Secret support for Mary Stuart

An example of such a piece of jewelery is an unpublished gold ring from the time of Mary I of Scotland – also known as Mary Stuart or Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587). Mary Stuart ruled Scotland from 1542 until her forced abdication in 1567. Her life was marked by tragedy and betrayal. At first glance it looks like a signet ring decorated with acanthus leaves and bearing a family coat of arms.

However, upon closer inspection, the shield engraved on the heart-shaped setting reveals the coat of arms of Scotland, and when the ring is removed, an inscription reveals the wearer’s loyalty to the Scottish Queen. The engraving on the inside reads: «MARIA RÑA NOSTRA» (Mary, Our Queen).

This ring dates from a period in the history of Scotland and England that shaped centuries of religious and political disputes between the two countries. After the start of the Reformation in 1517, Northern Europe was rocked by religious wars. The English King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church and built a new church. This caused conflict not only with adherents of Catholicism in England, but also with the Catholic Monarchy in Scotland – a then independent kingdom with a long history of wars against England.

Mary was proclaimed queen upon the death of her father James V of Scotland shortly after her birth in 1542 when she was only six days old. At the age of six, she was sent to Catholic France by her French mother and regent of Scotland, Marie de Guise (1515-1560), to protect her from the invading English. She became the betrothed of Francis, the Dauphin of France. The marriage took place in 1558 and in 1559 he became king of France. However, after his early death in 1560, Mary returned to troubled Scotland in 1561.

In her absence, Scotland had also undergone a Reformation – the result of which was resistance to Mary, for her rule as Catholic monarch over a Protestant country caused great tension. Two marriages in quick succession sealed her fate. First, in 1565, she married her English half-cousin, Henry Stuart Darnley, and they had a son, James. Darnley betrayed them by aligning himself with Protestant members of the Scottish gentry and was eventually killed in 1567.

As a result, within months of Darnley’s death, Mary married James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, a Catholic noble who had been charged with Darnley’s murder but acquitted. In the same year, Maria was captured after a coup at Lochleven Castle. She was able to escape, but had to abdicate in favor of her one-year-old son James, who subsequently died under the name of James VI. became King of Scotland. She never saw him again.

After unsuccessfully trying to retake the Scottish throne, she fled to southern England in hopes of the protection of her cousin Queen Elizabeth I, but was instead imprisoned for 19 years and eventually sentenced to death for treason and executed in 1587. Elizabeth’s advisers had feared that Mary would assert her claim to the English throne and—as a devoted Catholic—restore the Roman Catholic Church.

Ironically, after Elizabeth died childless in 1603, Mary’s Protestant-bred son, James VI, became heir apparent and reigned as James I and VI, Kings of England, Ireland and Scotland until his death in 1625.

This ring was probably worn as a sign of loyalty to Mary from 1561 to 1567 when she was still Queen of Scots. However, the hidden inscription could also indicate that the ring was made in the period after her flight to England and before her death in 1587, since public support for Mary was dangerous at that time. Religious and political rebellions had both thwarted their rule in Scotland and threatened their safety as captives of the English Crown.

Another ring, made less than two centuries later, picks up on this age-old conflict, but unlike the older ring, the Stuarts’ devotion to Catholicism is openly displayed. Predating 1745, the ring bears the Latin inscription “QUAERIT PATRIA CAESAREM” (“The land seeks its Caesar”), calling for the restoration of the House of Stuart to the English, Irish and Scottish crowns, and in particularly in recognition of James Francis Edward Stuart, the Catholic son of the exiled King James II, as rightful heir and King James III. and VIII.

The ring’s blue enamel resembles the ribbon of the Order of the Garter, but instead of the Garter motif is a white rose, the symbol of the Jacobites, as the followers of James II and James Stuart called themselves. James II had ascended the throne upon the death of his brother Charles II in 1685, but as a converted, devoted Catholic, he was extremely unpopular with his Protestant subjects. When his son, James Stuart, was born in 1688, anti-Catholic riots broke out and fears arose in Parliament that a Roman Catholic dynasty would arise. In the same year that the “Glorious Revolution” took place, James II was deposed and exiled to France, where he remained until his death in 1701.

The crown passed to a Protestant succession outside the ruling House of Stuart. During the Jacobite Rising of 1715, James Stuart – later known as the “Old Pretender” – tried unsuccessfully to wrest the throne from King George I of Hanover. James’ eldest son, Charles Edward Stuart, nicknamed the Young Pretender, tried again in August 1745.

The Anglo-Scottish conflict, the unhappy life of Mary Stuart and the Jacobite movement evoked strong emotions and passionate devotion. The surviving memorabilia and politically influenced trinkets bring back to life these turbulent centuries – a time that is still the subject of many romanticized novels, plays and films.