Pod Insights Conspiracy Theories The Spymaster and the Exiled Queen: Was Mary Queen of Scots Framed? About this episode By the time she was 25, Mary, Queen of Scots had lost her thrones in two countries, France and Scotland. And officially, she was executed for conspiring to take a third throne: England’s. But was Mary naive enough to get caught committing treason? Or was she a shrewd politician who was framed by her lifelong enemy?
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Transcript 0:06 Speaker 00 Google Mary Queen of Scots. Eh, actually, put your phone down. I'll do it.
0:12 Speaker 00 Mary Queen of Scots.
0:17 Speaker 00 1500s, spent too much time on her hair, bought an absurd amount of shoes, and married the wrong guy. Oh, three times in a row! In her official letters, one historian said Mary's writing sounds like, and I quote, "a moron."
0:38 Speaker 00 But here's the thing. Mary Queen of Scots wrote a lot more than her official letters. In the early 2020s, code breakers searching an Italian archive found 57 lost letters, kept secret for centuries, thanks to the fact that they were written in code. These encrypted letters show a different person than Mary's official communications. Because it turns out, all those shoes she bought had hidden messages in the heels, including plots to escape her captivity as a political prisoner. And she wrote way more than those 57 Italian letters.
1:20 Speaker 00 Hundreds of Mary's secret messages sit in archives in multiple countries. But one stands out. A ciphered message from 1586 called "The Babington Letter." This letter is the central evidence in a conspiracy. Officially, it proved that Mary Queen of Scots plotted to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I of England. Its discovery led to her execution. But when you look at Mary's letters and her whole story, it suggests a different conspiracy.
2:02 Speaker 00 That English spies forged this letter to frame Mary for treason. The scheme was a trap, and their conspiracy killed her. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. New episodes come out every Wednesday. We love to hear from you, so if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts, or check us out on Instagram at the Conspiracy Pod. This episode contains discussions of violence, murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by Petivity.
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4:27 Speaker 00 Allegedly, the 1586 Babington letter is the most important letter Mary, Queen of Scots, ever mailed, and she sent a lot of mail. By the time she sent the Babington letter, Mary had been held captive as a political prisoner for almost 20 years, ever since Scottish lords had staged a coup against her. She narrowly escaped with her life, only to discover that her supposed allies in England would rather keep her locked in a castle on house arrest. Mary longed to regain her freedom and her throne. She was the archetypal princess trapped in a tower, and her letters were the key to her rescue.
5:11 Speaker 00 While Mary knew her captors read her official mail, and so did international spies, she had enemies across Europe, people who didn't want her restored to her birthright as queen. So Mary had to be sneaky, hence, writing in code. On the video, you'll see a key for one of her ciphers. The symbols stand for individual letters, combinations of letters, places, people, and even phrases, like "I pray you" and "my good brother," basically the 1500s versions of LOL and OMG. The code also has symbols to denote that a letter should be doubled or deleted.
5:54 Speaker 00 And, if that wasn't complicated enough, Mary had at least 60 different ciphers. So, even if you had the key to decrypt one letter, you couldn't decrypt them all. Some ciphers were so strong, code breakers in the 2020s needed a computer program to help crack them. And that was almost 500 years later. These are solid codes. Once the letters were written, Mary sealed them using letter locking. Think origami meets espionage, for those who aren't watching. I've got a little sample right here that we've done. Basically, it makes it so you can't open the letter without...
6:40 Speaker 00 Ripping the paper. Now, Mary's favorite spiral lock was so complicated historians weren't able to reverse engineer it until 2021. Pretty impressive. Though, Mary didn't operate alone. Throughout her captivity, she kept her own loyal staff. Even though she wasn't ruling, she was rich and could pay well. Still, Mary was careful, seeking out people loyal to her cause or unable to read her mail. She hired at least one illiterate teen and she wrote her letters in multiple languages. Mary was fluent in at least five. Yeah.
7:25 Speaker 00 Five languages, complex ciphers, elaborate letter folding. I'm starting to question the moron allegations. Most of Mary's ciphered letters began as notes or dictation to her French secretary. He gave the complete letter to her Scottish secretary, who translated it into English, then translated it again into the cipher code before it was sent. So that's three people communicating in three written languages. Think a very high stakes game of telephone. Once the message was written and sealed, Mary's staff snuck it out.
