Mary, Queen of Scots

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Hello, Mary Queen of Scots had potential to be one of the most powerful rulers in Europe, yet she was also one of the most vulnerable. In France, when she was a teenage bride to their future king, she was seen as rightful heir to the thrones of England and Ireland, as well as Queen of Scotland and one day of France, which would have been an extraordinary union. She was widowed a year after the marriage, though, and as a...

Devout Catholic returning to an abrasively Protestant Scotland, she struggled to overcome rivalries in her own country. Eventually, after various battles, she fled to Protestant England, where she was implicated in plots to overthrow Elizabeth, and it was Elizabeth herself. who signed Mary's death warrant. With me to discuss the life and times of Mary, Queen of Scots, are David Forsyth, Principal Curator in the Scottish History and Archaeology Department at National Museums Scotland,

Anna Groundwater, Teaching Fellow in History at the University of Edinburgh, and John Guy, Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge. John Guy, Mary was born in 1542. Who were the most important people in her immediate family at that time?

Her father, James V of Scotland, died six days after her birth. So she was brought up in Scotland for the first five years by her mother, Mary of Guise, or Marie de Guise, James's second wife, who, of course, had been French princess. Those were very dangerous times because Henry VIII was seizing his opportunity to attempt to unite the crowns of England and Scotland by marrying off his son, Prince Edward, to Mary, even though she was a baby. When Mary was five, she was shipped out.

to the safety of France. And there at the court of the French king, Henry II, the most important family members around her and the most important influences on her life and the key players in Henry's court were Francis, Duke of Guise and Charles.

Cardinal of Coray and her uncles. How far did Henry VIII get in marrying up in this attempt, this rough wooing attempt to marry off his son to marry? Well, in effect, he sparked not quite a civil war in Scotland, but there was a pro-English party and there was a... In the end, the pro-French party was in the ascendant, but that took years to play out. Henry tried to impose a treaty on the Scots, which eventually the Scottish Parliament rejected.

I mean, this was not just diplomacy. I mean, it was effectively war. There were invasions and devastations of the lowland area of Scotland and of Edinburgh. So she went to France, not surprisingly, her mother was French from a grand French family, and what happened then?

Well, she's brought up in the relative luxury and comfort of France. She is still speaking Scottish regularly because four of her immediate attendants are in fact Scottish. So she's fluent in French, but she's also keeping her fluency in French. Scottish but the point about this is that certainly by 1550 her uncles the Francis Duke of Guise I mean one of the key war leaders in France and and her uncle one of the cleverest but also the slippery diplomats

in France. He's also Archbishop of Reims. They have a grand plan. A sort of master plan in which through Mary and by the idea, which of course was there from the moment Mary went to France, that one day she might marry the Dauphin of France, young Francis. The crowns of Scotland and France could be united, but also with the crown of England, there would be a triple monarchy because, of course, looking to looking to the future, Henry's son, Edward.

came the boy King Edward VI, was a Protestant, and of course the Catholics didn't recognise Protestants. And then in the future, of course, down the line, was Elizabeth Tudor, who was not only becoming a Protestant, but of course it was Anne Boleyn's daughter, and therefore the Catholics considered her to be a Protestant.

illegitimate. Is it this time she's getting a very good education Mary, an unusually good education? She's getting pretty much the same education as Elizabeth got in England. The difference is that whereas Elizabeth is actually rather bookish. Mary is clever. This idea that came from the 19th century, that she was somehow a sort of femme fatale, I mean, is just not supported by the evidence. She is almost as able intellectually as...

as Elizabeth, but she has different characteristics. She can reach out to people. She is much more generous than Elizabeth. The thing about Mary is that when she's talking to you... she persuades you that you're the only person in the whole world that really matters. And her physical appearance was very impressive. She's tall, so was her mother, Mary of Gies. All the Gies are tall. Elizabeth, of course, is relatively short, only five foot four. I mean, that was actually...

something later between them, there was always this issue of who was the better looking and who was the taller and who could play the Virginals better, who could speak languages better. But Mary has a very, very good education, but also Mary has a sense of fun. I mean, she likes to... dress up. One of her favourite things is sort of going into the kitchen and making Quinn's marmalade coating, that sort of thing. She likes riding. She's a cultured woman.

But the key thing about the time in France is this Franco-British policy because when... We move on, and Elizabeth becomes queen in 1558. The uncles do something that determines what is going to happen in terms of Anglo-Marian relations, really, for the rest of the story. which is they quarter the arms of England, France and Scotland on the, you know, essentially Mary and Francis' crockery.

and they invite the English ambassador, Nicholas Throckmorton, to dinner and serve him his dinner on a silver plate, you know, embossed with the arms of England. When Mary goes to chapel... The ushers cry, make way for the Queen of England. This is deliberately provocative to establish Mary's claim as the great-granddaughter of Henry VII, of course, to the throne. Exactly.

Anna Groundwater, she returned to Scotland after her French husband died. There was a year between them. He was a young lad and it was only a year of marriage. Did she have any other options? I think by that point, no, she didn't. How old is she now? She returns to Scotland when she's 18. She could have tried to hang on at the court in France, but... Her mother-in-law, Catherine de Medici, seriously didn't want her around. They didn't have a good relationship. Sorry. Why was that?

