SYMHC Classics: Mary, Queen of Scots

This 2018 episode focuses on the adult life of Mary, Queen of Scots – especially the conspiracy that ultimately led to her execution in 1587. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. Mary Queen of Scott's, also known as Mary Stewart,
was crowned as Queen of Scotland four hundred and eighty
years ago today. She had inherited the crown on December fourteenth,
fifteen forty two, after the death of her father, James
the Fifth, and she was only a few days old
when her father died than when she was crowned on

(00:23):
September ninth, fifteen forty three, she was only nine months old.
So we are pulling one of our episodes on Mary
out for today's Saturday Classic. This one is more focused
on her adult life, especially the conspiracy that ultimately led
to her execution in fifteen eighty seven.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
So enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Hello, and Welcome to the podcast I'm Tracy V. Wilson Frye.
Earlier this year, the folks that Focus Features came to
us about doing a podcast related to Mary, Queen of
Scott's to coincide with their new film, also called Mary
Queen of Scott's. Mary Stewart, as she is also known,
has made several appearances on our show before Previous hosts

(01:17):
talked about the death of her husband, Lord Darnley, as
well as her lengthy rivalry with Queen Elizabeth the First.
But Mary is such a memorable figure and there's so
many parts of her life that we haven't talked about
that it was very very easy for us to find
something that we wanted to cover, and that is the
Babbington plot, which ultimately led to her execution. So we're

(01:38):
gonna set the stage with a little bit about her
youth and a little about that rivalry with Elizabeth, but
our focus today is really on the plot and the
trial that followed. And since this is an episode about
the Stuarts, Mary's beheading is only one of the gruesome
executions that we're going to discuss.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, there was definitely a trend in those stories where
there is a lot of violence, there's a lot of
killing each other in very grisly ways. Yeah, this is
one of those times. Any pretty much anytime, but especially
when we talk about the Stuarts and the Tutors. I
kind of have that thing of like, who would want
that job? Because no one's safe, Like it's one thing

(02:20):
to have a stressful job, and I guess if you
really want power, there's a draw, but I would be like, no,
I'm not part of the royal family, thank you. I
would completely excommunicate myself. But that is neither here nor there,
so we will get into Mary's story. Mary Stewart was
born on December eighth, fifteen forty two, in Linlithgow Palace
in Scotland, and her parents were James the fifth of

(02:42):
Scotland and Marie of Geese. She was their only surviving child,
and less than a week after Mary was born, her
father died. Mary became Queen of Scotland at the age
of six days old, with her mother acting as regent.
Mary spent most of her childhood and young adulthood in France,
not in Scotland. She was sent there to be fostered

(03:03):
and to escape an unwonted marriage to Henry the Yighth's
son Edward, and then on April twenty fourth of fifteen
fifty eight, she married Francis, the Dauphin of France. He
was the son of Henri the second and Catherine de Medici.
At the time, she was seventeen and he was fourteen,
and they do seem to have been genuinely fond of
each other, but their relationship was also more like siblings

(03:26):
than spouse's. On November seventeenth of that same year, Elizabeth
the First ascended to the English throne, and that put
Mary next in the line of succession after Elizabeth, which
was the focal point of the rivalry between the two
of them. There was a lot more than just this
one issue tangled up in this rivalry, though, including religion, politics,

(03:47):
family dynamics, ongoing tensions between England and Scotland, and ongoing
tensions between England and France. Consequently, the next decade of
Mary's life was increasingly chaotic and turbulent. Onria the Second
tried to make a claim to the English throne on
her behalf, but he died not long after that. That
made Francis the King of France and Mary was the

(04:09):
Queen Consort. But then Francis died on December fifth of
fifteen sixty, just a couple of years into their marriage.
Earlier that same year, Marie of Geese had also died,
so suddenly Mary was the Queen of Scotland, the dowager
Queen of France, a widow, and an orphan all at
the same time. She was eighteen. Maria of Geese's death
also meant that Scotland no longer had its regent, and

