0:00:05 > 0:00:10In her last sickness, with the sense of her end coming on fast,
0:00:10 > 0:00:14Elizabeth the First had the ring she had worn since her coronation
0:00:14 > 0:00:17filed away from the royal finger.
0:00:17 > 0:00:21It was a tricky operation, for the skin had grown in over the gold,
0:00:21 > 0:00:25but then it was supposed to be a tight fit.
0:00:25 > 0:00:33This was, in a way, her wedding band put on when she had joined herself to England 45 years earlier.
0:00:33 > 0:00:37Now, it seemed, the two were to be put asunder.
0:00:38 > 0:00:42# Since first I saw your face
0:00:42 > 0:00:46# I resolved to honour and renown ye... #
0:00:46 > 0:00:50She was supposed to be immortal, of course.
0:00:50 > 0:00:54The odd thing was that, despite the garish auburn fright wig,
0:00:54 > 0:00:57the white face mask and the wrinkled bosom,
0:00:57 > 0:01:01diplomats who saw her at court and who had no reason to be gallant,
0:01:01 > 0:01:07swore they could still see the young woman no more than 20 years of age.
0:01:07 > 0:01:14# What I that loved and you that liked Shall we begin to wrangle...? #
0:01:14 > 0:01:18It doesn't do to be too starry-eyed about the Virgin Queen.
0:01:18 > 0:01:24Elizabeth the First was only too obviously made of flesh and blood.
0:01:24 > 0:01:29She was vain, spiteful, arrogant, she was frequently unjust
0:01:29 > 0:01:33and she was often maddeningly indecisive.
0:01:33 > 0:01:39But she was also brave, shockingly clever, an eyeful to look at
0:01:39 > 0:01:43and, on occasions, she was genuinely wise.
0:01:43 > 0:01:47In other words, she had all the qualities it took
0:01:47 > 0:01:51to make the genius politician she undoubtedly was.
0:01:55 > 0:02:01A few feet away from Elizabeth's tomb in Westminster Abbey lies the body of another woman -
0:02:01 > 0:02:09Mary Queen of Scots, the woman who had haunted and fascinated Elizabeth for so much of her life.
0:02:09 > 0:02:14No virgin, that's for sure. No politician either.
0:02:14 > 0:02:18A complete disaster as a ruler, you would have to say,
0:02:18 > 0:02:23but Mary managed something that eluded Elizabeth - she reproduced.
0:02:24 > 0:02:28This is the story of two queens and more importantly, two women,
0:02:28 > 0:02:32one a politician, the other a mother,
0:02:32 > 0:02:38and it's the story of a painful birth, the union of England and Scotland - the birth of Britain.
0:03:22 > 0:03:27A cherished tradition has it that when Elizabeth heard the news
0:03:27 > 0:03:32that she was to become queen, on November the 17th 1558,
0:03:32 > 0:03:37she was seated beneath an ancient oak tree. Her first words were from Psalm 118 -
0:03:37 > 0:03:42"a domino factum est mirabilae in oculis nostris..."
0:03:42 > 0:03:47"This is the Lord's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes."
0:03:48 > 0:03:54She was right, it WAS marvellous, in fact it was little short of being a miracle
0:03:54 > 0:03:57that she had made it to that day alive.
0:03:57 > 0:04:02Tudor royal politics were a bloody affair, especially for Tudor women.
0:04:07 > 0:04:12She had been only two when her mother, Anne Boleyn, had gone to the scaffold,
0:04:12 > 0:04:16her sin - in Henry's mind - being her failure to produce a son.
0:04:16 > 0:04:21It must have been a body possessed by others, by the devil,
0:04:21 > 0:04:25an unclean piece of flesh, it had to be cut away.
0:04:29 > 0:04:33So Elizabeth would never be free from suspicion.
0:04:33 > 0:04:37Out of her dark Boleyn eyes, she watched herself being watched.
0:04:38 > 0:04:45Inevitably, there were times when her guard was down. She was barely a teenager when trouble first struck.
0:04:45 > 0:04:51She was living with her guardian, Katherine Parr, Henry VIII's widow,
0:04:51 > 0:04:57when Parr's new husband, Thomas Seymour, started paying playful visits to her bedroom.
0:04:58 > 0:05:01When Katherine Parr died,
0:05:01 > 0:05:07a rumour started circulating that Seymour had his sights set on marrying Elizabeth.
0:05:07 > 0:05:11To even THINK of such a thing was treason.
0:05:11 > 0:05:17Even worse, some wagging tongues said that Elizabeth was pregnant with Seymour's child.
0:05:17 > 0:05:24It took all of Elizabeth's already extraordinary composure and self-confidence
0:05:24 > 0:05:28to persuade Lord Protector Somerset that she was innocent.
0:05:28 > 0:05:35"My Lord, there goeth rumours abroad, which be greatly against my honour and honesty, which be these -
0:05:35 > 0:05:41"that I am in the Tower and with child by my Lord Admiral. These are shameful slanders.
0:05:41 > 0:05:47"I most heartily desire, your Lordship, that I may come to the court and show myself there as I am.
0:05:47 > 0:05:52"Your assured friend to my little power, Elizabeth."
0:05:54 > 0:06:02She was, remember, just 14, but there was already the fortitude and clarity and the courage.
0:06:02 > 0:06:07It was just as well, for she'd need these qualities five years later
0:06:07 > 0:06:12when facing the most traumatic and dangerous crisis of her entire life.
0:06:14 > 0:06:18When her Catholic half-sister, Mary, came to the throne,
0:06:18 > 0:06:22Elizabeth found herself in even deeper trouble.
0:06:22 > 0:06:29In fact, she found herself in the Tower when a Protestant plot to get rid of Mary backfired.
0:06:29 > 0:06:33Elizabeth managed to talk herself out of being charged with treason,
0:06:33 > 0:06:36but she remained under close surveillance.
0:06:36 > 0:06:43Danger only turned to deliverance five years later, when Queen Mary died childless.
0:06:44 > 0:06:48So here she was, Elizabeth, under the oak,
0:06:48 > 0:06:51about to be the Protestant Queen.
0:06:51 > 0:06:57She had survived, just, but she must have been full of dark knowledge and experience
0:06:57 > 0:07:01about how difficult it was all going to be.
0:07:01 > 0:07:06Her mother had been killed for producing just a daughter and a stillborn,
0:07:06 > 0:07:12and her sister Mary's womb had produced nothing but the tumour that had killed her.
0:07:12 > 0:07:16So, however dazzling Elizabeth looked, however clever she was,
0:07:16 > 0:07:22she has got to have known how rough the road was going to be for a ruler of the wrong sex.
0:07:31 > 0:07:36The 25-year-old Elizabeth came into an inheritance of high hopes
0:07:36 > 0:07:40and deep anxieties.
0:07:40 > 0:07:45The celebrations at her coronation were carefully designed
0:07:45 > 0:07:49to show off the young queen as the paragon of virtue.