Well, I think what Catherine de' Medici didn't like was the de Guise power and influence that came when they had Mary there, as John says, as part of this sort of master plan. And whilst Mary was Dauphin and then Queen, of course, it gave the de Guises a lot of influence, a lot of power. But as soon as she lost that position, the de Guises...

were eclipsed really effectively because then the new king was Catherine de' Medici's son, Charles IX, over whom she was able to exert quite a bit of power, certainly, to begin with. So the only option was to get out, as you're saying? Yeah, she had to get married otherwise. She could have, I suppose, gone somewhere else in Europe. But I think really what's probably more important here is that she had a kingdom to run.

And that I suppose one of the questions is why wouldn't she have gone back to Scotland? She was Queen of Scotland. Scotland wasn't a bad country. It wasn't a bad place to be. Maybe it wasn't as... glittering a quarter's France, but she had been Queen of Scotland since virtually from birth. While she'd been in France, what connections had she kept with Scotland? We've been told she spoke the language every day, but what other connections did she have? Well, there's a...

frequent correspondence between her and her mother. Who's living in Edinburgh. Who's living in Edinburgh and around. And her mother, in fact, came out to see her in France in 5051 and bringing actually, I think, two of her half-brothers, her illegitimate half-brothers, also came out to the court. there was also a determined attempt to keep her informed of what was going on in Scotland so that she was aware of the situation in Scotland. And I think...

Because of that, she was very aware that there was a Protestant revolution going on in Scotland at the time. So she came back as a Catholic who hadn't been to the country for a very long time. probably scarcely remember it really, into an abrasively Protestant country, very demanding of its Protestantism, and she was a debout Roman Catholic. How did she manage to exercise any control at all?

Well, I think key here is that she did come back as the absolute acknowledged monarch. There hadn't been any attempt to challenge her right to rule. her legitimacy, and in fact her half-brother, her illegitimate half-brother, James Stewart, who becomes the Earl of Murray, who's a committed Protestant.

he comes out to ask her to come back. So, you know, she's being asked to come back. She's declared an interest in coming back. And this is a place where she can exert power. I think there's one other... point here is yes, there's been a Protestant revolution. The monarchy has been challenged successfully on the religion.

But that's not to say that Scotland didn't overnight become Protestant. There were seriously Protestant figures around, powerful Protestant figures around, but not everyone. You know, you don't change your faith overnight.

David Forsyth, so she's back there. She's a Catholic, though. The Mass is allowed to be said only in the chapel. Only in the Royal Chapel. Only in the Royal Chapel. How did she adapt? Did she adapt? She's got Protestant Scotland in front of her. She walks out of the chapel at Holyrood. What did she do there? Well, she can hear the Edinburgh mob being. The first day that Mass is said at Holyrood House, the Protestant mob are being at the door.

and the illegitimate half-brother James has to help to ensure that the mass goes ahead. She's very, I think, diplomatic. She shows great realpolitik in realising that this is a reformed country. But let's not forget, the Protestant Reformation is still at a very early stage. There are great pockets of Roman Catholicism. But Mary takes a practical approach. She proclaims that there'll be no change to the religion. She's...

She's been made quite clear to her from the half-brother that the Mass is only supposed to be said within the confines of Holyrood House in Edinburgh. When she tries to say it, have it said in Stirling, there's trouble there. So she respects, if you like, the faith of her subjects. She even starts to accommodate in a way that she'll attend Protestant baptisms, she'll listen to some Protestant preachers.

that she finds acceptable. So I think she treads a very careful, determined, realpolitik, practical line. She knows that, for Mary, the important thing is that she is the anointed Queen of Scots. She has that authority.

She goes so far as to put down a Catholic rebellion, doesn't she? She does indeed. So she puts down the rebellion in the north by the great Gordon in the north-east, the great Gordon family interest, one of the leading Scottish noble families. So she's showing great handedness in terms of her dealing with...

religion. But you're talking about it being embryonic, as it were, the Protestant thing. You're still quite violent. You have this man, John Knox, writing against the monstrous regiment of women. He sees her four or five times. The latest scholarship says the first two or three times were reasonably uh amicable and the fourth time he told her who she should marry and when she went out we are told she burst into tears which was rather unusual for her

That's correct. I mean, the conversations, for want of a better word, with Knox become more and more strident. The first one is about the monstrous regiment of women. It's about the political position of... Meaning women in power. Meaning women in power, yes. So Mary de Guise, Mary Tudor... Elizabeth, who obviously was on her side, on Moxie's side, and Mary herself. But they become more about religion. Knox trying to persuade her that she's not really a legitimate monarch through her religion.

I think the thing about Mary is that she's been born, she's been schooled in queenship, she holds the line. These floods of tears tend to come after Knox, Master Knox has left the room. But in terms of the leadership, the political leaders are our half-brother, James Stuart. I mean, the Scottish Protestant Reformation is a political movement.

Two things here, picking up from what you said. Firstly, she's very straightforward about her being Queen of Scots. When challenged by the great Catherine de' Medici, when she came to the nursery saying, why do you not bow to the Queen of France, this girl immediately replied, why do you not bow to the Queen of Scots?

