Queen Of Scots Quotes

In my end is my beginning

Mary Queen of Scots had a little dog, a Skye terrier, that was devoted to her. Moments after Mary was beheaded, the people who were watching saw her skirts moving about and they thought her headless body was trying to get itself to its feet. But the movement turned out to be her dog, which she had carried to the block with her, hidden in her skirts. Mary Stuart is supposed to have faced her execution with grace and courage (she wore a scarlet chemise to suggest she was being martyred), but I don’t think she could have been so brave if she had not secretly been holding tight to her Skye terrier, feeling his warm, silky fur against her trembling skin.

He was now beginning to wonder whether the jigsaw was the correct metaphor for relationships between me and women after all. It didn't take account of the sheer stubbornness of human beings, their determination to affix themselves to another even if they didn't fit. They didn't care about jutting off at weird angles, and they didn't care about phone booths and Mary, Queen of Scots. They were motivated not by seamless and sensible matching, but by eyes, mouths, smiles, minds, breasts and chests and bottoms, wit, kindness, charm, romantic history and all sorts of other things that made straight edges impossible to achieve.

Rue not my death. Rejoice at my repose, It was no death to me but to my woes. The bud was opened to let out the rose. The chain was loosed to let the captive go.” —ROBERT SOUTHWELL ON MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS

Darnley, who, like Banquo's ghost, seemed to play a much more effective part in Scottish politics once he was dead than when he was alive.

Lady Jane Gray, who tho' inferior to her lovely Cousin the Queen of Scots, was yet an amiable young woman & famous for reading Greek while other people were hunting....Whether she really understood that language or whether such a study proceeded only from an excess of vanity for which I beleive she was always rather remarkable, is uncertain.

He had never once felt itchy, in the way that two connecting pieces of a jigsaw never felt itchy, as far as one could tell. If one were to imagine, for the sake of argument, that jigsaw pieces had thoughts and feelings, then it was possible to imagine them saying to themselves, 'I'm going to stay here. Where else would I go?' And if another jigsaw piece came along, offering its tabs and blanks enticingly in an attempt to lure one of the pieces away, it would be easy to resist temptation. 'Look,' the object of the seducer's admiration would say. 'You're a bit of telephone box, and I'm the face of Mary, Queen of Scots. We just wouldn't look right together.' And that would be that.

[L]et us not overlook the further great fact, that not only does science underlie sculpture, painting, music, poetry, but that science is itself poetic. The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion. ... On the contrary science opens up realms of poetry where to the unscientific all is a blank. Those engaged in scientific researches constantly show us that they realize not less vividly, but more vividly, than others, the poetry of their subjects. Whoever will dip into Hugh Miller's works on geology, or read Mr. Lewes's “Seaside Studies,” will perceive that science excites poetry rather than extinguishes it. And whoever will contemplate the life of Goethe will see that the poet and the man of science can co-exist in equal activity. Is it not, indeed, an absurd and almost a sacrilegious belief that the more a man studies Nature the less he reveres it? Think you that a drop of water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses anything in the eye of the physicist who knows that its elements are held together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would produce a flash of lightning? Think you that what is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow-flake, does not suggest higher associations to one who has seen through a microscope the wondrously varied and elegant forms of snow-crystals? Think you that the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid a million years ago? The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded. Whoever has not in youth collected plants and insects, knows not half the halo of interest which lanes and hedge-rows can assume. Whoever has not sought for fossils, has little idea of the poetical associations that surround the places where imbedded treasures were found. Whoever at the seaside has not had a microscope and aquarium, has yet to learn what the highest pleasures of the seaside are. Sad, indeed, is it to see how men occupy themselves with trivialities, and are indifferent to the grandest phenomena—care not to understand the architecture of the universe, but are deeply interested in some contemptible controversy about the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots!—are learnedly critical over a Greek ode, and pass by without a glance that grand epic... upon the strata of the Earth!

In the letters section, a Scot reminds his readers of the ‘Glorious Alliance’ between France and Mary Queen of Scots, which explains why Scotland should not share the rabid Europhobia of Englishmen.