8:05 Speaker 00 Over the years, they hid messages in sword scabbards, dirty laundry, fancy Renaissance sleeves, until her jailers got wise and replaced her washerwoman and started strip searching all visitors. But, Mary, Queen of Scots, didn't give up easily. She had her incoming and outgoing messages hidden in books, in shoes, even in kegs of beer. That's how they allegedly smuggled out the Babington Letter past her enemies in 1568.
8:43 Speaker 00 Why all the secrecy in her messages? Well, Mary's very existence was a threat to the rulers of multiple countries. Their power would only be secure if she was dead, and they sought any excuse to kill her. You see, Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland at the wise and mature age of six days, right after her father died. Mary's mother and cousin ran Scotland while Mary was busy learning how to walk, and when she was five, they sent her to France, where they'd arranged her marriage to the French Dauphin. And this is important.
9:27 Speaker 00 In France, Mary was raised very Catholic, and not modern-day Catholic, Renaissance-era Catholic, where the monarch was anointed by the Church and chosen by God. Mary's faith was a major part of her life. So was being a queen. When she was 16, her husband became King of France, so Mary became Queen again. Imagine being 16 and leading two countries. I couldn't even ask a girl out on a date, I was too nervous. Unfortunately, it didn't last. The King of France died of an ear infection. Remember, 1500s, anything can happen.
10:10 Speaker 00 At 18, Mary returned to Scotland and focused on ruling just one country. Until five years later, when the lords staged that coup. They ousted Mary from her throne in favor of her one-year-old son. The Scottish just loved babies and crowns. Fun fact: For over 200 years, Scotland didn't crown an adult king or queen. Mary's father took the throne at 17 months, and the four kings before him were also crowned as children. This dynasty would just have a baby then die, like salmon.
10:50 Speaker 00 Okay, cute as a baby king is, the real reason Scotland had so many underage monarchs was because the lords always wanted more power and babies were easier to control. After the lords forced Mary to abdicate, they imprisoned her, but before they could kill her, Mary hatched an escape plan. She dressed up as a washerwoman, went on the run, and eventually fled to England. There, she hoped her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, would help her retake her throne. If Elizabeth lent her an army, she could vanquish the rebel lords.
11:31 Speaker 00 But Elizabeth wasn't keen to lend Mary an army because Mary actually had a chance at being queen of a third country: hers. Mary was a direct descendant of England's King Henry VII, and technically, next in line to the English crown. Okay, so, to break it down, Mary, Queen of Scots, had lost two crowns (and two husbands) and was eligible for a third crown, all before she turned 25.
12:08 Speaker 00 In 1567, Elizabeth hadn't formally named Mary as her heir because Mary was not a popular choice. First, she was a foreigner, Scottish-born and raised in France, and worse, like I mentioned earlier, Mary was devoutly Catholic. England was a Protestant nation under Queen Elizabeth I, and the English lords did not want a Catholic monarch, especially William Cecil, the Baron of Burghley and the Queen's spymaster.
12:47 Speaker 00 As a Protestant nobleman, Cecil was terrified of a Catholic queen because last time they'd had one, English Protestants lost their powerful positions, their lands, and their heads.
13:02 Speaker 00 Cecil's right-hand man, Francis Walsingham, held similar fears. Walsingham was serving as the English ambassador to the French when he witnessed the Saint Bartholmieu's Day massacre, where thousands of Protestants were murdered across Catholic France. Both men wanted to avoid that worst-case scenario in England. They'd do anything to keep Catholic Mary off the English throne. So, Mary didn't exactly get a warm reception when she arrived in England. She was kept in various castles, free to move around the grounds, but not allowed
13:42 Speaker 00 to leave until Queen Elizabeth and her spymasters decided what to do. Even though Queen Elizabeth had executed her share of Catholics, she wanted to keep the peace between Catholics and Protestants, and Scotland and England. She also had to be careful with Mary's image as a fellow queen. If Mary wasn't treated well, English subjects might get ideas about mistreating their own queen. So to get rid of Mary, Cecil and Walsingham needed an ironclad reason. Mary quickly learned to fear the queen's master spies.
