Elite Hunting Culture and Mary, Queen of Scots

Book excerpt: Examines the political significance and performativity of elite hunting in sixteenth-century Scotland. Hunting during the early modern period was not simply a popular form of elite entertainment; it also had an important part in court politics and royal governance. However, little attention has been devoted to it in sixteenth-century Scotland. This study of the role that hunting played in the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, in France and in Scotland, aims both to shed new light on the subject and to provide a new perspective on Mary herself. Drawing on the hunting treatises of Gaston Phoebus and Henri de Ferrières, the histories of Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie and John Lesley, and a wide variety of other literary and visual sources, including letters, administrative records and fieldwork evidence, it reveals the full significance of the hunt in Mary's life and career. She is shown to be an able and enthusiastic huntress, using this "pastime" to establish herself as a Stewart monarch, demonstrate her royal authority, and, particularly during the later stages of her reign, to attempt to hold together a fractious Scottish aristocracy.