So Mary has confidence, yes. From the beginning. Secondly, about people who advised her, and we're going to come to the English advisor in a minute, Liz, who are... let's say they were very impressive. They were devious, they were deceitful, they were all sorts, but they were very impressive. Did she have a like group of people advising her?

But what I would say, I think one thing that Mary felt, if she had people like Walsingham and Cecil around her in an immediate circle, she may have been more successful. There was a... The Scottish court politics fell into various cabals. There were people like Maitland of Lethington, known as the Machiavelli of Scotland, Meikle Mac. I think Mary felt that because of these... great regional interests in Scotland, the Lennoxies, the Gordons, the people around on the court, the half-brother.

that she really was not best served by some of these so-called advisors. And they had their own rivalries as well. And they had the disputatious nature of early modern Scottish politics. So she's there, this young girl. still. Her husband has died, her mother has died, her favourite uncle who really looked after her has died. That's right. She's back in this sort of foreign country which is her own. John Galley Did she have really dangerous enemies, and who were they? Well, it isn't Elizabeth.

I mean, this is the common... Not at this stage. Not at this stage. This is a common assumption. This is a common assumption that it is. But, of course, at this early stage, both Elizabeth and Mary, as it might whimsically be said, are fully paid-up members of the...

the Women Monarchs Trade Union. More importantly than that, I mean, not more importantly, you know what you're talking about, but they were both, Elizabeth, both of them were very well aware at the time that they had been anointed, divinely anointed. to be in a position they were, and this mattered to them more than anything else. And that is the bond, which is a very serious bond, and it played a part right the way through.

Well, this is exactly right, because then divine right kingship meant exactly what it said. But, of course, this was not so for... William Cecil, Elizabeth's chief minister. And the most important single fact to know about the early Elizabethan regime is that for Cecil, Elizabeth was Protestant, but not Protestant enough. And the difference in their, if you like, their intellectual DNA.

is that both Mary and Elizabeth believe that the first thing that matters when you're talking about, say, the succession to the throne is dynastic rite, is heredity, and not religion, whereas Cecil... believes that there should be some sort of religious test to make sure... I mean, Cecil and Knox are on the same wavelength here. They believe that an idolatrous ruler, which effectively means a Catholic ruler...

and in particular a Catholic idolatrous, should never be the Queen. And what Cecil wants to do from the beginning is to exclude Mary from the succession using Parliament, which, of course, Elizabeth finds absolutely repulsive. So her greatest enemies outside Scotland is Cecil Lord Burley, Queen Elizabeth's advisor over many, many years, who runs things. Sometimes she's very angry that he does things without her authority, but he's there all the time. He is against her from the start.

plots against her on the start, he undermines her, sets up traps and schemes and so on. So he's out there after her. Who was on her side on a groundwater? She married Darnley. Why did she marry him? I think Darnley was... Who was it to start with? Okay, so Henry Darnley was a grandson of Margaret Tudor, who had married James IV of Scotland. And thus he was the same.

degree of relation to Mary Tudor as Mary was herself. So they were both grandchildren of Margaret Tudor, both grandchildren, great-grandchildren of Henry VII. He had in his own right a claim to the English throne as well. And he was also relatively ambivalent around his religion, so he could be... quite Catholic, he could also be Protestant when he needed to be. How and why did she pick him out? Was he picked out for her or did she see him or did he come and woo her? What happened?

It wasn't, yes. To start with, a whole load of other people were offered or suggested, none of whom really were very suitable. So there was the Don Carlos of Spain. Philip II's son, who became mad, and then also the Earl of Arran in Scotland, who also became mad. So not a great choice, really. There really wasn't a great choice out there. And the other problem is that you marry a foreigner.

you get into that situation that Mary Tudor had with Philip II of Spain, that you've got a foreigner who could potentially make a claim to that throne. So how did she get Darnley? So, Darnley, I think... Or vice versa. I don't know, what do you think? Elizabeth slipped up there a bit and let him go. I've got two hands going up there. Yeah, sorry. David, you come in. Elizabeth, Elizabeth.

lets Darnley travel to Scotland and then realises a mistake. Darnley, of course, is a born Englishman, so this also adds to the genealogical claim to the throne. It's also partly on the rebound because one of the silliest things, one of the very few silly things Elizabeth ever did

was to try to foist Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, her own favourite. While we think we're sort of almost proved lover. Yeah, exactly. And Elizabeth's idea was that they would all live together in a ménage à trois in the south of England. I mean, this was, you know, and I mean, to Mary, that was, you know, a red... rag to a ball. But Darnley... Actually, let's get this straight because I think listeners are going to be rather surprised at this. Elizabeth proposed...

to her cousin, that they lived together in the south of England with Elizabeth's lover, whom she made an earl, so he could be earl enough to marry her cousin. And what a wheeze. Absolutely. But the thing about Darnley was that he was one of these very, very smooth young men who knew how to behave until the ring was on the finger. The trouble starts once the ring's on the finger. Right?

And also Darnley is one of the few men that can look Mary in the eye, because he's long of leg, as Mary describes him. She's 5'11". He's a tall man, and he was certainly fanciful. But we are told he arrives there with syphilis, which opens up questions for the future James. We've got to leave that alone, unfortunately. Anyway, they get married.

