A queen deposed
On 24 July 1567, Mary Queen of Scots, imprisoned in the island fortress of Lochleven Castle, was forced to sign instruments of abdication in favour of her infant son James. She was twenty-four years old. She had been queen of Scotland since she was six days old and queen consort of France at sixteen. Now, broken by the catastrophic sequence of events that had followed her marriage to Bothwell, she signed away her crown under duress.
The abdication was forced by the Confederate Lords — the coalition of Scottish nobles who had turned against Mary after her marriage to the Earl of Bothwell. They had confronted her at Carberry Hill on 15 June, where her army melted away without a fight. She was taken to Edinburgh, jeered by crowds, and then rowed across Loch Leven to the Douglas family's island fortress. Lord Lindsay of the Byres, a brutal man, reportedly threatened Mary with violence if she refused to sign.
Mary signed three documents: one abdicating in favour of her son, one appointing the Earl of Moray as regent, and one authorising a council of nobles to govern until Moray returned from France. Whether the abdication was legally valid — signed under imprisonment and threat — has been debated for centuries. Mary herself repudiated it the moment she escaped from Lochleven the following May.
Her infant son was crowned James VI at the Church of the Holy Rude in Stirling on 29 July, five days after the abdication. John Knox preached the coronation sermon. The baby was thirteen months old. He would grow to become one of the most successful Stewart monarchs, eventually uniting the Scottish and English crowns in 1603. But he would never know his mother. Mary's abdication began nineteen years of imprisonment — first in Scotland, then in England — that ended only with her execution at Fotheringhay in 1587. Lochleven Castle stands today as one of Scotland's most atmospheric historic sites, its ruined tower rising from the island where a queen lost her throne.