0:07:49 > 0:07:53This charade of piety, though, was hardly enough to compensate
0:07:53 > 0:07:58for the misfortune of having another woman on the throne.
0:07:58 > 0:08:04All the same, the sceptics must have been reassured by Elizabeth's precocious self-possession,
0:08:04 > 0:08:10the air of controlled energy she exuded in public right from the start.
0:08:10 > 0:08:16You might suppose that her first appearances at the council would have been an ordeal,
0:08:16 > 0:08:20but what the councillors saw was not some girlish ingenue,
0:08:20 > 0:08:25but someone who seemed full, it was said, of MANLY authority.
0:08:27 > 0:08:33Elizabeth did all the things women in 16th century England weren't supposed to do.
0:08:33 > 0:08:37She looked men in the eye and she spoke out of turn.
0:08:37 > 0:08:42She had been schooled to it by her tutor, Roger Ascombe.
0:08:43 > 0:08:47Ascombe was not just another low-rent don.
0:08:47 > 0:08:54He was public orator at Cambridge University and it was his outlandish idea to teach the teenage girl
0:08:54 > 0:08:58a discipline most people thought was quite unsuitable for a woman -
0:08:58 > 0:09:01the art of rhetoric, the art of public speech.
0:09:01 > 0:09:06This was Elizabeth's first and would always be her strongest political weapon.
0:09:09 > 0:09:15But there was something Elizabeth brought to the management of sovereignty
0:09:15 > 0:09:21that was entirely her own - something that none of the princely conduct manuals ever spelled out -
0:09:21 > 0:09:24that state craft was also STAGE craft.
0:09:24 > 0:09:29Her father and mother had both known this instinctively.
0:09:29 > 0:09:33Elizabeth had the actress's gift in spadefuls.
0:09:33 > 0:09:36She simply adored being adored.
0:09:42 > 0:09:46Adoration, though, wasn't the same thing as allegiance.
0:09:46 > 0:09:52For her most important adviser, in fact, her surrogate father, William Cecil,
0:09:52 > 0:09:58charisma was no substitute for the one thing which would truly secure the future of a Protestant England -
0:09:58 > 0:10:01an heir.
0:10:02 > 0:10:08Cecil knew perfectly well that the majority of the country was still Catholic,
0:10:08 > 0:10:10either actively or passively,
0:10:10 > 0:10:16and he also knew how little it would take for the hard-earned gains of the Reformation to be undone.
0:10:16 > 0:10:21So although the Queen told everyone it was none of their business,
0:10:21 > 0:10:23Cecil constantly had to remind her
0:10:23 > 0:10:27that the realm needed her to have a husband.
0:10:27 > 0:10:32For that matter, her body required it too, since in the 16th century,
0:10:32 > 0:10:39prolonged virginity was thought to bring on the potentially toxic condition known as green sickness -
0:10:39 > 0:10:43the abnormal retention of female sperm.
0:10:43 > 0:10:49Marital copulation, then, was what the doctor ordered for the good of the realm.
0:10:49 > 0:10:56The problem, though, as Cecil was painfully aware, was that if he pushed Elizabeth too hard,
0:10:56 > 0:11:02she might just end up plumping for the man everyone assumed she really loved.
0:11:02 > 0:11:07That man, of course, was Cecil's rival on the council - Robert Dudley.
0:11:11 > 0:11:15Dudley was everything Cecil was not - flashy, gallant,
0:11:15 > 0:11:21a noisy extrovert and, not least, incredibly good-looking, especially on a horse.
0:11:21 > 0:11:27To a queen who liked being surrounded by lookers and who could dismiss those she thought ugly,
0:11:27 > 0:11:30this mattered a lot.
0:11:30 > 0:11:35And they shared a past - the same tutors, the same childhood traumas.
0:11:35 > 0:11:41Dudley's father had been executed for treason, which made them both orphans of the scaffold.
0:11:41 > 0:11:45In the grim years of Mary's reign, he'd sold lands to help Elizabeth -
0:11:45 > 0:11:48that sort of thing she never forgot.
0:11:53 > 0:11:56But how much of a couple were they?
0:11:56 > 0:12:03Did they, as all the gossips and all the diplomats and most movie-makers since have assumed, become lovers?
0:12:06 > 0:12:11What was in the way was Dudley's wife, but she had been ailing for years.
0:12:11 > 0:12:18When she died, Dudley would be free and sleeping with your intended was not that unusual in Tudor England.
0:12:18 > 0:12:25But this would have been outrageous for a Queen who had paraded her virginity at her coronation
0:12:25 > 0:12:28by leaving her hair down.
0:12:28 > 0:12:34When pressed about the rumours, Elizabeth airily retorted that such things were impossible
0:12:34 > 0:12:37when she was surrounded day and night by her ladies.
0:12:37 > 0:12:41With the terrible example of the fate of her own mother before her,
0:12:41 > 0:12:46it would have been foolhardy for her to sleep with Dudley.
0:12:46 > 0:12:50The politician in her was, as always, ruling the lover.
0:12:54 > 0:13:01In any case, something then happened which did terrible damage to their relationship -
0:13:01 > 0:13:07Dudley's wife, Amy, was found at the bottom of a staircase, dead from a broken neck.
0:13:07 > 0:13:12An accident seemed altogether too convenient to be credible.
0:13:12 > 0:13:16This was, after all, the golden age of gossip
0:13:16 > 0:13:22and gossip did not believe Amy had fallen, gossip believed she had been pushed.
0:13:23 > 0:13:28Elizabeth immediately sent Dudley away until cleared of suspicion.
0:13:28 > 0:13:34Officially, he was and although the Queen always insisted that Dudley had been completely vindicated,
0:13:34 > 0:13:41it still cast a shadow over their relationship just at the moment when they had become free to marry.
0:13:41 > 0:13:48Perhaps it was a case of "beware of wishing for your heart's true desire lest you end by getting it."
0:13:51 > 0:13:57For the next few years, Elizabeth swung mercurially between endearment and exasperation,
0:13:57 > 0:14:00drawing up documents to make Dudley an earl,
0:14:00 > 0:14:03only to shred them in front of him -
0:14:03 > 0:14:07and other times, especially when she felt nagged by the council,
0:14:07 > 0:14:14she would torment them by pretending their marriage was just about to happen. It never did.
0:14:15 > 0:14:22By 1563, Elizabeth seems to have given up on the possibility of ever marrying Robert Dudley,
0:14:22 > 0:14:26because she was prepared to offer him to someone else,
0:14:26 > 0:14:33someone whose own marriage prospects were of tremendous significance for the balance of power in Britain.
0:14:33 > 0:14:38That someone was Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots.
