696. Elizabeth I vs The Catholics: Killing the Queen of Scots (Part 6)

How did the Babington Plot, another Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth I and replace her with the imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots, unfold? Did the Spanish help her? How did Sir Francis Walsingham and his web of spies foil the plot? And, what would become of Mary once put on trial? Join Tom and Dominic for the dramatic conclusion to their mighty series on the most climatic period of the reign of Elizabeth I, as she faces another assassination attempt, and decides whether to execute her cousin, and a fellow queen… *The Rest Is History LIVE: The Ultimate Victorian Adventure* The maddest expedition in history and it’s NEVER been heard before on the show: join Tom Holland & Dominic Sandbrook LIVE at the Southbank as they tell the bonkers story of Queen Victoria ordering one of history’s most daring assignments ever. ⁠⁠⁠⁠Tickets available for Friday 4th September⁠⁠⁠⁠, the Saturday show is SOLD OUT. Summer sale is here: get an annual membership for an extra 20% off with code SUMMER26. That's ad-free listening, every bonus episode, and full access to our exclusive members' series. Sale ends August 31st, so grab it before summer's over. https://therestishistory.com/club?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=summersale26&utm_term=listeners&utm_content=epdescriptionsummer To read our new newsletter, sign up at: ⁠therestishistory.com/newsletters⁠ Advertise with us: ⁠[email protected] _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude Senior Producer: Callum Hill Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Hello everyone. And before today's show, I have incredibly exciting news for you about a live show. On Friday, the 4th of September, Dominic and I will be at the South Bank to do something that we have not done before. So you will be the first people to hear it. We are telling the story of what is the ultimate Victorian adventure. The date is 1868, the location is Abyssinia, and the Emperor of Abyssinia has been writing letters to Queen Victoria, who rather rudely has not replied to them. So the Emperor of Abyssinia, annoyed

• 0:46Speaker 00

  about this, has kidnapped a number of British subjects. In response, Britain sends an expedition to rescue the captives. And it is no exaggeration to say, it is massive. On this expedition, 13,000 soldiers, 40,000 animals, including 44 elephants, and the British even put down a railway line to transport everything. It's an incredible story, full of jaw-dropping events, ludicrous characters, lots of moustaches, lots of general Victorian shenanigans. And, as I say, it is the first time that we have ever done it on The Rest Is History. I don't

• 1:30Speaker 00

  want to blow our trumpet, but I think it's going to be an absolute Rest Is History classic. So if you want to get a ticket for the ultimate Victorian adventure at the South Bank in London on Friday, the 4th of September, you know where to go. TheRestIsHistory.com.

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• 2:38Speaker 00

  This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Now, history's biggest leaps started as hard questions that people didn't want asked.

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  Yeah, there's a classic example of that at the end of the 15th century. And the hard question in particular was, what is out there beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the West? And as you will know, the man who found the answer to that question was the explorer Christopher Columbus. And he realizes, or rather, everybody else realizes, that there is a vast continent out there, and it is, of course, the Americas. So Anthropic knows the importance of questions, and it's why Anthropic is founded on one hard question above all. How can we ensure that the AI revolution really goes well for ordinary people?

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• 3:51Speaker 01

  The affairs being thus prepared, and forces in readiness both without and within the realm, then shall it be time to set the six gentlemen to work, taking order that on the accomplishing of their design, I may be suddenly transported out of this place, and that all your forces in the same time beyond the field to meet me, as we await the arrival of the foreign aid, which then must be hastened with all diligence. So that is an extract from one of the most consequential letters in all British history. It was written on behalf of Mary, Queen of Scots, brought up, educated in France, hence the accent. And it was written, actually, by one of her secretaries. And it was written

• 4:36Speaker 01

  on the evening of the 17th of July, 1586. It was then transcribed into a secret code, and then early the following morning, it was sent to a young Catholic gentleman, whose name was Anthony Babington. And at the end of the letter, there was a PS which read as follows, fail not to burn this present quickly. And you can understand why somebody put that PS in there, because what is in this letter could not be more sensitive, more incendiary. Because what Mary is doing there, Tom, she's giving the green light, isn't

• 5:17Speaker 01

  she, to something that has been mooted for so many years, the operation to overthrow her cousin, Queen Elizabeth of England, and take the throne herself.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  Yes, and it is projected that this will be combined with an armed uprising in England itself, and that this uprising will release Mary from her captivity. It will be coordinated with an invasion from France. And Elizabeth's fate, Mary does not explicitly say what this is to be, but her meaning is clear. Because 17 days earlier, this young Catholic gentleman, Anthony Babington, had written a letter to Mary, and had proposed in this letter, the assassination of the woman he described as the usurper, in other words, Elizabeth.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  So he'd written, 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. In other words, the assassination. So Mary, you know, 17 days to write her reply, she has been mulling over what she should say, mulling it over and over in her mind. But now at last, she has made up her mind. And that's the significance of that otherwise kind of enigmatic phrase, then shall it be time to set the six gentlemen to work. In other words, get the assassination squad out there. Let them kill Elizabeth.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  So this is the sixth episode that we've done in this series on the sort of the Golden Age of Elizabeth I, the rival with Spain, the kind of the war in the shadows, but also the war at sea with Sir Francis Drake and all of this. A Mary Queen of Scots has been this presence throughout the whole series. She's been in captivity, but she hasn't really been centre stage. Now, we did a previous series about Mary Queen of Scots, which listeners can look up. We did that in 2025 if they're interested. Let's pull back the camera and talk about exactly who she is. She is Elizabeth's cousin. She is her obvious heir, if anything

• 7:34Speaker 01

  happens to Elizabeth. But the issue is that she's not merely French and Scottish, but she's a Catholic, and that is the main problem as far as Elizabeth sees it.

• 7:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, and this has obvious consequences for the kind of the general climate of suspicion and paranoia that has prevailed throughout this series. Because Catholics in England, in Scotland, and on the continent, all dream of seeing Mary on the throne of England. And Protestants, by contrast, see Mary as the great enemy of everything that they hold dear. So if you're an English Protestant, the enemy of Queen Elizabeth, of England, and of the Protestant religion. And two of Elizabeth's councillors, in particular, who have featured

• 8:26Speaker 00

  throughout this series, are absolutely set on bringing her to execution, to seeing Mary Queen of Scots' head chopped off as a traitor to Elizabeth. And these two councillors are William Cecil Lord Burghley, who is Elizabeth's chief minister, and Sir Francis Walsingham, who is her head of intelligence, her spy chief. And for two decades, effectively, they have seen Mary as this kind of malignant spider, sat at the heart of a great web of international conspiracy, and by 1586, as the storm clouds of war gather over the Channel.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  Mary is coming to see more of a menace even than she had done before. And we've been tracing the reasons for this in our previous episodes. Though, three years earlier, listeners may remember, in 1583, there had been another plot to overthrow Elizabeth, to place Elizabeth on the throne, to launch a foreign invasion. And this was the Throckmorton plot, named after the guy who gets captured and is the fall guy for it. And that had been exposed and foiled by Walsingham's counter espionage service. And it's this sense of a domestic conspiracy combining with foreign backing that gives Walsingham and everyone on Elizabeth's Privy Council the kind of the heebie jeebies.

