Her name was Mary, and she was the most beautiful young queen in the world; and the old French queen, whose name was Catherine, taught her to love dress, and shows, and dancing, more than anything, although she was so clever that she might have learned all the good things that the beautiful Lady Jane Grey had learned.
The young King of France died very soon, and then Mary, who is always called Queen of Scots, went home to Scotland. If she had been wise, she might have done as much good as her cousin Queen Elizabeth did in England.
But she had been too long living in gaiety and amusement in France, to know what was best for her people; and instead of listening to wise counsellors, as Elizabeth did, she would take advice from nobody but Frenchmen, or others who would dance and sing instead of minding serious things.
When she went away from Scotland all the people were Papists; but long before she got back, not only the people, but most of the great lords, were Protestants; and Mary was very much vexed, and tried to make them all turn Papists again.
At last, there was a civil war in Scotland, between the Papists and Protestants, which did much mischief: at the end of it, the Protestants promised Mary to let her be a Papist and have Papist clergymen for herself and the lords and ladies belonging to her house; and she promised that her children should be brought up as Protestants, and that the people should be allowed to worship God in the way they liked best.
Just before this war Mary had married her cousin, Henry Stuart, called Lord Darnley, who was very handsome; and she liked him very much indeed for a little time, and they had a son called James. But soon afterwards Mary was very much offended with Darnley, and showed great favour to Lord Bothwell. Not long afterwards Lord Bothwell murdered Darnley at the very time when Mary was giving a ball in her palace and was dancing merrily; and most people then thought that Mary had planned the wicked deed with Bothwell that she might be able to marry him.
And it turned out just as everybody expected; so you cannot wonder that most of those who were good were very angry indeed when they found that she chose to marry that wicked man three months after he had killed her poor husband.
Then there was another civil war, and Mary was put into prison in Loch-Leven Castle, which stands on a little island in the middle of a lake. However, by the help of one of her friends she got out, and once more got her Papist advisers round her, who tried to make her queen again.
But the Scots would not allow it, and they made her little infant James their king, and made the lords Murray and Morton, and some others, guardians for the little king and the kingdom.
It would have been well for Queen Mary if she would have lived in Scotland quietly, and taken care of her little son herself. But her bad husband, Bothwell, had run away to save his own life, and Mary Queen of Scots chose to come to England, in hopes that Queen Elizabeth, her cousin, would help her to get the kingdom of Scotland again.