'THAT Parliament acknowledges the calls by campaigners to return the remains of Mary, Queen of Scots, to the country of her birth; recognises that Mary was an iconic historical figure in Scotland… notes the support that campaigners have had from the Catholic Church in Scotland; further notes that Falkland Palace… was a place of sanctuary for Mary, and nominates this Fife palace as a possible location where her remains could be interred."
So ran the motion tabled at Holyrood last Monday by Christine Grahame, Scottish Nationalist MSP for the South of Scotland. As Alex Salmond's Arc of Prosperity collapsed into an Arc of Poverty, any diversion was welcome to the pole-axed SNP, even a
return to the body-snatching traditions of Burke and Hare. There is an obvious déjà-vu about Mary becoming the object of cynical manipulation by Scottish politicians.
La Grahame is a great one for the attention-seeking parliamentary motions, as in her notorious sour-grapes resolution after England won the Ashes: "That the Parliament notes the recent cricket win by England over Australia and, while congratulating England's players, laments the overwhelming UK-wide coverage of a sport that is of only marginal interest in Scotland"… That ill-informed whine drew down on her the wrath of Scotland's 12,000 active cricketers, participating in a sport played here since 1785.
The proposal to bring the body of Mary, Queen of Scots, back to Scotland and bury it at Falkland Palace is equally ill-considered. The Stone of Destiny this is not. Any comparison is unfounded. The Stone was an intrinsic part of Scotland's heritage, taken by force by an invader. It was stolen property and, as such, required to be restored to its rightful location. The body of the Queen is a different matter.
The motion notes support "from the Catholic Church". James MacMillan, the Catholic composer, has said the return of Mary's body would be a "profoundly religious and spiritual event". How can he believe that? MacMillan, to his great credit, has been vociferous in condemning the travesty of a liturgy that is the legacy of the Second Vatican Catastrophe. Can he not imagine the field day the liturgical animators and sanctuary can-can dancers would have, capering around the royal catafalque, singing banal, happy-clappy rubbish, with a few bars of Simon and Garfunkel thrown in for the more traditionally inclined?
The main objection, however, is that it would diminish Mary. Besides being Queen of Scots, she was also Queen Mary II de jure of England. Elizabeth I was the bastard daughter of Henry VIII and his mistress Anne Boleyn, born out of wedlock, then spuriously legitimised by a bigamous marriage. That was why Mary, throughout her imprisonment in England, was the centre of plots – not to restore her to the Scottish crown, but to install her on the throne of England. She died for that rightful claim and for the Catholic faith.
After her judicial murder, on the ludicrous pretence that the sovereign of Scotland could commit "treason" against England, when her head was hewn off with a butcher's axe previously used on animals, her body lay for a year at Fotheringhay before being removed to Peterborough Cathedral. In 1612 her contemptible son James I and VI, who had not lifted a finger to save her, ordered her re-interment in Westminster Abbey, in order that "honour be done to the body of my dearest mother".
That was as close as she came to recognition of her royal rights in England: burial among the English sovereigns. Mary II rightly occupies her place in the Abbey, surrounded by more than 40 of her descendants. Mary's own wish was to be buried in France, where she had briefly reigned as Queen Consort of Francis II – but, emphatically, not in Scotland.
Before her execution she wrote to Elizabeth, requesting "that I may be buried in holy ground, with my ancestors in France, especially the late Queen my mother, since in Scotland the remains of the Kings my predecessors have been outraged, and the churches torn down and profaned".
As those words show, the Queen was repelled by the prospect of being buried in Scotland, the country that had reviled and overthrown her, with heretical rites amid a desecrated religious heritage. Yet that is precisely what is being wished on her now by "campaigners". The SNP – a republican party – has no understanding of how dynastic inheritance overreaches narrow nationalism. Mary II and I should continue to lie in the Minster of Edward the Confessor, her repose there proclaiming the consummation of the motto embroidered on her cloth of estate: En ma Fin gît mon Commencement. In my end is my beginning.
