Scottish Protestant nobles draw up the First Covenant, a plan for a reformed national church, but both the clergy and the Scottish parliament refuse to meet the nobles’ requests.

A series of eloquent sermons by the fiery Knox induces mobs to attack and pillage churches in 1559.

The Roman Catholic Marie de Guise, widow of James V and regent of Scotland, requests aid from France.

The Scottish Protestants receive help from Elizabeth, who dispatches an English fleet and sends an army to besiege French forces at Leith.

William Maitland of Lethington, recently become secretary to the queen regent, soon joins the Protestant lords against the regent in order to help expel the French from Scotland.

Their leader is twenty-eight-year-old James Stewart, Lord Abernethy; as the illegitimate son of King James V and Lady Margaret Douglas, he is the half-brother of young Mary.

The return to Scotland of the widowed Mary, who lands at Leith on August 19, 1561, leads to a famous series of face-to-face confrontations between the young queen and the outspoken Knox.

Immediately taking the advice of the moderates—her half-brother Lord Abernethy and Sir William Maitland of Lethington, who she has named secretary of state—Mary recognizes the Reformed (Presbyterian) church and allows it a modest endowment but not full establishment.

The Protestant reformers, including Knox, are appalled because she has Mass in her own chapel, and the Roman Catholics are concerned about her lack of zeal for their cause.

Mary attempts to placate the Protestants and befriend England’s Queen Elizabeth, her cousin.

At the same time, in order to prod Elizabeth into naming Mary as her successor, Maitland approves of negotiations seemingly intended to result in Mary's marriage to Don Carlos of Spain, the sickly, mentally disturbed teenage son of Habsburg monarch Philip II of Spain.

This would be an alliance that Elizabeth cannot risk.

Mary creates James Stewart 1st Earl of Moray and Earl of Mar in 1562.

Queen Mary’s secretary of state William Maitland has a hand in the unsuccessful proposals of a marriage between Mary and Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester.

Nineteen-year-old Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, the son of Matthew, fourth earl of Lennox, meanwhile begins in February 1565 to court the widowed twenty-two-year-old queen, who is his first cousin.

Thomas Randolph, the English ambassador to Scotland, is in early 1565 told by the Scottish queen that she would accept the proposal.

To his amazement, Dudley is not to be moved to comply: But a man of that nature I never found any ... he whom I go about to make as happy as ever was any, to put him in possession of a kingdom, to lay in his naked arms a most fair ... lady ... nothing regardeth the good that shall ensue unto him thereby ... but so uncertainly dealeth that I know not where to find him.

Dudley had indeed made it clear to the Scots at the beginning that he was not a candidate for Mary's hand and forthwith has behaved with passive resistance.

He also works in the interest of Lord Darnley, Mary's eventual choice of husband.

Elizabeth herself had wavered as to declaring Mary her heir; still, she finally tells the Spanish ambassador that the proposal fell through because the Earl of Leicester had refused to cooperate.

Negotiations on both the English succession and the Spanish marriage result in refusals, and Mary opts for a marriage of love with the handsome Darnley over a purely political match.

A dynastic argument for the union can certainly be made, however, as their marriage will unite the branches of the powerful Stewart family.

Moreover, Darnley, whose mother is the former Margaret Douglas, daughter of Margaret Tudor and the sixth earl of Angus, stands next to Mary in the English succession.

The couple wed on July 29 according to Roman Catholic rites, to the great displeasure of Moray, the prominent Hamilton family, and John Knox, head of the Scottish Reformed church, to say nothing of her Protestant subjects.

Elizabeth, meanwhile, disapproves of Mary marrying another Tudor descendant.

Moray is jealous of the Lennox family's rise to power and from August to October has attempted to arouse Edinburgh citizens against Mary's authority.

Aided by other nobles, he raises a rebellion that she quickly suppresses with the help of twenty-nine-year-old James Hepburn, 4th earl of Bothwell, despite his support of the Protestant faction in Scottish politics.

She outlaws Moray and personally leads the force that drives him and his supporters across the border.

Feeling betrayed, however, by her Protestant advisors, Mary withdraws some of her support from the Reformed church.

The Queen’s marriage with the ambitious Darnley soon sours, and she refuses him the right to succeed if she dies without issue.

The disappointed young queen turns for comfort and advice to her secretary, David Riccio, whose influence the Protestant lords fear because they suspect him of being a papal agent.

Darnley is weak and vicious, and when his jealousy of the Italian becomes unmanageable, he openly states that Riccio is too intimate with the queen.

The deposed queen, aided by a few brave friends, escapes from her incarceration in the castle of Loch Leven and immediately rallies behind her a six thousand-man force.

The Marian loyalists on May 13, 1568, confront the army led by the Protestant lords at Langside and are soundly beaten.

Mary immediately flees Scotland for ...

...England to beg support from her cousin Elizabeth, who immediately places Mary under house arrest, employing a series of excuses connected with Darnley’s murder to keep her in captivity.

Maitland remains in Scotland and works to restore Mary to power.

A substantial portion of the nobility continue to maintain Mary's right to rule, and Moray has difficulty putting into practice his vigorously Protestant and pro-English policies.