• 9:48Speaker 00

  And now in 1586, that threat of foreign intervention seems to them even greater than ever. Because England by now is at war with Spain in all but name. So, English and Spanish forces are openly fighting in the Low Countries. In our previous episode, we described how Sir Philip Sidney went to war with the Spanish forces in the northern Low Countries. Privateers are raiding Spain's holdings in the New World, led by the greatest privateer of them all, Sir Francis Drake. And there are reports that in Spain, as a response to these insults, Drake's raids and the English intervention in the Low Countries,

• 10:30Speaker 00

  the King of Spain, Philip II, is mustering a great fleet to attack England in Spanish an armada.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  So it's no surprise that Lord Burghley, or Cecil as he used to be, and Sir Francis Walsingham are very keen to basically get Mary out of the picture, to eliminate her from this story. They've been wrestling with this issue for a long time, haven't they? Since 1572, which was the first time that Mary was pretty clearly implicated in a plot against her cousin Elizabeth. But the big problem is that Elizabeth does not want to put Mary to death. I mean, partly because she knows it would inflame opinion across Europe, but also there is a sort of personal issue, isn't there? That Elizabeth doesn't want to set a precedent of killing a queen.

• 11:18Speaker 00

  Yes, so there are all kinds of reasons why she doesn't want Mary publicly put to death. Because she knows that it will cause outrage across Europe and it will provide Philip with a kind of clinching justification for sending that armada against England. And as we've been saying throughout this series, Elizabeth hates war and she hates kind of any sense that she's locked into foreign policy courses. So to quote Garrett Mattingly, this wonderful book on the Spanish Armada that he wrote back in the 1940s, but it's still great. He said of Elizabeth, "Her foreign policy was to have no foreign policy not alterable by the lightest touch on the helm." And obviously, if Elizabeth is locked into war with Spain,

• 12:00Speaker 00

  then that's no longer a course that she can follow. But as you implied, Elizabeth's opposition to having Mary executed goes beyond mere foreign policy concerns. She sees it as a threat to her own authority because Mary, like Elizabeth, is an anointed queen. And Elizabeth doesn't want to licence anything that might impair the sense her subjects have of the divinity that hedges a king, as Shakespeare will put it. And obviously, if you're anxious to maintain the sense of dignity that surrounds an anointed monarch, then chopping off her head is not the way to maintain it. And for Burghley and Walsingham, as you said, this is a complete nightmare.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Can I just ask a quick question? You've said a couple of times, she doesn't want to have her publicly executed. Is this not a flaw in Elizabeth I's armoury? Why does she not consider killing her privately? I mean, why not, you know, have poisoned her?

• 12:57Speaker 00

  She does consider it, and we will be coming to that later in this episode.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I'd have killed her already, frankly. I don't understand why she's been dithering.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  I absolutely know that you would. And it's just a shame that you weren't at the beck and call of the Virgin Queen, as we will see in due course. But for now, I mean, conversely, for Burghley and Walsingham, having her publicly executed ticks all kinds of boxes. You know, it very publicly removes her, it brands her as a traitor. It locks them into the war with Spain that they probably feel is coming. And it serves to establish a kind of solidarity among the Protestants of England and beyond. So they want that. They also want Mary gone because throughout this period, Elizabeth has no children, she has no husband, she's going to die a virgin. And so if she dies now, then civil war will be the best that they can hope for.

• 13:49Speaker 00

  The worst is the complete triumph of popery over everything that they have lived for throughout their careers. And of course, it will also result in their own personal ruin. So Burghley, who is a very consummate political operator, understands the functioning of the state, understands how Parliament perhaps can interact with Elizabeth's royal power. He's been trying to box Elizabeth in by getting Parliament to pass a very momentous piece of legislation. So this had gone through Parliament in March 1585, and it was called an Act for the Queen's Safety. And by its terms, any claimant to the throne of England who is implicated in a rebellion or an invasion

• 14:29Speaker 00

  or an assassination plot against Elizabeth is to be put on trial for treason and if convicted of treason, to be killed. No one is named in the Act, but Mary doesn't need to be named. It's obvious that she is the target. And with this piece of legislation on the statute book, the pressure now is on Walsingham as the head of intelligence to find sufficient evidence against Mary, evidence that is watertight enough to satisfy a court of law that she is indeed guilty of treason. Because if he can do that, the legislation is now at last in place to have her tried and then executed.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Okay, so let's turn now to, away from Walsingham and Burghley, to Mary herself. So, you know, when people think about Mary, Queen of Scots, they think about Saoirse Ronan playing her in the film, right? They think about this elfin, helpless victim, very beautiful, pale, all of this. In reality, her vibe is very different now. I mean, it's very ungovernable for us to say so, Tom. And maybe some listeners may say we're not in a position to say this, but we'll say it anyway because that's the kind of people we are, certainly I am. She slightly lets herself go, is that fair?

• 15:50Speaker 00

  Well, yes, so she is 43 in July 1586, when she's writing that letter, or at least getting her secretary to write that letter. But she looks a lot older. So as you said, she's very beautiful as a young woman, famously so. But by now, she is overweight and she's very stoop-shouldered. And she also has very serious health issues. So Burghley is receiving updates on the state of her health. And he's being told that Mary's legs are swollen and indeed, to quote, "are wrapped in gross matter", which is not very nice.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't want to, you know, give myself away, but I don't think anyone likes gross matter wrapped around a woman's legs, do they?

• 16:28Speaker 00

  No, and also people don't like constipation, which Mary is also suffering from. So here's another report. "Oftentimes, by reason of great pains through windy matter ascending unto her head and other parts, she is ready to swoon."

• 16:40Speaker 01

  I'm going to cancel that date with Mary, Queen of Scots.

• 16:42Speaker 00

  But you know, it's not, these ailments, the weight gain, the stoop shoulders, they're not her fault. And she has them for kind of two apparently contradictory reasons, both which relate to the ambivalences of her situation in England. So the first is, she is a captive, she is under a form of house arrest. And so she can no longer, as she had done when she was a queen, kind of exercise every day. As a queen, you said Saoirse Ronan, Saoirse Ronan galloping around on a horse firing pistols. That was what Mary did as a queen, she was a very active woman. But now she's not, she's allowed to go riding at most once or twice a month. And even when she rides in a coach, she's escorted by a squad of musketeers because Walsingham is petrified that a rescue attempt may be made.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  But at the same time, as she's not getting any exercise, she is being treated with the honour that is due to a queen. Elizabeth insists on that. And in practical terms, that means that wherever she is, there is a groaning table laden down with foods that have been cooked in her own kitchen and served to her by her own staff. And she demands the full royal protocol. And to quote John Guy from his wonderful biography of Mary, "Like Elizabeth, Mary enjoyed two courses at both dinner and supper, and each course included 16 separate dishes individually presented and accompanied by bread, wine, salads and fruit. This meant 32 dishes for each meal and 64 for each day."