‘I’m fairly bursting tae ken how ye guessed I spoke Scots?’ Lymond looked up. Superficial pain, withstood or ignored for quite a long time, had made his eyes heavy, but they were brimming with laughter. ‘Well, God,’ he said. ‘In the water, you were roaring your head off at a bloody bull elephant called Hughie.

He was a red-headed chap, and my experience of the red-headed is that you can always expect high blood pressure from them in times of stress. The first Queen Elizabeth had red hair, and look what she did to Mary Queen of Scots.

Wherever I may be In the woods or in the fields Whatever the hours of day Be it dawn or the eventide My heart still feels it yet The eternal regret... As I sink into my sleep The absent one is near Alone upon my couch I feel his beloved touch In work or in repose We are foreverver close...

Queen Mary was very beautiful, but she was very unfortunate and unhappy.

Sweetheart, I might be a wolf, but I’m a Scot first, and I’ve never trusted those English bastards.

Mary was like a caged tiger in the first days of her captivity. Keen, alert, and watchful, she listened tensely each dawn for the key that unlocked her door. After breakfast she watched the road for messengers, pacing back and forth like a confined feline. But no messengers ever came. Elizabeth had abandoned her. Or forgotten her. And the days passed. Little by little, the Queen of Scots grew accustomed to her captivity. She no longer heard the key in the lock, or the footsteps outside her door. More often than not it was the maid's cheerful voice that woke her, along with the hand on Mary's shoulder and the delicious smells wafting from the breakfast tray.

News of the death of James V on 14 December gave even further cause for rejoicing, because his heir was a week-old girl, the infant Mary, Queen of Scots. Scotland would be subject to yet another weakening regency—it had endured six during the past 150 years—and should give no further trouble.

All people suffer from the dread of death, but we are mostly troubled by the uncertainties of time and circumstance.

Never have I had such assistants to disrobe me, and never have I put off my clothes before such a company

sunken to that of an old woman in the harsh disguise

En ma fin est ma commencement.

If aw his hums and haws were hams and haggises, the country wad be weel fed!

She died early in the morning of February 13, 1662, at the age of sixty-five, one day shy of what would have been her forty-ninth wedding anniversary.

Only Mary Queen of Scots challenged the prevailing orthodoxy when she wore white to mourn the death of Lord Darnley in 1567, earning the title of ‘The White Queen’.

When sonneteering Wordsworth re-creates the landing of Mary Queen of Scots at the mouth of the Derwent - Dear to the Loves, and to the Graces vowed, The Queen drew back the wimple that she wore - he unveils nothing less than a canvas by Rubens, baroque master of baroque masters; this is the landing of a TRAGIC Marie de Medicis. Yet so receptive was the English ear to sheep-Wordsworth's perverse 'Enough of Art' that it is not any of these works of supreme art, these master-sonnets of English literature, that are sold as picture postcards, with the text in lieu of the view, in the Lake District! it is those eternally, infernally sprightly Daffodils.

Wherever I may be In the woods or in the fields Whatever the hours of day Be it dawn or the eventide My heart still feel it yet The eternal regret... As I sink into my sleep The absent one is near Alone upon my couch I feel his beloved touch In work or in repose We are foreverver close...

As Grey put his hand on the pommel, he heard a low Scots voice murmur in his ear: “Queen’s rook to king eight. Check.” Grey laughed out loud, a burst of exhilaration pushing aside his disquiet. “Ha,” he said, though without raising his voice. “Queen’s bishop to knight four. Check. And mate, Mr … MacKenzie.

The crypt underneath the manor was beautiful and in perfect preservation. Paul made a drawing. Miriam stayed with him. She was thinking of Mary Queen of Scots looking with her strained hopeless eyes, that could not understand misery, over the hills where no help came, or sitting in this crypt being told of a God as cold as the place she sat in.

