Escape from the island fortress
On 2 May 1568, Mary Queen of Scots escaped from Lochleven Castle, a fortress on an island in the middle of a loch in Kinross-shire. She had been imprisoned there since June 1567, forced to abdicate the throne in favour of her infant son James, and kept under the watchful guard of the Douglas family. Her escape was one of the most daring episodes in her extraordinary life.
The plan was hatched by George Douglas, the younger brother of the castle's laird, who had fallen under Mary's spell. The key role, however, was played by Willie Douglas, a teenage page — possibly an orphaned cousin of the family. On the evening of 2 May, during supper, Willie stole the castle keys while the laird was distracted. He locked the gate behind him, helped Mary into a waiting boat, and rowed her across the loch. On the far shore, George Douglas and a party of loyal supporters were waiting with horses.
Mary was free for the first time in almost a year. She was twenty-five years old, still possessed of the charisma that had dazzled the courts of France and Scotland, and she moved with astonishing speed. Within days she had gathered an army of six thousand men — Hamiltons, Gordons, Flemings, and others who still saw her as the rightful queen. The speed of the rally testified to the depth of loyalty she still commanded across Scotland.
But freedom would prove cruelly brief. Eleven days after her escape, Mary's army met the forces of her half-brother, the Earl of Moray, at Langside near Glasgow. The result was catastrophic. Mary watched the battle from a nearby hill and saw her hopes destroyed in less than an hour. She fled south, crossed the Solway Firth, and rode into England — and into nineteen more years of captivity. Lochleven had been a prison; England would be a tomb.