• 18:12Speaker 00

  So that is a lot of food if you're not having any exercise.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  So 1586, however, so this is in the wake of the Throckmorton plot. Her conditions are a little bit harsher than the high living of previous years, right? So she's, so how many meals a day is she down to now? Surely no longer 64 a day?

• 18:33Speaker 00

  It's Omega 20.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  20.

• 18:36Speaker 00

  And she has to rub by with 48 servants, which is massively slumming it. She's been moved into the kind of timbered mansion that, had it survived into the present day, and it hasn't, would probably be a boutique hotel. This is a place in Staffordshire called Chartley Manor. And it's a very pleasant place to be, but it is surrounded by two moats. So again, she is, you know, she knows that she's effectively in a prison. And she has to suffer all kinds of indignity, so her request for Turkish carpets is turned down. She's not allowed to have fish from the sea, you know, it will have to be caught in the river. And every time she has her canopy decorated with her royal regalia put

• 19:18Speaker 00

  up, the guy who is acting as her jailer comes in and tears it down. And the name of this jailer is Sir Amias Paulet, and he is a very kind of hard-nosed granite-faced Puritan. And he's been the given the job of serving as Mary's jailer because unlike everyone else who has been appointed to that job, Paulet can be absolutely relied upon not to succumb to Mary's charm, which remains considerable. Paulet loathes Mary as a kind of as Jezebel, as a papist, and as a Scot with no pity at all of English purses. I think a tremendous phrase.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, he sounds like a great man. But actually, she doesn't like him at all, does she? She, what'd she call him? One of the most whimsical and austere persons whom I've ever known, and in a word, fitter for a jail of criminals. It's odd to have somebody who's both whimsical and austere. But anyway, there he is. And he, I mean, one of the things that he does is he stops her having contacts with the outside world, doesn't he? I mean, you can understand why they've done this. They'd want her plotting with Jesuits and with bad people of various kinds against England.

• 20:31Speaker 00

  And you can understand why they want to kind of exert a much greater control over her in the wake of all these kind of various plots. And as you say, the harshest restrictions concern her contacts with the outside world. You know, she's not allowed to know what is going on beyond the moats of her, this manor house that is her prison. And so she is completely desperate to re-establish contact with sympathizers, to know what prospects there are for her being released from prison, and perhaps what prospects there are for her to to win the throne of England, which she is now starting to, you know, to recognize is the only way she's ever going to escape this form of imprisonment. But, you know,

• 21:14Speaker 00

  how is she to do this? Because Paulet is a very, very effective jailer. You know, he's not allowing her any letters. He conducts random searches of her quarters to check that, you know, she's not hiding notes there. And should anyone from her personal household kind of go out into the outside world, visit the local villages or whatever, then when they come back, they they will be subjected to strip searches. So the situation looks really bad for Mary. But over the course of her very lengthy imprisonment in England, she has learnt the value of patience. And fortunately for her, Mary's partisans are patient as well. And they're determined, and they are very, very ingenious. And in

• 21:58Speaker 00

  April, so four months after Mary had been moved to Chartley Manor, an agent from the French Embassy in London manages to get a letter through to her. And this is a guy called Gilbert Gifford, and he is English, he's from Staffordshire, he's Catholic, and he's actually a kinsman of Francis Throckmorton, who had been implicated in the previous plot to set Mary free. He'd studied at one of the seminary set up by William Allen, who is the kind of the great Catholic leader of the exiles on the continent. And he'd been ordained a deacon there. And in Paris, where he'd moved to after his ordination,

• 22:40Speaker 00

  he'd been recruited by Mary's agents in the city and employed as a courier, taking letters from Paris to the French Embassy in London. But obviously, his real ambition is to get letters from the French Embassy to Mary in Chartley Manor. And he has come up with what he thinks is a brilliant weas that will enable him to do it. And this is like a kind of children's book on spycraft, the kind of thing you could imagine, I don't know, Ian Blighton or someone coming up with. So Gifford has gone to the local brewer who supplies Chartley Manor with its beer. And Gifford's plan is to put letters for

• 23:25Speaker 00

  Mary into a kind of a waterproof receptacle, or a beer-proof receptacle, perhaps you might say, and then to insert this receptacle through the bung hole of the beer barrel. And then the beer barrel will be taken by the brewer to Chartley Manor. And when it arrives there, the message can be retrieved through the bung hole by Mary's butler, who can then take the the correspondence to Mary's secretaries, and they can then pass it on to Mary herself. And then should Mary want to reply to anything, the whole procedure can operate in reverse. And it sounds mad.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  I think it sounds good. I think it's a great scheme.

• 24:06Speaker 00

  Amazingly. Well, it works, Dominic. And this is how Babington, with his kind of plot for assassinating Elizabeth with those, you know, those six gentlemen, and springing Mary from Chartley Manor, this is how he had been able to get his letter through to her. And it's also why Mary spends so much time kind of mulling over what she's going to, how she's going to reply, because she knows that this is really the one realistic chance she has to escape from her prison, and perhaps to become the Queen of England. Now, her secretaries say, don't reply, it's too dangerous. There are spies everywhere. And Mary is clearly anxious herself. And so as she is mulling over what she should

• 24:50Speaker 00

  reply, she's keen to get out into the open to escape the claustrophobia of her quarters. She can't go riding, but she she can go out in her carriage. And so this is what she does. She goes for rides around the area. And as she does so, three days before she ends up composing her letter, she looks out of the window, and she sees a youngish man. And she describes him later as being of low stature, slender every way, dark yellow hair on the head, and clear yellow bearded. And she smiles at him. And then the coach rumbles on. And four days later, after she's seen him, so she's had her secretaries write the letter, and then the following day, this letter with its allusion to the six gentlemen

• 25:31Speaker 00

  who were plotting to kill Elizabeth is placed in the beer barrel in the watertight receptacle. And the barrel is taken away. The brewer is taking it. And Mary is hoping that the brewer will be taking this barrel with its secret message inside to Babington. And Babington can then take the letter to the French Embassy and beyond that to Paris, and the wheels of conspiracy can be set in motion. Unfortunately, however, Babington is not the first recipient of Mary's letter. Instead, the letter is delivered to the youngish man with yellow hair that she had seen through her coach window. And this is the man who is about

• 26:11Speaker 00

  to deliver her up to the people who in the long run will have her killed. And the name of this young man with his yellow hair is Thomas Phillips. And he is a linguist, he's a mathematician, and he is the single most gifted cryptanalyst in the employ of Elizabeth's spy chief, Sir Francis Walsingham.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  So what do we know about this guy, this yellow-haired man? He's Stephen Alford, in his great book, The Watchers, says he's secret and secretive, a man who had travelled to the uttermost in the cipher. Do we know anything more about him? Or is he just a sort of shadowy presence?