I made tiny newspapers of ant events, stamp-sized papers at first, then a bit bigger, too big for ants, it distressed me, but I couldn’t fit the stories otherwise and I wanted real stories, not just lines of something that looked like writing. Anyway, imagine how small an ant paper would really be. Even a stamp would have looked like a basketball court. I imagine political upheavals, plots and coups d e’tat, and I reported on them. I think I may have been reading a biography of Mary Queen of Scots at the time…. Anyway, there was this short news day for the ants. I’d run out of political plots, or I was bored with them. So I got a glass of water and I created a flood. The ants scrambled for safety, swimming for their lives. I was kind of ashamed, but it made for good copy. I told myself I was bringing excitement into their usual humdrum. The next day, I dropped a rock on them. It was a meteorite from outer space. They gathered around it and ran up and over it; obviously they didn’t know what to do. It prompted three letters to the editor.

very last answer which Paulet and Buckhurst were prepared to

As the common people say, Only harlots marry in May.

to see her not merely as a bundle of stereotypes or as a convenient and tenuously linked series of myths, but as a whole woman whose choices added up and whose decisions made sense.

The worst imposition of all was to be instructed to take on some costly, long-standing obligation to the crown. Such was the fate of Bess of Hardwick’s husband, the sixth Lord Shrewsbury. For sixteen years he was required to act as jailer to Mary, Queen of Scots, which in effect meant maintaining the court of a small, fantastically disloyal state in his own home.

Elizabeth set an example to the monarchs of her day and of subsequent epochs, in that she never arrogated to herself the position of ruler of England, but assumed the more modest role of administrator, of carrier-out of the folk-will, of servitor to the national mission; she understood the trends of the epoch that was emerging from an autocratic regime into a constitutional regime.

It sounds nicer than it seems in the book," she would say. "I never cared about Mary, Queen of Scots, before, and I always hated the French Revolution, but you make it seem like a story." "It is a story," Sara would answer. "They are all stories. Everything is a story—everything in this world. You are a story—I am a story—Miss Minchin is a story. You can make a story out of anything.

Zealots see only faith or heresy, politicians see plots and conspiracies everywhere, lovers see devotion or betrayal in every action, and none of them can imagine a simple middle ground of stability or peace.

There fermented in that sublimated brain plans so vast, projects so tumultuous, that there remained no room for any capricious or material love—that sentiment which is fed by leisure and grows with corruption.

A recognisable picture of a spoilt 22-year-old girl experiencing her first love affair, knowing that she is infatuated with a totally unsuitable man who will alienate her friends and eventually cause herself serious damage, yet determined to press ahead whatever the cost.

Kings can be autocratic, usually are. But queens give up some power to survive. They must work more closely with ministers, accept the views of others. They are hailed as skilled in compromise and bringing people together, whereas kings are congratulated for deciding, commanding.

At least this is a nation, with a religion, a head, a status, a policy. Not a damned Noah's ark: a chicken here, a lamb there, a family of wolves in the next field. I suppose you are proud of your French Queen, playing dice with Scots knucklebones for the greater glory of her native land?

Huntly was also taken, but died of a stroke while still mounted on his horse. His corpse was embalmed and sent to Edinburgh, where it was kept until the following May, when it was put on trial in Parliament. As the clerk’s report put it, “The coffin was set upright, as if the earl stood on his feet.” He was then found guilty of treason, and the family estates were declared forfeit.

Be the queen of my castle. The proud wearer of my plaid. The one to feed me when I hunger, and not just for blood. For everything. Love, sex, companionship. I want ye to be the one. My one.” “You’re asking an awful lot. What do I get out of this?” “Ye want more? I’m giving you my heart. My love. My loyalty and my life. What more do you want?” She knew the answer to that one thanks to Sasha. “I want forever.

There are wonderful examples in Scripture of the power of prayer. Nothing seems to be too great, too hard, or too difficult for prayer to do. It has obtained things that seemed impossible and out of reach. It has won victories over fire, air, earth, and water. Prayer opened the Red Sea. Prayer brought water from the rock and bread from heaven. Prayer made the sun stand still. Prayer brought fire from the sky on Elijah's sacrifice. Prayer turned the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness. Prayer overthrew the army of Sennacherib. Well might Mary, Queen of Scots, say, "I fear John Knox's prayers more than an army of ten thousand men." Prayer has healed the sick. Prayer has raised the dead. Prayer has procured the conversion of souls. "The child of many prayers," said an old Christian to Augustine's mother, "shall never perish." Prayer, pains, and faith can do anything. Nothing seems impossible when a man has the Spirit of adoption. "Let me alone," is the remarkable saying of God to Moses, when Moses was about to intercede for the children of Israel. (Exod. xxxii. 10.) The Chaldee version has it "Leave off praying." So long as Abraham asked mercy for Sodom, the Lord went on giving. He never ceased to give till Abraham ceased to pray. Think of this. Is not this encouragement?