And he drinks a lot and he's soon a sot, a drunken sot. Womanizes. And why was he murdered? And who did it? That's up to you, David. That's a six billion dollar question. Well, he's Catholic, normally. The Scottish advisers round Mary do not like Darnley. He's inveigled into the whole Ritzio. Who's Ritzio?

Well, you tell us who Rizzio was. Rizzio was a fine bass singer. He was from the Savoy court. That's a funny way to introduce him. He was our French secretary and became very close to Mary. Mary spent a lot of time with him. And, of course, the so-called advisors or plotters around Mary use Ritzio to really fire up Darnley and, say, whisper all sorts of...

you know, crude innuendo about what the relationship between Mary and Rizzio might be. And Rizzio was murdered and one of the murders was Darnley. Darnley's implicated in the plot. And the root of the problem is that once Darnley and Mary are married...

Darnley wants to be king of Scotland. The thing about the 16th century is that rank does not trump gender. Even the person who was attempting to write a book defending Elizabeth as Queen of England said that a woman may rule as a magistrate but must obey as a wife. And Mary, one of Mary's mistakes.

is that before the wedding she tells Darnley she will make him king of Scotland but after the wedding she realises what he's really like and refuses and after that he plots against her to attempt to get the crown matrimonial Crown matrimonial is that he gets to be king. And, I mean, to cut to the quick, this leads to great turbulence in Scotland. In the process of that turbulence, Mary's secretary gets murdered.

The people who've done that are expelled from the country. And, of course, in London, William Cecil wants to get those people back because those people are his Scottish allies. They're all Protestant. He wants to work with them. And so a situation is reached in which Darnley begins to plot against Mary in a way that looks like he will actually even attempt to depose her.

Hold on, it's getting very overpopulated. Just a second. Anna here. So, let's keep it clear. She's married, Darnley. They've had this child, James, who becomes later James. Crucially. Crucially, right.

Can you tell me, did that change the balance of power in Mary's favour, crucially? What effect did that have? Well, it immediately gave her that air that's your primary duty as Queen to provide. And it certainly... was probably one of the highest points of her life, was having had this son, the Longfall Son and Air, she has a baptism ceremony at... Stirling Castle which was a splendiferous affair.

And it really showed Mary at her best the majesty of monarchy, the splendour of the court. It was very impressive. People heard about it abroad. And that really was her high point. But at that point, crucially, Darnley goes, oh, I'm not going to bother. I'm not coming to the baptism. So this was very problematic because that's the sort of thing you do if you were saying.

this child isn't mine. So it was potentially very, very harmful, extremely disloyal. And also he was writing letters out of the country at this point to get support from the Pope or whoever against Mary. She had the child soon after she met. He was the child, his. David? No. But it's certainly made his hand. We know that really, honestly, that wasn't the question I asked. Come on, face up. Was it his? I just turned to me down and saying it might not have been his child. What's the odds there?

Oh, I think it was... I think this is James. He's only all Stuart. OK, so let's... So let's go for the murder of Darnley. He is murdered, and then what? Would you like to take that look? Well, I think the thing about the murder is the whole... Kirkefield explosion. I mean, the body is found. So Darnley is enticed back to Edinburgh. He's enticed back to Edinburgh with Mary. He's staying in lodgings in an area of the sort of upscale area of the city called Kirkefield near the National Museum.

museum is now and he there's a huge explosion a gunpowder plot the gunpowder plot I feel like a Scottish gunpowder plot that the lodgings that he's in are completely destroyed But the body of Danley and the night servant are found in the orchard, unharmed. Well, not unharmed, he's dead, obviously, but unsinged from any explosion. There are no marks on his body. So it's that, it's the whole nature of that event.

I mean, the event is triggered because at the baptism, the English ambassador who's been put there by Cecil, who's one of his closest allies. So Cecil's around everywhere. Yeah, he's everywhere. The subject of this story, the tentacles of Cecil. He's partly controlling these events.

The Earl of Bedford, who's the ambassador put there by Cecil, gets Mary, who is too generous on this occasion, to pardon the people who'd murdered Darnley and let them back into England. And the key player here is the Earl of Morton. who comes back determined to murder Darnley for betraying their bond, essentially their... They're going to murder it. Exactly. So this is a revenge killing.

But, of course, the question is... I mean, my view of this... The question is, was she part of it? Yeah, this is the question. And what's your answer to that? And my answer to that is that she was not part of it. But this doesn't mean that she was a wimp. Donnelly had by this time become totally unmanageable and uncontrollable. And my belief... In what way? Because most seriously, he was threatening to depose Mary and rule in the name of Prince James.

support this you know by if necessary by by funding and if necessary military support from the European Catholic powers so everyone agreed all the people around Mary agreed that something had to be done about this Now in order to cope with this, my reading of the sources is that Mary had a plan.

And it was to go and Darnley, after he'd finished sulking after the baptism, because he's now got more advanced syphilis, has gone off to his sort of, if you like, ancestral estates near Glasgow. She goes to fetch him back. My belief is that she was going to bring him to Christ.

