The Tudor Society

14 December – A death, an accession and a burial

On this day in 1542, James V died at Falkland Palace in Falkland, Fife, Scotland, after being taken ill following the Scots' defeat at the Battle of Solway Moss on 24th November. It is not known what killed him – some argue that it was a nervous collapse, and others that it was a virus.

While James was on his deathbed, his consort, Mary of Guise, gave birth to a daughter, and it was the six-day-old baby who became Mary, Queen of Scots on her father's death. John Knox and the chronicler Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie both recorded that James uttered the words “it came wi a lass, it'll gang wi a lass” (“it came with a lass, it will end with a lass”) as he lay dying, referring to how the Stuart dynasty began with a girl, through Marjorie Bruce, Robert the Bruce's daughter, and how he feared it would now end with his daughter, Mary. However, the Stuart dynasty actually ended with another girl, Queen Anne, in 1714, and it is not known that James actually ever said these words.

James was buried at Holyrood Abbey on 8th January 1543.

Also on this day in history, 14th December 1558, just under a month after her death, Queen Mary I was buried at Westminster Abbey. Although Mary had left instructions in her will for her mother Catherine of Aragon's remains to be exhumed and brought to London so that mother and daughter could be buried together, her instructions were ignored and Mary was buried by herself at Westminster on 14th December 1558 with just stones marking her resting place.

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