• 26:50Speaker 00

  Well, Stephen Alford says that Phillips is the most kind of secretive, the most mysterious of all the spies in Walsingham's employ, and also the ablest. So in addition to being the greatest codebreaker, the greatest cipher breaker in Walsingham's employ, he is also the best handler of double agents. And this is why Walsingham has sent Phillips to Staffordshire to supervise this entire very complex operation. Because Gilbert Gifford, so that's the young seminarian who'd been recruited by Mary's agents in Paris to serve as a courier, he too has been recruited by Walsingham. Walsingham has turned him. And Gifford's approach to Mary had been a setup supervised by Phillips. And it's Phillips

• 27:34Speaker 00

  as well who had recruited the brewer. So basically, you know, he's holding all the strings. And he has been opening all the correspondence between Babington and Mary. He's been decrypting what Babington may have written, or what Mary may have written, reading it through. And then he is, another of his many talents is that he's able to reseal letters that he's opened, and make it look as though they have never been opened. And so because of this, he can then forward these letters that he's read to the intended recipients, and they have no idea that the contents have already been read by Walsingham Spy Agency.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  These people are brilliant, Tom. And she has walked right into it. I admire them for this.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  I mean, she has, but you know, she has no choice, as I think, as she sees it. She's aware that there's a risk. She's very smart. I mean, you know, she knows what she's up against. But I think she's desperate. As you say, she has walked into it, because Phillips has had read Babington's letter to Mary with its mention of the six noble gentlemen ready to kill Elizabeth. And so he has been waiting on tenterhooks to find out how Mary's going to reply, because he knows that if she replies favourably, if she says, oh, yeah, let's get the six gentlemen operating, then that's it, they've got her. And so he, you know, he gets this letter that's been sent back by Mary, supposedly to Babington, but in fact, it's been brought to Phillips. He opens the letter, probably not with trembling hands, because he seems to be a very cool customer, but definitely, I mean, his heart

• 28:59Speaker 00

  must have been pounding. And he reads it through, and he is not disappointed by what he finds. He deciphers Mary's letter. There is the reference to the six gentlemen. He writes it up, makes a copy in English, which he then sends to Walsingham. And on the copy of the letter that he sends to Walsingham, he inscribes it with a drawing of a gallows. But he might as well have drawn a chopping block and an axe. And he describes it as the bloody letter. Because this, this Phillips feels is the letter that is going to doom Mary, Queen of Scots, who of course, has no idea what has happened. And all the while,

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Mary is hoping that the letter has got through, and that perhaps a plot has been set in motion to set her free from her prison.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  So three and a half weeks later, it's the 11th of August. Mary, of course, knows nothing of this and her jailer, the whimsical and austere, Mr. Paullet, who's usually very unfriendly to her, says to her, would you like to go on a deer hunt? Doesn't he? And she doesn't think, oh, this is a bit suspicious. She thinks, oh, deer hunt, brilliant, especially as her legs. The issue of the gross matter seems to have cleared up.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, the oozing has ceased to a degree. So she gets on a horse for what is going to prove the last horse ride that she will ever take. And she gallops out with Paullet into the woods that surround the manor. And they haven't gone far when they see a troop of horsemen approaching. And Mary's heart, of course, I mean, it leaps. You know, she's thinking, are these the men who've been sent by Babington to set me free? Has his plot come to fruition? Perhaps Elizabeth is dead. Perhaps they're coming to take me to London and set me on the throne of England. And sure enough, the captain of horse rides up to her and he addresses her not very politely. And he tells Mary that a plot against the life of Elizabeth has been uncovered.

• 30:55Speaker 00

  And he then informs Mary that she is under arrest. And by this point, unbeknownst to Mary, a number of the conspirators in Babington's plot have already been apprehended. And Babington himself was arrested three days later on the 14th of August, and he was subjected to repeated interrogation. And it became very clear to his interrogators that he had been completely hoodwinked by Phillips and that he'd even swallowed a kind of outrageous forgery that Walsingham and Phillips had concocted between them, which was designed to extract an even more direct confession out of him. And in the event, Babington and the other conspirators in the plot did confess to plotting Mary's release,

• 31:38Speaker 00

  to sponsoring a foreign invasion and to working for the restoration of Catholicism. I mean, they couldn't really not, they'd been, you know, they were bound to rights. They did, however, interestingly, deny plotting to murder Elizabeth. And I think the reason for this was that they knew that that is what would doom Mary. If they said, yes, Mary was in on the plot to assassinate Elizabeth and that would doom Mary and they didn't want to do that. Obviously, they are put horribly to death. So Babington himself was publicly executed on the 20th of September. His fellow conspirators were executed the following day. And the site of this was in Hoban. It's where Tottenham Court Road Tube Station is. So it's that kind of great traffic intersection now. And their deaths are very, very horrible.

• 32:19Speaker 00

  Elizabeth had insisted that they be as salutary as they possibly could. And once their kind of maimed and bleeding corpses lay spread eagled on the scaffold, they had then been chopped up into quarters and distributed to the various gates of the City of London to serve as warnings to the fate of traitors. Meanwhile, what of Mary? Well, she has been ordered to prepare for her departure from Chartley Manor. And she leaves on the 21st of September, even as the second batch of plotters who had conspired to free her were meeting their terrible ends in Hoban. And she was accompanied by an absolutely enormous wagon train,

• 33:03Speaker 00

  loaded down with clothes, with furnishings, with assorted luxuries. Because even in these dire straits, Mary remains what she has always been, a complete diva. And it takes her days to travel the 80 miles from Chartley Manor to the place that Elizabeth had personally chosen as her new place of imprisonment. But finally, on the 25th of September, so they've been on the road for four days, Mary's journey comes to an end. And she has arrived in Fotheringay Castle.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  We all know what's coming next, well, at least a lot of us do. And even if you don't, it's going to be good. All right, so join us after the break for the end of the story of Mary, Queen of Scots.

• 33:52Speaker 01

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• 36:44Speaker 01

  Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Mary, Queen of Scots, has just arrived at Fotheringay Castle. Now, this is the one thing that Fotheringay Castle is really known for. And it's the sort of detail that everybody always remembers. Oh, yeah, she, you know, the last chapter of her life is at Fotheringay. But actually, I've got no sense of like what Fotheringay looks like. Or I don't really have that much of a sense of where it is. It's Northamptonshire, isn't it? So it's in a sort of slightly nondescript middle of England.