14:25 Speaker 00 In her decoded letters, Mary warned people Walsingham was up to no good, and she needed to outmaneuver him to win Elizabeth's favor and reclaim her throne. So she used the ciphers, which were nearly impossible to crack without the key. She knew any message written in cipher was from her or for her. She didn't know that in the early 1580s Cecil and Walsingham snuck a mole into London's French embassy and acquired a key to her ciphers. This gave them the ability to read Mary's messages and write in her code without anyone realizing. The
15:11 Speaker 00 They spent the next few years planting double agents, intercepting letters, acquiring more cipher keys, and cracking codes. Decoding each letter, the spies had one mission: Find dirt on Mary, Queen of Scots. Anything that could permanently disqualify her from being named as Queen Elizabeth's heir. This mission only grew more dire over the years, because Queen Elizabeth never married or had any children who could bump Mary down the line of succession. Every day, it looked more likely that England would have a Catholic queen.
15:55 Speaker 00 And here's where the stories diverge, between the official tale and the conspiracy theory, when Cecil's spy network got their hands on the Babington letter. It was a reply from Mary to a French Catholic in England named Anthony Babington. Officially, a double agent intercepted the letter, another agent decoded it, and the decrypted message was passed up to Cecil. It didn't say much, just that Mary, Queen of Scots, was plotting to assassinate Queen Elizabeth first. Uh, so yeah, I'd call that dirt. Cecil brought the message to Queen Elizabeth, who reluctantly agreed to launch an inquiry
16:40 Speaker 00 into the correspondence between Mary and Babington. The Queen and Cecil appointed roughly two dozen nobles to essentially put Mary on trial. In the meantime, Cecil's men wrangled a confession out of Anthony Babington and a few co-conspirators. They admitted to their conspiracy, now called "The Babington Plot." The Babington Plot wasn't strong. Basically, six men would raise an army and storm Queen Elizabeth's castle.
17:17 Speaker 00 It probably wouldn't have worked. But officially, at this point, Mary was desperate, exhausted, and lonely. She'd join any plot, no matter how feasible, because it gave her hope after almost two decades of house arrest. Between the confessions, the letters, and the circumstances, the nobles found Mary, Queen of Scots, guilty of treason. They had her beheaded on February 8, 1587, at Fathering Hay Castle in England. With her died the threat of a Catholic taking the English throne.
17:57 Speaker 00 Even though Queen Elizabeth still didn't have any children, Mary's son, James, had been raised Protestant by the Scottish Lords. When James inherited the English crown, England stayed Protestant. It's still the monarch's religion today. Cecil and Walsingham won. But did they win fairly? Or did they win by conspiracy? Did the spies convince everyone to behead an innocent woman? Some people suggest the Babington Letter was doctored or forged.
18:40 Speaker 00 Remember, Cecil's spies had the ability to write messages in Mary's cipher. And it wasn't the first time Mary was brought to trial based on a letter she probably didn't write and accused of a murder plot.
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20:00 Speaker 00 Remember when I said Mary, Queen of Scots, didn't get a warm reception when she fled to England? Well, I downplayed it. Right after she arrived, after she'd been ousted from her throne in Scotland, she was essentially put on a murder trial by William Cecil because of some other letters. This time, Mary was accused of plotting a murder that did happen: her husband's. Here's what her accuser said happened in a story that became the accepted truth. In this version, Mary conspired to assassinate multiple people in her lifetime, but was
20:45 Speaker 00 bad at it. For the record, this is a heavily condensed story. Scottish history is so wild, there are so many twists and turns, so we're staying focused on what you need to know for the conspiracy theory, the one where Mary, Queen of Scots, plotted to kill her husband. It starts in 1567. Mary was still ruling Scotland, just 22 years old. She ruled alongside her second husband, 20-year-old Henry Stuart Lord Darnley. Here are some of the adjectives historians use to describe him.
