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Mary had been married to Francis, dauphin of France (son of Henry II) in 1558. Although Francis became King (and Mary Queen) of France in 1559, he ruled for a little over a year before dying from an ear infection.Mary, dowager of France, was no match to the political influence of Henry II\'s dowager queen, Catherine de Medici. Before the marriage ceremony in Notre Dame, Mary had secretly signed away Scotland\'s sovereignty and declared that, if she died before her husband, Scotland would become subject to the French crown.Faced with the death of Francis in 1560, Mary now had to return to her kingdom - a realm she had not seen since she was five. On her return to Scotland (landing at Leith on 19 August 1561), Mary was faced with a problem concerning the religion of the nation.
For the next four years, while actively Catholic in private, she did little to oppose the Protestant religion in public. Indeed, in October 1562, she placed an army in the field to combat her leading Catholic nobleman, George Gordon, Earl of Huntly. Only with her marriage to Henry, Lord Darnley, in 1565, can Mary\'s policies be seen to be going wrong.
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