Why is the Earl of Moray's role in the Chaseabout Raid still debated Essay

Why is the Earl of Moray's role in the Chaseabout Raid still debated - Essay Example It will, however, validate the charge of Bothwells sexual violence. Scholars have debated whether Mary was born on 7 or 8 December 1542, even though she celebrated her birthday on the 8th. As her contemporaries were sometimes vague about dating events that occurred shortly after midnight, it is likely that she was born in the early hours of the 8th at Linlithgow Palace to Mary of Guise, the second wife of James V of Scotland, whose parents were James IV and Margaret Tudor, a sister of Henry VIII. As Marys father died a few days after her birth in despair because of the recent English victory at Solway Moss, she could not remember a time when she was not queen regnant. The immediate accession controversy was not over her sex but her age, for she required a regent. The heir presumptive, James Hamilton, second earl of Arran, gained the office with English aid but soon found that his arrangements for Mary to wed Henry VIIIs heir were extremely unpopular. Arrans major rival was Matthew Stewart, fourth earl of Lennox, who returned from exile as a French partisan and claimed to be the rightful heir presumptive and regent because of some irregularity in the marriage of Arrans parents. After Marys coronation in September 1543, Arran rejected the English alliance, and in 1548, having been promised the dukedom of Chatelherault, agreed to her removal to France as the betrothed of Francis, the dauphin, who was born in 1544. Meanwhile, the English invaded Scotland, attempting to seize Mary, a claimant to their throne as a grandchild of Margaret Tudor, in raids called the Rough Wooing. Lennox retreated to England and wed Margaret Douglas, the daughter of Margar et Tudor, who gave birth to Darnley in