0:14:41 > 0:14:46Throughout the whole tortured history of their relationship,
0:14:46 > 0:14:50Elizabeth was eaten up with curiosity about her cousin, Mary,
0:14:50 > 0:14:53stuck in a neurotic beauty contest,
0:14:53 > 0:14:57interrogating her ambassadors as if they were the mirrors on the wall,
0:14:57 > 0:15:01as to who was the taller, the fairer, the wittier, the cleverer.
0:15:01 > 0:15:07Elizabeth might have won the prize for brains, but from the few pictures we have of her,
0:15:07 > 0:15:11Mary, with her heart-shaped face, heavy eyelids and creamy complexion,
0:15:11 > 0:15:16evidently had the stuff to reduce men to warm puddles on the floor.
0:15:16 > 0:15:22She was more than just competition, though. To Elizabeth, Mary, Queen of Scots was a menace.
0:15:22 > 0:15:26The reason was obvious. Mary was a Catholic
0:15:26 > 0:15:32and the Catholic church did not recognize Elizabeth's right to be Queen of England.
0:15:32 > 0:15:39To them, Elizabeth was the product of Henry VIII's illegal marriage to Anne Boleyn.
0:15:39 > 0:15:43In Mary's Catholic eyes, then, Elizabeth was simply illegitimate.
0:15:43 > 0:15:46How could Elizabeth not take this personally?
0:15:46 > 0:15:50What's more, Mary was not only a Stuart,
0:15:50 > 0:15:54she was also a Tudor through her great-grandfather, Henry VII,
0:15:54 > 0:16:00and so long as Elizabeth was childless, Mary was next in line to the English throne.
0:16:05 > 0:16:10From the moment Mary Stuart arrived in Scotland at the age of 18,
0:16:10 > 0:16:13from the French court where she had been brought up,
0:16:13 > 0:16:18the relationship between the cousins was tainted with mutual suspicion.
0:16:19 > 0:16:24At the first opportunity, Elizabeth behaved badly, almost irrationally,
0:16:24 > 0:16:28denying Mary safe conduct through England to her new realm
0:16:28 > 0:16:32and forcing her to sail the long way round to Scotland.
0:16:32 > 0:16:38Though very much the injured party, Mary's response already betrayed the theatrical self-pity,
0:16:38 > 0:16:41which so got up Elizabeth's nose.
0:16:41 > 0:16:48"I trust the wind will be so favourable as I shall not need to come on the coast of England,
0:16:48 > 0:16:56"and if I do, Monsieur L'Ambassadeur, the Queen, your mistress, shall have me in her hands to do her will of me
0:16:56 > 0:17:00"and if she be so hard-hearted as to desire my end,
0:17:00 > 0:17:05"she may then do her pleasure and make sacrifice of me."
0:17:05 > 0:17:10Perhaps things might be better between the two of them
0:17:10 > 0:17:15if Mary could accept Elizabeth's choice of a safe Protestant husband for her -
0:17:15 > 0:17:18in the form of Robert Dudley.
0:17:18 > 0:17:21One tiny problem with this plan, though.
0:17:21 > 0:17:25Mary had no intention of being told what to do by Elizabeth,
0:17:25 > 0:17:32and, anyway, everyone knew that after the death of his wife, Robert Dudley was spoiled goods.
0:17:34 > 0:17:40Lord Henry Darnley, though, the handsome poster boy of the Scottish nobility,
0:17:40 > 0:17:47seemed a much better prospect. One look at Darnley's shapely calves and Mary decided she must have him.
0:17:47 > 0:17:53It helped that he, too, had Tudor blood flowing through his veins -
0:17:53 > 0:17:57unfortunately a lot of whisky ran through them too.
0:17:57 > 0:18:01Too late, Mary discovered that she had married a lazy, dissolute drunk,
0:18:01 > 0:18:05incapable of doing even the minimal things required of a co-sovereign.
0:18:06 > 0:18:11Stuck at Holyrood with the task of ruling Scotland without him,
0:18:11 > 0:18:15Mary increasingly relied on her private secretary,
0:18:15 > 0:18:18the Italian Catholic, David Rizzio.
0:18:18 > 0:18:21Naturally, the Protestant nobles in Scotland
0:18:21 > 0:18:27were convinced that Mary was plotting to turn Scotland back into a Catholic country once more.
0:18:27 > 0:18:33So Darnley's increasing estrangement from his wife gave the Lords -
0:18:33 > 0:18:39most offended by Rizzio's access to the Queen - the opening they were looking for.
0:18:39 > 0:18:46In 1566, a group of them approached Darnley and proposed what amounted to a violent coup -
0:18:46 > 0:18:52get rid of David Rizzio, who was her lover, they said, not just her secretary.
0:18:52 > 0:18:58"Ah!" thought Darnley, "Now that'd explain why she's such a bitch.
0:18:58 > 0:19:00"I'll show her who's in charge!"
0:19:02 > 0:19:06On March the 7th, while she was dining,
0:19:06 > 0:19:10Darnley and his fellow plotters burst into Mary's chamber,
0:19:10 > 0:19:16tore the terrified Rizzio from Mary's skirts and stabbed him to death in front of her.
0:19:31 > 0:19:38Between 50 and 60 wounds were discovered on his body, after it was thrown down the privy staircase.
0:19:38 > 0:19:45At some point, the murderers turned to Mary, pointing a pistol at her heavily pregnant belly...
0:19:47 > 0:19:53..and perhaps, at that moment, Mary knew how to turn terror into power,
0:19:53 > 0:19:55for in the months that followed,
0:19:55 > 0:20:00she milked the melodrama of the threatened womb for all it was worth.
0:20:00 > 0:20:07Instead of being reduced to a weeping wreck, Mary was strangely calm.
0:20:07 > 0:20:14She knew she could be strong because she was carrying her greatest weapon inside her womb.
0:20:14 > 0:20:19Whatever happened to her useless, drunken, homicidal nitwit of a husband,
0:20:19 > 0:20:24she knew that a baby would be born. Mother and child were going to survive.
0:20:28 > 0:20:32On June the 19th, at Edinburgh Castle,
0:20:32 > 0:20:36Mary gave birth to the boy who would become James VI of Scotland.
0:20:36 > 0:20:40On hearing the news, Elizabeth's reaction was to cry -
0:20:40 > 0:20:45"Alack, the Queen of Scots is lighter of a bonny son,
0:20:45 > 0:20:49"and I am of the barren stock."
0:21:06 > 0:21:13Mary was by now so consumed with contempt for Darnley, that she resolved to be rid of him.
0:21:13 > 0:21:17Possibly all she meant by this was to be rid of him as a husband,
0:21:17 > 0:21:19but some of her devotees,
0:21:19 > 0:21:26in particular the Earl of Bothwell, who took her sighs to mean something altogether more decisive.
0:21:26 > 0:21:30Bothwell, one of the great landowners of Scotland,
0:21:30 > 0:21:33was rich, promiscuous and dangerous,
0:21:33 > 0:21:37but he could also turn on the gallantry, and in her distress,
0:21:37 > 0:21:40Mary now turned to him as protector,
0:21:40 > 0:21:46and Bothwell was only too happy to solve Mary's Darnley problem.
