Marie Stuart Society: Marie Stuart Society: Sheffield Manor

16th. May 2012

Marian Events at Sheffield Manor

The Society held a very successful Gathering at the Manor last spring when we were made very welcome and fair to say that we were very impressed with all the restoration and interpretive work which has taken place there in recent years.

Mary was of course prisoner at Sheffield Castle for fourteen long years from 1570 to 1584. The Castle itself has to all intents and purposes disappeared but the Lodge to which it was linked by a beautiful avenue of walnut trees has most fortunately survived and has now been handsomely restored

I have received a note of the following events with a bearing on Mary’s story which will taking place at the Manor this summer and autumn and which I am sure will be of interest both to Society members and others.

Tuesday 21^st. August

Who Dunnit? Someone has been sneeking messages out of Sheffield Manor Lodge to Mary supporters. Come and collect the clues. Interview the Tudor characters and see if you can find out who was guilty.

                                                Monday 3^rd.  September

“The final days of Mary, Queen of Scots” Talk by David Templeman  “Sheffield to Fortheringhay” at 7.0. p.m. Advance Booking only - £4

Friday 7^th. September

National Heritage Open Days;  Guided tour and costumed interpretation of the ruins and Turret House - Free.

Saturday 8^th. September

Mediaeval History Day; Guided tours and costumed interpretation of the ruins of Turret House -Free

Friday 2^nd. November

Tudor Crafts;  Find out how Bess of Hardwick and MQS used to pass their time . Booking essential.

Bess of Hardwick

Interspersed with the above are events covering archaeology, cooking, pottery, food and flower festivals to name but a few.

Full details see - www.manorlodge.org.uk

Ronald

Marie Stuart Society: Gunsgreen House

 Concert of 16th. century music at Gunsgreen House Eyemouth

Just heard of a concert of 16^th. century music on 26^th. May  at Gunsgreen House in Eyemouth which we would almost certainly have attended but for the fact that it clashes with the Society outing to Dundee.

Posting details as anyone not managing Dundee might just manage down to Eyemouth.

The concert is by Bel Canto, an Edinburgh-based a cappella group who specialise in the performance of choral music from the 15^th and 16^th centuries. In recent years this repertoire has been extended to include music of all periods, including some specially commissioned works. The Group comprises around 12 regular voices although draws on an extensive pool of deputies for the performance of larger scale pieces of music.

 The Group generally performs in historic settings and has performed widely in churches, cathedrals, castles and stately homes throughout Scotland, including an annual series of concerts for the National Trust for Scotland. They also gives recital in the various Galleries of Scotland.  

The group was founded by the current Director, David Buchanan-Cook, in 1990. He is also a composer of choral music and the premier of his Missa Brevis was performed by Bel Canto in St Aloysius Church, Glasgow in 2005.

The recital will consist of a selection of English Elizabethan madrigals on the theme of Fair Ladies and sundry winged creatures. The music will be interspersed with readings and refreshments will be served at the interval.

Tickets are priced at £15 which includes a glass of prosecco and nibbles at the interval.

To book contact Gunsgreen  or telephone 018907 52062

Marianne and I are voluntary guides at Gunsgreen House (usually on a Monday morning) and while nothing to do with Mary we thoroughly recommend a visit if in this part of the world. Designed by John Adam for a master smuggler this recently restored house has so much of historic interest and so many secrets to reveal.

Ronald

Dorothy Dunnett Society

Received today copy of a recent edition of the magazine “Whispering Gallery” which is a publication of the
Dorothy Dunnett Society.

This is not a magazine which I am familiar with, not indeed with the Society which exists to promote an interest in the works of author Dorothy Dunnett and the period in which they are set. Society member Ann McMillan is their Chairman.

I was very impressed indeed with the Magazine both the content and the quality.

Much of historic interest in the content including a most interesting and detailed article on the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh -a number of us visited and enjoyed a guided tour of the battlefield site only last September see-

Although no connection with Mary or her period another very interesting article written by Ann on “St. Ninian and the West Pilgrims’ Way”.

A Society which looks in many ways similar to our own - even to the extent that they will be holding their annual Gathering in Edinburgh on the same day as ourselves. Theirs however will extend over the whole week-end taking in talks on recent discoveries at Stirling Castle and a visit to the Castle and the Wallace Monument.

I have put up a link on our website.

