Mary, Queen of Scots the Scottish alliance with France. Beaton wanted to move Mary away from the coast to the safety of Stirling Castle. Regent Arran resisted the move, but backed down when Beaton's armed supporters gathered at Linlithgow. The Earl of Lennox escorted Mary and her mother to Stirling on 27 July 1543 with 3,500 armed men. Mary was crowned in the castle chapel on 9 September 1543, with "such solemnity as they do use in this country, which is not very costly" according to the report of Ralph Sadler and Henry Ray. Shortly before Mary's coronation, Scottish merchants headed for France were
Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley not together in early 1545 and a letter of March 1566, from Mary Queen of Scots, indicates Darnley was then nineteen years old. Therefore the date 1546 would seem probable. A descendant of both James II of Scotland and Henry VII of England, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was heir to two royal houses, the House of Stuart and the House of Tudor, thus he had claim to both the Scottish and English thrones, a claim that may have cost him his life. In 1545, his father, Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox was found guilty of treason in Scotland for