Philosophy is one of those subjects, like astrophysics and neurosurgery, that are not for the fainthearted. To delve into the absolutes of the human experience, to seek to advance the progress of enlightenment first expounded by the likes of the revered Aristotle and Plato, to search for the answers to the profound questions of the universe, often at the risk of deadly reprisal from entrenched powers, requires not only brilliance and tenacity but a deep sense of purpose. But even among this select fraternity, [René] Descartes stands out. From him did we get practical discoveries like coordinates in geometry and the law of refraction of light. But what he really did was to shake loose the human mind from the shackles of centuries of stultifying religious orthodoxy by creating an entirely original approach to reasoning: the Cartesian method.

In my end lies my beginning" Who said that? Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots (1542-1587).

All this “confusion” came to an end twenty years after the Royal Visit, when two Bohemian brothers, claiming to be the illegitimate grandsons of Prince Charlie himself, appeared on the scene with their own tartan pattern book, portentously titled Vestiarum Scoticum. James and Charles Sobieski Stuart, as they called themselves, had selected seventy-five different setts, each linked to a specific clan, from a sixteenth-century manuscript they claimed had once belonged to Mary Queen of Scots’s father confessor—although they could never quite produce the manuscript when others asked to see it.

King Francis, in addition to other complaints, had been suffering for some time from pain and disease in the ear.

dressed in mourning—in white—according to the custom in royal families in those days,

known among the people as the White Queen.

So get you gone out of my presence, miserable traitors as you are.

it with an E. We had recitations this afternoon. I just wish you could have been there to hear me recite 'Mary, Queen of Scots.' I just put my whole soul into it. Ruby Gillis told me coming home that the way I said the line, 'Now for my

Vigenère’s work culminated in his Traicté des Chiffres (“A Treatise on Secret Writing”), published in 1586. Ironically, this was the same year that Thomas Phelippes was breaking the cipher of Mary Queen of Scots. If only Mary’s secretary had read this treatise, he would have known about the Vigenère cipher, Mary’s messages to Babington would have baffled Phelippes, and her life might have been spared.

He took the messages to a local brewer, who wrapped them in a leather packet, which was then hidden inside a hollow bung used to seal a barrel of beer. The brewer would deliver the barrel to Chartley Hall, whereupon one of Mary’s servants would open the bung and take the contents to the Queen of Scots. The process worked equally well for getting messages out of Chartley Hall.

fine enough, but getting there is no pleasure.” She stood with her hands

These women were not ahead of their time-they were their time. And that legacy-Mary's-endures.

