Tea at Trianon: The Coronation of Mary Queen of Scots

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, September 12, 2011

The Coronation of Mary Queen of Scots

Stephanie Mann discusses the Infant Queen of Scotland.

When Mary, Queen of France and Queen of Scotland, also claiming the title Queen of England, was born on December 8, 1542 at Linlithgow Castle, her father, James V was mortally ill after a resounding defeat by the English in November of that year. When hearing that his second wife, Mary of Guise had been delivered of a girl, he is said to have turned in face to the wall in bed, saying only "It came from a woman; it will end in a woman" referring to the Stewart claim to Scotland's throne.

When James V died on the 14th of December, 1542, Mary became Queen of Scotland as an infant, only six days old. She was crowned in the chapel at Stirling Castle on September 9, 1543. The painting at the right is by William Ewart Lockhart, a Victorian era painter trained at the Royal Scottish Academy. (Read entire post.)