Ronald

Treasures from The Royal Palaces

As part of  the Christmas Outing last December members of the Scottish Branch enjoyed a visit to the exhibition entitled “The Northern Renaissance: Durer to Holbein” being staged in the Queen’s Gallery at the Palace Holyroodhouse.

The exhibition contained much relating to Mary and the Royal Court including

portraiture by  court artist, François Clouet’s  showing Mary  both as the16-year-old future bride of Francis II c.1558 and as a widow of 18 who had just lost the throne of France, c.1560-61. 

Mary as a widow by Clouet

Too late now to see this exhibition but good news for those members who have kept their tickets which I believe they will admit to a new exhibition just opened.

This exhibition marking the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee is entitled

“Treasures from the Queen’s Palaces”

While obviously not so relevant to Mary an exhibition well worth seeing in its own right including works by Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo as well as two Easter Eggs by the Russian Jeweller Carl Faberge.

Also though included is a pair of earrings given by Mary to her attendant Mary Seton.

Even if not of so much Mary interest nevertheless an exhibition certainly well worth visiting. For further information.

Ronald

Callander House, Falkirk

 

Visited Callander House in Falkirk yesterday.

Purpose of the visit not involving Mary at all although the house is one with very many Marian connections.

The is very little of the house which Mary would know remaining but rebuilt as a fine Georgian House built in the French chateau style and well worthy of a visit.

The house is now a museum and art gallery with perhaps the main attraction for many being the fine restored and working Georgian kitchen.

Nonetheless a House very closely interwoven in Marian history.

In Mary’s time owned by Alexander, Fifth Lord Livingston who accompanied Mary’s father James V on his journey to France for the marriage to Princess Magdalene.

Shortly after her birth, Mary was betrothed to the future Edward V1 of England by the Treaty of Greenwich, a union initially promoted by the Regent of Scotland, the Earl of Aran but opposed by others.

It was a Callander House that the two parties became reconciled and determined to resile from the Treaty thereby incurring the wrath of the English King Henry V111 and setting in train the ‘Wars of the Rough Wooing’

Lord Livingston’s daughter was one of the ‘Four Marys ‘ who accompanied Mary to France (although not mentioned in the well-known song of the same title). Lord Livingston and his wife were also in the party and Lord Livingston was to die there in 1552.

His son, Lord William Livingston, although he had converted to Protestantism, played a prominent role in effecting Mary’s return as monarch in 1561.

Mary visited Callander House on several occasions, including in 1565 for the marriage of Mary Livingston to Lord Semple and later for the baptism of one of Lord Livingston’s children.

Mary also stayed at Callander on her return from Glasgow accompanied by Lord Darnley immediately before returning to Edinburgh. It was at Callander that the decision was taken than Darnley should not recuperate at Craigmillar Castle as would appear to have been intended but at the ill fated Provost’s Lodgings at Kirk o’ Field.

How and by whom this decision came to be made and the logistics of getting the house ready and what preplanning would have been required for the packing of the cellars of the house with gunpowder has long been debated and no doubt will again arise when the matter is the subject of the address by John Addiman at out Annual Gathering in April.

Ronald Morrison

Anniversary of Mary's Execution

8th. February 2012

The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots by Harry Payne 1858-1927

To day is the 425^th. anniversary of Mary’s execution at Fotheringhay Castle in Northhamptonshire in 1587

The lines (gender adjusted) of Malcolm in “Macbeth”   speaking of the Thane of Cawdor spring to mind:

"Nothing in her life

Became her like the leaving of it"

There can be no doubt she died with regal dignity and almost certainly sought to die as a Catholic Martyr.

The following is a contemporary account of her execution by Robert Wynkfield (spelling  modernized)

Her prayers being ended, the executioners, kneeling, desired her Grace to forgive them her death: who answered, 'I forgive you with all my heart, for now, I hope, you shall make an end of all my troubles.' Then they, with her two women, helping her up, began to disrobe her of her apparel: then she, laying her crucifix upon the stool, one of the executioners took from her neck the Agnus Dei, which she, laying hands off it, gave to one of her women, and told the executioner, he should be answered money for it. Then she suffered them, with her two women, to disrobe her of her chain of pomander beads and all other apparel most willingly, and with joy rather than sorrow, helped to make unready herself, putting on a pair of sleeves with her own hands which they had pulled off, and that with some haste, as if she had longed to be gone.

