James I settled down contentedly at Whitehall, where his mother had so often dreamt of residing. At long last he was free from monetary cares, and his ambition was satisfied; he thought more of comfort than of immortal fame. He often went out hunting; was glad to visit the theatre, there extending his patronage over a certain Shakespeare and other noted playwrights—this being one of the few good things to be recorded of the first Stuart monarch of a united Britain. A weakling, lethargic and dull-witted, devoid of Elizabeth’s intellectual brilliancy, lacking the courage and the passion of his mother, he was a humdrum ruler over the joint heritage of the two queens who had so long been at feud. The union of the crowns, which each of them had so eagerly coveted, fell into his hands like an overripe fruit. Now, when England and Scotland were one, the time had come to forget that a Queen of Scotland and a Queen of England had troubled one another’s lives with poisonous enmity. No longer could it be said that one of them had been right and the other wrong, since death had reduced the pair of them to the same level. Those who had so long fiercely opposed one another could now rest side by side. James I had his mother’s mortal remains brought south from Peterborough to be interred, with great pomp and ceremony, in the British pantheon at Westminster Abbey. A marble statue of Mary Stuart was erected over her tomb, hard by the marble statue over the tomb of Elizabeth Tudor. The old quarrel was finished; neither woman would dispute the other’s right to a place in the Abbey. The foes who during their lifetime had never set eyes on one another were to rest for evermore side by side as sisters in the untroubled sleep of immortality.
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Copyright
First published in German in 1935 as
Maria Stuart © Insel Verlag
This edition first published in 2011 by
Pushkin Press
12 Chester Terrace
London N1 4ND
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 906548 74 2
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Pushkin Press
Cover Illustration The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots
Robert Herdman
© Culture and Sport Glasgow (Museums)
Frontispiece Stefan Zweig © Roger-Viollet Rex Features
Set in 10.5 on 13 Monotype Baskerville MT
and printed in Great Britain on Munken Premium 80 gr
by MPG Books Group
www.pushkinpress.com
Stefan Zweig, Mary Stuart
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