The Body of the Queen A History of Britain by Simon Schama


The Body of the Queen

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In her last sickness, with the sense of her end coming on fast,

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Elizabeth the First had the ring she had worn since her coronation

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filed away from the royal finger.

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It was a tricky operation, for the skin had grown in over the gold,

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but then it was supposed to be a tight fit.

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This was, in a way, her wedding band put on when she had joined herself to England 45 years earlier.

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Now, it seemed, the two were to be put asunder.

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# Since first I saw your face

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# I resolved to honour and renown ye... #

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She was supposed to be immortal, of course.

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The odd thing was that, despite the garish auburn fright wig,

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the white face mask and the wrinkled bosom,

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diplomats who saw her at court and who had no reason to be gallant,

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swore they could still see the young woman no more than 20 years of age.

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# What I that loved and you that liked Shall we begin to wrangle...? #

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It doesn't do to be too starry-eyed about the Virgin Queen.

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Elizabeth the First was only too obviously made of flesh and blood.

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She was vain, spiteful, arrogant, she was frequently unjust

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and she was often maddeningly indecisive.

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But she was also brave, shockingly clever, an eyeful to look at

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and, on occasions, she was genuinely wise.

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In other words, she had all the qualities it took

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to make the genius politician she undoubtedly was.

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A few feet away from Elizabeth's tomb in Westminster Abbey lies the body of another woman -

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Mary Queen of Scots, the woman who had haunted and fascinated Elizabeth for so much of her life.

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No virgin, that's for sure. No politician either.

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A complete disaster as a ruler, you would have to say,

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but Mary managed something that eluded Elizabeth - she reproduced.

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This is the story of two queens and more importantly, two women,

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one a politician, the other a mother,

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and it's the story of a painful birth, the union of England and Scotland - the birth of Britain.

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A cherished tradition has it that when Elizabeth heard the news

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that she was to become queen, on November the 17th 1558,

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she was seated beneath an ancient oak tree. Her first words were from Psalm 118 -

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"a domino factum est mirabilae in oculis nostris..."

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"This is the Lord's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes."

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She was right, it WAS marvellous, in fact it was little short of being a miracle

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that she had made it to that day alive.

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Tudor royal politics were a bloody affair, especially for Tudor women.

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She had been only two when her mother, Anne Boleyn, had gone to the scaffold,

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her sin - in Henry's mind - being her failure to produce a son.

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It must have been a body possessed by others, by the devil,

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an unclean piece of flesh, it had to be cut away.

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So Elizabeth would never be free from suspicion.

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Out of her dark Boleyn eyes, she watched herself being watched.

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Inevitably, there were times when her guard was down. She was barely a teenager when trouble first struck.

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She was living with her guardian, Katherine Parr, Henry VIII's widow,

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when Parr's new husband, Thomas Seymour, started paying playful visits to her bedroom.

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When Katherine Parr died,

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a rumour started circulating that Seymour had his sights set on marrying Elizabeth.

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To even THINK of such a thing was treason.

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Even worse, some wagging tongues said that Elizabeth was pregnant with Seymour's child.

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It took all of Elizabeth's already extraordinary composure and self-confidence

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to persuade Lord Protector Somerset that she was innocent.

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"My Lord, there goeth rumours abroad, which be greatly against my honour and honesty, which be these -

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"that I am in the Tower and with child by my Lord Admiral. These are shameful slanders.

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"I most heartily desire, your Lordship, that I may come to the court and show myself there as I am.

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"Your assured friend to my little power, Elizabeth."

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She was, remember, just 14, but there was already the fortitude and clarity and the courage.

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It was just as well, for she'd need these qualities five years later

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when facing the most traumatic and dangerous crisis of her entire life.

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When her Catholic half-sister, Mary, came to the throne,

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Elizabeth found herself in even deeper trouble.

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In fact, she found herself in the Tower when a Protestant plot to get rid of Mary backfired.

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Elizabeth managed to talk herself out of being charged with treason,

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but she remained under close surveillance.

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Danger only turned to deliverance five years later, when Queen Mary died childless.

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So here she was, Elizabeth, under the oak,

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about to be the Protestant Queen.

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She had survived, just, but she must have been full of dark knowledge and experience

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about how difficult it was all going to be.

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Her mother had been killed for producing just a daughter and a stillborn,

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and her sister Mary's womb had produced nothing but the tumour that had killed her.

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So, however dazzling Elizabeth looked, however clever she was,

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she has got to have known how rough the road was going to be for a ruler of the wrong sex.

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The 25-year-old Elizabeth came into an inheritance of high hopes

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and deep anxieties.