Craig Miller Castle, just outside Edinburgh, three miles outside of it and keep him locked up there if necessary for the rest of his life. However, the people around her... who, she's got enemies inside Scotland, believe that they not only want to kill Darley, they want to destabilise. Mary. And, I mean, if you're going to kill Darnley and you want it to go unobserved, you don't do it in a gunpowder plot in the middle of Edinburgh. Anna, can you take us on from that? So Darnley is murdered.

How does that affect Mary? Let's focus again on Mary because there's lots of people telling her, which is right and proper. So how does that affect her? He's been murdered. Do a lot of people think she's implicated? Do people think it's a good thing, a bad thing, a what thing? What's going on? OK, so in Edinburgh, very quickly after Darnley's murder, placards appear which show...

pictures of Mary as... What would appear, sorry? Placards. Placards, sorry. Posters of Mary as a mermaid, which was... a person of ill repute. A prostitute? Yeah. And then underneath, a picture of the hare, which was the crest of the Earl of Bothwell, who was also accused of...

who was certainly part of the murder of Darling. Bothwell's just come on the scene. Can you give us two or three sentences about Bothwell? Bothwell is a Protestant. He's a hard man from the borders. He's got quite a sizeable armed following, like a lot of these other earls do. And he is the one person that has come back in support of Mary. and also indeed in support of her mother at one point.

So he's someone with a lot of military power, someone that she trusts. He's independently rich. All those are Protestant, he supports her, and he supports France as well. So he's an unusual character. He's not keen on the English, in a way.

You know, to be a Protestant and not to be keen on the English is almost, you know, the opposite to the normal way of doing things. Yeah, I mean, he's a strange amalgam. I mean, he is a bit of a borders hard man, but he's been at the court in France. He's cult. Richard, if you look at the beautiful little miniature noil that the Scottish National Portrait Gallery has, you know, he looks very much...

regal or part of the courtly world. But I think he's got an armband. He's a regional magnate. And what happens that she marries him? Sorry, John, you want to come in? He's been in alliance with this Morton character, but after the murder, of course, there's a falling out, if you like, among the thieves.

And the Earl of Bothwell, you know, who sees an opportunity here, thinks that now that Mary is in this terrible crisis, I mean, after all, I mean, her husband has been murdered in a gunpowder plot. The reverberations of this are all over Europe, you know, where, of course...

Catholic Europe this is seen as a regicide even Elizabeth thinks that it's a regicide because after all Darnley is her cousin too so Bothwell steps onto the stage and says to Mary I can be your protector and in this position of emotional crisis and political crisis for she accepts and then Bothwell does in a way what all the men do at this time he demands marriage as the price of protection and then it all goes wrong then it all happens again.

How does it all go wrong, Anna? Well, she marries him. Absolute disaster. Because in doing so, she's threatening the power of all those other powerful Scottish nobles because he's there. right by her side and has got that claim then to the throne, to power. And he thus, as John's saying, alienates, manages to alienate all these people that he has actually been in a bond with up until then.

Can I ask an obvious, very obvious question here? Was being a woman particularly difficult? Her advisers weren't as good as Elizabeth's advisers by a long chalk, nor as consistent, and nobody in the world was as implacable as Cecil. Putting that to a side. Was just being a woman, is it a soft question or what do you say? Well, I certainly think that we should look at Mary's rule as Mary as a ruler rather than a female ruler to start with. You know, was she an effective ruler?

And my answer to that would be she was variable because she was human. Sometimes she got it right, sometimes she got it disastrously wrong. But being a female ruler definitely did come with a few... particularly because you've got to get married. And as John was saying, you know, you're meant to obey your husband in this time. And that left her vulnerable either. She marries someone in Scotland.

She gets a whole load of jealous Scottish nobles. She marries a foreigner. She gets people worried about that. So the whole question of her marriage leaves her vulnerable and leaves her open to these things where you get someone like... Darnley, someone like Bothwell, who want more than just marriage. They want power. Before we take her, before she goes to England, David, there's a...

phase in her life where she gets on a horse and goes into battle and wins things, doesn't she? Until finally she doesn't. But let's talk about winning, first of all. Well, she does. This is one of the dynamic natures of Mary. She does lead troops into battle, I don't think. There are many other Renaissance queens that do that. She's very visible.

After her various interventions when she's been in imprisonment and captivity, it is surprising just, again, how many men she can put in the field. So despite this religious disparity, she maintains elements of support and popularity.

And she wins early on with that matter, doesn't she? She does, yeah. She's quite effective. She's got good military men with her, but she does have military success. And, of course, Bothwell had supported her at that time. He'd come back to support her at that moment. I mean, she can be...

incredibly decisive and the other thing about Mary is that she is a bit of a risk taker unlike Elizabeth of course it always plays for time I mean in a crisis Mary will say I've got to do something Elizabeth will say I've got to do absolutely nothing so yes she gets on a horse with a steel cap and a

and a gun in a holster and she rides and she throws these people out of Scotland. But look, Rizzio's been murdered, Darlene's been murdered. That's too much for one woman in this world in which you are in a vice because if you marry...

you're in peril from an ambitious husband, and if you don't marry, you're in a dynastic cul-de-sac because you can't have an heir. And then she lost one big battle. Was it Pinky? Where she lost the battle, David. And then she fled. She made what all of you call... A major miscalculation by fleeing to Carlisle Castle, across the border, across the Solway into England. Well, I think that...

