Lecture Access

This lecture will be available to view until 4 January 2027

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OVERVIEW

Watch on Demand | One-Hour Lecture


Mary, Queen of Scots, ascended the Scottish throne when she was just six days old, setting in motion one of the most dramatic royal lives of the sixteenth century. 

Raised in France and married to its future king, she was widowed young and returned in 1561 to a Scotland transformed by the Protestant Reformation, where a Catholic queen ruled an increasingly hostile realm.

Her personal reign unravelled amid scandal and violence. A disastrous marriage to Lord Darnley, his murder, and her swift remarriage to the Earl of Bothwell turned her nobility and her people against her, forcing her abdication in favour of her infant son.

Fleeing to England in 1568, Mary sought the protection of Elizabeth I but found instead nearly two decades of captivity. Implicated in successive plots to seize the English throne, she was tried and executed in 1587, becoming in death a Catholic martyr and an enduring symbol of tragic queenship.

This lecture examines Mary's contested legacy, weighing the woman against the myths that have long surrounded her.

LECTURER

Biography

Dr Lauren Mackay is an historian, author, lecturer and consultant, with a B.Mus from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music/University of Sydney, Australia, a Masters of History from the University of New England, and a PhD from the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her research explores the interconnected worlds of the Early Modern period, from the courts of Tudor England and the famed Habsburgs, to the Ottoman Empire, and the global reach of European expansion into the New World. Lauren is also the author of three books, and her fourth, Thunder Through the Realms: Five Kingdoms and the Shaping of Early Modern Europe, is due out in 2025 with Bloomsbury Publishing. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, she has lectured throughout the UK, at venues including Hampton Court, the Tower of London, Sudeley Castle, Hever Castle, Windsor Castle, Leeds Castle, The National Archives, Kew, The Portrait Gallery, London, and the BBC History weekends.

Dr Lauren Mackay

Historian