Marlborough (Account of Conduct, p. 25) pretends that she soon grew weary of anybody who would not talk a great deal. At court a saying circulated according to which the queen talked as much as the king thought and the princess ate (Klopp, iv. 397). Miss Strickland insinuates that in the last respect both of Anne Hyde's daughters resembled their mother. The defects of Mary's education had, more especially in the quiet Dutch days during Hooper's chaplaincy, been supplemented by reading, and she never gave up the habit. She was well-informed, not only in controversial divinity, but in history, and took up the study of English constitutional history as late as 1691 (Memoirs ap. Doebner, p. 44). According to Burnet (Memorial, p. 80) she was very exact in geography, and had a taste for other sciences. She wrote with ease and fluency in both French and English, and could put together a letter in Dutch (ap. Dalrymple, iii. 87). Her weak eyesight, however, at times obliged her to resort to female handiwork in her desire to avoid idleness (Burnet, Own Time, iii. 134; Memorial, pp. 81-2). At Hampton Court many evidences of her horticultural taste are still extant, and three catalogues of her botanical collections are in the British Museum (Sloane MSS. 2928, 2370-1, 3343; see Law, Hampton Court, iii. 30-42).
A large number of portraits remain from the successive periods of Mary's short life. In youth an elegant dancer, and slight in figure, she afterwards grew more, but never excessively, full in person, and was always a good walker (ap. Doebner, pp. 102-3).
The earliest portrait of her is probably Necksher's, taken at about two years of age. Wissing's was painted in duplicate between 1685 and 1687. There is another Dutch portrait, belonging to Lord Braybrooke, of 1688. The latest is Vandervaast's, of 1692.
[Genuine materials for a personal biography of Mary II are to he found in her letters to William III, covering; the period from 19 June to $ Sept. 1690. and printed in Dalrymple, iii. 68-129; in the Lettres et Memoires de Marie Reine d'Angleterre, &c.; published by Countess Bentinck at the Hague in 1880. and comprising a fragment of Mary's Memoirs (in French) from the beginning to the end of 1688, together with a series of Meditations by her, dating from 1690 and 1691, and a short series of letters written by her to Baroness de Wassenaer-Obdam and others at various times in the six years of her reign; and in the Memoirs and Letters of Mary, Queen of England, ed. by Dr. R. Doebner, Leipzig, 1886. The last-named volume carries on her summary autobiographical narrative (in English) from the beginning of 1689 to the close of 1693, and contains in addition a series of letters from the queen to the Electress Sophia, dating from 1689 to 1694. These materials have been largely used by Krämer in his Maria II Stuart (Utrecht, 1890), the best extant biography of Queen Mary. Miss Strickland's life of her in vols. x. and xi. of the Lives of the Queens of England, 1847, which is full of interesting details as to the queen's earlier years, afterwards degenerates into spiteful gossip. For Mary's early years and marriage see Diary of Dr. Edward Lake, ed. by G. P. Elliott for the Camden Society, Camden Misc. vol, i. (1847). For her life in Holland see the extracts from Hooper's MS. in Trevor's Life and Times of William III. 1836, reproduced by Miss Strickland; and H. Sidney's Diary and Correspondence from 1679, ed. R. W. Blencowe, 2 vols. 1843. Burnet's Hist. of his own Time (here cited in the Oxford edit. 1833) is a first-hand authority from 1686 to the queen's death. His Essay on the Memory of the late Queen (here cited as Memorial in the original edition) first appeared in 1695. See also Clarendon Correspondence, ed. S. W. Singer, 2 vols. 1828; Clarke's Life of James II, 2 vols. 1816; Evelyn's Diary and Correspondence, ed. Bray and Wheatley, 4 vols. 1879; Shrewsbury Papers, ed. Coxe, 1821; and as to the relations between Mary and Anne [Hooke's] Account of the Conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, 1742. See also Dalrymple's Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, 3 vols. 1790 edit.; Klopp's Der Fall des Hauses Stuart, especially vols, ii-vii. (1875-9); Macaulay's Hist. of England, especially vols, ii-iv. (here cited in the 1st edit.); F. A. Mazure's Histoire de la Revolution de 1688 en Angleterre, 4 vols. Brussels, 1843; Plumptre's Life of Ken, 2 vols. 1888; C. J. Abbey's The English Church and its Bishops, 1700-1800, 2 vols. 1887. For a bibliography of the political as distinguished from the personal history of Mary's life, see under William III.]
MARY of Modena (1658–1718), queen of James II of England, was born at Modena 5 Oct. 1658. Her additional baptismal names were Beatrice Anne Margaret Isabel; the name of Eleanor, by which she was familiarly known in her youth, and which reappears in her official burial certificate, was not among them (La Marquise Campana di Cavelli, Les Derniers Stuarts, i. 51 n.; Introduction, p. 83 and note). She was the only daughter of Alfonso IV of Modena, of the house of Este, who succeeded as duke a few days after her birth. On the death of Alfonso (July 1662), the government of the duchy was, on behalf of Francis II, his sister's junior by two years, carried on by the widowed Duchess Laura, a descendant of the Roman house of Martinozzi, and cousin of Mnzarin (Leo, Geschichte der italien. Staaten, 1832, v. 656; cf. Campana di Cavelli, i. 33 note). She brought up her children both religiously and strictly (cf.
