Mary, Queen of Scots was forced to abdicate at 24 in 1567

On 24 July 1567, Mary, Queen of Scots, then a prisoner in Lochleven Castle, was forced to sign her abdication, handing the Scottish throne to her 13-month-old son, James. She was 24 and had been queen since the first week of her life.

Her fall took about ten weeks from her third wedding:

• May 1567: Mary marries James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, widely believed to have murdered her second husband, Lord Darnley, that February. The nobles who had backed the match soon turn against him.
• June 1567: Faced with rebel lords, Mary surrenders while Bothwell flees. She is held in Edinburgh, then moved to Lochleven, a castle on an island in the loch.
• 24 July 1567: While she is recovering from a miscarriage of twins, Lord Lindsay confronts her with letters that resign her crown, recognise her son as king and make her half-brother, the Earl of Moray, regent. She signs.
• 29 July 1567: The boy is crowned James VI in the Church of the Holy Rude, Stirling, with John Knox preaching.
• May 1568: Mary escapes across the loch, loses the Battle of Langside and flees into England. She never sees Scotland again.

The abdication was signed under duress. By the Library of Congress’s account, Mary was outraged, but she was also frightened and ill, and she believed she would be killed if she refused. To justify deposing her, the Scottish lords produced the Casket Letters at an English inquiry in 1568–69. The letters supposedly traced an affair with Bothwell that gave the couple a motive for Darnley’s murder. Mary denied writing them and was never allowed to examine them, and the originals disappeared in the 1580s, so historians have only copies.

The coronation left a lasting distinction. Holy Rude claims to be one of only two churches in the British Isles still in use that have hosted a coronation; the other is Westminster Abbey. Mary spent the rest of her life in English custody until she was executed at Fotheringhay in 1587.