(04:32):
Mary returned to Scotland to take the throne in fifteen
sixty one, but she immediately ran into all kinds of problems.
Her upbringing and manners and education were all very French,
so some Scots considered her to be an outsider. She
was also Catholic, but Scotland at that point had become
a Protestant country, and returning to Scotland had amped up

(04:54):
the tension between her and Elizabeth even more since it
meant that Mary and her claim to the end English
throne were right there on the same island with Elizabeth
instead of somewhat out of the way in France.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
In fifteen sixty five, things got even more dramatic. Mary
married her cousin Henry Stewart, the Earl of Darnley. Since
Darnley was both Catholic and a Stewart, Elizabeth was highly
suspicious of this match and of the motivations for it.
It really was just an impulsive marriage that Mary made
for love, but it did not go well at all.

(05:28):
Case endpoint, Darnley and his men murdered David Rizzio, who
was Mary's secretary and favorite, and they did this in
front of her at dinner while she was about six
months pregnant.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Charmers everyone. And then Darnley himself died under very mysterious
and extremely suspicious circumstances. We have a previous podcast on
that as well, but the one sentence version is this.
He was found strangled outside the house he was staying
in after it exploded. Mary then got married again to

(06:02):
James Hepburn, the fourth Earl of Bothwell, who had been
one of the prime suspects in Darnley's death. There were
also a lot of rumors that Mary and Bothwell had
been having an affair and had conspired together to kill Darnley.
Mary's marriage to Bothwell was also strange. It wasn't totally
clear whether he kidnapped her or whether she willingly eloped

(06:23):
with him, but regardless, immediately before their marriage, he divorced
his wife, Jean Gordon, under very shady circumstances. Mary's sudden
marriage to Bothwell caused her to lose the support of
a lot of the Scottish nobility. Bothwell and his opponents
each raised armies, but the French ambassador arranged peace terms.
Before any of this could actually result in a war,

(06:46):
Mary surrendered on June fifteenth, fifteen sixty seven. After she surrendered,
Mary was forced to abdicate in favor of her son James,
making him James the sixth of Scotland. James's father had
been Lord Darnley, and since James was a little over
a year old, Mary's half brother, James Stuart, Earl of Moray,

(07:06):
was named as the regent as for bothwell. He was
eventually arrested and died after spending five years in solitary confinement.
Mary spent the next eleven months imprisoned at locke Leaving Castle.
After one failed escape attempt, she managed to leave the
island on May second, fifteen sixty eight. Willie and George Douglas,
ages sixteen and eighteen, were involved in both escape attempts.

(07:31):
In the second, they had a set of fake keys
to the castle made and they swapped those for the
real ones at dinner, taking the real keys right off
the table concealed in a napkin.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
This castle was on an island, and once she was
free of it, Mary rallied an army. She denounced her
half brother, and she announced that she had only abdicated
under duress, she started planning to take back the throne
of Scotland by force. She didn't succeed, though she was
defeated by Morey's forces at the Battle of Langside. At
this point, Mary was really out of options in Scotland,

(08:05):
so she fled to England. In spite of the ongoing
layered tensions between the two queens, Mary hoped that she
could take refuge with her cousin Elizabeth. This wasn't quite
as far fetched as the two queen's incredibly contentious history
might make it seem. Elizabeth really was appalled at what
had happened in Scotland because Mary was, without question the

(08:27):
rightful ruler of Scotland. This was not how a monarch
was supposed to be treated, especially not a monarch who
was her cousin.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
At the same time, Elizabeth wasn't at all ready to
commit English troops to helping Mary take back her throne,
or to give Mary a pass for all of those
years of animosity between them. Instead, she agreed to allow
Mary to stay in England while she convened a commission
that would hold hearings into the matter of Lord Darnley's death.
If Mary was complicit in Darnley's death, it would have

(08:56):
been out of the question for Elizabeth to help her
at all. This commission ultimately determined that England should not
interfere in what was happening in Scotland, but it also
found that Mary was not involved in Darley's death. Elizabeth, though,
was really sure that if she just freed Mary, the
result was going to be a Catholic uprising against her

