Mary Queen of Scots is a classic Scottish royalty biography by Jacob Abbott. Travelers who go into Scotland take a great interest in visiting, among other places, a certain room in the ruins of an old palace, where Queen Mary was born. Queen Mary was very beautiful, but she was very unfortunate and unhappy. Every body takes a strong interest in her story, and this interest attaches, in some degree, to the room where her sad and sorrowful life was begun. Mary, Queen of Scots (8 December 1542 – 8 February 1587), also known as Mary Stuart[3] or Mary I, reigned over Scotland from 14 December 1542 to 24 July 1567. Mary, the only surviving legitimate child of King James V, was six days old when her father died and she acceded to the throne. She spent most of her childhood in France while Scotland was ruled by regents, and in 1558, she married the Dauphin of France, Francis. He ascended the French throne as King Francis II in 1559, and Mary briefly became queen consort of France, until his death in December 1560. Widowed, Mary returned to Scotland, arriving in Leith on 19 August 1561. Four years later, she married her first cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, but their union was unhappy. In February 1567, his residence was destroyed by an explosion, and Darnley was found murdered in the garden. James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, was generally believed to have orchestrated Darnley's death, but he was acquitted of the charge in April 1567, and the following month he married Mary. Following an uprising against the couple, Mary was imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle. On 24 July 1567, she was forced to abdicate in favour of James VI, her one-year-old son by Darnley. After an unsuccessful attempt to regain the throne, she fled southwards seeking the protection of her first cousin once removed, Queen Elizabeth I of England. Mary had previously claimed Elizabeth's throne as her own and was considered the legitimate sovereign of England by many English Catholics, including participants in a rebellion known as the Rising of the North. Perceiving her as a threat, Elizabeth had her confined in various castles and manor houses in the interior of England. After eighteen and a half years in custody, Mary was found guilty of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth in 1586. She was beheaded the following year. Assessments of Mary in the sixteenth century divided between Protestant reformers such as George Buchanan and John Knox, who vilified her mercilessly, and Catholic apologists such as Adam Blackwood, who praised, defended and eulogised her.[236] After the accession of James I in England, historian William Camden wrote an officially sanctioned biography that drew from original documents. It condemned Buchanan's work as an invention,[237] and "emphasized Mary's evil fortunes rather than her evil character".[238] Differing interpretations persisted into the eighteenth century: William Robertson and David Hume argued that the casket letters were genuine and that Mary was guilty of adultery and murder, while William Tytler argued the reverse.[239] In the latter half of the twentieth century, the work of Antonia Fraser was acclaimed as "more objective ... free from the excesses of adulation or attack" that had characterised older biographies,[240] and her contemporaries Gordon Donaldson and Ian B. Cowan also produced more balanced works.[241] Historian Jenny Wormald concluded that Mary was a tragic failure, who was unable to cope with the demands placed on her,[242] but hers was a rare dissenting view in a post-Fraser tradition that Mary was a pawn in the hands of scheming noblemen.[243] There is no concrete proof of her complicity in Darnley's murder or of a conspiracy with Bothwell. Such accusations rest on assumptions,[244] and Buchanan's biography is today discredited as "almost complete fantasy".[245] Mary's courage at her execution helped establish her popular image as the heroic victim in a dramatic tragedy.