Mary, Queen of Scots Trivia
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70 free Mary, Queen of Scots trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Mary, Queen of Scots trivia quiz follows the Stuart queen from a cradle at Linlithgow to the block at Fotheringhay: queen of Scotland at six days old, raised at the French court, briefly Queen of France, widowed at eighteen, married to a jealous cousin who watched her secretary stabbed at dinner, then to the earl accused of blowing that cousin up, deposed, imprisoned in a loch, and finally held in England for eighteen and a half years until Elizabeth signed the warrant. The easy questions cover the outline: her country, her cousin, her husbands, her son and how she died. The harder half is for readers of Antonia Fraser and John Guy: the four Marys, the treaty of 1543, the priory she was hidden in, the port she sailed from, her height, the poet under her bed, the pistol on her saddle, the Crown Matrimonial, the house at Kirk o' Field, the tavern bond, the miscarried twins, the fishing boat across the Solway, the casket, the carts and dishes of her captivity, the spa she summered in, the words she embroidered on her cloth of state, the entrapment at Chartley, the number of judges, the colour of her petticoat, and the wig in the executioner's hand. Every answer was checked against Mary, Queen of Scots' encyclopaedia entry before publishing. If you enjoy this, try our Elizabeth I, Scotland and Tudors quizzes next.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Where was Mary born on 8 December 1542?
Linlithgow Palace
Linlithgow Palace. The lochside palace where both she and her father James V were born burned out in 1746 and has stood roofless ever since.
Q 02How old was Mary when she became Queen of Scotland on the death of her father?
Six days
Six days. With a baby on the throne, regents governed in her name, and she was 18 before she came home from France to rule Scotland herself.
Q 03Told of Mary's birth, dying James V reputedly sighed that the Stewart crown came with a lass, meaning which king's daughter?
Robert the Bruce
Robert the Bruce. His daughter Marjorie married Walter the Steward and their son became the first Stewart king; the line did end with a woman, but with Queen Anne in 1714, not Mary.
Q 04Who was Mary's mother, who later served as regent of Scotland?
Mary of Guise
Mary of Guise. Henry VIII had wanted the widowed French duchess as his own fourth wife, but she married his nephew James V instead.
Q 05Through which grandmother, sister of Henry VIII, did Mary derive her claim to the English throne?
Margaret Tudor
Margaret Tudor. She was sent north at 13 to marry James IV and seal a peace with England, yet ten years later he was killed fighting her brother's army at Flodden.
Q 06The 1543 Treaty of Greenwich promised the infant Mary in marriage to whom?
Prince Edward of England
Prince Edward of England. When the Scots tore up the treaty within months, his father Henry VIII sent armies north to force the match, a war later nicknamed the Rough Wooing.
Q 07After the Scots lost at Pinkie in 1547, the four-year-old Mary was hidden at which island monastery on the Lake of Menteith?
Inchmahome Priory
Inchmahome Priory. She stayed only about three weeks, but the scare helped persuade her guardians to promise her to the French king's son and send her abroad the next summer.
Q 08From which castle did the five-year-old Mary sail for France in August 1548?
Dumbarton
Dumbarton. The rock fortress on the Clyde was Scotland's back door to France, well away from the English forces then occupying the south-east.
Q 09What were the surnames of the 'four Marys' who accompanied the young Mary to France?
Beaton, Seton, Fleming and Livingston
Beaton, Seton, Fleming and Livingston. Mary Fleming's mother went along as the young queen's governess, until she became the French king's mistress and was replaced.
Q 10Which mother-in-law of Mary took power as regent of France when Mary was widowed in 1560?
Catherine de' Medici
Catherine de' Medici. She became regent for her ten-year-old younger son, and Mary, shut out of power at 18, sailed home to Scotland nine months later.
Q 11Mary, who grew to about 5 feet 11 inches, took which sickly future king as her first husband?
Francis II of France
Francis II of France. He reigned for less than a year and a half before dying at 16, which left Mary a widow at 18 and sent her back to Scotland.
Q 12Where did the 15-year-old Mary marry the heir to the French throne in April 1558?
Notre-Dame de Paris
Notre-Dame de Paris. Twenty days earlier the bride had secretly signed deeds giving Scotland to France if she died without children.
Q 13How did Henry II of France die in 1559, making Mary Queen of France?
