Mary, Queen of Scots
Catholic queen of Scotland, absent in France as the wife of the French king when the Parliament of 1560 adopted a Protestant confession. She returned in 1561, kept the mass in her own chapel and left the new order in place without ratifying it.
Most of what this wiki reports of Mary comes from John Knox, who was her opponent. In 1560 she was in France, married to its king, and the acts of the Scottish Parliament against the pope and the mass were sent to the two of them there; no ratification was returned (Knox, History of the Reformation vol. 2, pp. 125–127).
She landed in Scotland as a widow on 19 August 1561. Mass was said in her chapel on the first Sunday, to the anger of the Protestant lords, and the next day a proclamation in her name forbade any alteration of the state of religion that she had found in the realm at her arrival (Knox, History of the Reformation vol. 2, pp. 267–273). Knox reports that she charged him to his face with stirring her subjects against her mother and herself (Knox, History of the Reformation vol. 2, pp. 277–278). In July 1567 she resigned the crown to her son, James VI and I, and the Parliament held in his name that December, with the earl of Moray as regent, ratified the acts of 1560 (Records of the Parliaments of Scotland 1567/12/104) (Records of the Parliaments of Scotland A1567/12/1–4). See the Scottish Reformation.
In the timeline
- August 1560, firm dateThe Scottish Reformation
In August 1560 the Scottish Parliament, meeting while its Catholic queen is in France, ratifies a Protestant confession of faith written by John Knox and his colleagues, ends the pope’s jurisdiction and forbids the mass.