Mary of Guise in Scotland, 1548™1560: A Political Career

Rating:
Summary: At last - a serious study of a sixteenth-century queen,
Review: Ritchie's skillful narration of this difficult and controversial period has provided by far one of the best books as yet available on the politics of sixteenth century Scotland, but is also a must-see for anybody interested in the dynastic politics of France and England.

16th century Europe is one of the most fascinating periods in history, populated by some of the such colourful and well-known figures as Henry VIII, Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I and Bloody Mary. It is also a century, as the names listed above suggest, that features a large number of women in positions of power. Mary of Guise, mother of Mary Queen of Scots, was another of these powerful political women.

The side-effect of the colourful nature of the lives of some of these women is that sixteenth-century history books often read like little more than romantic fiction. They play up the history of personalities (often based on poor research and quasi-psychological guesswork), but ignore the serious side of the women who ruled some of the most powerful kingdoms in Europe.

Pamela E. Ritchie does not make this mistake. Her book is a serious study of a serious woman, and is based on meticulous and extensive research. But the book is no turgid academic tome, and Ritchie manages the difficult trick of providing a thoroughly readable and engaging study of the career and ambitions of a fascinating woman. Mary of Guise has traditionally been written off in Scotland as the main agent of an unpopular French/Catholic domination of Scotland that took place in the 1550s, which was overturned by the popular revolution of John Knox's Reformation in 1560. Ritchie shows this was not the case. Instead Guise, for most of the 1550s, enjoyed considerable support from Scots, and her plans for a dynastic union of the French and Scottish crowns by the marriage of Mary Queen of Scots to the Dauphin Francois was supported by Catholic and Protestant Scots alike. Guise, above all, was a skilled politician who carefully balanced the difficult circumstances of the dynastic conflicts of sixteenth-century Europe to best pursue the interests of her own family (les Guises) and her daughter, the monarch of Scotland. That her regime collapsed in 1560 as a result of a rebellion brought about as much by the role of a new protestant regime in England as any deep-seated popular hatred of the French influence in Scotland, should not obscure the successes of her time in power.

Rating:
Summary: 16th century Scottish politics
Review: The key to the contents of this book is in its subtitle - "1548-1560 A Political Study".

The author has done a lot of original research into Scottish politics during the minority of Mary, Queen of Scots and in reality this is what you'll find in this book and it takes up 99% of the first half of the book.

We get to see Mary de Guise in a more biographical form in the second half of the book. However, if you buy this book expecting to read a biography of Mary de Guise you will probably be disappointed. While Mary's political actions are dealt with in great detail, in the end you feel you really don't know that much about her. Instead you know more about how King Henri of France felt about Scotland, or the importance of various treaties than you do about Mary herself.

This is a first rate book for those who want to know the ins and outs of the various political schemes in Scotland from 1548-1560 but less successfully gives us a real feel for the personality of Mary of Guise. On the plus side the author has included a number of quotes from original documents in both their original French and with English translations for those of us not fluent in the French language and all the sources are well footnoted.