Life of Mary Queen of Scots

Life of Mary Queen of Scots is a historical biography by Henry Glassford Bell, originally published in 1828 and reissued in expanded form several times during the nineteenth century. Bell, a Scottish lawyer, sheriff, and poet who lived from 1803 to 1874, was a friend of Sir Walter Scott and a substantial figure in Edinburgh literary life across the second quarter of the nineteenth century.

The book belongs to the substantial body of nineteenth century writing on Mary Queen of Scots, a figure who fascinated Romantic and Victorian historians for both her dramatic personal story and the larger religious and political conflicts her reign embodied. Bell wrote from a strongly sympathetic position. He was convinced that Mary had been treated unjustly by the historical record, that her enemies had successfully blackened her reputation for political purposes, and that a fair examination of the evidence would substantially rehabilitate her character and her conduct.

The biography moves through Mary’s life in the conventional chronological sequence. There are chapters on her childhood and her early years at the French court, on her brief reign as queen of France through her marriage to Francis II, on her return to Scotland after his death, on the troubled years of her personal rule in Edinburgh, on the disasters of her marriage to Darnley and its violent end, on her marriage to Bothwell and the subsequent collapse of her power, and on the long years of her captivity in England that ended with her execution at Fotheringhay in 1587. Bell handles each phase with attention to the source material available in his time and with a clear preference for interpretations that present Mary in the most favourable light consistent with the evidence.

The book was popular in its time and went through several editions. Bell brought to it a combination of legal training, literary skill, and Scottish national feeling that gave the book its particular character. He was a serious researcher within the limits of the source material available in the early and mid nineteenth century, and many of his judgements about disputed episodes in Mary’s life have stood up reasonably well to the much fuller scholarly examination that later historians have been able to undertake.

The book runs to several hundred pages and is best read in chapter sized pieces. For readers interested in nineteenth century historiography about Mary Queen of Scots, this is one of the more sympathetic accounts. It pairs naturally with the much later modern biographies by John Guy and Antonia Fraser.