0:21:49 > 0:21:52On the evening of March 9th 1567,
0:21:52 > 0:21:55while Mary was attending a masked ball,
0:21:55 > 0:21:59Bothwell supervised the lighting of a fuse that, at 2am,
0:21:59 > 0:22:06would detonate an immense quantity of gunpowder beneath the house where Darnley was asleep.
0:22:06 > 0:22:10EXPLOSION
0:22:10 > 0:22:13The house was blown sky-high.
0:22:13 > 0:22:19Darnley was dead, but not bumped off according to plan. Minutes before the explosion,
0:22:19 > 0:22:25he'd heard suspicious noises and had himself lowered out of his bedroom window on a chair.
0:22:25 > 0:22:31Running through the garden in his nightshirt, Darnley ran straight into the plotters
0:22:31 > 0:22:34who promptly throttled him to death.
0:22:40 > 0:22:45Darnley's murder was a turning point in Mary's life.
0:22:45 > 0:22:50From now on, death followed Mary Stuart like a lady-in-waiting.
0:22:50 > 0:22:54She was already sick, vomiting black mucus.
0:22:54 > 0:22:59She needed help and the unscrupulous Bothwell was at hand to give it.
0:22:59 > 0:23:03His power over Mary now made him recklessly bold
0:23:03 > 0:23:09and he announced to the Scottish Lords that for the proper government of the country,
0:23:09 > 0:23:15it was necessary for Mary to have a husband. Very decently, he offered himself for the job.
0:23:17 > 0:23:24Bothwell's idea of a marriage proposal was to abduct Mary and take her to his grim castle in Dunbar.
0:23:24 > 0:23:29There, he planted his flag as prospective King of Scotland
0:23:29 > 0:23:35by planting himself, violently it was said, inside her body.
0:23:35 > 0:23:39Now he supposed the traumatised Mary would HAVE to marry him
0:23:39 > 0:23:42and, to most of the country's horror,
0:23:42 > 0:23:47Mary did just that, a few weeks later, at Holyrood.
0:23:48 > 0:23:52It was at this point that Mary lost it -
0:23:52 > 0:23:58lost control over her own body, lost the priceless political asset of her motherhood -
0:23:58 > 0:24:05soiled by her relationship with Bothwell - lost Scotland, lost the whole damned shooting match.
0:24:05 > 0:24:11The thing is, that it never needed to have happened. Had she been half the politician Elizabeth was,
0:24:11 > 0:24:15she would have distanced herself from Bothwell,
0:24:15 > 0:24:19and then she would have condemned Darnley's murderers,
0:24:19 > 0:24:23professing herself to be shocked at the crime, truly shocked,
0:24:23 > 0:24:28and presenting herself to the Scots as a doubly victimised mother.
0:24:28 > 0:24:33Instead, the mother let herself be turned into a whore.
0:24:35 > 0:24:40Mary now faced the rebel armies loyal to the murdered Darnley,
0:24:40 > 0:24:47but on the verge of battle, Bothwell conveniently disappeared to gather reinforcements, or so he said,
0:24:47 > 0:24:53leaving Mary to face the enemy on her own. It was the last she would ever see of him.
0:24:53 > 0:24:58Dragged back to Edinburgh, a captive, filthy and dishevelled,
0:24:58 > 0:25:03she appeared at a window, her dress torn from her shoulders,
0:25:03 > 0:25:08her breasts exposed, and was greeted by a mob howling abuse.
0:25:08 > 0:25:12Handbills, featuring her as a mermaid, began to appear -
0:25:12 > 0:25:15a mermaid being another name for a prostitute.
0:25:15 > 0:25:20Mermaids, of course, were not fit to sit on the throne of Scotland,
0:25:20 > 0:25:25so Mary was forced to renounce it in favour of her baby son.
0:25:25 > 0:25:28Her Protestant half-brother, the Earl of Moray,
0:25:28 > 0:25:32took charge of baby James and made himself Regent of Scotland.
0:25:33 > 0:25:36Mary was 25 years old -
0:25:36 > 0:25:39her history seemed done,
0:25:39 > 0:25:42but of course it was not.
0:25:53 > 0:25:55She had one last weapon to deploy -
0:25:55 > 0:25:59her air of tragically damaged beauty.
0:25:59 > 0:26:04Incarcerated in the castle of Loch Leven, in the middle of a deep lake,
0:26:04 > 0:26:08she unleashed her seductive charm on her jailer,
0:26:08 > 0:26:14one of the usually hard-bitten Douglas clan, who melted in adoration.
0:26:16 > 0:26:19After ten months of imprisonment,
0:26:19 > 0:26:24in May 1568, Mary made a getaway across the loch.
0:26:26 > 0:26:31But there was really only one way she could get her throne back -
0:26:31 > 0:26:34an appeal to her cousin, Elizabeth.
0:26:34 > 0:26:40So her next journey, across the border, was to be in the nature of a temporary refuge.
0:26:40 > 0:26:46She must have supposed her stay would last perhaps a month, a year at the most.
0:26:46 > 0:26:50Had she known the real answer - 19 years -
0:26:50 > 0:26:54she would surely have avoided the passage across the Solway Firth.
0:26:54 > 0:27:01But there she was, an exhausted, bedraggled figure, her hair cropped for disguise,
0:27:01 > 0:27:04sitting hunched up in a small boat,
0:27:04 > 0:27:08her eyes fixed on the disappearing shoreline of Scotland.
0:27:15 > 0:27:20Mary's appearance on English soil threw Elizabeth into turmoil.
0:27:20 > 0:27:23Was Mary her heir or wasn't she?
0:27:23 > 0:27:30After all, Elizabeth wasn't getting any younger - 35 in 1568.
0:27:30 > 0:27:34The royal laundresses were still sending Cecil monthly evidence
0:27:34 > 0:27:39of her capacity to produce children but she was no nearer to getting married.
0:27:41 > 0:27:45So would the fugitive Queen of Scots be treated like the next in line,
0:27:45 > 0:27:49or at least as a fellow sovereign, a guest?
0:27:49 > 0:27:54Well, not exactly. Mary's first request to Elizabeth
0:27:54 > 0:28:00was for some clothes that befitted her status rather than the rags she had fled in.
0:28:00 > 0:28:05What she got, after much complaining, was a packet of linen.
0:28:07 > 0:28:14Just as well, perhaps, that she didn't know Elizabeth was already wearing Mary's favourite pearls
0:28:14 > 0:28:20that had been stolen from Mary by her enemies and sent to the English Queen.
0:28:20 > 0:28:24In fact, Elizabeth didn't know what to do with Mary.
0:28:24 > 0:28:30Her royal instincts were outraged by the humiliation and indignities heaped on her royal cousin.
