IN this week in 1560, there died the man who would have been King of Scotland had he just survived a few more years.

Although classed as an adult, King Francis II of France died in that fateful year at the age of just 16. 

He had reigned over France for less than 18 months, since the death of his father King Henry II – 11 days after a jousting tournament in which the 40-year-old monarch received an ultimately fatal wound in the eye  from the splintered lance of the  captain of the King’s Scottish  Guard, Gabriel Montgomery. 

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The best physicians in France attended the king but they hadn’t really heard of sepsis back then and Alexander Fleming was still nearly 370 years away from discovering penicillin.

In any case, Henry II’s astrologer Nostradamus had predicted an early end for the king, and so Francis II ascended the throne. 

By then Francis was already king of Scotland in one way – he was married to Mary, Queen of Scots, who had been raised at the French court.

She had become the only queen regnant in Scottish history to that point, succeeding her father James V when she was just six days old.

Her mother, Mary of Guise, was a member of one of the most powerful families in France, second only to the royal House of Valois. They helped to persuade Henry II that a marriage between his son Francis and Mary of Scotland would be an advantageous union all round.

King Henry VIII of England disapproved as he had wanted Mary to marry his son, the future Edward VI, to achieve what Henry had always wanted, control of Scotland.

The Scots resisted Henry’s so-called “rough wooing” and sent the five-year-old Mary to the French court for safety along with her Four Marys and two  half-brothers.

She received the education of a royal princess, learning several languages and the art of embroidery. She also became a keen  and skilful horsewoman. 

Growing tall and beautiful in adolescence, she had been betrothed to Francis from the time she arrived in France, and the two children seemed to have become good friends. King Henry II became fond of her and wrote: “From the very first day they met, my son and she got on as well together as if they had known each other for a long time.”

Unfortunately for Mary, the King’s consort Catherine de Medici was not her biggest supporter, but she had the political nous to realise that Mary was going to become Queen of France as well as Queen of Scots and she decided to bide her time.

It was a time of religious tumult and Henry II had been persecuting the French Protestants, known as the Huguenots, for years, while also conducting wars against the Papal States and England. But peace treaties were signed and Dauphin Francis and Mary, Queen of Scots, were married in Notre Dame in April 1558, Francis thus becoming king consort of Mary.

Physically, he was no catch, as he was short and had a stutter, and in modern parlance, we would say he was punching above his weight when he married Mary, by all accounts one of the most beautiful women of the time. 

There has long been speculation about whether the marriage between the 14-year-old Francis and 15-year-old Mary was ever consummated, and reports circulated that the Dauphin had undescended testicles, but they do appear to have started married life happily enough, and when Henry II died, Francis was crowned king at  a ceremony in Reims Cathedral.

Normally his consort would have been crowned as well, but as Mary was already Queen of Scots, that ceremony was dispensed with.

Nevertheless, a crowned Mary appeared alongside her husband in the official portrait and Nicholas Throckmorton, England’s ambassador to France, reported to Queen Elizabeth in  London a development that greatly alarmed the paranoid Elizabeth: “A Great Seal is lately sent into Scotland with the Arms of England, France, and Scotland quartered, having this style, ‘Franciscus et Maria, Dei Gratia Franciœ, Scotiœ, Angliœ, et Hibernœ Rex et Regina.’  “The same arms are also graven upon the French Queen’s plate, and at dinner, he and Sir Peter Mewtas were served with the like.”

Claiming the crowns of England and Ireland was not a good move on Mary’s part, as she would find out much later.

What no-one knew then was that before her marriage, Mary had agreed in a secret document that if she died without issue, the throne of Scotland and her claim to the crown of England would pass to Francis II. Her father-in-law had always intended the unification of France and Scotland, and believed it would happen under Francis II and Mary – she believed it, too.

Dual citizenship for both French and Scots was already planned.   So what was he like, this potential King of Scotland?

His lifelong poor health seems to have rendered him weak, both physically and psychologically. He virtually surrendered the government of his country to the House of Guise who became both military and political controllers of France.

In the King’s name, they continued with the savage persecution of Huguenots, and they also imposed strict financial penalties on many areas of France.

Not surprisingly, they were not very popular and revolts such as the Amboise Conspiracy took place.  Francis II himself decided to take firm action against any rebels, but by November 1560, he had become very  ill.

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A huge abscess had developed behind his ear and when it was lanced, pus poured out through his ears, nose and mouth.

He was clearly dying and Mary and Catherine de Medici came together to nurse him in his final days. He worsened considerably in the looming winter and died on December 5, 1560. He had never been to Scotland, the land of which he was nominally king and of which he might well have become king regnant with all the implications that would have had for these islands.

As it was, the young widow Mary was soon back in her own country, to face John Knox and the Protestant Reformers, followed by her own forced abdication and exile in England. Her last letter on February 8, 1587, written even as she was awaiting execution in Fotheringhay Castle, was addressed to King Henry III of France, younger brother of Francis II.