THE signatures of the first three female queens regnant in England and Scotland are an important element of studying their respective queenships. The formal signatures adopted by Mary, Queen of Scots, Mary I of England, and Elizabeth I of England give insight into how these women viewed themselves and how they wished to portray themselves on the public stage.

Sixteenth-century Western Europe saw a curious change in its ruling class: there were more women ruling or governing than there had been before. In Spain, Isabella I (1451–1504) of Castile and her daughter Juana I (1479–1555) of Castile, and later of the Spanish Kingdoms, ruled by their own right. By the middle of the 16th century, England had its first queen regnant in Mary I (1516–58). Scotland’s first queen, Mary Stuart (1542–87), began her reign in 1542. Elizabeth I (1533–1603), who became queen after her elder sister Mary I's short reign, proudly remained unmarried her entire life.

Much has been written about the successes and failures of each of these women, from their marital choices (or lack of) to how they approached the fallout from the Reformation. R. Malcolm Smuts and Melinda J. Gough noted that, “with a few notable exceptions, such as Elizabeth I, queens and other high ranking women have received only limited attention from historians of early modern Europe, and women's contributions to the political and cultural life of the period remain understudied.” The way each of the women contemplated in this paper, including the oft-studied Elizabeth I, presented themselves on both the domestic and the international stage have easily left a mark on political society, because, “the cultural expectations shaping the behavior of each [woman] contributed to the operation of society in which the private business of great … households was inseparable from high politics and statecraft.” In this paper, I seek to understand how each woman sought to represent her public self through the presentation of official signatures.

Prior to 1500, England and Scotland each had a woman who, de facto, was eligible to be queen regnant. The first was Matilda in the 12th century, the only living heir of Henry I.