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Historic Love and Marriages From Hell

Khalid Elhassan September 22, 2020 31 min

Jerry Lee Lewis - Myra Gale Brown — Jerry Lee Lewis and his child bride, back home after a disastrous overseas trip. The Commercial Appeal

20. From Gay Paris to Grim Scotland

Mary Queen of Scots, by Francois Clouet. Google Art Project

Mary Stuart was raised Catholic. However, the Scotland to which she returned in 1561 was tearing itself apart between Catholics mounting a desperate rearguard action, and increasingly assertive Protestants. There was no love lost between the two sects.

Compared to the gaiety of the French court, where Mary had grown up, Scotland was a decidedly dour place. The leading Protestant reformer John Knox denounced the habits she had picked up in France of dancing, dressing too stylishly, and hearing the Catholic mass. It was against that backdrop that Mary met an Italian nobleman, David Rizzio, who arrived with the staff of an embassy from Savoy to Scotland in 1561.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.