Anna mentioned earlier in the programme about the co-sanguinity between Mary and Elizabeth. She throws herself on her cousin, her sister, the Queen, because of that belief that they're both anointed queens. Elizabeth is not going to harm her. How old is she at this time? Sorry, Mary. She's in her 20s for this time because this is the end of the... 20s. Yeah, 25. So this is the end of the personal win. So she loses that battle. Why did she decide that was the only option?

That was a mistake. It was a mistake. I think this is the biggest mistake. I mean, if she told up in Scotland... So she's got these options. She's gone back. She's toughed it out here, there. She's placed John Knox. She's placed all the others. Then she decides to go across the subway to Carla.

advised her why did she decide to do it john you're waving your hand well she loses the battle and then she's put she's imprisoned in lock leverman for a year and she escapes from Lock Leaven and then she raises her supporters because by this time her enemies have become so unpopular in Scotland she can actually raise a party but she actually loses the battle and then she flees.

No one is advising her. She decides to do that exactly off her own back because she believes that this relationship woman to woman with Elizabeth is such that if she can only meet Elizabeth and talk to her sister queen, as she calls her, all this will go away.

Can you briskly tell us the part that Casket Letters played? I want to get it in, but let's be short. Of course. Once Mary is in England, the thing that the Earl of Murray, who of course by now is the regent, and of course Cecil wants, is that Elizabeth will recognise Murray as the regent in Scotland ruling in the name of Prince James.

And to try and achieve that, the claim is made that eight letters, allegedly from Mary to Bothwell, were found in a silver box at Holyrood after she was taken to Lockleaven. And those letters... prove that first of all Mary was complicity in Darnley's murder and secondly that she was an adulterous relationship with Bothwell. before Darnley was dead. Now, there are these eight letters. I examined them at huge length in 2004.

Three are manifestly letters to Darnley while their relationship was breaking up. Three are of different versions of one letter to Bothwell that had been antedated by several weeks to make it look incriminating. There's a letter that Mary did... right but not at the date or the time that it's said to be and there's a long letter called the long Glasgow letter which on which the jury is still out but in my opinion 15 to 1800 words are genuine but 1000 to 1200 words are

forgeries so it was basically she was set up again wasn't she uh right there was other things going on in europe that made her positions can you skim through those and then we can get back to her in carlisle castle yeah um The problem that Mary faced... is that on the continent you have the beginning of the counter-reformation happening. Catholics hitting back, yeah. Catholics hitting back at all these Protestant reformations going on. In France, you...

got it descending into the French wars of religion. So where she might have perhaps hoped for some support from the de Guises, they are suddenly embroiled in an ineffectively religious civil war. In the Netherlands, the Dutch are revolting and Philip II is sending in his forces to try and put down what was effectively to become a Protestant rebellion there. quite start like that. And then you've got...

Philip II obviously wanting to control his land. Sorry, I should make that clear. He owns effectively the Netherlands, the low countries at this point. So they're rebelling against his rule.

committed Catholic as well. So the Catholics are on the rampage. The Catholics are on the rampage. And the Protestants are worried because it's a big rampage and Spain is very powerful and they've got lots of fleets, lots of soldiers, lots of money. And also Elizabeth doesn't want to annoy Philip II at that point either. No. Is there any way, Dave Forsyth, in which her having the sun...

She's got the son. Insurance policy. She's just, she's in Carl. I keep mentioning Carl, I guess. I wonder why. Well, no, no, not really. It's just because she's there. And I want to talk a bit more about it, if you don't mind. No. But is any person around her son or sunset? look, this is the mother of our future king. She can't be over there. We want her back here. Did that go on at all? Well, I mean, the main man round, the son, of course, is Buchanan. Formerly...

One of Mary's advisors, the man who wrote... A brutal teacher. He used to be a little boy. Whether he deserved it or not, he got a sound beating. And, of course, James is brought up or schooled by this man who tells him that his mother is a murderess and an adulteress. And this really wide...

James has a very difficult relationship with his mother. Yeah, but that isn't the question I'm asking. Weren't there people there when she left saying, hold on, she's the mother of a future king, she is still Queen of Scots, let's bring her back? across the Solway and try to make do with it, make it work. Anna?

There's a civil war going on in Scotland. It's not a severe civil war, but there is civil war. It's called the Marian Wars. There was a significant number of people who did still support Mary. Queen's man. But the problem was they didn't own the body of the prince, the king himself. I've just seen how little time we've got left. I'm in a shock.

You're going to have to be very fast, John. She's in England for 19 years, imprisoned. trying to make deals with Elizabeth, almost again and again making Elizabeth willing, she's willing, again and again Cecil undermines it. Can you give me a rather extended view of that summary? Yeah, I mean, that's the basic outline. And at first, Mary is, it's almost like a sort of court in exile. She's a cuckoo in Elizabeth's nest.