21:23 Speaker 00 Overconfident, arrogant and willful, proud, disdainful and suspicious, narcissist, drunk, shallow, vain, weak, indolent, selfish, vindictive and irredeemably spoiled. Not one positive word. Darnley was known to pull knives on people who disagreed with him, sleep with sex workers and get syphilis, and sleep with courtiers and impregnate them. He embarrassed Mary. But there's one more adjective historians use for Lord Darnley.
21:59 Speaker 00 Hot. Seriously. He was over six feet, which was a big deal in the 1500s, especially because Mary herself was almost six feet tall. Within their first year of marriage, Mary got pregnant. But if you thought impending fatherhood would improve Darnley's behavior, well, nope, he got worse. One day, Mary was in her chambers with her secretary, David Ritio, one of her best friends. A group of noblemen stormed into the room, held Mary at gunpoint, and stabbed Ritio to death in front of her. Poor Ritio was stabbed at least 50 times. They went full Julius Caesar.
22:44 Speaker 00 And when the nobleman finished, they left one knife in Ritio's back. Darnley's. See, Darnley was convinced Mary was having an affair with Ritio and decided to end it himself.
23:02 Speaker 00 Mary was devastated. She discussed annuling her marriage with her advisors, but decided against it for the sake of her unborn baby. Remember, Mary was Catholic, and an annulment would make her child illegitimate and unable to inherit the crown. So, Mary punished everyone else involved in Ritio's murder, several Scottish lords. Mary exiled them all, but publicly forgave Darnley, which naturally upset the lords. But even this didn't inspire Darnley to clean up his act. After Mary gave birth to their son, Prince James,
23:46 Speaker 00 Darnley didn't even show up to the baptism. Apparently, he was in hiding, getting his syphilis treated. With Darnley out of town and on her last nerve, Mary grew closer to another advisor, James Hepburn Earl of Bothwell. He stepped in to fill Ritio's shoes. But he wanted to step in to fill Darnley's.
24:14 Speaker 00 Bothwell and Mary began an affair. Bothwell was older, in his early 30s. Mary needed a friend and a protector after Rizzio's murder, and Bothwell had a powerful presence. He was very "fight first, ask questions later." He was once kicked out of town for starting too many duels, but now, he was sheriff of Edinburgh. Allegedly, Mary wanted to marry Bothwell, so they sat down and plotted to murder Darnley. First, she lured him back into town. She made a big deal of forgiving everyone involved in Rizzio's murder,
24:59 Speaker 00 and reinstated all of the lords she'd exiled. Most of them returned to Edinburgh. On a more personal note, Mary promised Darnley that once his pus-filled syphilis boils cleared up, she'd start sleeping with him again. Darnley very quickly returned to a royal residence just outside Edinburgh, Kirk O'Field House. Mary spent a few nights there, in a separate room, because Darnley's boils were still active. Apologies for the mental image. A few nights later, on February 9th, 1567, Mary attended a wedding at Holyrood Palace across the city, so spent the night there for convenience, or an alibi.
25:44 Speaker 00 At 2:00 a.m., a boom woke the entire city of Edinburgh. A huge explosion. Everyone freaked out. Gunpowder stored in the basement had caught fire at Kirk O'Field House, where Darnley was staying. It was as if a bomb detonated under his bed. It would have looked like a terrible accident.
26:12 Speaker 00 If Darnley had been in his bed. So, okay, here's where things get weird. Darnley didn't die in the explosion, but he did die. He was found in a nearby field, far from the rubble, without a smudge of gunpowder on him. His body was laid out on the ground, next to his servant, as if they'd been posed. Both men wore nightshirts pulled up around their stomachs, with Darnley's hand conveniently placed for his modesty. Nearby, in the field, there was a chair, a rope, a fur cloak, and a little further away, a clean dagger.
26:56 Speaker 00 There were no marks of violence on either man's body. The marks on Darnley's legs were presumably from syphilis. It's like a game of Clue. Well, the syphilis victim was killed by poison in the field outside of the bomb. The murder investigation went to the Edinburgh Sheriff.