(09:17):
in England. So Elizabeth had Mary imprisoned for the next
almost nineteen years. More on that after a sponsor break.
Even though Elizabeth was suspicious of.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
Mary, she didn't really have any legal grounds to imprison her.
Mary was a monarch of another country. Her son, at
this point was the King of Scotland. England and Scotland
were not at war with each other, and for one
monarch to just imprison another one during peacetime wasn't really
within the bounds of international law, so Elizabeth's treatment of

(09:57):
Mary was more like keeping her under house arrest. Mary
spent her first night in England in Workington Hall, and
from that point on she was kept under guard at
a series of manors and castles. At first, many of
them were owned by George Talbot, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury.
He was Mary's custodian or jailer for much of her confinement.

(10:18):
He and his wife, Bess of Hardwicke acted as Mary's
keepers and Elizabeth's informants for most of those nineteen years.
During those years of imprisonment, the Reformation and Counter Reformation
were playing out in Europe, leading to ongoing religiously motivated violence.
Just as one example, the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, in

(10:39):
which French Catholics murdered thousands of Huguenots, was in fifteen
seventy two while Mary was captive at Sheffield Castle. Religious
strife also escalated in England during this time, some of
it connected directly to Mary and Elizabeth, because many Catholics
didn't consider Elizabeth to be a legitimate monarch at all.
She was the daughter of Henry the Eighth and his

(11:00):
second wife, Anne Boleyn. They had become secretly married in
fifteen thirty three while Henry was still married to Catherine
of Aragon. Henry had asked the Pope to annul his
marriage to Catherine, and when he didn't, Henry declared himself
head of the English Church and appointed an archbishop who
would do the annulment for him. Anne was already pregnant

(11:20):
with Elizabeth when Henry's marriage to Catherine was annulled, and
an archbishop, not the Pope, had done that annulment. So
a lot of people, Catholics especially, did not consider Elizabeth
a legitimate successor to the throne. They thought of her
as the illegitimate child of a king's concubine. In addition
to all of that, on April twenty seventh, fifteen seventy,

(11:42):
Pope Pious the fifth had issued a bull that excommunicated
Elizabeth and called her a heretic and quote the pretended
Queen of England and the servant of crime. The bull
also absolved the nobles, subjects, and people of the said
Realm of any oaths and duties toward Elizabeth, and made
obedience to Elizabeth punishable by excommunication. The papal bull combined

(12:06):
with the existing questions about Elizabeth's legitimacy to spawn a
whole series of plots to depose or assassinate her and
replace her with Mary. The Ridolphie plot of fifteen seventy
one was named for one of the conspirators Italian merchant
Roberto Ridolphi. This plot was connected to a Catholic uprising
called the Northern Rising, as well as to King Philip

(12:27):
Icond of Spain. Then there was the Throckmorton plot of
fifteen eighty three, named for Francis Throckmorton, who was working
with agents from France. It's possible that Mary was connected
to the Throckmorton plot, or at least knew about it.
Throckmorton was writing a letter to her in code when
he was arrested. And then there was the Perry plot

(12:47):
of fifteen eighty five, which was named for Welsh spy
and doctor William Perry. None of these plots was particularly
likely to be successful, and it's not clear whether Perry
really ever plotted.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
To kill the queen at all, but Elizabeth's advisers did
encourage her to take them seriously. Added to all this
stress was the assassination of William the Silent or William
the First Prince of Orange in fifteen eighty four, who
had led the Netherlands against Spanish rule and was ultimately
assassinated by a Catholic fanatic. In the face of all

(13:20):
of this, in fifteen eighty five, Mary was moved to
Chartley Castle and assigned a new custodian, Sir Amiya Poulet.
The move and the changing custody are widely reported to
have been the work of Sir Francis Walsingham, that was
Elizabeth's Secretary of State and spymaster. The move to Chartley
let Walsingham keep a closer eye on Mary, it let

(13:42):
Poulet completely cut her off from communication with the outside world.
Parliament also passed a new law related to all of this.
It had started with an informal agreement known as the
Bond of Association in fifteen eighty four, which was formalized
as an Act for the Security of the Queen's Royal
Person and the Continuance of Peace in the Realm, which