• 37:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Why don't we know what it looks like? Because it doesn't exist anymore.

• 37:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, the castle has pretty much vanished. I mean, Fotheringay is a great place to visit because it has a wonderful church that was a kind of a monument to the Yorkist regime. So if you're interested in the Wars of the Roses and Richard III, it's great. But there are very few memorials to the place where Mary, you know, it's her final place of imprisonment. But so just to describe what was there when she arrives in September 1587. As you said, Dominic, it's Northamptonshire, which is the middle of England. So as far away from Scotland and the sea as possible. They've got to make sure that she's not rescued. The ground around the castle is kind of very boggy and treacherous, so that helps as well. The castle itself is on a kind of raised hill. Like Chartley Manor, it has a double moat.

• 37:53Speaker 00

  Unlike Chartley Manor, it has very thick walls, a very imposing gateway, a colossal kind of Norman keep. So it is effectively, as a prison, impregnable. And there is no real prospect of Mary escaping it. But that's not the only reason that Elizabeth has fixed on Fotheringay as Mary's place of imprisonment. Because Fotheringay, as well as fortifications, also has a great sprawling complex of state rooms. And these include a great hall, so capable of containing large numbers of people. And on the first floor of these state rooms, there is what was called a presence chamber, which is a room where the monarch, if she arrives, you know, the throne can be placed there

• 38:34Speaker 00

  and she can keep state and all the people around can come and pay their respects to her. And it's in this presence chamber on the 14th of October, 1586, that the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots opens. And Elizabeth herself is not there, but it feels like she is because her empty throne presides over the whole trial. It's positioned beneath a great cloth of state emblazoned with her royal arms. And so it dominates the proceedings. Mary's judges, they are sitting around a table that's placed in the centre of the room. And then around that table, there are three benches.

• 39:17Speaker 00

  And one of them is facing the kind of the empty throne at the opposite end of the room. And the other two are set at right angles to it. So kind of framing the space in which the table had been set. Essentially, there's the throne and then there are kind of benches at right angles to the throne and a bench at the far end of the room. And on these three benches are sat the commissioners who've been appointed by Elizabeth to the trial. So these are the privy councillors and assorted kind of supplementary peers, so barons and vicats and earls, the leading figures in the state. Walsingham is there, obviously. So too is Sir Christopher Hatten, Elizabeth's great favourite, the sponsor of Drake on his circumnavigation of the globe.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  But there's no question, who is the guy in ultimate charge of the proceedings? And this is William Cecil, Lord Burghley, because this is the moment he has been waiting for. This is the moment that he has been working towards for many decades, long before even Mary, Queen of Scots, had sought refuge in England. His great aim has been to bring Mary, Queen of Scots, down right from the very beginning.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  To bring her to justice, you might say. But of course, does she have a place at this trial at all? Because she's a queen. She's not a subject and she's not a subject of Elizabeth the first, you know, she's, she's not even English. So is this, is it actually legal? I guess that's the question.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  Well, that's the point she makes. I should betray the dignity and majesty of kings. And it would be tantamount to a confession that I am bound to submit to the laws of England.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Well, she's got a Scottish accent now.

• 40:57Speaker 00

  Well, she, she had a very pretty Scottish accent. Um, is, is, is the report. So she, she's pretty obdurate. I'm, you know, it's a bit like her grandson Charles the first, when he gets put on trial at the end of the English Civil War. You know, he refuses to recognise the court and this is basically Mary's strategy. And this is infuriating for Burley. And so he leads a succession of delegations to try and persuade her otherwise. But she just seems completely obdurate and she tells Burley in very memorable terms, look to your consciences and remember that the theatre of the whole world is wider than the Kingdom of England. But the guy who ultimately is able to persuade her is the, the very fluent and plausible Sir Christopher Hatten.

• 41:39Speaker 00

  And he says to her, if you be innocent, you wrong your reputation in avoiding a trial. And the subtext there, I think, is very clear. He's saying that the trial is going to go ahead, whether you are there or not. And if you are not there, then your absence will be interpreted as an admission of guilt.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  What if you got to fear if you're innocent?

• 41:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so Mary feels the force of this and she spends a very restless night wondering what she should do. And finally, on the day that is scheduled for the start of the trial, she says, yes, okay, I will attend. And so she arrives in the courtroom shortly after nine o'clock in the morning. She's wearing a long, black dress of made of velvet, a white cap and a long white veil that covers her hair. And as she enters, everyone stands and takes off their hats. So it's a mark of respect to her as a queen. And she acknowledges these marks with a kind of slight incline of her head. But having said that, she is completely indignant that her chair is below Elizabeth's throne, because it implies that she is subject to Elizabeth.

• 42:43Speaker 00

  So she has a kind of a bit of a strop about that. She does have three ladies in waiting attending her. These are the only women, obviously, in the courtroom. And these ladies in waiting are the only people who are sympathetic to Mary. Mary does not have a lawyer with her. She doesn't have a kind of barrister who is speaking on her behalf. And instead she is completely surrounded by enemies and by two in particular. Because just across from where she is sitting, so right in her eye line, next to the Lord Chancellor is Lord Burley. And at a further remove on the bench reserved for night, so this is the bench that is facing the throne of, um, the empty throne of Elizabeth. Is a man that she had only met for the first time that very morning. And this is Sir Francis Walsingham.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  So she's looking at the two men who've basically done more than anybody else to bring her to this point. And do you think she thinks that at that point, you know, that she's been told, if you're innocent, you've got nothing to fear. But do you think she thinks at this point when she sees them looking at her, when she sees that her chair is lower than Elizabeth's throne, all that stuff? Do you think she thinks, okay, this is a done deal? Like this is a show trial. I'm never going to get off. Or is she thinking, I can still turn this around?

• 43:55Speaker 00

  It's hard to know. I imagine that, that probably in her heart, she knows that she would not have been brought to trial had the determination of her enemies not been to see her executed. But against that, she doesn't know what evidence is going to be presented against her. And the whole way through, she has been insistent that, um, you know, she's put nothing to paper in her own handwriting. She's been very careful about that. And, you know, she must assume that people haven't seen the letters that she wrote to Babington. She doesn't know about this. No one's told her. So, you know, she probably has a kind of scintilla of hope. But I think the moment that the proceedings start, she must have felt this kind of sickening cold hand of dread clamping at her heart.

• 44:40Speaker 00

  Because Thomas Phillips, you know, the, the fairhead young man that she'd seen from her coach. He has prepared the evidence against her very diligently and very, very remorselessly. And it is all laid out there for the commissioners to study. So Babington's correspondence with Mary. Mary's correspondence with Babington and her various friends and allies abroad. And most faithfully of all, that letter which Phillips had termed the bloody letter and illustrated with the gallows. I mean, that is the letter that is going to destroy her. And when Mary realises that all her correspondence had been penetrated by Walsingham.

