Mary of Guelders, queen and regent of Scotland (born 17 January 1433)
The woman who would become queen of Scotland on 3 July 1449, Marie de Gueldres, or, in English, Mary of Guelders, was the daughter of Arnold, duke of Guelders, and Catherine of Cleves. Through her mother, Mary of Guelders had close ties to the Burgundian court--Catherine of Cleves was the daughter of Marie of Burgundy (who became duchess of Cleves through her marriage to Adolph I, duke of Cleves).
Through her maternal line, then, Mary of Guelders had illustrious connections. The duchy of Burgundy was a wealthy and powerful state, and one of the most culturally advanced in western Europe. Her grandmother, Marie of Burgundy, was the daughter of Philip the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, and the elder sister of Philip the Good, who succeeded his father of duke of Burgundy--thus Philip, duke of Burgundy was Mary of Guelders's maternal great uncle.
(The Cleves connection is also interesting, in particular to those who love Tudor history, because of one of her descendants--Mary of Guelders's mother, Catherine of Cleves, was the great aunt of Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII's third wife--the one he divorced.)
Although Guelders was a vassal state of the Holy Roman Empire during this period, it also had critical ties with Burgundy, and Philip of Burgundy offered the duke of Guelders not only his support but a bride, his greeat niece Mary. Despite these marital ties, Arnold of Guelders would have an uneasy relationship with Burgundy, and Duke Philip eventually turned against him.
In 1442, during this period of conflict, the nine-year-old Mary of Guelders left her father's court and was sent to Burgundy, where she was placed in the care of Isabel of Portugal, Philip of Burgundy's third wife. There, under the carae of the remarkable duchess, Mary of Guelders received not only an excellent education, but she could also witness and learn from the political acumen and administrative experience of Isabel of Portugal.
A possible marriage for Mary of Guelders with Charles, count of Maine, was suggested when she was about twelve years old. A member of the cadet branch of the ruling Valois family, Charles was the son of Yolande of Aragon, daughter of the king of Aragon and duchess of Anjou--the alliance was most likely proposed by the younger Charles's cousin, Charles VII of France. But after Arnold of Guelders informed the duke and duchess of Burgundy that he could not provide the dowry required for his daughter, that match failed to be made.
But in in 1446, the possibility of a marriage to the king of Scots, James II, arose. While this suggested alliance has been ascribed to the king of France, Charles VII, historian Rosalind K. Marshall notes that "it seems much more likely that the original idea and the initial delicate negotiations were achieved through a network of female connections."
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| A sixteenth-century depiction of the marriage of Mary of Guelders and James II of Scotland (Lambeth Palace MS 316); in the manuscript, Mary is misidentified as "Margaret," though she is correctly said to be the daughter of the "Duke of Gelders" |
The king of Scotland's mother, Joan Beaufort, was related to Isabel of Portugal (I can't work out the exact relationship--Isabel of Portugal's mother, Philippa of Lancaster, was John of Gaunt's daughter by his first wife, Blanche of Portugal, while Joan Beaufort was the daughter of John of Gaunt's son, John Beaufort, by his third wife, Katherine Swynford.)
Joan Beaufort, queen of Scotland, died in 1445, however, though it was "not long after" her death that "soundings were being taken" about the potential of an alliance between Scotland and Burgundy.
By June of 1446, Scottish ambassadors were in Guelders, when Mary of Guelders may have been visiting her father. The next year, Arnold of Guelders was known to be discussing the possibility of the marriage.
In 1448, James II of Scotland wrote to Charles VII of France, asking the king for advice about a bride--and the king of France suggested Mary of Guelders. But, as Marshall claims, "[n]o doubt" the king of Scotland already knew that Mary was "the chosen bride."
I have examined the political connections among royal and aristocratic women in the late-medieval and early-modern periods myself, and although I love the idea that the marriage between Mary of Guelders and the Scottish king is the result of the "delicate negotiations" between women, there really is no evidence. One of Isabel of Portugal's great interests as duchess of Burgundy was arranging influential marital alliances, but Marshall notes only that the queen of Scotland and the duchess of Burgundy "were almost certainly in touch with each other." While the potential of a marriage might have been raised by the two women, the death of Joan Beaufort in 1445 would seem to make her role in bringing the alliance to fruition unlikely.
Meanwhile, as Scottish historian Callum Watson notes, the French king was "a kind of international marriage broker for the Scots during the 1440s":
It was thanks to King Charles that James II's other sisters were married off to such luminaries as the Duke of Brittany, the Archduke of Austria, the Lord of Veere, and the Count of Geneva. When the time came, Charles also encouraged Philip to apply pressure to Mary's father to accept a match between his eldest daughter and the Scottish king. The union was hugely appealing to the Scots as it provided the royal administration with connections to the courts of Burgundy (through her uncle), Gueldres (through her father), and Cleves (through her mother).
Whoever was responsible for the marriage, the treaty for the marriage was was agreed upon by Philip of Burgundy and James II on 1 April 1449. (And Philip of Burgundy paid the dowry for Mary of Guelders.) In the treaty, Mary of Guelders is described as "young and beautiful" (or, in the Latin of the document, nubilus et formosa). Suitable preparations for Mary of Guelders's wedding to James II of Scotland were soon made. She left for Scotland on 9 June 1449, arriving in Leith, just north of Edinburgh, on 18 June. Her marriage to the nineteen-year-old king took place on 3 July 1449.