27:17 Speaker 00 Bothwell. He concluded Darnley was killed in the explosion. Even though the evidence didn't line up. He looked suspicious, and so did Mary. Especially when she gave Bothwell Darnley's horses, his clothes, and his job. Yeah, barely three months after her last husband's murder, Mary was already remarried. Shady. So, when Mary was honeymooning with Bothwell in Dunbar, the Scottish lords raided her castle in Edinburgh, seeking proof. These were the same Scottish lords who'd just come out of exile for killing Ritzio. They were constant thorns in Mary's side.
28:04 Speaker 00 And they found the proof they were looking for. The Lords allegedly discovered 12 poems, eight love letters, and two marriage contracts, with one marriage contract dated before Darnley's death, all kept in a beautiful silver filigree box from the French court. Well, that kind of fancy box was also called a casket. And that's how the documents got their nickname, the Casket Letters. Altogether, they explained how Mary and Bothwell conspired to murder Darnley. The story we just told. With the letters in hand,
28:47 Speaker 00 the Lords had no choice but to force Mary to abdicate. That's the version of events people believed in Mary's time. That she schemed with her lover to murder her husband, and the Casket Letters proved it. But here's where the forgery allegations come in. Mary insisted she didn't write any of the Casket Letters. They were fake, created by the Scottish Lords to justify seizing power for themselves through her child. Looking at the Casket Letters, they're anything but airtight. None of them are signed, and only one is dated,
29:30 Speaker 00 so we can't actually confirm who wrote them or when. They have odd spacing errors, as if new pages were inserted. They're in French, Mary's first language, but this writer's French is, uh, not great. And the poems? Well, I'm no expert, but every history book we checked agrees. They're bad. Odd. Because Mary learned poetry from a renowned expert.
29:59 Speaker 00 I have a lot of questions. You know who else had questions? William Cecil, the spymaster. When Mary and the casket letters arrived in England, Cecil was charged with helping Queen Elizabeth determine if she needed to intervene to save the Scottish monarchy, or if she was harboring a fugitive. Did Mary kill her husband? Or was she being framed? Cecil analyzed the casket letters. Based on his notes, he concluded that Darnley's murder was a multi-person conspiracy. But the main culprits were none other than...
30:42 Speaker 00 Drumroll, please. The Scottish rebel lords. The very men accusing Mary of Darnley's murder were probably the ones who arranged it. Remember, they didn't like that Darnley wasn't punished for David Rizzio's murder when they were. But instead of telling Queen Elizabeth, or letting the 1500s justice system bring this to light, Cecil buried it. Yes, Queen Elizabeth's spymaster buried the evidence suggesting that Scottish lords conspired to kill Lord Darnley and framed Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Earl of Bothwell
31:26 Speaker 00 for the murder. An inquiry into the letters and Mary's guilt had already been scheduled. But Cecil had the location moved and the judging panel changed. He packed the court with noblemen who'd be less favorable to Mary, or at the very least, unfamiliar with her handwriting. Mary had exchanged letters with the English court for years in standard diplomatic relations. She'd even exchanged sonnets with Queen Elizabeth I. So Elizabeth and her court had the ability to do side-by-side comparisons with the casket letters. But Cecil blocked that.
32:10 Speaker 00 He ensured the panel never saw the complete casket letter documents, only segments. Uh, yeah, well, I have the evidence. Well, no one can see all of it, but I swear it's there. It's over there, not here. You can't see it, but it's there. Mary was never allowed to see the casket letters either. Okay, you might be thinking, okay, surely a modern handwriting expert can tell if they're forged? Well, the originals went missing. All we have left today are the copies from the inquiry, including Cecil's notes. Which brings us to the biggest evidence they might be
32:53 Speaker 00 complete forgeries. William Cecil's notes reveal that he doctored one of the letters. He changed "after" to "afore", altering the timeline of an undated letter to place it before Darnley's murder. Well, did he change more than one word? He didn't keep records of it. But spymaster William Cecil most certainly took steps to make the English nobility think Mary, Queen of Scots, killed her husband. And by another theory, he went a step further.
33:36 Speaker 00 He engineered the entire coup.