0:28:30 > 0:28:35If Mary would agree to keep her hands off the English throne,
0:28:35 > 0:28:39Elizabeth was sorely tempted to help her regain the Scottish crown.
0:28:43 > 0:28:47Elizabeth, though, could also see the wisdom of the opposite view -
0:28:47 > 0:28:51it was folly to restore a Catholic queen to the Scottish throne,
0:28:51 > 0:28:55giving a back door entry to Britain for the French and the Spanish.
0:28:55 > 0:29:03There was a safe Protestant regime in Scotland now, run by Mary's enemies - why rock the boat?
0:29:03 > 0:29:09So, if Mary imagined she could rely on the sisterhood of queens, she was deluded.
0:29:09 > 0:29:15The first thing that Elizabeth did was order an inquiry into the murder of Mary's husband, Lord Darnley,
0:29:15 > 0:29:19which turned into a trial in all but name.
0:29:20 > 0:29:27Now Mary could have no illusion that she was anything except a prisoner.
0:29:27 > 0:29:34She was shuttled from house to house under the watchful eye of the Earl of Shrewsbury,
0:29:34 > 0:29:40who got the unenviable job of being her jailer. Some of those houses were just a damp ruin.
0:29:40 > 0:29:44Others, like Wingfield here, were much more tolerable places.
0:29:44 > 0:29:51Now, Wingfield is in Derbyshire and that tells you something about the nervousness of her captors.
0:29:51 > 0:29:57Mary Stuart had to be kept a long way away from any possibility of rescue,
0:29:57 > 0:30:01far away from Scotland, from London, from the coast...
0:30:01 > 0:30:03In fact, in the Midlands.
0:30:03 > 0:30:09But wherever she was, Mary Stuart had become maximum-security problem number one -
0:30:09 > 0:30:14not just a headache, but a magnet for conspiracy.
0:30:21 > 0:30:24There were many political heavyweights
0:30:24 > 0:30:29for whom Mary was a legitimate and attractive alternative to Elizabeth.
0:30:29 > 0:30:33And they were not just a bunch of wild-eyed Catholic dreamers,
0:30:33 > 0:30:37but men close to the heart of Elizabeth's government.
0:30:37 > 0:30:42Their most ambitious plan was to annul the Bothwell marriage
0:30:42 > 0:30:49and marry the Queen of Scots to the premier duke of the realm - Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.
0:30:49 > 0:30:52Although Norfolk may have been a Catholic at heart,
0:30:52 > 0:30:59he was, like so many at this time, outwardly at least, a conforming Protestant.
0:30:59 > 0:31:05So it was reasonable to see the marriage plot as a way of binding up the wounds of the Reformation.
0:31:05 > 0:31:09But the Queen wasn't fooled, not for a moment.
0:31:09 > 0:31:14When the plot was exposed, she sent Norfolk straight to the Tower.
0:31:20 > 0:31:26The plot collapsed. There was, though, a different kind of fury waiting to happen
0:31:26 > 0:31:31and this WAS burning with a Catholic flame.
0:31:35 > 0:31:40Up here in the north, Catholicism had not only NOT been rooted out,
0:31:40 > 0:31:44it actually fed on the burning resentment and fierce independence
0:31:44 > 0:31:48of the great aristocratic families who ran things around here.
0:31:48 > 0:31:55They had been here for centuries and were not about to be pushed around by a bunch of Tudor bureaucrats.
0:31:55 > 0:32:01They weren't going to be told what was what in THEIR government and THEIR religion.
0:32:01 > 0:32:05So, for them, Mary Stuart was not just a successor,
0:32:05 > 0:32:10she was a replacement, as in immediate replacement.
0:32:13 > 0:32:17So the Catholic north fought the Protestant south.
0:32:17 > 0:32:21For a while it even looked as though the north might win.
0:32:21 > 0:32:25The rebels swept through Lancashire, Yorkshire and Northumberland,
0:32:25 > 0:32:29and it must have seemed that Catholic Britain had been reborn.
0:32:30 > 0:32:36Now Elizabeth's government really knew what it was up against -
0:32:36 > 0:32:39the latest act in the religious war
0:32:39 > 0:32:44that had begun when Henry VIII had made himself Head of the Church.
0:32:45 > 0:32:51But 12,000 troops were eventually mustered and the rebellion brutally crushed.
0:32:55 > 0:32:58Perhaps the brutality worked
0:32:58 > 0:33:04because the northern rising was the last great rebellion to disturb Tudor England,
0:33:04 > 0:33:11and it's tempting now to feel the country's settling at last into its Elizabethan finery -
0:33:11 > 0:33:17feeling fat, safe, comfortable - but it was always a jittery kind of grandeur.
0:33:17 > 0:33:19# Farewell!
0:33:19 > 0:33:24# Thou art too dear for my possessing... #
0:33:26 > 0:33:31Elizabeth was 20 years into her reign and suitors had come and gone,
0:33:31 > 0:33:38but there was always something the matter with them - too lowly, too Catholic, too stupid.
0:33:38 > 0:33:41And besides, now her suitors had rivals -
0:33:41 > 0:33:45millions of Elizabeth's subjects who had become jealously possessive
0:33:45 > 0:33:49and thought that the Queen was theirs alone.
0:33:52 > 0:33:55In the 1570s, they got her.
0:33:55 > 0:34:01The cult, the religion of Elizabeth was spectacularly created.
0:34:01 > 0:34:05# For how do I hold thee
0:34:05 > 0:34:09# But by thy granting...? #
0:34:09 > 0:34:13Her Accession Day became the greatest of national holidays,
0:34:13 > 0:34:18more sacred than all the heathen events on the Papist calendar.
0:34:18 > 0:34:25# The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting
0:34:25 > 0:34:28# And so my patent back again... #
0:34:28 > 0:34:33Her image began to appear everywhere in allegorical pictures -
0:34:33 > 0:34:38Elizabeth as the sun who gave the rainbow its radiant hues.
0:34:38 > 0:34:41Even those on the inside,
0:34:41 > 0:34:47who could plainly see the elaborate scaffolding from which this image was projected,
0:34:47 > 0:34:51who knew that the pale moon glow of the queen's face
0:34:51 > 0:34:55was just pulverised eggshell, borax, alum and mill water,
0:34:55 > 0:35:01even these knowing types were still total captives to the cult.
0:35:01 > 0:35:05She had this effect on all kinds of people, especially men,
0:35:05 > 0:35:08even when they got older and should have known better.
0:35:08 > 0:35:16They built huge prodigy houses in her honour. It was, in a way, a desperate need to impress,
0:35:16 > 0:35:22a sign of culture's raw immaturity, its hunger for glitzy gorgeousness.
0:35:22 > 0:35:26Elizabethan razzle-dazzle, thigh-hugging hose,
0:35:26 > 0:35:30oak-panelled libraries with yards of unread classics,
0:35:30 > 0:35:33ballrooms as big as playing fields.