(14:02):
was past the following year.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Under this Act, if a person conspired in a plot
against the Queen, or if a plot against the Queen
was concocted on a person's behalf, that person was prosecuted.
Whether they knew about the plot or not. It was
considered treason and it was punishable by execution. The Act
also specified that anybody participating in such a plot or

(14:25):
having such a plot carried out on their behalf was
permanently and irrevocably barred from ever ascending to the throne
of England.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
The bond of Association and the law that followed were
clearly crafted because of Mary. They set up a legal
framework to prosecute her if her supporters plotted to put
her on the throne, regardless of whether she was involved
or even knew about any of it.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
Okay, they might as well have just called it the
law to make it so wea can behead Mary Stuart. Thanks, Yeah,
because otherwise there's a logic breakdown to it.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
There are several logical breakdowns.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah. That all brings us finally to the Babington plot.
Named for Anthony Babington. He was Catholic, very well off,
and connected to several other people who had been involved
in previous plots to try to depose or assassinate Elizabeth
and replace her with Mary. He had also served as
a page to George Talbot's sixth Earl of Shuebury, who
had been Mary's custodian, and during that service he had

(15:22):
become quite fond of her. One of his connections was
to a Catholic priest named John Ballard, who also wanted
Elizabeth off the throne and helped put him in touch
with even more people who had similar goals. Babington and
several co conspirators started plotting in early fifteen eighty six,
using an inn as their meeting place, and they were

(15:43):
not all that discreet about.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
Any of this. They even commissioned portraits of themselves, either
because they thought that they would live and be famous
for it, or because they thought they would die but
be remembered as martyrs. Either way, portraits of themselves were
going to come in very handy. It's like they were
writing their own history books before they did the thing
that was going to become historically significant. Yeah, they are

(16:06):
often described as being arrogant and full of hubris, as
sort of a pattern among them all. So meanwhile, Walsingham
learned about this plot pretty quickly, and he saw it
as an opportunity. He concluded reasonably that as long as
Mary was alive, there were going to be ongoing attempts
to get rid of Elizabeth and put Mary on the throne.

(16:27):
Just as reasonably, he concluded there was no way Elizabeth
was going to sign off on Mary's execution without some
real concrete proof that she was involved in a plot
to kill the monarch and take the throne for herself.
So he allowed the Babbington conspirators to continue with their plotting,
and even took steps to allow them to do it.

(16:48):
When Gilbert Gifford, an English Catholic who had been in France,
returned to England, Walsingham arrested him and got him to
work as a double agent. Now, in some accounts Gifford volunteered,
and in others this is more of a situation where
Walsingham convinced him, and we're using the ear quotes around
Convince threatened maybe yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
Gifford's mission wasn't just to gain the conspirator's trust and
provide intelligence back to Walsingham. It was also to actively
encourage and enable this entire plot.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
At Walsingham's instruction, Gifford went to Babington and told him
he had learned about this plot from another of the conspirators,
a man named Thomas Morgan. Gifford said he had worked
out a way to get messages to and from Mary,
even though all that communication with the outside world had
been cut off for months. He said he had a
friend who was a brewer and that they could smuggle

(17:39):
messages into and out of Chartley Castle in beer barrels
with false bottoms. At this point, we don't know who
this brewer might have been. He was always referred to
only as the honest Man. Babington approved of this plan,
but he did not entirely trust Gifford with his secret correspondence,
so he used to cipher to encode all his letters.

(18:01):
Mary already had the codebook she'd need to decipher the
letters and encode her reply, apparently thanks to an emissary
from France. But Gifford didn't take these letters straight to
his brewer friend. He took them to Walsingham, who was
working with a forger to replicate the seals that were
used on all the letters. So Walsingham and his forger
would open up the letter, make a copy of it,

(18:23):
reseal the original, and send it on his way, and
then keep the copy. Walsingham would take that copy to
his codebreaker, Thomas Phillips, to try to work out the code,
and at one point he even had Philips housed at
Chartley Castle to do this work more efficiently, right there
where Mary also was. Babington's cipher included replacing letters of

(18:44):
the alphabet with symbols and using other symbols to represent
specific words and phrases. And he thought this cipher was secure,
so he wrote a clear account about what he was doing.
But Philips quickly cracked this code, or more likely, they
had actually already intercepted the key and Philips was just
using it to decipher what was in front of him.

