No one in the history of the British Isles has aroused more interest and controversy than Mary, Queen of Scots; a good-sized library would be needed to house all the volumes, pamphlets and letters that have been written on the subject of the famous woman who reigned in Scotland for six years and who ended a captivity of nineteen years by the violent death then the penalty for political failure.

Moreover, the original sources on which all these histories and studies are based are extremely large in number; it is a well-documented story. State records, private and public correspondence, the reports of ambassadors and spies, contemporary accounts, compiled by men who lived through the events they described, and satires, pasquinades and ballads afford such abundant data for the life of Queen Mary Stewart that it might well seem astonishing that there should be any doubt as to either her character or her career.