But, of course, there's a big rebellion in England in 1569 in the northern rising, you know, 6,000 rebels. It's not just the rebellion that's put down. It's put down extraordinarily brutally. But 60 of those rebels escape to the continent and become, if you like, Mary's supporters on the continent. One of the aims of the rebels was to restore the mass, restore Catholicism and put Mary. on the throne. But I personally do not believe that Mary was a great threat to Elizabeth.

until the 1580s, at which point the international situation, which Anna's been describing, has reached boiling point. And at that point, of course, it isn't just that... Catholics want her on the throne. It's that she is rejected by her own son. In 1581, Mary puts forward a proposal that she should rule on a co-ruler basis with James. James rats on her and allies with Elizabeth. Very briefly. Let's forget the Rodolphe papers. The Babington plant...

Babington wrote her a letter saying, will you join the conspiracy? She answered the letter. Walsingham then falsified the letter by adding other names. And he, like Cecil, set her up. And that with the Babington plot could not, it at the time said, be denied.

and Elizabeth, I'm told you, had no alternative but to pronounce her guilty, and she was executed. I mean, that was the intention of Walsingham and Cecil in setting her up, was that it would force Elizabeth... Elizabeth's hand finally to sign that death warrant. But I think James helped to sign that death warrant too by signing an Anglo-Scottish alliance in 1586. Her son, which made no reference to Mary at all.

So she was left friendless. Well, not all that old. She's still very attractive. He designed the main prize. He designed the throne on the throne. What he had to do. And Elizabeth wrung her hands. And then it's all a bit sleight of hand, isn't it, though? Signing that letter. She should have put the letter in the bin. No, we've got to stop. It's awful. We've got to stop.

Shiller got it right. John, we've got to stop. Anna Groundwater, John Guy, David Forsyth. Thank you very much. Next week we'll be talking about parasitism. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. This is the extra, really, which the podcast persons get. Hello, podcast persons. And I usually say, what do we miss out? And then I sit back.

So it's up to you. Lots. Thank you so much. What did I miss out? Did we miss anything out that was critical? I'd like to say one particular thing, which is about the nature of Scottish government. I think there are two sort of slightly opposing views here of it. So when she came back, was she faced with, I think you've called it tribal politics.

which she really was not going to ever be able to come? Or was it that she came back to a situation which, if she had asserted her authority consistently, that she would have been able to take? much more control than she did. And I think one of the things that she didn't do was to pack the Privy Council with her supporters. If she had done that... Why didn't she do that?

To me, this is extraordinary, and I don't understand why she didn't pack the Privy Council in Scotland with her supporters. And if she had... I think it might have been a different story. Religion aside, it may have been a different story. Because I think with the religious thing, she was happy to tread that line. And even taking criticism from...

Catholic monarchs from the papacy, you're not doing much to sort out these heretics in your kingdom. So that, I think, again, shows this real politics. So it's always in a way, if she's... Is that because she is at her again? I'm just a bit obsessed with the advisors. Yeah, it's difficult to do. I mean, when she comes back...

Essentially, these advisers, of whom two have been to see her in France to try and make terms beforehand, they expect her, in a sense, to fail and the whole thing to be a catastrophe, which, of course, for James Stewart, Earl of Murray, could be rather a good thing.

legitimate son of James V. He's the Edmund in King Lear. He thinks he really should actually be the king. But of course, when Mary comes back, because of this politic approach that she takes, which David's... described you know she's doing extremely well and by the end of the first year Maitland of Lettington is saying blimey

I mean, she's so good. If anything's amiss, the fault lies in ourselves. And I think that she was so successful until she married Darlene. The problem is, I mean, for me, the problem is if you're a woman monarch in the 16th century, you're stuffed.

because if you marry, the bloke will try and take over, and if you don't, you're in this dynastic cul-de-sac, and then everybody's wondering about the future and what's going to happen. But don't you think if Darnley had been a better character, there was a chance there?

Well, I had this debate with Antonia Fraser in Westminster Abbey about if Elizabeth had married, you know, Robert Dudley. And, you know, Antonia's view was, you know, yeah, that could have worked because, you know, Dudley would have behaved. And I mean, my reaction was, no, the guy was the Popping J, you know.

it would have gone exactly the same way. And, you know, one reason why Elizabeth didn't marry, in my opinion, was because she'd sussed this out as an adolescent, with all the Tom Seymour business, and she'd sussed it out with the struggle that she'd got to the throne. And then she saw it again beginning to unfold in her own reign, and particularly with Mary. Why am I going to... I'm not going to go down that road. But somehow I think if Darnley had been a more reliable character...

The system of government was there for her to take the reins of. The structure was there. The structure was there. The relationships were there. She just had to, Jenny Wilmond always says, rise above faction and assert her authority. And I'm very much in agreement with that. And that's what she ultimately failed to do.

But a divisively difficult mission. So she's in Carlisle Castle, and I didn't manage to get in. No, I saw him. I was born in Carlisle. Yeah, I know you were. She's in Carlisle Castle, and she just...

There's all sorts of places in Cumberland called Weary Hall and all that, where she's supposed to have stayed. She should have meandered through the north of England. She meandered through the north of England, you know, continually coming, you know, coming further south to come in more to the sort of the fulcrum of...

