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signet library collection guides

the mary queen of scots collection

The Signet Library Mary Queen of Scots Collection contains about two hundred historic books on the life, reign, and controversies of Mary Queen of Scots. It was one of the library's first designated special collections and contains examples of most of the significant published output about her from a period within her lifetime until well after the Great War. The collection contains material in at least seven languages, written across five centuries and varying from short anonymous political pamphleteering through to luxurious, richly illustrated Victorian quartos and everything in between.

The Signet Library began as a collection of legal texts in the possession of the Library's owners, the Society of Writers to HM Signet, in 1722, but after 1778 the Society shifted focus to begin collection of books and materials on all subjects. One of the earliest of these new-style acquisitions was Marian in the form of a copy of the third edition of William Tytler's Inquiry, historical and critical, into the evidence against Mary Queen of Scots. This was a donation from the author, and the flyleaf carries the inscription "to the Honble (sic) The Society of Clerks to His Majesties Signet - Gentlemen - Who by Education and Profession, are well Qualified to Judge of the Nature and Importance of Evidence..."

The collection represents the collecting and work of the Signet Library's nineteenth and twentieth century scholar-librarians. As such it offers scholars of material history and collecting practice insight into the attitudes and approaches to this material present on the part of a major institutional collection across three centuries. Most of such Georgian and Victorian institutional and private collections are now dispersed. The Signet Library offers the opportunity to study such a collection intact, in its original context, in partnership with its original organisational apparatus and cataloguing. Most of the material retains its original binding and evidence of ownership, and some evidence of provenance is present in the majority of collection items. The collection offers access to a wide array of early engraved depictions of Mary. The collection played a significant role in the creation of the first full bibliography of works concerning Mary, John Scott’s A Bibliography of Works Relating to Mary Queen of Scots (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, 1896).

The books in the collection carry publication dates from 1560 onwards, with the earliest work at the time of writing being Chancellor of France Michel de L'Hopital's In Francisci illustriss. Franciae Delphini, et Mariae sereniss. Scotorum reginae nuptias, written in celebration of the marriage between Mary and Francis II of France. Another early collection highlight is a rare 1571 London (John Day) edition of a translation of George Buchanan's De Maria Scotorum Regina into Scots: Ane detectioun of the duinges of Marie Quene of Scottes, touchand the murder of hir husband, and hir conspiracie, adulterie, and pretensed mariage with the Erle Bothwell. The Signet Library is comparatively weak in sixteenth century Scottish material overall, but there is a good collection of the works of Mary's ally Bishop John Leslie, including his De titulo et iure serenissimae principis Mariae Scotorum Reginae published in Rheims 1580, which was a defence of Mary's claim to the English throne.

Perhaps the most beautiful item in the collecton is a richly bound and extra-illustrated copy of the 1624 William Udall ("William Stranguage") translation of William Camden's The historie of the life and death of Mary Stuart Queene of Scotland, which includes additional engraved portraits, a copy of Mary's seal, and extensive manuscript pages of research and commentary by the friend of Robert Burns, Captain Robert Riddell (1755–1794). Another well-connected work in the collection is the Caroline courtier Sir William Sanderson's 1656 A compleat history of the lives and reigns of Mary Queen of Scotland, and of her son and successor, James the Sixth in which Sanderson comments, ‘..for myself, having lived long time in court, and employed (till my grey hairs) more in business than in books; far unworthy, I humbly confess, to have any hand to the helm, yet I cabined near the steerage, and so might the more readily run the compass of the ship's way.’ His near contemporary Thomas Walsingham is alleged to have written the anonymous A brief history of the life of Mary Queen of Scots, and the occasions that brought her, and Thomas Duke of Norfolk, to their tragical ends, which the library holds in the 1681 Thomas Cockerill edition.

Other anonymous works include the 1725 James Bettenham editions in both English and Latin of The history of the life and reign of Mary Queen of Scots, and Dowager of France which are believed to be the work of Samuel Jebb, votary of the great doctor and collector Richard Mead.

Mary's complicity in the murder of her husband Bothwell hinges on the nature of the famous Casket Letters, and the Library holds major early works on the controversy including the 1726 second edition of The genuine letters of Mary Queen of Scots, to James Earl of Bothwell : found in his secretary's closet ... Translated from the French originals, by Edward Simmonds and the 1754 contribution made to the debate by Walter Goodall during his tenure as sub-Librarian to our near neighbour the Advocates Library, An Examination of the Letters said to have been written by Mary Queen of Scots in which he came down on the side of the Queen.

Like any library with claims to Scottish Enlightenment origins, we hold the Histories of Scotland by Robertson, Hume, and Gilbert Stuart, along with commentary in Stuart's Critical observations concerning the Scottish historians Hume, Stuart, and Robertson: including an idea of the reign of Mary Queen of Scots, as a portion of history.