0:35:33 > 0:35:36# Farewell!
0:35:36 > 0:35:41# Thou art too dear for my possessing... #
0:35:41 > 0:35:48Now you might suppose that devotees would be queuing up for a glimpse of the national Madonna,
0:35:48 > 0:35:52but many knew that hosting the show came at a heavy price.
0:35:52 > 0:35:55If you were a Burgess of the City of Warwick,
0:35:55 > 0:36:00it's hard to know which lot would have made you more nervous.
0:36:00 > 0:36:06The royal wanderers, after all, came with 200 carts of the Queen's baggage,
0:36:06 > 0:36:13each one pulled by a team of six horses - that's a lot of stable room to find, that is a lot of hay!
0:36:13 > 0:36:17And a week before the great event, men from the office of purveyors
0:36:17 > 0:36:25would come here and buy up everything in sight for the visit at prices THEY decided were fair.
0:36:25 > 0:36:29Then there were the lords and ladies, notoriously hard to please.
0:36:29 > 0:36:36Supposing they rolled their eyes at the entertainment? Supposing they wrinkled their nose at the fair?
0:36:36 > 0:36:39And then there was Queen Bess herself,
0:36:39 > 0:36:45a bejewelled apparition with a chalk-white face like some goddess on Earth,
0:36:45 > 0:36:52but like the immortals, she was evidently frightening as well as majestic.
0:36:55 > 0:36:59You could revel in the Elizabethan glamour show,
0:36:59 > 0:37:05just so long as you didn't think too hard about what was going on beyond the sceptred isle.
0:37:05 > 0:37:12For out there in Europe, a total war between Catholic and Protestant powers was about to ignite.
0:37:13 > 0:37:20The rivalry between Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth was no longer a girlie soap opera.
0:37:20 > 0:37:24It was right at the centre of that global struggle.
0:37:24 > 0:37:29In Rome, the Pope declared that Elizabeth was to be considered a heretic.
0:37:29 > 0:37:34"Whoever sends her out of the world," the Pope decreed,
0:37:34 > 0:37:38"not only does not sin but gains merit in the eyes of God."
0:37:38 > 0:37:42In response, England became a national security state.
0:37:42 > 0:37:46Infiltrators and double agents were recruited by the government.
0:37:46 > 0:37:51Gentlemen vigilantes were sworn to take out, in advance,
0:37:51 > 0:37:55anyone so much as suspected of plotting against the Queen.
0:37:57 > 0:38:03At the heart of the operation was Elizabeth's chief spymaster, Francis Walsingham.
0:38:04 > 0:38:09"Intelligence is never too dear," was Walsingham's motto,
0:38:09 > 0:38:15and his whole career was an applied demonstration that knowledge is power.
0:38:16 > 0:38:20But if Walsingham was ferocious, he was not paranoid.
0:38:20 > 0:38:26There were underground conspiracies organised in France, Rome and Spain,
0:38:26 > 0:38:32and they were all working towards one end - the assassination of Elizabeth
0:38:32 > 0:38:35and the enthronement of Mary Stuart.
0:38:37 > 0:38:43Elizabeth might have been queasy about taking care of Mary, but Walsingham wasn't.
0:38:43 > 0:38:49It was his job to get his hands dirty for England - that's what spymasters do,
0:38:49 > 0:38:56but he knew he couldn't just do her in. Elizabeth had to be free of any suspicion of complicity in murder.
0:38:56 > 0:39:03On the other hand, the Mary problem could not be allowed to drag on for another 15 years.
0:39:03 > 0:39:08Walsingham realized he would have to force a solution.
0:39:08 > 0:39:13So he engineered a trap... and it was a gem.
0:39:14 > 0:39:21Mary may have been under house arrest, but she been allowed to lead the life of the country lady.
0:39:21 > 0:39:27Then, in December 1585, Walsingham made a change.
0:39:27 > 0:39:33Mary and her household were suddenly packed up and sent to close confinement
0:39:33 > 0:39:36at Chartley Manor in Staffordshire,
0:39:36 > 0:39:41where she was guarded by the unsmiling puritan, Amias Paulet.
0:39:42 > 0:39:46As Walsingham had intended, Mary was furious,
0:39:46 > 0:39:50desperate to find a way out of her prison.
0:39:50 > 0:39:55So of course she was thrilled when she discovered an ingenious means
0:39:55 > 0:39:58to smuggle coded letters to her supporters.
0:39:58 > 0:40:05The letters were secretly put in a watertight packet, slipped through the bunghole of beer casks,
0:40:05 > 0:40:07delivered to and from Chartley.
0:40:07 > 0:40:13What Mary didn't know, of course, was that this was a trap.
0:40:13 > 0:40:16Walsingham set the whole thing up.
0:40:16 > 0:40:19The letters were intercepted.
0:40:19 > 0:40:23When Mary's latest champion, the rich merchant, Anthony Babbington,
0:40:23 > 0:40:29supplied Mary with details of a plot to murder Elizabeth and put Mary on the English throne,
0:40:29 > 0:40:32Mary wrote back with encouragement.
0:40:34 > 0:40:37The trap was sprung.
0:40:40 > 0:40:44At Chartley, Mary felt the skies lighten.
0:40:44 > 0:40:48After nearly 20 years of unjust imprisonment,
0:40:48 > 0:40:52she could feel liberty so close she could practically taste it.
0:40:52 > 0:40:55One morning, and very unusually,
0:40:55 > 0:40:59Paulet allowed her to go out riding, have a day's hunting.
0:40:59 > 0:41:03From a distance she could see a group of horsemen approach.
0:41:03 > 0:41:06Mary must have thought, "This is it!
0:41:06 > 0:41:10"News from Babbington, freedom at last!"
0:41:12 > 0:41:16But it was, in fact, the warrant for her arrest.
0:41:16 > 0:41:21Babbington and his fellow plotters had been tortured and had already confessed.
0:41:23 > 0:41:28Mary was taken away while her rooms at Chartley were searched,
0:41:28 > 0:41:32turning up hundreds of incriminating documents.
0:41:33 > 0:41:40In London, Elizabeth wrote an ecstatic letter to Amias Paulet.
0:41:40 > 0:41:43"Amias, my most faithful and careful servant,
0:41:43 > 0:41:50"may God reward thee treble-fold for the most troublesome charge so well discharged."
0:41:57 > 0:42:04There was just one more stop, one more castle in the career of the wandering Queen -
0:42:04 > 0:42:07Fotheringay in Northamptonshire.
0:42:07 > 0:42:14It's just a grassy mound now, which is just as well, since no ruin, no standing building for that matter,
0:42:14 > 0:42:19could possibly take the weight of the drama that was to follow.
0:42:22 > 0:42:29Anyone expecting Mary Stuart to crumble into tearful confession had seriously misjudged her.