(19:05):
Mary and Babington exchanged a few letters that were mostly
about Mary getting access to all the mail that had
been withheld from her, and then Babington sent her a
letter that referenced, quote a great preparation by the Christian Princes,
your Majesty's allies for the deliverance of our country from
the extreme and miserable fate wherein it hath too long remained.

(19:28):
That letter went on to describe a plan to be
carried out in the wake of such a deliverance. When
these other Christian princes invaded, they would dispatch the usurping competitors,
being Elizabeth, and then quote myself, with ten gentlemen and
one hundred of our followers, will undertake the delivery of
your royal person from the hands of your enemies. For

(19:51):
the dispatch of the usurper from the obedience of whom
we are by the excommunication of her made free. There
be six noble gentlemen, all my private friends, who for
the zeal they bear to the Catholic cause, and your
Majesty's service will undertake that tragical execution. Mary's response to
this letter, which was intercepted, is dated July seventeenth, and

(20:13):
it was also intercepted, and it said, in part quote,
when all is ready, the six gentlemen must be set
to work, and you will provide that on their design
being accomplished, I may be myself rescued from this place
and be in safe keeping till our friends arrive. It
will be hard to fix a day for the execution.
You must have a party therefore in readiness to carry

(20:36):
me off, and you will keep four men with horses
saddled to bring word when the deed is done, that
they may be here before my guardian.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
Here's of it. Mary's response didn't really get into the
idea of assassinating Elizabeth. It rested on the idea of
a foreign invasion. If that invasion were successful, she might
logically become queen, But she really left the question of
who should be Monarch of England in the hands of
God and the invasion's outcome. Her letter expressed clear support

(21:06):
for the conspirators freeing her from her confinement, but not
for the idea of assassinating the Queen. Yeah, people hang
on the word execution a lot, but in the context
of this, she was talking about executing the plan.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yes, in the sense of to do a thing right,
not to assassinate the monarch. So, of course Walsingham intercepted
this letter and all of these other letters, and even
though he had Babbington's outline of the plot and Mary's
support for at least part of it, he didn't have
the names of all the conspirators or a clear statement
that Mary hoped for or planned the assassination of Queen Elizabeth.

(21:44):
So before passing Mary's letter on to Babbington, Walsingham had
his forger at a PostScript. So in this fake PS,
Mary asked to know the names of the six men,
under the grounds that she might have some information about
one or more of them that could let her give
him further advice. His hope with adding this fake PS

(22:04):
was that Babbington would reply and name more names, But before.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
His correspondence with Mary got much further. Babington learned that
Walsingham had discovered the plot. He fled, but was captured
on August fourth. In his confession, he implicated all his
other co conspirators and also said he had gotten a
letter from Mary saying that she had supported the entire plot.
Here's the thing about those letters.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
Though the originals don't exist, and this is not a
recent development, by the time the case came to trial,
all the originals had been burned or otherwise destroyed, as
is common practice when you get some secret correspondence from somebody.
So all that was left of the letters were copies
copies made by a forger employed by Walsingham while trying

(22:52):
to ferret out a plot to overthrow the queen. So
this raises some questions about their authenticity. In fact, Walsingham
laid such a key role in all of this that
the Babbington plot has been described as a double conspiracy,
with Walsingham conspiring against Mary and Babbington and his crew
conspiring against Elizabeth. Each plot could only exist in conjunction

(23:14):
with the other. The conspirators had no way to communicate
with Mary without Walsingham's double agent and that honest man
with the beer barrels, and Walsingham had no plot to
use against Mary without Babbington and his crew.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
One of the articles that I read about this was
basically like, this whole thing is so convoluted that even now,
hundreds of years later, it's sometimes.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
Hard to tell who is tricking who.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
At which point we will talk about the trials of Babbington,
his co conspirators, and Mary. After another sponsor break. Based
on his confession and the copies of all this correspondence,
Anthony Babington and twelve co consin inspirators were put on