Cecil. I mean, the Carlyle thing is interesting because she's convinced because of this, her cousin, her fellow, her sister, the anointed queen, that she's a guest. There's this sort of slow realisation that she's not a guest.

But again, this is Cecil, because, I mean, the minute she's at Carlisle, Cecil sends, you know, Francis Knowles up. I mean, essentially, the police go up to sort of hem her in, and she's very closely, she's closely guarded. The big seal, doesn't it? And of course... And Elizabeth... at this point i mean the sort of the paradox of this scenario is that at this moment elizabeth you know

probably was prepared to meet her and talk about it woman to woman. But Cecil blocks it, just as in 1562, when a meeting actually was arranged and it was all going to happen. Cecil had written the equivalent of the press communique.

cancelling the meeting two weeks before anything had happened to actually justify the meeting being cancelled. He didn't want them to get together. He whipped up the Huguenot. He didn't want that. And there was always... Sorry, I'm being a bore, but how long was she in colour? Was it a year or was it months? No, no, months. Then she's gradually brought down to Tutbury and then she's put with the Earl of Shrewsbury and there's Derbyshire being at the county where you're first.

You're furthest from the coast at any point. Shrewsbury Castle, actually. Shrewsbury Castle, yeah. But there was the opportunity still, I think, in 69 for her to have negotiated a settlement whereby she could have been restored. to the Scottish throne, but Cecil made sure that that didn't happen. He's the nemesis. He's the nemesis. And even Elizabeth knew.

I mean, Elizabeth wouldn't give a decision at the meeting, or the commission as it's called, which examined the casket letters, because basically she knew they were dodgy and the thing was just left in abeyance. I mean, some historians say...

it's like the sort of Scottish verdict of not proven, but actually it's just, you know, shut the whole thing down. And everyone was sworn to secrecy. And then blow me, you know, after, you know, the Rodolfi plot, which we didn't talk about on air, but after the first of these, you know, more...

specific plots. What does Cecil do? He tries to get Mary executed, and shortly before the summoning of the 1572 Parliament, in which he and his people try to get Mary executed, he publishes the casket letters in phony Scots, anonymous... pretends it was done by the Scots. Even Buchanan, you know, writes in and says, hang on, you know, not me, Garth, you know, there's nothing to do with me. I mean, this guy is a skilled political operator, you know, of the moment.

where Mary was concerned, I mean, the most sort of messianic. I didn't realise, I mean, I read that sort of stuff at university and before that at school. you've got a little bit about it. I like that. There was recognitions all the way, but that was a while ago. I didn't realise he'd kind of stalked us since the beginning of the 15th century. John mentioned the army. In 1559, in August 1559, at the height of the revolt of the Protestant Lords in Scotland.

He wrote a sort of master plan saying that if Mary, as an absentee ruler at that point, doesn't get rid of idolatry in Scotland, doesn't get rid of French influence, then it pleases Almighty God to depose her. You know, he could read them. He could read the mind. This is absolutely extraordinary. And at the moment when she is forced to abdicate at Lock Leaven...

Elizabeth is absolutely horrified because she thinks that the abdication of a divine right monarch is worse than whoever killed Lord Darnley. She gives Nicholas Throckmorton, who's the ambassador she sends up, the sort of Henry Kissinger type envoy she sends up to try and sort of get this sort of... get her out of jail, get her restored of Queen of Scotland, get her her money back.

Cecil gives Throckmorton contrary instructions keep her in don't let her out if she does get out you know she you know she's to absolutely have no money and Scotland's got to be ruled by a council of 24 nobles led by Murray it destroys Throckmorton's career but at the end of instructions as a private sort of doodle at the end and in the draft of them this is my my eureka moment in the National Archives Cecil writes a failure inter empty

per Joash Reagan. Athalia was a saturnated so that Joash could be king. And this is pure knocks out of the first glass of the trumpet. Athalia, like Jezebel, the idolatrous rulers of Israel who were deposed in favor. of a regency of a young boy with a council of nobles. Bingo. Why did he finish his career? Because he obeyed the wrong person? Because you couldn't cope with this. You couldn't satisfy them both. He couldn't serve two masters or one master or one mistress. John, how much...

Do you think that Cecil had that sort of... almost British, well, certainly an Anglo-Scottish vision, a Protestant Anglo-Scottish. I mean, he talks about one monarchy in the 1560s. And the other thing he says is... that religion is the biggest band that will bring us together and that was Protestant. He's one of the very first people to use this language in Edward VI reign and it's bound by religion and what I think his master plan...

was for a Protestant British Isles. But of course, the problem for the Scots was it was to be done in Cecil's view on the basis of English superiority. And that the Scots could never accept. Except if it had been done on the basis of equality, then this could well... It could as well have happened.

work in inverted commas in 1603 because there was that the migration north to south of James but there's a 40 year delay because in order for it to work you have to get rid of Elizabeth because it's the one thing that she wants this is absolute absolutely abhorrent to her. I think we've got a producer pawing the ground outside the door to make you an offer you I really can't refuse. Oh dear. You've got enough now, yeah? I'd love coffee. Oh, I'd love a coffee, Simon. Yes, please.

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