20. From Gay Paris to Grim Scotland
Mary Stuart was raised Catholic. However, the Scotland to which she returned in 1561 was tearing itself apart between Catholics mounting a desperate rearguard action, and increasingly assertive Protestants. There was no love lost between the two sects.
Compared to the gaiety of the French court, where Mary had grown up, Scotland was a decidedly dour place. The leading Protestant reformer John Knox denounced the habits she had picked up in France of dancing, dressing too stylishly, and hearing the Catholic mass. It was against that backdrop that Mary met an Italian nobleman, David Rizzio, who arrived with the staff of an embassy from Savoy to Scotland in 1561.