• 45:23Speaker 00

  I mean, she is stunned at that point. Surely she knows the game is up and she, she sobs. You know, she, she is good at, at weeping on demand. And other times when she's not weeping, she goes very spiritedly on the attack and she, she plays all her favourite cards. She says, you know, I'm not answerable for what people like Babington wrote to me. I had no influence on him whatsoever. She says that the letters attributed to her were not in her own handwriting. And she declares, can I be responsible for the criminal projects of a few desperate men? Which they planned without my knowledge or participation.

• 46:03Speaker 00

  And she also makes sure to respond directly to the two men that she now appreciates are her, her two greatest foes. So on the opening day of the trial, she accuses Walsingham, I mean, correctly, of having tampered with her letters. That's exactly what Walsingham and Phillips had done. And his response is a magnificent display of ambivalence. He says, I call God and all the world to witness that as a private person, I have done nothing unworthy of an honest man. And as Secretary of State, nothing unbefitting my duty. And as Stephen Orford puts it, this is a masterpiece of subtle wordplay that said everything and nothing at the same time.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  I mean, Walsingham is such a terrifying man to have as your enemy, I think.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  What about Burley? He's also a great man. And she confronts him directly, doesn't she?

• 46:53Speaker 00

  People may remember who listened to our fir-, our first series on Mary, Queen of Scots, that when she arrived in England, she wrote to Burley and said, I hope that you will be my, you know, you, you will speak to me, to the Queen on my behalf. And it's evident from that letter that she had no idea how much Burley hated her and how hard he'd been working to destroy her. And it, it, it's as though now at her trial that she suddenly realised what, what Burley has been up to all these long years. And she kind of says to him, you are indeed my enemy, as though this is a blinding realisation. And Burley's reply, yes, I am the enemy of the enemies of Queen Elizabeth.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  So she's clearly, you know, she, by day two, she really must know that she's, you know, she's staring at oblivion. And actually she has a sort of meltdown, doesn't she, at the end of day two?

• 47:46Speaker 00

  She just decides there's no reason for her to stay. I mean, there's nothing she can say or do that is going to change the verdict that is looming. And so she, she rises to her feet. She declares that she forgives the commissioners for what is clearly a charade, a show trial. And then amazingly, she crosses the room to where Walsingham is sitting and she has private words in his ear. And nobody hears what she says to him. But it, it is apparent to people watching that Walsingham is very angered by what Mary is telling him. And then once she's finished talking to Walsingham, she turns and addresses the entire commission again. And she insists one last time on her innocence. I place my cause in the hands of God.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  No speculation about what she said to Walsingham?

• 48:34Speaker 00

  How can we know?

• 48:35Speaker 01

  But why would it languor him? I mean, he's won. He's, he's always about to win.

• 48:39Speaker 00

  I imagine she, she accused him of cheating, of fraudulent behaviour, cast suspicions on his honour, I would guess.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Okay. So she's placed her cause in the hands of God. And what does God say? What does God decide?

• 48:51Speaker 00

  Well, God doesn't really, it isn't really very helpful because, um, the verdict of guilty is duly brought in. Actually not in Fotheringay, but in the Star Chamber in Westminster. And it's delivered 10 days after the end of Mary's trial. And the reason for the delay is the inevitable one, that Elizabeth doesn't know what to do. And delay and prevarication is always Elizabeth's answer to insoluble puzzles. Because she's still in agonies at the thought of Mary, who is an anointed queen, suffering execution. And if she suffers execution, then definitely this will bring war down on England. It will definitely mean that Philip's armada is sent against her kingdom.

• 49:34Speaker 00

  But also there is the fact that Mary has been convicted under this act that had been brought in the year before, the Act for the Queen's Safety. So if Mary is now executed, then Elizabeth's worry is that it will seem that.

• 49:49Speaker 00

  Parliament has licensed it and that therefore Parliament has the right to commit regicide. And this is something that Elizabeth doesn't want. And you know, in the long run, Mary's grandson, Charles I, is also going to be executed by Parliament. So her anxieties are not completely overwrought. But Dominic, you asked earlier, Elizabeth doesn't want Mary publicly executed, but does she want her kind of eliminated privately? And yes, that is absolutely what Elizabeth wants. And she does want Mary kind of removed in the way that unwanted royals throughout medieval history have traditionally

• 50:32Speaker 00

  been eliminated. So maybe, you know, she could be drowned in a butt of marmalade or suffocated with a pillow or, you know, a hot poker stuffed up her bum. I mean, whatever, all these kind of various methods that have been used to remove unwanted members of the royal family. But she needs someone to do it. And she is kind of expectant that someone will step up to the plate and answer her, her needs. Because listeners may remember, back in 1584, large numbers of her loyal subjects, so the Privy Council, members of Parliament, particularly loyal members of the general public, had all signed something called a bond of association. And this bond had been deliberately targeted

• 51:11Speaker 00

  at Mary. And people who signed it had committed themselves, should Mary ever be found guilty of plotting against Elizabeth, to kill her. And essentially, it had formally committed them to a kind of lynch law. And this bond of association had been bundled into the parliamentary act. So Elizabeth can say to people, well, this is now the law of the land. Why aren't people acting on it? And so this is why she is prevaricating, even once the guilty verdict against Mary has been brought in. She's essentially hoping that one of the signatories to that bond of association will do what they have pledged to do, and quietly and

• 51:50Speaker 00

  silently kill Mary without Elizabeth having to sign her death warrant.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  What I don't understand is why, though, she, I mean, A, why it's taken so long? And why have we even got to this point? And B, you know, the sort of, oh, I hope that somebody, because of the bond of association, will privately kill Mary, you know, all this. Why didn't she, two years ago, say to Lord Burghley, can we not just get rid of, please, now? Like, you know, you can, you must know, poison us, crack on and do it. Richard III style, or getting rid of Edward II, or getting rid of the Duke of Clarence, or however, it's so easy to do.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  It's a great question, and it's something that Mary, Queen of Scots herself, often pondered. So back in the days when she was able to communicate with the French and Spanish ambassadors, she, she wrote to them and said, I think this is what's going to happen. I think I'm going to be poisoned. I'm going to be smothered by a pillow, or whatever. This is what I suspect. But it doesn't, I think, you know, we've been casting the, the Privy Council and the Protestant establishment in quite a dark light in this series. You know, they're practising dirty tricks and operating under the radar. But they do, I think, have quite a principled sense that the operations of the law should proceed. They are, by definition, very devout