From injuries sustained in a joust
Q 21What nickname did Elizabeth give the tall young Darnley?
The long lad
The long lad. Elizabeth teased Mary's envoy that the Scots liked 'yon long lad' better than the suitor she was pressing on Mary, her own favourite Robert Dudley.
Q 22What name is given to the 1565 rebellion in which Mary's army and Moray's rebels never met in battle?
The Chaseabout Raid
The Chaseabout Raid. The name fits: the two armies marched back and forth across Scotland without ever fighting, until Mary's larger force drove Moray over the border into England.
Q 23What did Darnley demand that Mary refused to grant, turning him against her?
The Crown Matrimonial
From injuries sustained in a joust. At a tournament celebrating peace with Spain, the Count of Montgomery's lance struck him in the head, and he died ten days later.
Q 14What killed Mary's teenage first husband, the King of France, in December 1560?
An ear infection
An ear infection. It turned into an abscess that killed the king at 16, and his sudden death saved the Prince of Condé, who was awaiting execution for treason.
Q 15Which 1560 agreement recognising Elizabeth's right to rule did Mary refuse to ratify?
The Treaty of Edinburgh
The Treaty of Edinburgh. Elizabeth hit back by refusing her a safe-conduct for the voyage home in 1561, so Mary sailed for Scotland without one.
Q 16At which port did Mary land on her return to Scotland on 19 August 1561?
Leith
Leith. No welcoming party was waiting for the returning queen, who is said to have rested in a merchant's house by the harbour before she was escorted to Holyrood.
Q 17Which fiery reformer preached against Mary for hearing Mass, dancing and dressing too elaborately?
John Knox
John Knox. Mary summoned him to Holyrood again and again, and one stormy audience in 1563 ended with the queen in tears while he stood his ground.
Q 18How did Mary's half-brother the Earl of Moray, regent of Scotland, die in 1570?
Shot by an assassin
Shot by an assassin. A gunman loyal to Mary killed the regent as he rode through a town street, and his death tipped Scotland back into civil war.
Q 19Where in Mary's lodgings was the French poet Chastelard twice caught, an offence that cost him his head in 1563?
Her bedchamber
Her bedchamber. He survived the first offence but did it again, and her secretary Maitland claimed he had been sent by her enemies to blacken her name.
Q 20Which scene, a favourite of plays and films about Mary and Elizabeth I, never took place in real life?
The two queens meeting
The two queens meeting. They wrote to each other for years and a summit was planned for 1562, but Elizabeth cancelled it and never granted her captive rival an audience.
The Crown Matrimonial. It would have made him king in his own right, and the lords plotting against her favourite bought his help by promising to get it for him.
Q 24Which Italian secretary was stabbed to death in front of the pregnant Mary in 1566?
David Rizzio
David Rizzio. Darnley and a band of armed nobles burst into her supper room at Holyrood, dragged him out and stabbed him more than fifty times.
Q 25Where was Mary's son James born on 19 June 1566?
Edinburgh Castle
Edinburgh Castle. The labour was a hard one, and one of her ladies is said to have tried witchcraft to shift the queen's birth pains onto another woman.
Q 26In October 1566 Mary rode from Jedburgh to visit the wounded Bothwell at which castle?
Hermitage
Hermitage. She rode there and back in a day, fell so ill afterwards that her life was despaired of, and later saw the ride twisted into proof of an affair.
Q 27At which house was Darnley staying when it was destroyed by an explosion in February 1567?
Kirk o' Field
Kirk o' Field. The blast wrecked the house but did not kill him: Darnley was found dead in the garden without a mark from it, apparently strangled or smothered as he fled.
Q 28How long did the trial that acquitted Bothwell of Darnley's murder last?
Seven hours
Seven hours. Bothwell's armed followers filled the streets, so Darnley's father dared not come to accuse him, and with no evidence offered the acquittal was a formality.
Q 29What did a gathering of lords sign backing Bothwell's plan to marry Mary?
The Ainslie Tavern Bond
The Ainslie Tavern Bond. By the usual account Bothwell sprang it on his guests late in the evening after treating them to supper, shortly before he waylaid Mary on the road and carried her off.
Q 30Mary's accusers charged that she was seen playing which sport days after her husband Darnley was murdered?
Golf
Golf. The charges drawn up against her said she had played golf and pall-mall in the fields at Seton instead of mourning, which is why she is often called the first woman golfer.