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34:45 Speaker 00 Spymaster William Cecil had it out for Mary, Queen of Scots, long before she arrived in England. We know he spied on her and buried evidence that might have convinced Queen Elizabeth I to help Mary retake the Scottish throne. But it's possible he was the true architect of the plan to dethrone Mary in the first place. Yeah, Cecil may have been pulling the strings this entire time, all in the name of keeping a Catholic off the English throne. This guy's like Littlefinger from Game of Thrones on steroids. Alright, let's flashback to the 1550s and go through the evidence.
35:26 Speaker 00 Once again, Scottish history is intense, so we'll skip some details to stay focused on the conspiracy theory. Okay, so, Mary was living in France before that ear infection took out her first husband. While she was there, the English snuck spies into Scotland to help the Protestant lords gain more power. They hoped to create a rift between Scotland and their Catholic allies, namely France and Spain. The English slowly grew their influence to the point where William Cecil actually turned one of the more powerful Scottish lords into a double agent!
36:07 Speaker 00 That lord was part of the same group who conveniently discovered the casket letters and forced Mary to abdicate. Yeah, it wasn't random that they sent the letters to England. Turns out Cecil was colluding with the Scottish lords this entire time! But Cecil didn't only operate in the shadows. He also tried to weaken Scotland through official channels. You see, when Mary was sent to France for the marriage alliance, France sent back an army. If you know anything about European history, you know England and France were big time rivals.
36:48 Speaker 00 The last thing England wanted was French troops at their northern border. So after Elizabeth became queen in 1558, she tried to work out a peace treaty, the Treaty of Edinburgh. For our story, the most important points were that France and England would pull their troops out of Scotland. England and Scotland would promise to leave each other alone, and Mary would give up her claim to the English crown. Mary refused, so negotiations went back and forth for years, making Cecil nervous. At any time, Elizabeth could die, and then Mary would claim her crown.
37:32 Speaker 00 She'd turn England Catholic, and Cecil would lose everything. It didn't help when he learned how close Mary was growing to David Rizzio, her Italian Catholic secretary. Cecil suspected that Rizzio was working for the Pope as a spy. Well, speaking of, remember how Darnley killed Rizzio because he suspected Mary was having an affair with him? It turns out, that was just a cover story. This next part is confirmed fact. The plot was actually engineered by the Protestant lords.
38:16 Speaker 00 And their true motivation was to take out Rizzio, the alleged papal spy. The lords' plan was to convince Darnley Mary was having an affair, so he'd kill Rizzio. With Rizzio's blood on his hands, Darnley would threaten to do worse, unless Mary granted him the Crown matrimonial, basically full royal authority as king of Scotland, and not just her consort. According to the plan, Mary would bend to Darnley's demands. With the Crown matrimonial, Darnley would have the power to pardon the other lords for their part in Rizzio's murder. So the Pope's spy would be gone,
38:59 Speaker 00 the king would be in the lords' pockets, and the Catholic queen would be watching her back. It's not clear how much of a hand Cecil had in the Rizzio murder plot, but his double agent did clue him in beforehand. And Cecil didn't say no. He probably welcomed the chaos, since it could make Elizabeth reconsider the treaty negotiations. Of course, the plot didn't go as the lords planned. Darnley was out, running away with Mary after the murder, and the other conspirators all got exiled. After Cecil received a report of events, he sent new spies into Mary's court
39:43 Speaker 00 to influence her to reinstate the exiled Protestant lords, which she eventually did. Meanwhile, Mary and Elizabeth continued negotiating, this time discussing a new peace treaty. In this agreement, each queen would acknowledge the other's right to reign and promise not to invade. However, it had a new provision: naming Mary, Queen of Scots, as Elizabeth I's heir. William Cecil's worst fear. He could not allow this treaty to be ratified. In early 1567, Mary sent an envoy to London to formally accept the treaty.
40:28 Speaker 00 She must have been thrilled. Queen Elizabeth was finally acknowledging Mary's status as a princess of England and possibly its future queen. She'd have peace at her borders and a guarantee that her homeland remained self-governing. It was a dream come true. Maybe if Elizabeth died before her, Mary would even be able to make England Catholic again. This was a huge deal for her. But before the envoy arrived in London, Darnley's bedroom blew up. And with it, Mary's dream went up in flames.