0:42:29 > 0:42:35Up against it, she had drawn something inside her long and mostly disastrous career,
0:42:35 > 0:42:43which made her resolute and unnervingly lofty as if she was suddenly above this squalid charade.
0:42:43 > 0:42:51From the moment of her arrest to the moment of her execution, she gave as good as she got.
0:42:53 > 0:42:58As a sinner I am truly conscious of having often offended my creator.
0:43:00 > 0:43:02I beg him to forgive me,
0:43:02 > 0:43:07but as queen and sovereign, I am aware of no fault or offence
0:43:07 > 0:43:12for which I have to render account to anyone here below.
0:43:12 > 0:43:18Her second tactic was to lie her head off, denying all knowledge of the Babbington plot,
0:43:18 > 0:43:20although she was on stronger ground
0:43:20 > 0:43:27when she accused Walsingham of setting up the whole thing to get rid of her.
0:43:28 > 0:43:34Elizabeth, of course, did not see it exactly in this way.
0:43:34 > 0:43:40She wrote to Mary as if the Queen of the Scots was a houseguest who'd made off with the towels.
0:43:43 > 0:43:49"You have planned to take my life and ruin my kingdom by the shedding of blood.
0:43:49 > 0:43:53"I never proceeded so hastily against you.
0:43:53 > 0:43:59"I have maintained and preserved your life with the care I use for myself."
0:44:03 > 0:44:09On the 15th of October 1586, the formal trial began.
0:44:09 > 0:44:13In a typical gesture, half plea, half threat,
0:44:13 > 0:44:18Mary warned her prosecutors to look to their consciences.
0:44:18 > 0:44:24Remember, she said, the theatre of the world is wider than the realm of England -
0:44:24 > 0:44:31and it was to that audience, worldwide and across the ages, that she now took centre stage.
0:44:34 > 0:44:39Mary hobbled into the room, by now painfully infirm,
0:44:39 > 0:44:45dressed head to foot like a glamorous mother superior in swathes of velvet and a white headdress.
0:44:45 > 0:44:50Deprived of any lawyer, she turned to the Privy Council facing her.
0:44:50 > 0:44:56There is not one, I think, among you, let him be the cleverest man in the world,
0:44:56 > 0:45:04who would be capable of resisting or defending himself if he were in MY place.
0:45:05 > 0:45:10Of course, it wouldn't have mattered what she said -
0:45:10 > 0:45:17the trial resumed in London without her and passed swiftly to her conviction.
0:45:17 > 0:45:23All her adult life, Elizabeth had been spooked by her fascinating, infuriating cousin,
0:45:23 > 0:45:29who seemed to personify all the cliches about women which Elizabeth herself had rejected.
0:45:29 > 0:45:34Now she had a precious opportunity to get mother Mary off her back.
0:45:34 > 0:45:41Parliament was impatient to be rid of her and the people were positively baying for Mary's blood.
0:45:41 > 0:45:45Yet somehow, Elizabeth couldn't bring herself to do the deed,
0:45:45 > 0:45:50not because she was sentimental, but because she was scared -
0:45:50 > 0:45:55scared of being seen by the world to have her fingerprints on the axe.
0:45:57 > 0:46:02This was what was robbing Elizabeth of her sleep -
0:46:02 > 0:46:09the tormenting question whether by killing Mary she was getting rid of trouble or inviting it.
0:46:12 > 0:46:19On February 1 1587, Elizabeth finally put her signature on Mary's death warrant.
0:46:21 > 0:46:25# There were three ravens Sat on a tree
0:46:25 > 0:46:30# Down-a-down Hey, down-a-down
0:46:32 > 0:46:35# They were as black as they might be... #
0:46:37 > 0:46:44All the chaos, squalor, reckless adventuring, rash conspiracies, pathetic delusions,
0:46:44 > 0:46:52histrionic self-pity, all the escapes, all the rescues had all led her to this one supreme moment -
0:46:52 > 0:46:54she would be a Catholic martyr.
0:47:01 > 0:47:08So when Mary was told she was to be executed the next morning, by a weeping Scottish courtier,
0:47:08 > 0:47:16she told him to be joyful instead, for the end of Mary Stuart's trouble, she said, was now done.
0:47:16 > 0:47:24Carry this message for me and tell my friends that I died a true woman to my religion
0:47:24 > 0:47:29and like a true Scottish woman and a true French woman.
0:47:40 > 0:47:44When she undressed for the executioner,
0:47:44 > 0:47:51the demure black gown fell away to reveal a crimson petticoat, the blood-red hue of the martyr.
0:47:51 > 0:47:57Mary's eyes were bound with a white silk handkerchief embroidered with gold
0:47:57 > 0:48:04and she lay with such utter stillness on the block that it actually unnerved the executioner.
0:48:09 > 0:48:13# His hawks they fly so eagerly
0:48:13 > 0:48:17# Down-a-down Hey, down-a-down... #
0:48:17 > 0:48:22His first blow cut deep into the back of her head,
0:48:22 > 0:48:27the second severed it but for a hanging thread of flesh.
0:48:28 > 0:48:32Even now, Mary contrived to remain centre stage.
0:48:32 > 0:48:36For 15 minutes after the last blow of the axe
0:48:36 > 0:48:44the lips on her severed head, so witnesses reported, continued to move, as if in silent prayer.
0:48:46 > 0:48:51# She lifted up his bloody head... #
0:48:51 > 0:48:57And when the executioner, by now probably wanting to die himself, held up the head to the spectators,
0:48:57 > 0:49:02he made the mistake of grasping it by the mass of auburn curls.
0:49:02 > 0:49:04But that was a wig.
0:49:04 > 0:49:09To general horror, Mary's skull, the hair cropped into grey stubble,
0:49:09 > 0:49:13fell from his grip and rolled along the floor.
0:49:21 > 0:49:29At that moment, a terrible howling came from the crimson blood-soaked petticoat.
0:49:29 > 0:49:34Mary's lapdog had to be taken away from the wreckage of her mistress.
0:49:34 > 0:49:39They tried and tried to scrub it clean of the clotted blood.
0:49:39 > 0:49:44They did so but it wouldn't eat. It languished, it died.
0:49:44 > 0:49:49It was just another martyr to Mary's pathetic, tragic life.
0:49:49 > 0:49:55If that dog was the first mourner, it certainly wouldn't be the last.
0:49:59 > 0:50:06Among the mourners, astoundingly, was Queen Elizabeth, in deep denial of what she had done.
0:50:06 > 0:50:11"When she heard, her countenance changed, her words faltered
0:50:11 > 0:50:18"and with excessive sorrow she was in a manner astonished, in so much as she gave herself over to grief,
0:50:18 > 0:50:23"putting herself into mourning weeds and shedding an abundance of tears."
0:50:38 > 0:50:43Some of Elizabeth's anguish may have been genuine remorse.
0:50:43 > 0:50:45Some of it was downright fear -
0:50:45 > 0:50:48and she was right to worry.
