Maria von Geldern (Queen)

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Maria von Geldern (English Mary of Guelders or Mary of Gueldres ; * around 1434 in Grave ; † December 1, 1463 in Roxburgh ) was Queen of Scotland from 1449 to 1460 through her marriage to James II .

Early life and marriage to King James II

Maria von Geldern was the eldest daughter of Arnold von Egmond , the Duke of Geldern, and his wife Katharina von Kleve . She was brought up at the court of her great-uncle Philip the Good . This Burgundian Duke and his wife Isabel de Portugal wanted to betroth Maria to Count Charles IV of Maine in 1442 ; however, her father could not raise the dowry.

Negotiations about Mary's marriage to the Scottish King James II began later, which were apparently tough and protracted, with James II also calling in January 1448 for the help of his relative, the French King Charles VII . According to her father's ideas, Maria should also be the wife of the Austrian Duke Albrecht VI. and instead marry her younger sister Margaret to the Scottish King. Ultimately, however, as a result of the marriage negotiations, in the course of which the Franco-Scottish alliance was renewed on New Year's Eve 1448, a contract for Mary's marriage to the Scottish king was signed in Brussels on April 1, 1449 . The Duke of Burgundy undertook to pay 60,000 gold crowns as a dowry for his great niece over the course of two years.

The Chancellor William Crichton was given the task of escorting Mary to Scotland. She sailed from Sluis on June 9, 1449 on a fleet of 14 ships with a large retinue of nobles and 300 soldiers and set off for her new home by sea. On the way she stopped on a Scottish island, the Isle of May , and visited the chapel of St. Adrian there . On June 18, she went ashore in Leith and traveled on to Edinburgh . Her wedding to James II took place there on July 3, 1449 in Holyrood Abbey . Afterwards a luxurious banquet was held and on the same day she was crowned Queen of Scotland. To the Wittum, which they received in the event of the earlier death of Jacob II and which should yield an income of 10,000 crowns, belonged the counties Strathearn and Atholl , the lordship of Methven as well as the Linlithgow Palace and the tax revenue of the city of Linlithgow .

progeny

Jacob II and Maria had seven children, two of whom did not survive toddlerhood and of whom the sons were excluded from the succession to the throne in the Duchy of Geldern :

  • nameless son (* and † May 19, 1450)
  • Jacob III (10 July 1451 - 11 June 1488), King of Scotland since 1460
  • Mary (around 1451/52; † May 1488)
  1. ⚭ 1467 with Thomas Boyd, 1st Earl of Arran
  2. ⚭ 1474 with James Hamilton, 1st Lord Hamilton
  • Alexander (around 1454 - 7 August 1485), since 1458 Duke of Albany
  • David (* around 1455; † before July 18, 1457), Earl of Moray since 1456
  • John (* around 1456/57; † probably July 9, 1479), since 1458/59 Earl of Mar and Garioch
  • Margaret (* around 1459/60), ⚭ William Crichton, 3rd Lord Crichton

Regent for Jacob III. and death

Jacob II died on August 3, 1460, at the age of just 30, during the siege of Roxburgh Castle by the explosion of one of his own cannons. Immediately afterwards, Maria set off for the theater of war with her eldest living son, Jakob III, who was only nine years old at the time, and soon after she arrived in the Scottish camp outside Roxburgh. It was mainly on their drive that the siege continued and the fortress quickly taken. Her underage son Jakob was crowned on August 10, 1460 in Kelso Abbey .

As a result, two parties struggling for power in the country formed, one of which was led by the Queen Dowager Mary and the other by Jacob Kennedy , Bishop of St Andrews, and George Douglas, 4th Earl of Angus . Both Maria and Jakob Kennedy claimed guardianship for the young Jakob. To avoid tangible disputes, three bishops intervened and obtained a one-month break, during which the Queen's widow and Jakob Kennedy presented their points of view in front of Parliament. Finally, the election of a Regency Council took place in which both parties participated. The Dowager Queen was now at the head of this Regency Council, to which she sent, among others, Robert Boyd, 1st Lord Boyd , while the Bishop of St Andrews was the most important Minister. Maria quickly set up shop stewards as bailiffs of the important castles of Edinburgh, Stirling , Blackness and Dunbar and appointed James Lindsay of Covington to keeper of the lord seals .

In terms of foreign policy, Maria was also drawn marginally into the Wars of the Roses , which were raging in England at the time . She tried to pit the warring houses of York and Lancaster against each other, while Bishop Kennedy preferred an alliance with the Lancasters. When the English Queen Margaret of Anjou, who belonged to the Lancaster party, and her husband Henry VI. After their devastating defeat in the Battle of Towton (March 29, 1461) fled to Scotland, they were welcomed by Mary. For this, the disempowered English royal couple ceded the border town of Berwick to Scotland in a contract dated April 25, 1461 . Margaret of Anjou sought an alliance with Mary and proposed that her son Edward of Westminster marry the younger daughter of the Scottish queen widow, Margaret. However, Duke Philip of Burgundy spoke out against this, and he maintained increasingly friendly relations with King Edward IV , who was now ruling England and came from the House of York . This offered Maria as a spouse, so that she stopped her support for the House of Lancaster. Mary turned down this offer of marriage, but paid large sums of money to the royal Lancasters to get them to leave Scotland. In April 1462 Margaret of Anjou sailed with her son to France to support Louis XI. to be requested, while Maria tried to find a compromise with Edward IV. However, the Bishop of St Andrews tried to thwart Mary's efforts in this regard.

According to later rumors, Maria is said to have had several love affairs during her time as regent, including Edmund Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset , who also fled to Scotland after the battle of Towton . She carried on her late husband's plans to build Ravenscraig Castle in County Fife . As a devout Catholic, she founded Trinity College Church in Edinburgh in memory of her husband , of which only the reconstructed apse has survived. She was also responsible for extensive renovations to Stirling Castle , Falkland Palace and other royal residences.

Mary died at Roxburgh Castle on December 1, 1463 at the age of 30 and was buried in Trinity College Church, but in 1848 transferred to Holyrood Abbey, the burial place of the Scottish kings.

See also

literature

  • Norman Macdougall: Mary of Gueldres . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB). Vol. 37 (2004), p. 67f.
  • Thomas Finlayson Henderson: Mary of Gueldres . In: Dictionary of National Biography (DNB). Vol. 36 (1893), pp. 390f. ( online )
  • Ralf G. Jahn : The genealogy, the bailiffs, counts and dukes of money. In: Johannes Stinner, Karl-Heinz Tekath (ed.): Gelre - Geldern - Gelderland. History and culture of the Duchy of Geldern (= Duchy of Geldern. Vol. 1 = Publications of the State Archives of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Series D: Exhibition catalogs of the State Archives. Vol. 30). Verlag des Historisches Verein für Geldern and the surrounding area, Geldern 2001, ISBN 3-9805419-4-0 , pp. 29–50.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ According to Norman Macdougall (ODNB, vol. 37, p. 67), Jacob III. Born at the end of May 1452
predecessor Office Successor
Joan Beaufort Queen Consort of Scotland
1449–1460 		Margaret of Denmark
personal data
SURNAME Maria von Geldern
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Queen of Scotland
DATE OF BIRTH around 1434
DATE OF DEATH December 1, 1463
Place of death Roxburgh