• 53:06Speaker 00

  Christians. And they don't want to just commit a murder below the radar. They think that justice should be seen to be done. And it's important for the reputation, not just of the Privy Council, not just of English justice, but of their religion, that they are seen to be doing the right thing. And I think that that ultimately is, is the reason why. And so this is why, even as Elizabeth is digging her heels in still and saying, I'm not going to sign the death warrant, Burghley and Walsingham are busy scheming to try and force her hand. And so first, they get Parliament to petition her for Mary's execution. And Elizabeth treats this with kind of icy contempt. And in the wake of this, Burghley then thinks,

• 53:49Speaker 00

  well, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to unleash the dirty tricks here. And so he reveals to Elizabeth the existence of yet another plot to assassinate her. And in fact, this plot is an old one. It had never gone anywhere. It had been foiled the year before. But Burghley had been kind of keeping it in reserve for just such an eventuality. And even as he presents Elizabeth with the news of this supposed plot against her, he also fabricates a rumour that Spanish troops have landed in Wales. And he goes to her and say, ah, it's terrible news, you know, they're marching on Cardiff, or whatever. You should double your bodyguard, because you are in mortal danger. And this does sufficiently alarm Elizabeth that at last, on the 1st of February 1587, she takes the fateful step,

• 54:33Speaker 00

  and she does sign the warrant for Mary's execution. But even now, Elizabeth remains Elizabeth. She's signed, she's signed this death warrant, but she doesn't want it used. She is still hoping that someone will get in there and kind of remove Mary, and it won't be in Elizabeth's name. And to this end, she has Walsingham, who is sick in bed at this time, Walsingham is often prostrated by illness. She has Walsingham write a letter to, to Paulet, who is still serving as Mary's jailer. He's moved with her to Fatheringay. Walsingham doesn't, really doesn't want to do this, but he has no choice, because Elizabeth has directly ordered him. So Walsingham writes to Paulet that, that Elizabeth is

• 55:16Speaker 00

  very disappointed that he is yet to live up to the vow that he had made when he signed the bond of association. And why is it, Elizabeth demands to know, that he has not yet, and I quote, "found out some way to shorten the life of that queen." In other words, Mary, do it. And Paulet, to do him credit, and I think this kind of shed lights on the question you were asking, why don't they just bump her off? Paulet is appalled. And he replies to the Queen, "God forbid that I should make so foul a shipwreck of my conscience, or leave so great a blot to my poor posterity, to shed blood without law or warrant."

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:52Speaker 00

  Elizabeth is contemptuous. She dismisses Paulet as dainty. And she does not mean it's a compliment. I mean, Elizabeth is a very, a very hard woman. But, you know, Paulet is a hard man. But he, you know, his, his conscience, his faith, doesn't permit him to just go around bumping people off without the due course of law. And I think that, that, that's the explanation for why. Puritans and Protestants, they think it has to be done, you know, it has, it has to be done with God's approval, basically.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  But Burghley now has the death warrant. And he, this is the weapon he needs. And even though Elizabeth has said, don't yet use it, he just thinks, come on, let's crack on. And so he, he has a little sort of cabal, doesn't he? He gets some of the Privy Councilors to his house, and they agree, yep, we're going to do this. And they send the warrant to Fatheringay.

• 56:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. So only the Privy Councilors whom Burghley is confident will back him in this, because they all know that they are going behind Elizabeth's back. And there is the risk of considerable trouble for them, once the news reaches Elizabeth. But they all think the stakes are so high, we've got to take this step. And so the warrant is given to the clerk of the Privy Council, who is Walsingham's brother-in-law, Robert Beale, the guy who had been his secretary in the St Bartholomew's Day massacre in Paris. And Beale goes galloping northwards at top speed for Northamptonshire. And he's accompanied by two of the greatest peers in the realm. And this is the Earl of Kent and the Earl of Shrewsbury. And the Earl of Shrewsbury is the Earl Marshal. So he's going to be

• 57:20Speaker 00

  the guy officially in charge of the execution. And Shrewsbury hates it, because he had been Mary's jailer for 15 years. And he got on very well with Mary. He liked Mary. And in fact, he got on so well with her, that Shrewsbury's wife, the very formidable Bess of Hardwick, had suspected him of having an affair with Mary. And so the fact that he now has to supervise the execution of, of the Queen of Scots is a miserable thing for him. But he knows his duty. And so he's heading off to Fatheringay as well. And also travelling from London to Fatheringay is one last key participant. And this is a man who goes by the name, or perhaps the pseudonym, of Bull. And Walsingham, who had sourced this guy,

• 58:04Speaker 00

  Bull, alerts Beale to his arrival. And Walsingham writes to Beale, "His instrument is put in a trunk, and he passeth as a serving man. And the instrument is an axe. And Bull is the executioner."

• 58:20Speaker 01

  So by the evening of the 7th of February, everything is in place, isn't it? And this guy, Beale, Robert Beale, the clerk of the Privy Council, he leads a delegation, which has Shrewsbury, it has the Earl of Kent, and it has the jailer, Paulet. And he leads the delegation to Mary's quarters for this spectacular last confrontation.

• 58:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, and this time they do not remove their hats and for the last time personally pulls down Mary's cloth of state and Beale then reads out the warrant to Mary and informs her that the following morning she will meet her death on the chopping block and Mary greets the news with great courage, there are no tears, she maintains her composure and she swears on the Bible that she is innocent and she then requests the company of a Catholic priest for her last night so that she can give her confession and be administered the last sacrament. But this request is refused and the Earl of Kent does not hesitate to explain why.

• 59:27Speaker 00

  He says to Mary, "Your life would be the death of our religion, your death will be its life." And this, I think, is a foolish thing for him to have said because it confirms Mary in her determination to die a martyr. So people who listen to the series we did last year on Mary will remember that although she's a Catholic, she wasn't a particularly militant Catholic. But now she is preparing to step onto the great stage of her own death and she decides that when she steps onto that stage, she is going to be playing the

• 1:00:07Speaker 00

  role of a Catholic persecuted to death by heretics for her faith. And so she sits up late into the night, writing to her brother-in-law, Henry III of France, and this is the last letter that she will ever write. And she composes it very, very deliberately, very cleverly, with the aim of doing as much damage to Elizabeth and England on the international stage as she possibly can. So she writes to Henry, "The Catholic faith and the assertion of my God-given right to the English crown are the two issues on which I am condemned, and yet I am not allowed to say that it is for the Catholic religion that I die, but

• 1:00:47Speaker 00

  for fear of interference with theirs." So that's one depth charge that she is laying, which, you know, will survive her death. And she, all night, she has been plotting other gestures of defiance. And these other gestures of defiance will be unveiled the following morning, the 8th of February, the day of her death. She keeps her executioners waiting. Of course she does. She's a diva. She's the star of the show. You know, she was never going to turn up on time. And it's only at nine, so an hour after she was meant to have appeared in the great hall, that she turns up. And all night carpenters had

