Series 3 > Scottish correspondence of Mary of Lorraine

422 THE SCOTTISH CORRESPONDENCE OF
nated French domination in Scotland and left the nation
free to work out its own salvation.
As a force of opposition, religious and political, the
Reformation movement had proved irresistible. In a
negative and undreamt-of way, Mary of Lorraine had
wrought a service to her daughter’s kingdom. Time,
that alters perspective, enables posterity to be more
tender than were contemporaries to the memory of the
unhappy princess who, at midnight on 10th June 1560,1
passed from sore sickness of mind and body ‘ in the
keiping of almichti Code.’
1 Diurnal of Occurrents, 59 ; Leslie, 289 ; Hay Fleming, Mary Queen of
Scots, 216.