3 The Recusant Period

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2.10 THE BOOK OF HOURS OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS (1542-1587)

Silk damask velvet, silk plush, enamelled gilt, silver gilt, 160 x 90mm

1558 Loaned by the British Province of the Society of Jesus

By venerable tradition, this book is believed to have been the property of Mary, Queen of Scots. Although there is little contemporary documentary evidence to support this, the attribution is of very long standing.

The book began its existence as the property of another famous queen of the same name. Mary Tudor (1516-1558), daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, became queen of England in 1553. Mary was a Catholic who had clung to her faith through the religious upheavals of the reigns of her father and brother, at great personal cost. When she ascended the throne, it was her intention to restore England to the Roman Catholicism of her early childhood.

The book consists of a traditional collection of prayers, psalms, Gospel readings and hymns such as had been used in Europe for centuries. It differs from the illuminated manuscripts in this exhibition in that it was printed and has no pictorial images. The plainness of the interior, however, is more than compensated for by the lavish decoration on the binding. The rich red silk damask is skilfully woven to be patterned on the upper side of the fabric and to have a rich brown silk pile on the underside, resembling fur. The velvet continues beyond the bottom edge of the book in a style known as chemise binding, allowing the silk ‘fur’ on the underside of the fabric to be seen and admired.

On the front of the book are silver gilt letters spelling out the queen’s name in Latin, Maria. Flanking the letter R, are a tiny gold Tudor rose and a gold pomegranate, the badge of Mary’s mother, Katherine of Aragon. On the back is the word Regina, meaning Queen, and Mary’s royal coat of arms in enamel on gold. The book was ordered from a prestigious firm of publishers and bookbinders in Lyon.

The publication date of 1558 is significant. It was the year of Mary’s death, and we can speculate that the book did not reach the English queen. Instead the only other person who could possibly have used it acquired it –another Catholic Queen Mary with Tudor blood and a claim to the royal arms of England – Mary, Queen of Scots, who in 1558 was married to the dauphin, the eldest son of the king of France.

According to tradition, Mary used the book in France and later in her native Scotland. It then travelled with her into exile and imprisonment in England. She is reputed to have read her last prayers from the book on the scaffold at Fotheringay, before her

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execution in 1587 on the orders of her cousin, Elizabeth I, Mary Tudor’s half-sister.

The book was smuggled away by Mary’s companions and hidden for seventy years before it arrived at the college of the English Jesuits in Liège in 1650. It made its way to Lancashire in 1794 when the suppressed Jesuits of Liège were forced to flee the French revolutionary army advancing on the city and found themselves a new home at Stonyhurst.

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The Recusant Period 3