On This Day: December 14

James V of Scotland

     In 1542, King James V of Scotland dies at Falkland Palace in Fife, either from a fever or from a nervous break-down resulting from the loss of the Scottish army to the English following the Battle of Solway Moss. His daughter Mary Stewart became Queen of Scots at age the of six days.

Mary I of England and Ireland

     In 1558, a Requiem Mass was held for Queen Mary I of England and Ireland following her death on November 17th. The Mass with full Catholic rites was sanctioned by her Protestant half-sister and successor, Elizabeth I, whom Mary had acknowledged as her successor only after she had failed to give birth to an heir.

Albert, Prince Consort in 1860.

     In 1861, Prince Albert, Prince Consort – the beloved husband of Queen Victoria – died at Windsor Castle of typhoid fever. Victoria went into a prolonged mourning period during which she withdrew from public life, and though she eventually resumed her public duties, she would dress as a mourning widow for the remainder of her life. So devasted was Victoria, that she could not bring herself make a dairy entry about Albert's death for ten years. Among other things, she had Albert's clothes and shaving materials laid out in his rooms every morning as if he were there to use them.

George VI

     

     In 1895, Prince Albert Frederick Arthur George of York (the future George VI) is born as the second child of the Duke and Duchess of York (the future George V and Queen Mary). Upon hearing the proposal to name the boy "Albert" (after his late great-grandfather), Queen Victoria wrote: "I am all impatience to see the new one, born on such a sad day but rather more dear to me, especially as he will be called by that dear name which is a byword for all that is great and good." His maternal grandmother, the Duchess of Teck, did not like the first name, and wrote prophetically that she hoped that the third middle name "may supplant the less favoured one."