Buchanan tried to whip the devil out of me. “Find your tongue, lad!” Forgive this regression, but the man hated English. He may have hated everything by then, including me, but he was uncommon prickly when it came to English. You could tell by the way he bullied it. “The bastarde English,” the old man roared. “The verie whoore of a tongue.” We did our best to mimic him note for note, gesture for gesture. He hated that, too. The verie whoore. Old Greek before Breakfast Latin by Noon himself. The point is, what English I had was beaten or twisted into me. We were orphaned and crowned before we could speak or take our first step. No father. No mother. Too many uncles. Hounds for baying. Buchanan was the most religious of my keepers, and the unkindest of spirits among them. We have been told the young queen of Scots was once his student, and that he loved her. Just before giving her over to wreckage, methinks. Pious frauds. Their wicked Jesus. Then occasion smil’d. We were thirteen. The affection of Esme Stuart was one thing, lavished, as it was, so liberally upon us, but the music of his voice was another. We empowered our cousin, gave him name, station, a new sense of gravity, height, and reach, all the toys of privilege. We were told he spoke our mother’s French, the way it flutters about your neck like a small bird. But it was his English that moved us. For the first time, there was kindness in it, charity, heat and light. We didn’t know language could do such things, that could charm with such violence, make such a disturbance in us. Our cousin was our excess, our vice, our great transgression according to some, treason according to others. They came one night and stole him from us, that is, from me. They tore me out of his arms, called me wanton. Better that bairns should weepe, they said. Barking curs. We never saw our cousin again and were never the same after. But the charm was wound up. If we say we can taste words, we are not trying to be clever. And we are an insatiable king. Try now, if you can, to understand the nature of our thoughts touching the translation, its want of a poet. We will consult with Sir Francis. He is closer to the man, some say, than a brother. English is mistress between them. There, Bacon says, is empire. There, a great Britain. Where it is dull, where the glow . . . gleam . . . where the gleam of Majestie is absent or mute . . . When occasion smiles again, we will send for the man, Shakespere. Majestie has left its print on his art. After that hideous Scottish play, his best, darkest, and most complicated characters are . . . us. Lear. Antony. Othello. Fools all. All. The English language must be the best that is in us . . . We are but names, titles, antiquities, forgotten speeches, an accident of blood and historical memory. Aye . . . but this marvelously unexceptional little man. No more of this. By the unfortunate title of this history we must, it seems, prepare ourselves for a tragedy. Some will escape. Some will not. For bully Ben can never suffer a true rival. He killed an actor once for botching his lines. Actors. Southampton waits in our chambers. We will let him. First, to our thoughts. Only then to our Lord of Southampton.

Caroline was a rotter. She was a rotter through and through. Mind you, she had charm. She had that kind of sweetness of manner that deceives people utterly. She had a frail, helpless look about her that appealed to people’s chivalry. Sometimes, when I’ve read a bit of history, I think Mary Queen of Scots must have been a bit like her. Always sweet and unfortunate and magnetic—and actually a cold calculating woman, a scheming woman who planned the murder of Darnley and got away with it. Caroline was like that—a cold, calculating planner. And she had a wicked temper

Elizabeth, her fellow sovereign as much as her rival for the past thirty years, was herself all too anxious to defend the ideal of monarchy: the principle that rulers were accountable to God alone.

Elizabeth had a firm grasp of the issues. She knew that Mary’s death would alter the way that monarchy was regarded in the British Isles. A regicide would give a massive boost to Parliament, diminishing forever the “divinity that hedges a king.

Having had three husbands already, Mary Queen of Scots was ready for a fourth. As she surmised, her hopes lay not in Elizabeth’s promises - which had proved so empty – but on making a new match for herself. The bridegroom she had in mind was England’s premier nobleman, the Duke of Norfolk.

He never bothered any one to learn dates — but the dates stuck in the memory just the same. If, as Mary Queen of Scots, you were beheaded by the school axe, kneeling blindfolded at the doorstep, with Perry Miller, wearing a mask made out of a piece of Aunt Laura’s old black silk, for executioner, wondering what would happen if he brought the axe down too hard, you did not forget the year it happened; and if you fought the battle of Waterloo all over the school playground, and heard Teddy Kent shouting, “Up, Guards and at ‘em!” as he led the last furious charge you remembered 1815 without half trying to.

Sir Winston Churchill was born into the respected family of the Dukes of Marlborough. His mother Jeanette, was an attractive American-born British socialite and a member of the well known Spencer family. Winston had a military background, having graduated from Sandhurst, the British Royal Military Academy. Upon graduating he served in the Army between 1805 and 1900 and again between 1915 and 1916. As a British military officer, he saw action in India, the Anglo–Sudan War, and the Second South African Boer War. Leaving the army as a major in 1899, he became a war correspondent covering the Boer War in the Natal Colony, during which time he wrote books about his experiences. Churchill was captured and treated as a prisoner of war. Churchill had only been a prisoner for four weeks before he escaped, prying open some of the flooring he crawled out under the building and ran through some of the neighborhoods back alleys and streets. On the evening of December 12, 1899, he jumped over a wall to a neighboring property, made his way to railroad tracks and caught a freight train heading north to Lourenco Marques, the capital of Portuguese Mozambique, which is located on the Indian Ocean and freedom. For the following years, he held many political and cabinet positions including the First Lord of the Admiralty. During the First World War Churchill resumed his active army service, for a short period of time, as the commander of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. After the war he returned to his political career as a Conservative Member of Parliament, serving as the Chancellor of the Exchequer where in 1925, he returned the pound sterling to the gold standard. This move was considered a factor to the deflationary pressure on the British Pound Sterling, during the depression. During the 1930’s Churchill was one of the first to warn about the increasing, ruthless strength of Nazi Germany and campaigned for a speedy military rearmament. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty for a second time, and in May of 1940, Churchill became the Prime Minister after Neville Chamberlain’s resignation. An inspirational leader during the difficult days of 1940–1941, he led Britain until victory had been secured. In 1955 Churchill suffered a serious of strokes. Stepping down as Prime Minister he however remained a Member of Parliament until 1964. In 1965, upon his death at ninety years of age, Queen Elizabeth II granted him a state funeral, which was one of the largest gatherings of representatives and statesmen in history.