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The celebrations at her coronation were carefully designed

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to show off the young queen as the paragon of virtue.

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This charade of piety, though, was hardly enough to compensate

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for the misfortune of having another woman on the throne.

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All the same, the sceptics must have been reassured by Elizabeth's precocious self-possession,

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the air of controlled energy she exuded in public right from the start.

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You might suppose that her first appearances at the council would have been an ordeal,

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but what the councillors saw was not some girlish ingenue,

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but someone who seemed full, it was said, of MANLY authority.

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Elizabeth did all the things women in 16th century England weren't supposed to do.

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She looked men in the eye and she spoke out of turn.

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She had been schooled to it by her tutor, Roger Ascombe.

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Ascombe was not just another low-rent don.

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He was public orator at Cambridge University and it was his outlandish idea to teach the teenage girl

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a discipline most people thought was quite unsuitable for a woman -

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the art of rhetoric, the art of public speech.

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This was Elizabeth's first and would always be her strongest political weapon.

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But there was something Elizabeth brought to the management of sovereignty

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that was entirely her own - something that none of the princely conduct manuals ever spelled out -

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that state craft was also STAGE craft.

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Her father and mother had both known this instinctively.

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Elizabeth had the actress's gift in spadefuls.

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She simply adored being adored.

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Adoration, though, wasn't the same thing as allegiance.

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For her most important adviser, in fact, her surrogate father, William Cecil,

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charisma was no substitute for the one thing which would truly secure the future of a Protestant England -

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an heir.

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Cecil knew perfectly well that the majority of the country was still Catholic,

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either actively or passively,

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and he also knew how little it would take for the hard-earned gains of the Reformation to be undone.

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So although the Queen told everyone it was none of their business,

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Cecil constantly had to remind her

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that the realm needed her to have a husband.

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For that matter, her body required it too, since in the 16th century,

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prolonged virginity was thought to bring on the potentially toxic condition known as green sickness -

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the abnormal retention of female sperm.

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Marital copulation, then, was what the doctor ordered for the good of the realm.

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The problem, though, as Cecil was painfully aware, was that if he pushed Elizabeth too hard,

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she might just end up plumping for the man everyone assumed she really loved.

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That man, of course, was Cecil's rival on the council - Robert Dudley.

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Dudley was everything Cecil was not - flashy, gallant,

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a noisy extrovert and, not least, incredibly good-looking, especially on a horse.

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To a queen who liked being surrounded by lookers and who could dismiss those she thought ugly,

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this mattered a lot.

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And they shared a past - the same tutors, the same childhood traumas.

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Dudley's father had been executed for treason, which made them both orphans of the scaffold.

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In the grim years of Mary's reign, he'd sold lands to help Elizabeth -

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that sort of thing she never forgot.

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But how much of a couple were they?

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Did they, as all the gossips and all the diplomats and most movie-makers since have assumed, become lovers?

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What was in the way was Dudley's wife, but she had been ailing for years.

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When she died, Dudley would be free and sleeping with your intended was not that unusual in Tudor England.

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But this would have been outrageous for a Queen who had paraded her virginity at her coronation

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by leaving her hair down.

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When pressed about the rumours, Elizabeth airily retorted that such things were impossible

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when she was surrounded day and night by her ladies.

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With the terrible example of the fate of her own mother before her,

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it would have been foolhardy for her to sleep with Dudley.

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The politician in her was, as always, ruling the lover.

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In any case, something then happened which did terrible damage to their relationship -

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Dudley's wife, Amy, was found at the bottom of a staircase, dead from a broken neck.

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An accident seemed altogether too convenient to be credible.

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This was, after all, the golden age of gossip

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and gossip did not believe Amy had fallen, gossip believed she had been pushed.

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Elizabeth immediately sent Dudley away until cleared of suspicion.

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Officially, he was and although the Queen always insisted that Dudley had been completely vindicated,

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it still cast a shadow over their relationship just at the moment when they had become free to marry.

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Perhaps it was a case of "beware of wishing for your heart's true desire lest you end by getting it."

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For the next few years, Elizabeth swung mercurially between endearment and exasperation,

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drawing up documents to make Dudley an earl,

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only to shred them in front of him -

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and other times, especially when she felt nagged by the council,

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she would torment them by pretending their marriage was just about to happen. It never did.

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By 1563, Elizabeth seems to have given up on the possibility of ever marrying Robert Dudley,

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because she was prepared to offer him to someone else,

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someone whose own marriage prospects were of tremendous significance for the balance of power in Britain.

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That someone was Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots.