41:10 Speaker 00 The rumored murder conspiracy destroyed the peace deal. Elizabeth couldn't trust a woman who killed her own husband. It's pretty convenient that Darnley's murder happened right as Mary, Queen of Scots, was finally about to be named as Queen Elizabeth I's heir. Could Cecil have arranged Darnley's death to derail the treaty? Was he so hell-bent on keeping Catholicism out of England that he'd collude in a murder plot? If he did, it was a major political move that changed the course of two countries and sent Scotland into chaos for a year.
41:54 Speaker 00 Here's what we can confirm. Cecil had eyes on the ground at Darnley's murder. His spy sent him a full account of the explosion, the weird crime scene and everything we covered earlier, including the most famous image of this event. Yeah, this picture was created for Cecil by his spy. Seems very specific. And just a few months later, that same image became part of the Scottish Lords' rebellion. They flew a flag with the picture of Darnley's corpse and baby James screaming for vengeance. Propaganda.
42:40 Speaker 00 As we mentioned earlier, one of those Protestant lords was Cecil's double agent. And according to Cecil's private notes, that same lord was part of the Darnley murder plot. But Cecil chose to turn a blind eye to that fact, perhaps because he and the lords colluded. And if Cecil secretly arranged Darnley's murder to sabotage the treaty, that means Mary didn't conspire to kill her husband. But if she didn't kill her husband, why did she marry Bothwell, the sheriff who obviously covered up the murder? Remember the guy Mary was so in love with she gave him Darnley's clothes?
43:27 Speaker 00 According to analysis by historian John Guy, contemporary documents suggest that Mary didn't actually choose to marry Bothwell, the sheriff of Edinburgh. She was coerced into marrying him. She didn't love him, and he stole the clothes. Well, based on documents that weren't analyzed until centuries after Mary's death, Bothwell wasn't her lover, but her abuser. In April 1567, he kidnapped her, assaulted her, got her pregnant, and basically blackmailed her into marrying him. Pretty awful for Mary.
44:10 Speaker 00 If everyone was saying she killed for love when in reality she was forced to marry her rapist? Well, here's the biggest evidence in my book. Mary and Bothwell's wedding was a Protestant ceremony. Mary was devoutly Catholic. Her first two weddings were Catholic. Then, after marrying Bothwell, Mary stopped attending Mass. This news reduced Mary's support in neighboring Catholic countries like France and Spain. Exactly what Cecil and the Protestant lords wanted. When you take all of that, you add it to the discrepancies in the casket letters, which
44:53 Speaker 00 are the only evidence that Mary and Bothwell conspired to kill Darnley, and it feels... very fishy. But, back in 1568, during the inquiry, the English nobleman had a decision to make. Did Mary write the casket letters? Or were the casket letters forged to frame Mary for Darnley's murder as part of the coup? When it came down to it, the English nobleman judging the case decided.
45:25 Speaker 00 No verdict.
45:28 Speaker 00 It feels like a choice to not clear Mary's name. And with the first story widely publicized and the second story covered up in the court of public opinion, Mary killed her husband to marry her lover. Today, most historians agree the casket letters were doctored to some degree. Some propose they were a combination of Mary's letters taken out of context and love letters and poems sent to Bothwell by, get this, his other wife, who he'd abandoned in Norway. What? Okay, that sentence took a turn. Yeah. While chasing the Scottish crown,
46:11 Speaker 00 Bothwell had a whole secret family in another country. The conspirators spliced together the letters, which accounts for the weird spacing and tense issues. And those conspirators were the Scottish Protestant lords who wanted to seize power in Scotland, aided by Cecil and his spies. Remember, Cecil had the letters in hand before the trial. He had the opportunity to edit them, and he did. He wanted Scotland in Protestant hands, and he even knew what Mary's handwriting looked like from her official letters.
46:54 Speaker 00 The forgery was a conspiracy to destroy Mary, Queen of Scots. A conspiracy that only partly succeeded. With no verdict, Queen Elizabeth I determined that Mary should stay in England under house arrest. Naming Mary as her heir remained on the table. Mary desperately hoped to regain her power and freedom, and Cecil desperately hoped she didn't. And that was the status quo for the next 17 years.