Prince James was duly christened according to the full Catholic rite, except that the queen refused to let the priest spit in his mouth as the custom then was, saying according to a later story, that she was not going to have ‘a pocky priest’ spitting in her child’s mouth.

Darnley left the court in one of his sullen moods in December, 1566, and shortly after was stricken with smallpox at Glasgow.

She stepped forth from Scottish soil, never to set foot on it again, and steered across the Firth to the shores of England. CHAPTER

It is often said that a secure childhood makes the best foundation for a happy life. In marked contrast to her cousin Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart enjoyed an exceptionally cosseted youth. It is left to the judgement of history to decide whether it did, in fact, adequately prepare her for the extreme stresses with which the course of her later life confronted her.

The pattern of Scottish politics was forming once more into the same shapes of family alliances and feuds, in which the power of one noble could not be allowed to grow unchecked, and in which English help was like the joker in the pack of cards.

Cecil’s minute is too good to be true. It is almost certainly misleading.

Moreover, we have already seen that letters 7 and 8 were forgeries on the evidence of their contents.

At most, a certain resemblance might have been observed.

And what exactly was it that had been “collated”? Had all eight Casket Letters been scrupulously checked

By Christmas 1568, Mary had not been found innocent, but neither had she been convicted.

Mary found this insulting. It implied that she was Elizabeth’s inferior.

A seismic shift was about to occur, one that discounted her kinship bonds to Elizabeth

Philip II and the papacy, and therefore posed a greater threat to Elizabeth’s “safety

In late January 1569, she was taken on a long journey south to Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire,

Up to now, Mary’s own impresa, chosen while she was in France,

had been the marigold turning to face the sun.

Mary of Guise, whose emblem, or impresa, was the phoenix.

the mythical bird that set fire to itself and rose anew from the ashes every five hundred years;

unsurpassing beauty or quality, for hope and for ultimate triumph.

In my end is my beginning

But if Mary sometimes lapsed into pessimism, she never forgot she was a queen.

Like Elizabeth, she enjoyed two “courses” at both dinner and supper,

She especially yearned for her son. She could glean little news of him

She was not allowed to write to him,

James’s first letter to his mother appears to have been written as late as March 1585, when he was eighteen.

Mary was not blamed by Elizabeth for causing this, the most serious rebellion of her reign—at least not yet.

Mary rose and declared in the full glare of publicity that there was “no other queen of England but herself.

Meanwhile, Darnley was furiously plotting against his wife.

The Catholic lords intended to join with the Protestants to resist the forfeiture of the rebels

the grounds that such action might become a precedent for noble forfeitures generally.

Cecil was fully briefed about Rizzio’s assassination and did nothing to prevent it.

as it would soon give Mary a great deal more to think about than reasserting her claim to the throne of England.

David [Rizzio], with the consent of the king, shall have his throat cut within these ten days.

The night of March 9 was to be one of the longest and most terrifying of Mary’s life.

this was to be only the first of a kaleidoscopic sequence of murderous events in her country.

Assassination One

AT EIGHT O’CLOCK on the fatal Saturday evening, Darnley led Lord Ruthven and an accomplice through his private apartments

off the bedroom was a smaller adjoining chamber, or supper room, about twelve by nine feet,

Mary was eating with a group of friends, including Rizzio.