Throughout this time, I saw relatively little of Mother, for she was preoccupied with these political affairs and wrangling for what she believed to be her due entitlements. I was looked after by nurses and servants, yet she did make time to tell me all about her illustrious past and her grievances and her difficulties. She could not hide the fact that she was more devoted to King James than to me, even though I was with her, and she was not allowed even to see my brother. But I suppose it was understandable. I grew up believing that a mother must naturally look chiefly to the interests of her sons and that daughters were relatively unimportant. I did feel some pangs of jealousy, and resentment against James, but I hardly knew him and there was never a close bond between us.

For all Mother’s grumbles about poverty, I was brought up as a princess. We moved from palace to palace, like a small court. Scots was my first language, although Mother did teach me English. I was trained to virtue and grace, to obedience, truth and the fear of God. I tried very hard to do good and learn wisdom. And I suppose I was content – for a time.

I was five when Mother found out that Father had a mistress. There were vicious quarrels, which I heard all too clearly on occasion.

In her anguish and jealousy, Mother did not spare me. ‘Your father has done me much evil!’ she said to me, young as I was. ‘I am minded to part with him, for I know well he loves me not, as he shows me daily!’ I ended up feeling disloyal for just loving my Father, as the Commandments enjoined; and then I felt disloyal for thinking ill of him. I was cruelly torn. Looking back, I think I should have been protected from it all. But my parents were too far gone in hatred and acrimony to wonder about the effect their quarrels were having on me.

The Douglases, of course, sided with Father, and when Mother finally did leave him that December, King Henry VIII sided with him too, thinking it outrageous for a woman to desert her husband. But it was a relief to me when they were apart, even though I had to live with my mother’s anger and bitterness. It is hardly surprising that I grew up with a jaundiced opinion of my father. And, really, he deserved it, for he seized her property and appropriated her revenues, obliging us to live a poor existence in Edinburgh.