0:50:48 > 0:50:55Even before Mary's execution, King Phillip of Spain had accelerated his plans for the enterprise of England,
0:50:55 > 0:51:00and with Mary now dead, there would be no stopping him.
0:51:01 > 0:51:07Suddenly, Elizabethan England looked very small, very vulnerable.
0:51:10 > 0:51:17This was always Elizabeth's worst nightmare - a full-scale Catholic invasion.
0:51:17 > 0:51:19And now Phillip was launching one.
0:51:19 > 0:51:26The Spanish admirals, however, were deeply pessimistic about the chances of success.
0:51:26 > 0:51:31English ships were vastly superior in speed and manoeuvrability.
0:51:31 > 0:51:35The miracle was not that England was saved,
0:51:35 > 0:51:39but that the Spanish came so close to pulling it off.
0:51:39 > 0:51:46Only a few miles of the Channel and an unhelpful wind direction made the difference.
0:51:46 > 0:51:49The weather, as usual, batted for England.
0:51:54 > 0:52:02But it was a close thing. The English were right to be scared in the summer and autumn of 1588.
0:52:02 > 0:52:06What do you do when you're weepy and terrified?
0:52:06 > 0:52:08Well, you cry for Mummy.
0:52:08 > 0:52:15And that, courtesy of Robert Dudley, dying of cancer now but still the impresario of Elizabeth's shows,
0:52:15 > 0:52:20is how she appeared to the troops at the armed camp at Tilbury -
0:52:20 > 0:52:27the mother at last, the virgin mother of England and the kind of mother you'd want on your side.
0:52:27 > 0:52:29A mother in a breastplate of steel.
0:52:31 > 0:52:36Everything Elizabeth had ever learned came together at Tilbury -
0:52:36 > 0:52:40charisma in a costume, the shell-burst of oratory,
0:52:40 > 0:52:45and, perhaps most important, what all mothers know instinctively -
0:52:45 > 0:52:49that there's no substitute for BEING there.
0:52:49 > 0:52:54And there, on August 8th and 9th, she certainly was,
0:52:54 > 0:52:59arriving in a gilded coach escorted by 2,000 ecstatic troops.
0:52:59 > 0:53:04What she produced for the expectant crowds was pure gold -
0:53:04 > 0:53:08the first great speech by a queen recorded in history.
0:53:08 > 0:53:15This is where the real event of 1588 happened, not out on the high seas but on the soapbox at Tilbury.
0:53:18 > 0:53:24My loving people, I come among you, not for my recreation and disport,
0:53:24 > 0:53:33but being resolved in the midst of the heat of the battle to live and die amongst you all,
0:53:33 > 0:53:39to lay down for God and my kingdom and for my people,
0:53:39 > 0:53:44my honour and blood even in the dust.
0:53:45 > 0:53:50I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman,
0:53:50 > 0:53:56but I have the heart and stomach of a king and a king of England too,
0:53:56 > 0:54:05and think foul scorn that Spain or any prince of Europe should dare invade the borders of my realm,
0:54:05 > 0:54:11to which rather dishonour I myself will take up arms.
0:54:15 > 0:54:19Oh, I know it's all spin and hype,
0:54:19 > 0:54:26but it was hype for England and it did make a difference, just like Churchill's rhetoric in 1940.
0:54:26 > 0:54:32Almost instinctively the Queen seemed to know what it was her people needed to hear.
0:54:32 > 0:54:38"Look," she said, "I may be a goddess but I'm also flesh and blood - YOUR flesh and blood.
0:54:38 > 0:54:43"Whatever you go through, I'll go through it with you."
0:54:43 > 0:54:49That made the difference between terror and determination. That is what we have queens for.
0:54:52 > 0:54:56You couldn't top that and Elizabeth couldn't.
0:54:56 > 0:54:59The euphoria of 1588 was short-lived.
0:54:59 > 0:55:06In the closing years of the Tudor century, famine across the country triggered food riots.
0:55:06 > 0:55:10Cut-throats and beggars prowled the roads,
0:55:10 > 0:55:15the Irish, referred to as "savages", were driven into a nine-year war
0:55:15 > 0:55:17and for the queen herself,
0:55:17 > 0:55:24the distance between the mythology of Elizabeth's ageless body and the shrivelled reality
0:55:24 > 0:55:26became more glaring.
0:55:26 > 0:55:31Thoughts inevitably began to turn to her succession.
0:55:31 > 0:55:34Everybody knew who that would be -
0:55:34 > 0:55:37James, son of Mary, Queen of Scots.
0:55:42 > 0:55:49So in the end, did Mary, Queen of Scots, the mother, triumph from the grave over her rival Elizabeth?
0:55:49 > 0:55:53Elizabeth had one comfort though.
0:55:53 > 0:56:00James had been brought up a Protestant, forced to disown his own mother after her disgrace.
0:56:01 > 0:56:09But still, he was Mary's child - the fruit of her womb, not Elizabeth's.
0:56:13 > 0:56:19And when Elizabeth died in 1603, nearly half a century after that day under the oak,
0:56:19 > 0:56:24as gently as an apple falling from a tree, as someone said,
0:56:24 > 0:56:29and when her underthings were taken from her body,
0:56:29 > 0:56:34it was seen that they still fitted the contours of the virgin -
0:56:34 > 0:56:37wasp-waisted, slim-hipped, long-limbed.
0:56:37 > 0:56:43It was a body, which, according to some, had not fulfilled the purpose God intended.
0:56:43 > 0:56:50It was supposed to have joined itself to a husband - to have given him and the country posterity.
0:56:50 > 0:56:57She had done none of this, but no-one in their right mind thought she had failed her people.
0:56:57 > 0:56:59She had been different, that's all.
0:57:04 > 0:57:11When the ring which had united Elizabeth to her country was finally removed from her finger,
0:57:11 > 0:57:15it was carried 400 miles north, to Scotland.
0:57:16 > 0:57:21Now it symbolised a new marriage, this time between two nations.
0:57:22 > 0:57:26Elizabeth and Mary Stuart never met.
0:57:26 > 0:57:31It took James the First to bring the two women together at last -
0:57:31 > 0:57:35closer in death than they had ever been in life.
0:57:35 > 0:57:40There had been an old, wonderful joke doing the rounds in the 1560s
0:57:40 > 0:57:43that all of their problems would be solved
0:57:43 > 0:57:49if only Mary and Elizabeth could marry each other.
0:57:49 > 0:57:51And in one sense they had.
0:57:51 > 0:57:58Or at least together - and at a terrible price and with so much pain - they had had a baby.
0:57:58 > 0:58:05It was a little thing with a big name - Magna Britannia...Great Britain.
0:58:28 > 0:58:35There's much more to discover and debate about the history of Britain on the BBC history website.
0:58:49 > 0:58:55Subtitles by Gillian Frazer and Anne Morgan BBC Scotland 2000