Not much is known about Mary of Guelders for more than a decade after her marriage. As the Scottish antiquarian David Laing wrote in the nineteenth century, "During the eleven years that intervened between the . . . marriage of Mary of Gueldres in Scotland with James II in July 1449, and her husband's death, her name is not so much as once mentioned in connexion with any public event."
During this period, as James II's queen, Mary of Guelders received gifts and grants. She made charitable donations. As queens were expected to do, she appeared in parliament to intercede with her husband for those seeking his favor and forgiveness. She gave birth to a short-lived son in 1451, then to another son and heir, who would become James III, in 1451. Two daughters and three more sons followed. So, between her marriage and her husband's death in 1460, Mary of Guelders gave birth to seven children.
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| The ruins of Roxburgh Castle (photograph from 1936) |
Mary of Guelders may have been present when her husband besieged and took Blackness Castle in 1453 (the siege and recapture of the castle occurred during the king's conflict with the Douglas clan).
But the queen was not present in 1460, when James II attempted to retake Roxburgh Castle, held by the English. Nor was he so lucky. He was injured by a piece of shrapnel, but it wasn't from a weapon belonging to the English forces--he was standing too close to one of his own cannons, which backfired. He died on 3 August as a result of his injury.
Nevertheless, the siege of the castle continued. On learning of her husband's death, Mary of Guelders, traveled with her nine-year-old son from Edinburgh to Kelso, near Roxburgh, making sure that the Scots "finished her late husband's work." The castle fell on 8 August, and James III was crowned at Kelso Abbey on 10 August. Mary of Guelders had Roxburgh Castle razed.
Mary of Guelders, queen of Scotland, would die just three years after her husband, but during this brief time, she was regent for her son, now James III, with the advice of a regency council. Although these men seemed to believe there was "little good" in handing over the "keeping of the kingdom a woman," the new regent acted ably.
Later historians would conclude that she was feeble-minded and/or promiscuous--these are assessments of female rule that have appeared consistently throughout my entries on female rulers in this blog. But the reality is (see here and here, for example) that she acted competently in her role as regent, despite disruptive factions in Scotland and pressures from the contending parties in the Wars of the Roses in England.
Notably, Mary received Margaret of Anjou, in 1460, after Henry VI's queen was forced to flee England. The two women may have considered a marriage between the Lancastrian heir, Edward, and Mary, the eldest daughter of Mary of Guelders. Mary of Guelders again offered shelter to Margaret of Anjou and Henry VI after their defeat at the battle of Towton in 1461, and the Lancastrian pair stayed in Scotland for a year before the political situation in England made the situation too difficult for the dowager queen.
At this point, Mary of Guelders arranged for the deposed English king and queen to leave Scotland--she paid them to go. At the same time, she seems to have entertained the possibility of a marriage with Edward IV, the Yorkist king who had replaced Henry VI. But nothing came of that, and when Margaret of Anjou returned to Scotland once more, in 1463, the Scottish queen assisted her again before Margaret left in July of that year, seeking assistance in Burgundy.
Mary of Guelders, queen of Scotland, died soon after Margaret of Anjou's departure--according to Bishop Leslie, the queen died on 16 November of 1463--she is known to have become ill in the fall--but the date is recorded by the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland as 1 December 1464, with the year clearly an error. (Her funeral was not held until June 1464.) The December date is conventionally given for her death.
In addition to her political roles, as regent, Mary of Guelders undertook a "programme of building works" that would "articulate and define her power and status." As part of this her architectural program, she founded a hospital on Castle Hill in Stirling and founded the Trinity College Church and hospital in Edinburgh:
Queen Mary dedicated her foundation to the praise and honour of the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Mary, St Ninian—to whom she appears to have had an especial dedication—and all saints.39 The buildings included a perpetual college, or collegiate church, which was designed to secure masses for the souls of the queen, her deceased husband, and their families in perpetuity. Mary chose the church as her preferred burial location.
Her intention was to be buried at her foundation rather than with her husband at Holyroodhouse. As Rachel Delman and Jill Harrison note, this decision "demonstrated that she had ample wealth to afford an
impressive burial site indicative of her queenly status":
It was also a tangible expression of a woman’s personal choice and agency over where and how she and her family were to be remembered at a time when female agency was limited due to the patriarchal power structures of medieval society. The foundation demonstrated Mary’s charity on a grand, public scale through its sophisticated architectural design and its prominent original location on a busy thoroughfare frequented by pilgrims and visitors travelling to and from the continent.
Unfortunately, Mary of Guelders's collegiate church was dismantled in 1954 in order to make way for a railway--the "buildings’ royal significance and the feelings of their nineteenth century
supporters appear to have been ignored," and the "powerful narrative" of Mary of Guelders "was
forgotten."
For a bit of a happier note, something of a "revival" of the Trinity, see Rachel M. Delman and Jill Harrison, "Reviving the Trinity: Making Mary of Guelders’ Fifteenth-Century Built Legacy Relevant in TwentyFirst Century Scotland," Royal Studies Journal 12, no. 1 (2025), here. I've linked to quotations from this article, above. If you have access, I also recommend Rachel M. Delman's "Mary of Guelders and the Architecture of Queenship in Fifteenth-Century Scotland," Scottish Historical Review 102, no. 2 (2023), https://doi.org/10.3366/shr.2023.0611.
I've also linked here to Rosalind Marshall's Scottish Queens, 1034–1714, published in 2003. For what seems to be a revised version of this book, click here.
Fiona Downie's 2006 She is But a Woman Queenship in Scotland 1424–1463 is also forthcoming in a new edition.