All this time they were pulling off her apparel, she never changed her countenance, but with smiling cheer she uttered these words,'that she never had such grooms to make her unready, and that she never put off her clothes before such a company.'

Then she, being stripped of all her apparel saving her petticoat and kirtle, her two women beholding her made great lamentation, and crying and crossing themselves prayed in Latin. She, turning herself to them, embracing them, said these words in French, 'Ne crie vous, j'ay prome pour vous', and so crossing and kissing them, bad them pray for her and rejoice and not weep, for that now they should see an end of all their mistress's troubles.

Then she, with a smiling countenance, turning to her men servants, as Melvin and the rest, standing upon a bench nigh the scaffold, who sometime weeping, sometime crying out aloud, and continually crossing themselves, prayed in Latin, crossing them with her hand bade them farewell, and wishing them to pray for her even until the last hour.

This done, one of the women have a Corpus Christi cloth lapped up three-corner-ways, kissing it, put it over the Queen of Scots' face, and pinned it fast to the caule of her head. Then the two women departed from her, and she kneeling down upon the cushion most resolutely, and without any token or fear of death, she spake aloud this Psalm in Latin, In Te Domine confido, non confundar in eternam, etc. Then, groping for the block, she laid down her head, putting her chin over the block with both her hands, which, holding there still, had been cut off had they not been espied. Then lying upon the block most quietly, and stretching out her arms cried, In manus tuas, Domine, etc., three or four times. Then she, lying very still upon the block, one of the executioners holding her slightly with one of his hands, she endured two strokes of the other executioner with an axe, she making very small noise or none at all, and not stirring any part of her from the place where she lay: and so the executioner cut off her head, saving one little gristle, which being cut asunder, he lift up her head to the view of all the assembly and bade God save the Queen. Then, her dress of lawn [i.e. wig] from off her head, it appeared as grey as one of threescore and ten years old, polled very short, her face in a moment being so much altered from the form she had when she was alive, as few could remember her by her dead face. Her lips stirred up and a down a quarter of an hour after her head was cut off.

Then Mr. Dean [Dr. Fletcher, Dean of Peterborough] said with a loud voice, 'So perish all the Queen's enemies', and afterwards the Earl of Kent came to the dead body, and standing over it, with a loud voice said, 'Such end of all the Queen's and the Gospel's enemies.'

Then one of the executioners, pulling off her garters, espied her little dog which was crept under her cloths, which could not be gotten forth by force, yet afterward would not depart from the dead corpse, but came and lay between her head and her shoulders, which being imbrued with her blood was carried away and washed, as all things else were that had any blood was either burned or washed clean, and the executioners sent away with money for their fees, not having any one thing that belonged unto her. And so, every man being commanded out of the hall, except the sheriff and his men, she was carried by them up into a great chamber lying ready for the surgeons to embalm her.

Ronald Morrison

Happy Birthday Mary

Today is Mary’s birthday.

Happy Birthday, Mary - 469 year old today.

That said it is possible she may have been born not on the 8^th. but on the 7^th. of December (her close advisor and associate Leslie thought so) and it has been argued that perhaps the date of birth was the 7^th. but the announcement held over until the 8^th. to coincide with the Feast day of the Virgin Mary after whom she was named,

Mary though always however maintained her birthday to be the  8^th.

She was of course born in a second floor chamber at Linlithgow Palace which still exists although now roofless. Her mother was Mary of Guise, the birth was probably premature and initially reports were of a weak and sickly child. .

Her father James V had suffered a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Solway Moss on the 24^th. November. After the defeat James spent a few days with his heavily pregnant wife at Linlithgow but then, for whatever reason  moved on to his palace at Falkland.

There only five days later, no doubt disappointed at the news his wife had given birth to a daughter rather than he a son, he “turned his face to the wall and died” uttering  the words “Adieu farewell it cam wi a lass and it will gang wi’ a lass”. The reference is to the Stuart dynasty which had began with the marriage of Walter Stuart to Marjorie Bruce and which was in course to end with the death of Queen Anne in 1714. James must have seen the dynasty as doomed particularly following the death of two earlier sons James and Robert in infancy.

The birth is commemorated by the Society every year with a short  ceremony at  Mary’s tomb at Westminster Abbey (above) when flowers are laid. The ceremony was again held last Saturday.