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Mary, Queen of Scots (artist unknown)
If I were to summarize the entire wild ride of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587), it would be book-length and epic. Suffice to say the Scots loved a good regency and were not so fussed with adult monarchs, especially when that monarch was female, Catholic, Frenchified, and married to a fool (Henry, Lord Darnley; they were first cousins because Mary was the daughter of Margaret Tudor's son James V of Scotland from her first marriage to James IV of Scotland, while Darnley was the son of Margaret's daughter from her second marriage to Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, Margaret Douglas).
Mary's fatal mistake was fleeing to England under the impression that she was going to receive assistance from her cousin Elizabeth I. Mary's precipitate wedding to James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, was the catalyst for her forced deposition in favor of her infant son, James VI, and her imprisonment in ths island castle of Lochleven, from which she managed to successfully escape and head south. Her older bastard half-brother, James Stewart, Earl of Moray, essentially wrested the throne from her, as he was appointed the baby king's Regent. Moray was not that bad of a ruler and this is one of those cases where the offspring from the wrong side of the blanket should've been born on the right side of it.
Mary's presence in England was a dilemma for Elizabeth. Mary had claimed Elizabeth's throne before she even sat on it, stating her bastardy should prohibit her from being queen and the crown should've passed to Mary, the eldest legitimate scion of the Tudor bloodline. Mary desperately wanted to be recognized as Elizabeth's heir apparent and had married Darnley partially to strengthen both their claims to the English throne, but Elizabeth refused to name a successor. Elizabeth did not want war with Scotland, which would occur if she attempted to restore her feckless cousin to that throne. But she could not just release Mary to the Continent for fear of plotting with the Catholic Spanish to invade England and take Elizabeth's throne away, either. The papacy had declared Elizabeth a "heretic" and invited anyone who could to remove her from power. Mary could be used as a figurehead for that, since she had the best claim to succeed Elizabeth. There was nothing to do but keep the runaway Queen of Scots imprisoned.
Queen Elizabeth I, (the "Sieve Portrait", by George Gower)
Naturally Mary objected. She was just 25 when she first set foot on English soil in 1566 and had spent the majority of her life in France for protection from the "Rough Wooing" of Henry VIII and his successor Edward VI. She had briefly worn a pair of crowns, her first husband having been Francis II of France, and her abdication under duress now meant that she had none. It was an untenable position for Mary and she immediately fell to plotting.
She was already under suspicion for Darnley's mysterious death in the aftermath of the explosion at Kirk O'Fields, giving Elizabeth a thin excuse to hold her captive while the notorious "Casket Letters" were analyzed. George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and his wife Bess of Hardwick were given the unenviable position of Mary's jailers. Bothwell had escaped the Scots lords only to fall afoul of his past in Norway, where he was arrested for "ruining" a girl of noble family and imprisoned for the remainder of his life in Denmark's Dragsholm Castle (Denmark and Norway being ruled by the Danish king at the time). After his death, Mary entertained the idea of wedding the Catholic Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Howard, who ultimately lost his head for the notion, executed in 1572 for high treason after Mary's Ridolfi Plot fell apart.
William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Elizabeth Is premier advisor (portrait by Marcus Gheerharts)
Though Mary's involvement was widely suspected, no hard evidence of it could be found. Elizabeth's chief councilor, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, begged her to make an end of the Scots queen, but Elizabeth refused to do so on merely circumstantial evidence. She had her own position to think of as well, for if she executed a fellow queen, might not the same thing happen to her one day? Philip II of Spain, her sister Mary's widower, was Mary Stuart's most vocal supporter and threatened to invade England, depose Elizabeth, and install his daughter Isabella as queen in her stead if any action were taken against Mary. The Spanish Hapsburgs had a distant claim to the English throne via Edward IIIs son John of Gaunt; his daughter Catherine had married into Castile and his daughter Philippa had married into Portugal and were among Philip's ancestors.
Fear of further uprising prompted Parliament to pass an act making it punishable by death to plot against the queen. Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's "spymaster", made it his main goal to destroy the Queen of Scots, trying various entrapment schemes to get her to hang herself. He set up the Throckmorton Plot in an attempt to lure Mary into committing to the assassination of Elizabeth and was frustrated when he could get no evidence of her assent in her own hand. Finally the Babington Plot nailed Mary. Walsingham by this time had set up a system to intercept Mary's personal correspondence and he got his hands on a letter in which she agreed to having Elizabeth killed with Mary herself as the replacement queen, gleefully doodling a gallows on the paper when he saw it.
Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's spymaster (portrait by John de Critz)
Mary was moved, under a new jailer, Sir Amyas Paulet, to the castle of Fotheringhay, ironically the closest she would ever get to London and Elizabeth (in the 20 years of this captivity the two queens had never met and never would), and was tried in its great hall beginning October 15, 1586. She refused to recognize the legality of an English court to try her and refused to mount a defense for her actions, resulting in a conviction of high treason on October 25. She was sentenced to death by beheading.
Elizabeth did not want Mary's blood on her hands and tried to persuade Paulet to quietly poison her nemesis. He refused. Elizabeth dithered about and refused to sign the execution warrant. She finally did so on February 1, 1587. After the fact she would send her secretary, Sir William Davison, to the Tower of London, insisting he had slipped the document into a routine pile of paperwork and tricked her into signing off on it.
Davison hurriedly took the warrant to Cecil and Walsingham, mindful of Elizabeth's capricious nature and aware there was little time to spare in case the queen changed her mind and demanded it back to tear up.
On February 7, 1587, Mary Stuart was officially informed of her execution the following morning at eight o'clock. She was refused the services of her Catholic priest, De Preau, but offered those of the Protestant Dean of Peterborough, which she declined. She was then left alone to spend her last evening with her by now depleted group of servants. Mary demanded an early supper and appeared serene amidst her servants' tears. She then proceeded to go through all her remaining possessions by distributing them to her servants and earmarking some to be sent to her French relatives.
Having done so, she put pen to paper and drafted an elaborate will designed to provide for the welfare of those she was leaving behind. She then wrote a letter to her chaplain De Preau in lieu of the confession she had been denied. Her second letter was to her brother-in-law, Henry III of France. She also composed a poem about her approaching death:
O my Lord and my God, I have trusted in Thee.
O my dear Jesus, now liberate me.
In shackle and chain, in torture and pain, I long for Thee.
In weakness and sighing, in kneeling and crying, I adore and implore
Thee to liberate me.
Mary Queen of Scots, Wednesday 8th February 1587
It was by then two o'clock in the morning and Mary simply lay on her bed fully dressed without attempting to sleep. Between eight and nine in the morning she was led to the Great Hall of Fotheringhay, where she was eventually allowed to have some of her servants present after much pleading. Sir James Melville, her Secretary, Dr. Bourgoing, her physician, Jacques Gervais, her surgeon, Didier, her porter and two of her women, Elizabeth Curle and Jane Kennedy, were allowed to attend. Mary held a crucifix and prayer book in her hand and two rosaries hung down from her waist; round her neck was her pomander chain and an Agnus Dei.
Mary Queen of Scots Being Led to Her Execution (painted by Laslett John Potts, 1871)
Mary was led up the three steps to the stage and from there listened unperturbed to the commission for her execution. It wasn't until the Protestant Dean from Peterborough proposed to say her prayers according to Protestant rights that she expressed her disapproval. The Dean nevertheless proceeded while Mary, kneeling, read out loud from her Latin Prayer book.
The executioner, as customary, then asked for her pardon to which she replied, "I forgive you with all my heart, for now I hope you shall make an end of all my troubles". She was then undressed, assisted by Jane Kennedy and Elizabeth Curle, and divested of her Agnus Dei and rosary. Mary was now stripped to her red petticoat with red satin bodice trimmed with lace and a pair of red sleeves; red, the colour of martyrdom in the Catholic Church.
After bidding her servants not to cry and to pray for her, Jane Kennedy bound her eyes with a white cloth embroidered in gold, chosen by Mary the night before. Mary now stood alone on the stage and positioned her own chin on the wooden execution block. "Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit" were her last words before the first stroke of the axe.
The first blow missed the neck and cut into the back of the head. Mary was heard to whisper "Sweet Jesus". The second blow almost severed the head. The third blow completely cut through the remaining sinew.
As the executioner then picked up the head and held it up in the air to show the audience, the wig slipped off and the head rolled to the floor. Mary's hair was almost entirely gray from her long imprisonment.
Closeup of the tomb of Mary, Queen of Scots in Westminster Abbey
Every relic was burned and every drop of blood washed away. Her little Skye terrier that had managed to hide under her skirts and would not leave his dead mistress's side was also washed, but refused thereafter to be fed and pined away and died as well.
Mary's body was then subjected to further humiliations. Her heart and organs were buried deep within the castle of Fotheringhay, but the exact spot was never revealed. The body was then embalmed and incarcerated in a heavy lead coffin which remained unburied in the castle until July 30, 1587, where it was taken, in the dead of night for fear of public protest, to Peterborough Cathedral. Eventually her son James had her remains reinterred in Westminster Abbey when he succeeded to the English throne.
Execution scene from the BBC series Elizabeth R (1971). Starring Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth I and Vivian Pickles as Mary, Queen of Scots.