(24:01):
trial on September thirteenth through fifteenth, fifteen eighty six. Initially,
the men all pleaded guilty to everything except plotting to
kill Elizabeth, although they all changed their not guilty please
on that charge to guilty under pressure from the prosecution.
Those portraits that they'd commissioned of themselves were also brought
up as part.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Of the evidence. The method of execution was gruesome. Babbington
and the first seven conspirators were executed on September twentieth,
fifteen eighty six. They were hanged, cut down while still alive,
and then again while still living, disemboweled and castrated in
front of throngs of spectators. Queen Elizabeth decided that this

(24:43):
method of execution was excessively cruel, so when the rest
of the co conspirators were executed the next day, they
were hanged until they were dead, and then their bodies
were disemboweled and castrated. Mary was arrested on August eleventh,
fifteen eighty six, while she was out riding. She was
taken to Fotheringay, cast where she was held prisoner until
her own trial, which took place on October fourteenth and

(25:04):
fifteenth of fifteen eighty six. It was held before an
assembly of forty six Commissioners, as had been outlined in
the law that had been passed the year before.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
The evidence against Mary included the confessions of Anthony Babington
and John Ballard. Confessions from her secretaries, Gilbert Curle and
Jacques Now were included as well, but both of the
secretaries made their confessions under duress.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
They were deceived.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
Into thinking that the prosecution had copies of letters that
they had written and ciphered, which was not true. The
letters between Mary and Babington were also part of the evidence,
but as we noted before, these were the copies, not
the originals. But Mary consistently and stridently denied all involvement
in this plot. She said she had never spoken to Babington,

(25:52):
had never written or dictated those letters. Mary said these
copied letters used as evidence were forgeries in their entirety.
She also made the point that it was not possible
for her, the Queen of Scotland, to be charged with
treason against England, a nation of which.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
She was not a citizen. She said, quote, it seemeth
strange to me that the Queen should command me, as
a subject, to appear personally in judgment. I am an
absolute queen and will do nothing which may prejudice either
mine own royalty, or other princes of my place and rank,
or my son. The laws and statutes of England are
to me most unknown. I am destitute of counselors, and

(26:32):
who shall be my peers? I am utterly ignorant. My
papers and notes are taken from me, and no man
dareth step forth to be my advocate. I am clear
from all crime against the Queen. I have excited no
man against her, and I am not to be charged
but by mine own word or writing, which cannot be
produced against me. Yet I cannot deny that I have

(26:55):
commended myself and my cause to foreign princes. She also
argues that the power of a monarch came directly from God,
something that she and Elizabeth both believed. If Elizabeth's power
was bestowed by God, then so was Mary's, and that
meant that these proceedings were under God's jurisdiction, not the
jurisdiction of a bunch of men, who, while prominent and powerful,

(27:17):
were mere mortals. Although by all accounts, Mary bore herself
well and argued her own case impeccably, even though she
was denied her papers and any advisers or representation, and
then she was found guilty. She was convicted on October
twenty fifth, fifteen eighty six, without being present, without having
any further chance to be heard, and without even being

(27:39):
told that these proceedings were concluding that day after the conviction,
though it took Elizabeth months to sign Mary's death warrant.
In spite of the law that England had passed, it
would set a dangerous precedent for one monarch to execute another,
especially a relative in this way, but elizabeth' knew Secretary
of State William Davis did finally get her to sign

(28:01):
the warrant on February first, fifteen eighty seven, although she
told her counselors not to carry out the order until
she gave the final word. Her Privy Council ignored that instruction, though,
and decided to proceed with the execution without waiting for
her to finally okay it. Mary got word.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
That she was to be executed on February seventh, fifteen
eighty seven. She responded, quote, as for the death of
the Queen, your sovereign, I call to God to witness
that I never imagined it, never sought it, and never
consented to it. She asked for some more time to
put her affairs in order, but that was denied, so
she spent most of her remaining time that night writing

