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