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Throughout the whole tortured history of their relationship,

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Elizabeth was eaten up with curiosity about her cousin, Mary,

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stuck in a neurotic beauty contest,

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interrogating her ambassadors as if they were the mirrors on the wall,

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as to who was the taller, the fairer, the wittier, the cleverer.

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Elizabeth might have won the prize for brains, but from the few pictures we have of her,

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Mary, with her heart-shaped face, heavy eyelids and creamy complexion,

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evidently had the stuff to reduce men to warm puddles on the floor.

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She was more than just competition, though. To Elizabeth, Mary, Queen of Scots was a menace.

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The reason was obvious. Mary was a Catholic

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and the Catholic church did not recognize Elizabeth's right to be Queen of England.

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To them, Elizabeth was the product of Henry VIII's illegal marriage to Anne Boleyn.

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In Mary's Catholic eyes, then, Elizabeth was simply illegitimate.

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How could Elizabeth not take this personally?

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What's more, Mary was not only a Stuart,

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she was also a Tudor through her great-grandfather, Henry VII,

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and so long as Elizabeth was childless, Mary was next in line to the English throne.

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From the moment Mary Stuart arrived in Scotland at the age of 18,

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from the French court where she had been brought up,

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the relationship between the cousins was tainted with mutual suspicion.

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At the first opportunity, Elizabeth behaved badly, almost irrationally,

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denying Mary safe conduct through England to her new realm

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and forcing her to sail the long way round to Scotland.

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Though very much the injured party, Mary's response already betrayed the theatrical self-pity,

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which so got up Elizabeth's nose.

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"I trust the wind will be so favourable as I shall not need to come on the coast of England,

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"and if I do, Monsieur L'Ambassadeur, the Queen, your mistress, shall have me in her hands to do her will of me

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"and if she be so hard-hearted as to desire my end,

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"she may then do her pleasure and make sacrifice of me."

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Perhaps things might be better between the two of them

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if Mary could accept Elizabeth's choice of a safe Protestant husband for her -

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in the form of Robert Dudley.

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One tiny problem with this plan, though.

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Mary had no intention of being told what to do by Elizabeth,

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and, anyway, everyone knew that after the death of his wife, Robert Dudley was spoiled goods.

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Lord Henry Darnley, though, the handsome poster boy of the Scottish nobility,

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seemed a much better prospect. One look at Darnley's shapely calves and Mary decided she must have him.

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It helped that he, too, had Tudor blood flowing through his veins -

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unfortunately a lot of whisky ran through them too.

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Too late, Mary discovered that she had married a lazy, dissolute drunk,

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incapable of doing even the minimal things required of a co-sovereign.

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Stuck at Holyrood with the task of ruling Scotland without him,

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Mary increasingly relied on her private secretary,

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the Italian Catholic, David Rizzio.

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Naturally, the Protestant nobles in Scotland

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were convinced that Mary was plotting to turn Scotland back into a Catholic country once more.

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So Darnley's increasing estrangement from his wife gave the Lords -

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most offended by Rizzio's access to the Queen - the opening they were looking for.

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In 1566, a group of them approached Darnley and proposed what amounted to a violent coup -

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get rid of David Rizzio, who was her lover, they said, not just her secretary.

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"Ah!" thought Darnley, "Now that'd explain why she's such a bitch.

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"I'll show her who's in charge!"

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On March the 7th, while she was dining,

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Darnley and his fellow plotters burst into Mary's chamber,

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tore the terrified Rizzio from Mary's skirts and stabbed him to death in front of her.

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Between 50 and 60 wounds were discovered on his body, after it was thrown down the privy staircase.

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At some point, the murderers turned to Mary, pointing a pistol at her heavily pregnant belly...

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..and perhaps, at that moment, Mary knew how to turn terror into power,

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for in the months that followed,

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she milked the melodrama of the threatened womb for all it was worth.

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Instead of being reduced to a weeping wreck, Mary was strangely calm.

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She knew she could be strong because she was carrying her greatest weapon inside her womb.

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Whatever happened to her useless, drunken, homicidal nitwit of a husband,

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she knew that a baby would be born. Mother and child were going to survive.

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On June the 19th, at Edinburgh Castle,

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Mary gave birth to the boy who would become James VI of Scotland.

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On hearing the news, Elizabeth's reaction was to cry -

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"Alack, the Queen of Scots is lighter of a bonny son,

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"and I am of the barren stock."

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Mary was by now so consumed with contempt for Darnley, that she resolved to be rid of him.

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Possibly all she meant by this was to be rid of him as a husband,

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but some of her devotees,

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in particular the Earl of Bothwell, who took her sighs to mean something altogether more decisive.

