The early years of Mary, Queen of Scots: War, Disruption and Reformation

Mary Queen of Scots came to the throne aged six days old. Immediately, Scotland was plunged into war against Henry VIII of England seeking to marry her to his son, the future Edward VI, and convert Catholic Scotland to his new English brand of Protestantism. Whilst the drama of war over Mary's marriage is well known, the impact of the largest Tudor invasion on the people of Scotland is often forgotten. Sharing unpublished stories of ordinary Scots, found in archives from Aberdeen to Peebles, this talk shows how the war affected Scotland and the Scots, and how the devastation caused by war ironically contributed to Scotland's religious conversion to the very Protestantism it had resisted so fiercely.

Amy Blakeway is a Senior Lecturer in Scottish History at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of Regency in Sixteenth-Century Scotland (2015) and Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V of Scotland, 1528-42 (2022).

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