ABSTRACT
This essay examines Mary Hays's lengthy entry on Mary, Queen of Scots in her six-volume encyclopaedia, Female Biography. In many respects, Hays's biography not only tells the history of the loss of the queen's reputation during her lifetime but represents an effort to vindicate her from persistent calumnies over the centuries; as such, Hays's efforts to rewrite her life form a part of her overall authorial mission to take up her pen “in the cause and for the benefit of my sex.” Unlike earlier biographies of the queen, Hays's portrait is a remarkably sympathetic one, especially when compared to that provided by William Robertson in his History of Scotland. Despite relying on Robertson's History as her chief source, Hays incorporated many of the arguments used by John Whitaker in Mary Queen of Scots Vindicated, which challenged the long-standing assumptions that Mary was at least partially responsible for the murder of her second husband, Darnley; that she was passionately devoted to the Earl of Bothwell; and that she authored the so-called casket letters and sonnets to the latter. In Female Biography, the queen is presented as a victim of Darnley and Bothwell as well as of the regent, the Earl of Murray, and his cohorts, not to mention her cousin, Queen Elizabeth. Not least, unlike Robertson, Hays downplays her character flaws while presenting her as a woman who combined the best features of both sexes.