• 1:01:28Speaker 00

  been preparing the scene of execution, building the scaffold, draping the walls of the hall in black, draping the scaffold in the black. By the time Mary arrives, the hall is lined by halberdiers, a crowd of people have been allowed in to, to watch the proceedings. And of course, up on the scaffold, the executioner Bull is waiting with his assistant and both men, they wear black masks, they have long black gowns and they have white aprons over those gowns. And Bull, of course, is holding his giant axe. Mary has dressed with great

• 1:02:07Speaker 00

  care and consideration for her final hour. As at her trial, she appears in the great hall, dressed in a flowing gown of black velvet. She has a white veil and she has a frill of very delicate white lace at her throat. She's helped onto the scaffold by Paulette, her austere and formidable jailer. And as he helps her up, Mary says to him, "This will be the last trouble I shall give you and the most agreeable service you have ever done me." She walks across the stage and she takes a seat where she is flanked by the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury and Beale, stepping forward once again, reads out the

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  warrant of execution. And then it's the turn of the preacher, who has been chosen personally by Elizabeth for the occasion. This is a man called Robert Fletcher, who is the dean of Peterborough, and in fact, is the father of John Fletcher, the dramatist, occasional collaborator with Shakespeare. And goodness, I mean, this is such a Shakespearean scene. The, the kind of, the, the sense of tragedy about it is so strong. So Fletcher is giving his sermon, but Mary is having none of it. And first of all, she intimidates Fletcher into abandoning the sermon. And then as he begins to read his prayers, his Anglican

• 1:03:29Speaker 00

  prayers in English, Mary and the six women who are in attendance on her, they start answering these English prayers with prayers of their own, and these prayers are in the Latin of their own Catholic faith. And the voices of these seven women drown the sound of Fletcher and it's completely mortifying for him. And again, he is intimidated into silence, but Mary carries on. You know, I said she's a diva. She slips to her knees and she pulls out a silver cross from her skirts and she raises it. And then she begins to pray in English so that everyone present will understand what she's saying. And her

• 1:04:10Speaker 00

  prayers are for her enemies, for Elizabeth and for England. And it's incredible theatre.

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  Very embarrassing for her executioners, of course, but there's worse to come, isn't there? And this is about what she's wearing.

• 1:04:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. So we said she dressed with great care. The time has come for her execution. And so her attendants prepare her for the chopping block by removing first her veil and then her black outer garments. And I will read from Mattingly's account. We actually began our series on Mary, Queen of Scots with exactly this reading, but it always bears re-quoting. So to quote Mattingly, "The black velvet gown fell below her knees, revealing underbodice and petticoat of crimson silk. And she stepped forward suddenly, shockingly, in the colour of martyrdom, blood red from top to toe against the sombre background."

• 1:05:07Speaker 00

  And all the assembled Protestants there go into complete meltdown and they're so appalled by this stunt, this sartorial kind of coda teatra, that none of the official reports on Mary's death mention it. And it was left to Mary's attendants, the six Catholic women who were there with her on the scaffold, to publicise what Mary had done. So she's there in her, her scarlet underrobes and she kisses her ladies farewell. And then she kneels down on the cushion that has been laid before the chopping block and she allows her eyes to be covered by one of her attendants with a white Corpus Christi cloth. And the fateful moment is now at hand. Mary lowers her throat onto the chopping block, but she

• 1:05:52Speaker 00

  continues to pray in Latin. Bull stepped forwards, he raises his axe and he brings it swinging down and it crashes not onto Mary's neck, but onto the back of her head. And she cries out in agony, "Lord Jesus, receive my soul." And then comes a second blow and this time it is directly onto the neck. But even now, the, the blow isn't a clean one and Bull has to use the blade of the axe, rather like a cleaver, to hack and saw the head clean off. And even now, even in death, Mary still has two surprises in

• 1:06:30Speaker 00

  wait for her killers. So when Bull steps forward, picks up the severed head to exhibit it before the assembled crowd and proclaim the death of a traitor, this is what executioners are always obliged to do. He lifts up the head and he finds himself holding nothing but hair. And Mary's actual head, shrunken and withered and grey, has rolled to the edge of the scaffold and it takes the spectators in the hall a few seconds to realise and work out what has happened. Mary had been wearing a wig. And that's embarrassing enough.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:11Speaker 00

  But then there is one final embarrassment because once Mary's sobbing ladies have been removed to their quarters and the executioners bend down beside Mary's corpse to disrobe it, again, complete mortification. Because concealed in Mary's skirts all along has been her favourite dog, a sky terrier. And this dog, once detected, and it lies there amid the gore of the dog's mistress, and it howls piteously. And again, to quote Mattingly, "Mary Stuart had always known how to embarrass her enemies, and not just to embarrass them, but to do them the maximum harm."

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  Well, this is the question, isn't it? Because now we've come to this climactic moment, the moment that the whole series has been building towards. Elizabeth had, one of the reasons she didn't want to execute Mary, Queen of Scots, was she knew that it would set off a firestorm of protest in Catholic Europe and it would make England even more of a rogue state, as viewed from Madrid, for example. And this execution is going to have extraordinarily tumultuous and fearful consequences, isn't it, for England in this struggle with the Spanish?

• 1:08:25Speaker 00

  It absolutely is. Because 1588, which is the year that follows Mary's execution, is going to be the year that Philip of Spain attempts to invade England, to overthrow Elizabeth, the heretic queen, once and for all, to restore this Protestant rogue state, as you put it, to papal supremacy, to Catholicism. Because 1588 is going to be the year of the Spanish Armada.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  So much to look forward to. But we will be coming to the Spanish Armada much later because we will be changing the record a little bit next week, but only a little bit because we'll still be, there'll still be some Catholic versus Protestant, Anna de Proteste versus Catholic action, because we will be coming much further forward in time. We'll be coming to Belfast in the 1960s for the beginning of the troubles in Northern Ireland. And of course, Rest is History Club members will be able to get all that series straight away on Monday. If you want to join the Rest is History Club, the only way to get the full range of quite extraordinary benefits is to sign up at therestishistory.com. And of course, there will be, for those people who subscribe to the free newsletter,

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  there'll be all kinds of interesting things in the newsletter. I'll tell you one thing, I would love the newsletter to resolve. How did the dog stay quiet for so long and undetected? You know, when she's kneeling down, someone's hacking at her head and the dog is still not moving, not barking, not whimpering, not making any indication of its presence? That is one of the great questions of history, Tom Holland.

• 1:10:04Speaker 00

  I imagine that she had a little supply of biscuits in one of the pockets of her petticoats. That's my thesis.

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  Well, if, if, if the newsletter could address that, I personally would be very, very happy. Right. On that bombshell, we'll be back, back next week with Northern Ireland. And Tom, thank you so much for that absolutely Titanic series, a veritable tour de force. Goodbye. Bye-bye.

• 1:10:36Speaker 02

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