(28:40):
letters to loved ones, arranging gifts for her servants, and praying.
One of her final letters was to Henri, the third
brother of her late first husband, which said, in part quote,
tonight after dinner, I have been advised of my sentence.
I am to be executed like a criminal at eight
in the morning. I have not had time to give
you a full account of everything that has happened. But

(29:03):
if you will listen to my doctor and my other
unfortunate servants, you will learn the truth. And how thanks
be to God. I scorn death and vow that I
meet it innocent of any crime, even if I were
their subject. In this letter, she also described how her
chaplain had been taken away from her and she'd been
refused permission to have him come back and give her

(29:25):
the last sacrament. She also asked Henri to pay all
of her servants for any wages that were still owed
to them, and towards the end of the letter she wrote,
as for my son, I commend him to you in
so far as he deserves, for I cannot answer for him.
She had actually been prevented from keeping in touch with
him in any way during her imprisonment. Mary was beheaded

(29:46):
in the Great Hall of Fatheringay Castle on February eighth,
fifteen eighty seven, in front of an assembly of at
least three hundred people. She was forty four, As was
the case with her trial. In the last days of
her imprisonment, she's consistently described as going to her execution
with a stoic and graceful perseverance in the account of

(30:07):
Pierre de Bordailla quote. After kissing her women once more,
she bade them go with her blessing. As she made
the sign of the Cross over them. One of them
was unable to keep from crying, so that the queen
had to impose silence upon her by saying she had
promised that nothing of the kind would interfere with the
business at hand. They were to stand back quietly, pray

(30:28):
to God for her soul, and bear truthful testimony that
she had died in the bosom of the Holy Catholic religion.
One of the women then tied the handkerchief over her eyes.
The queen quickly and with great courage, knelt down, showing
no signs of faltering. So great was her bravery that
all present removed, and there were few among them that

(30:49):
could refrain from tears and their hearts. They condemned themselves
for the injustice that was being done. Walsingham had Mary's clothing, crucifix,
and prayer book from the execution destroyed so they wouldn't
be made into relics of a religious martyr. Her body
was placed in a lead coffin and buried in Peterborough Cathedral.
After this execution, Elizabeth really started to distance herself from it.

(31:13):
She was outraged that Davison and her counsel had carried
out this execution without waiting for her order, and she
actually had Davison sent to the tower. She also expressed
that the manner of the execution was sacrilegious, and she
knew that Catholic monarchs of other countries were going to
see it as a sacrilege as well.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
For a time, Elizabeth's behavior was interpreted in a pretty
cynical way, as though she were just trying to cover
herself with a show of anger over an execution that
she had actually secretly been eager for. But letters unearthed
in the nineteen sixties suggest that England's nobility was truly
alarmed at her displeasure, which seemed very genuine and not

(31:52):
something that she was just performing for the sake of appearances.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
Almost immediately, this whole affair became part of Little Richer
and art. There are so many paintings of the trial
and the beheading. There were ballads written about the execution
in the weeks immediately after it happened, and from there.
They have been plays and novels and poems and TV
shows and movies, and many of them approached Mary as

(32:16):
a very doomed and romantic heroine. There are certainly accounts
and versions that do not take that perspective, but she's
very frequently depicted with like a stoic grace and a
sense of impending destruction that she couldn't really control. And
of course Mary's son James, became James the sixth of

(32:36):
Scotland and first of England on March twenty fourth, sixteen
oh three. After the death of Queen Elizabeth in sixteen twelve,
he had Mary's body exhumed and placed in Henry the
Seventh's chapel in Westminster Abbey. He also had a white
marble tomb constructed that has an effigy of Mary on
the lid. Her hands are folded in prayer and there
is a crowned Scottish lion at her feet. And then

(32:59):
at the opposite end of that chapel there's the tomb
of her cousin Elizabeth. I thanks so much for joining
us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of
the archive. If you heard an email address or a
Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the
show that could be obsolete now. Our current email address

(33:22):
is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find
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(33:44):
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