47:31 Speaker 00 And that brings us back to where we started, to the Babington Letter, the letter that sent Mary, Queen of Scots, to her execution. Remember, the official story is that Mary was caught scheming to assassinate Queen Elizabeth when Cecil's spies intercepted the secret messages she was smuggling in beer kegs. But the conspiracy theory is that the spies did more than just intercept the letter. Both the man who suggested the beer keg method and the beer cellar were double agents planted by Cecil.
48:12 Speaker 00 When Mary hid her message for Anthony Babington in the beer keg stopper, it went straight to one of Cecil's spies, Thomas Phillips. After Phillips read the encrypted Babington letter, he picked up his pen and added more lines of code. Yes, Cecil's spy changed at least one part of the incriminating letter. It's a confirmed fact that he added a postscript before sending it along to Anthony Babington. Phillips' addition asked Babington to name all the conspirators. But how do we know Phillips stopped at the postscript? Could the whole letter be faked?
48:57 Speaker 00 Well, we can't be sure either way, because Phillips destroyed all the evidence of the original letter and his edits. And when Walsingham searched the castle after Mary's arrest, he couldn't find a single draft of the damning letter. We only have the edited copy. But it's more likely Phillips took an existing letter and altered it to make Mary look guilty, similar to how the casket letters were probably a combination of Mary's letters and Bothwell's secret wives. Historian John Hungerford Pollan did a deep analysis of the letter back in the 1920s,
49:37 Speaker 00 and he realized that some lines read more naturally if you remove certain clauses. He specifically noted references to the British Royal Court and the number 6 before the word "gentleman." Without these alleged additions...
49:57 Speaker 00 The letter could be read as a plot for escaping England, not as an assassination. Under interrogation, Mary said her letters must have been altered. She maintained that she should only be found guilty through a message written in her own hand. The Babington letter was signed with Mary's cipher symbol, but when you look at it, it's easy to forge that symbol. Three lines? Well, despite the questions, this time, Mary was convicted of treason. Still, when it came to Mary's execution, Queen Elizabeth stalled.
50:42 Speaker 00 She joked that when Mary died, Walsingham would also die of grief. Without her to spy on, he'd have nothing left to live for. And Elizabeth herself didn't want to execute another queen, so she waited, hoping someone might take justice into their own hands. Walsingham and Cecil did. In a stunning power grab, the pair authorized and planned Mary's execution without the queen's full written assent. In the 1500s, that was not normal. But Walsingham wasn't afraid to go against his queen.
51:25 Speaker 00 He personally hired Mary's executioner. Mary, Queen of Scots, may not have lost her life because of her treason, but because of her position. Her beheading wasn't just a blow to her supporters, it was a blow to the idea of the divine right to rule. The spy master's victory gave them unprecedented power. How far did they go to seize that power? How far did they go to protect their religion and their way of life? That's where the conspiracy theories lie. Mary was probably framed for her husband, Lord Darnley's murder, in a move that granted
52:08 Speaker 00 more power to the Scottish lords. And she may have been framed for the plot that led to her death. But the only way we'll know for sure is if more hidden letters appear, like those 57 they found in Italy. Maybe somewhere in an archive, there's a coded message that holds the truth that would reveal, once and for all, what Mary, Queen of Scots, plotted and what was plotted against her. It could prove her innocence or her guilt, but only if we can decode it.
52:57 Speaker 00 Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. If you're watching on Spotify, swipe up and give us your thoughts. And thank you to the fans who suggested today's topic. We dove down this rabbit hole, thanks to you. For more information on Mary, Queen of Scots, amongst the many sources we used, we found Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart by John Guy, The Queen's Agent: Francis Walsingham at the Court of Elizabeth I by John Cooper, and Codebreaker: George Lazarus' Talk: Deciphering Mary Stuart's Lost Letters.
53:40 Speaker 00 Extremely helpful to our research. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story. And the official story isn't always the truth.
53:54 Speaker 00 This episode was written and researched by Maggie Admire, edited by Pete Ritchie, fact-checked by Sophie Kemp, and engineered, video-edited, and sound-designed by Alex Button. I'm your host, Carter Roy.
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