A Dictionary of Interesting and Important Dogs by Peter Conradi

Author:Peter Conradi
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780724058
Publisher: Short Books

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MALTESE TERRIERS AND MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS

Mary, Queen of Scots’s love of dogs, especially Maltese terriers, was a frequent source of consolation to her during her turbulent life. These small, white, long-haired and notably affectionate dogs were her companions from infancy to the scaffold. As a five-year-old child, Mary was betrothed and sent abroad to live with the French dauphin, Francis II. Uprooted, disorientated, and unable at first to speak French, she talked mainly with her Scottish governess and played with the 22 dogs at Francis’s court, a collection of pugs, spaniels and Maltese terriers, which Francis used, in turn, to help teach his bride French.

When she was eighteen, Francis died, leaving Mary a widow in a foreign country. She returned to Scotland to reclaim her throne, accompanied by some favourite dogs. Scotland had become a Protestant country, and Mary was Catholic. Still, she was considered a legitimate sovereign of England by many English Catholics and, when in 1565 she married her Tudor cousin, Lord Darnley, this put further pressure on Elizabeth I – already deeply suspicious of her motives – to recognise Mary as successor to the English throne. The following year, Darnley was found dead, presumed murdered. Mary’s next marriage to Lord Bothwell, believed by some to be Darnley's murderer, provoked an uprising; forced to abdicate the Scottish throne, she fled to England, seeking Elizabeth’s protection – although this was not to be. Perceiving her as a threat, Elizabeth had her arrested and imprisoned for what turned out to be eighteen years. Mary was deprived of contact with friends and relatives, for fear of her plotting against the queen, and her chief companions and source of comfort were, once more, her lapdogs. Her jailor, Bess of Hardwick, reported that she spent hours talking to these dogs about her estranged son, James, and religion. Mary sent a portrait of one favourite dog to James, but it was intercepted and never reached him.

When she was charged with being an accomplice in a plot to murder Queen Elizabeth, Mary was moved to Fotheringhay Castle – damp, dark and miserable – where one comfort, again, was her lapdogs; after a direct appeal to Elizabeth she was allowed to keep them. She was brought to trial, found guilty and sentenced to death. Lord Burghley, William Cecil, had advised Elizabeth I to have Mary executed. His nephew, present at the execution on 8 February 1587, reported to Burghley that after her beheading ‘her lips stirred up and down a quarter of an hour after her head was cut off’, while a small dog, owned by the queen, emerged from hiding. Those present had been disturbed to see her red skirts – the colour of martyrdom – starting to move, as if her body were trying to stand. The executioner, a Mr Bull, found she had hidden her terrier puppy under her farthingale, and this dog, blood-stained and seated between her body and head, refused to leave. Eventually it was forcibly removed and washed clean.

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