Mary Stuart (8 April 1605 – 16 September 1607) was the third daughter and sixth child of James VI and I by Anne of Denmark.

There was an outbreak of smallpox at court and the doctors tried to stop her visiting a favourite maid of honour who had fallen ill.[2] Anne went to Greenwich after the performance of the Masque of Blackness in January, as Dudley Carleton described it, "to lay down her great belly".

[4][5] In January 1605 Sir Richard Leveson talked to one of the royal physicians, and had courtiers praise Anne Newdigate to the queen in an unsuccessful attempt to get her made nurse.

[13] On 8 April 1605, at Greenwich Palace, attended by the physician Martin Schöner, Anne of Denmark delivered a girl.

Throughout the realms, bonfires were lit and church bells rung all day long; the celebrations were encouraged by the fact that 68 years had elapsed since the birth of a child to an English sovereign, the last being Edward VI.

[16] The infant's clothing, a train of purple velvet, embroidered with gold and furred with ermines, was supported by two countesses, being so long that it fell to the ground.

Some of the lords came to bring her into the Chapel, and she came to the altar supported by the Dukes of Holstein and Lennox, then went to her seat in a canopy called a "traverse" opposite the king.

[26] An eyewitness account later preached at her funeral stated that "such was the manner of her death, as bred a kind of admiration in us all that were present to behold it.

The more strange did this appear to us that heard it, in that it was almost incredible that so much vigor should still remain in so weak a body; and whereas she had used many other words in the time of her extremity, yet now at last, as if directed by supernatural inspiration, she did so aptly utter these, and none but these.

According to Rowland Whyte, she had suffered a "burning fever for 24 days, and a continual rheum fell to her lungs and putrified there, which she had not strength to void".

[27] After showing the normal maternal signs of sorrow, she demanded that the king be told of Mary's death, an autopsy performed and a funeral prepared.

[29] Thus, a private ceremony took place at Westminster Abbey's Henry VII Lady Chapel on 23 September and Mary's embalmed body was buried opposite of her sister Sophia's tomb.

[31] Her effigy, created by Maximilian Colt, represented a young girl, clad in a mature dress, with the traditional ruff, carved in ivory.