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Bothwell, one of the great landowners of Scotland,

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was rich, promiscuous and dangerous,

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but he could also turn on the gallantry, and in her distress,

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Mary now turned to him as protector,

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and Bothwell was only too happy to solve Mary's Darnley problem.

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On the evening of March 9th 1567,

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while Mary was attending a masked ball,

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Bothwell supervised the lighting of a fuse that, at 2am,

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would detonate an immense quantity of gunpowder beneath the house where Darnley was asleep.

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EXPLOSION

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The house was blown sky-high.

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Darnley was dead, but not bumped off according to plan. Minutes before the explosion,

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he'd heard suspicious noises and had himself lowered out of his bedroom window on a chair.

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Running through the garden in his nightshirt, Darnley ran straight into the plotters

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who promptly throttled him to death.

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Darnley's murder was a turning point in Mary's life.

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From now on, death followed Mary Stuart like a lady-in-waiting.

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She was already sick, vomiting black mucus.

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She needed help and the unscrupulous Bothwell was at hand to give it.

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His power over Mary now made him recklessly bold

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and he announced to the Scottish Lords that for the proper government of the country,

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it was necessary for Mary to have a husband. Very decently, he offered himself for the job.

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Bothwell's idea of a marriage proposal was to abduct Mary and take her to his grim castle in Dunbar.

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There, he planted his flag as prospective King of Scotland

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by planting himself, violently it was said, inside her body.

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Now he supposed the traumatised Mary would HAVE to marry him

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and, to most of the country's horror,

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Mary did just that, a few weeks later, at Holyrood.

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It was at this point that Mary lost it -

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lost control over her own body, lost the priceless political asset of her motherhood -

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soiled by her relationship with Bothwell - lost Scotland, lost the whole damned shooting match.

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The thing is, that it never needed to have happened. Had she been half the politician Elizabeth was,

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she would have distanced herself from Bothwell,

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and then she would have condemned Darnley's murderers,

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professing herself to be shocked at the crime, truly shocked,

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and presenting herself to the Scots as a doubly victimised mother.

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Instead, the mother let herself be turned into a whore.

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Mary now faced the rebel armies loyal to the murdered Darnley,

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but on the verge of battle, Bothwell conveniently disappeared to gather reinforcements, or so he said,

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leaving Mary to face the enemy on her own. It was the last she would ever see of him.

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Dragged back to Edinburgh, a captive, filthy and dishevelled,

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she appeared at a window, her dress torn from her shoulders,

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her breasts exposed, and was greeted by a mob howling abuse.

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Handbills, featuring her as a mermaid, began to appear -

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a mermaid being another name for a prostitute.

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Mermaids, of course, were not fit to sit on the throne of Scotland,

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so Mary was forced to renounce it in favour of her baby son.

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Her Protestant half-brother, the Earl of Moray,

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took charge of baby James and made himself Regent of Scotland.

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Mary was 25 years old -

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her history seemed done,

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but of course it was not.

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She had one last weapon to deploy -

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her air of tragically damaged beauty.

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Incarcerated in the castle of Loch Leven, in the middle of a deep lake,

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she unleashed her seductive charm on her jailer,

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one of the usually hard-bitten Douglas clan, who melted in adoration.

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After ten months of imprisonment,

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in May 1568, Mary made a getaway across the loch.

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But there was really only one way she could get her throne back -

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an appeal to her cousin, Elizabeth.

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So her next journey, across the border, was to be in the nature of a temporary refuge.

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She must have supposed her stay would last perhaps a month, a year at the most.

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Had she known the real answer - 19 years -

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she would surely have avoided the passage across the Solway Firth.

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But there she was, an exhausted, bedraggled figure, her hair cropped for disguise,

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sitting hunched up in a small boat,

0:27:010:27:04

her eyes fixed on the disappearing shoreline of Scotland.

0:27:040:27:08

Mary's appearance on English soil threw Elizabeth into turmoil.

0:27:150:27:20

Was Mary her heir or wasn't she?

0:27:200:27:23

After all, Elizabeth wasn't getting any younger - 35 in 1568.

0:27:230:27:30

The royal laundresses were still sending Cecil monthly evidence

0:27:300:27:34

of her capacity to produce children but she was no nearer to getting married.

0:27:340:27:39

So would the fugitive Queen of Scots be treated like the next in line,

0:27:410:27:45

or at least as a fellow sovereign, a guest?

0:27:450:27:49

Well, not exactly. Mary's first request to Elizabeth

0:27:490:27:54

was for some clothes that befitted her status rather than the rags she had fled in.

0:27:540:28:00

What she got, after much complaining, was a packet of linen.

0:28:000:28:05

Just as well, perhaps, that she didn't know Elizabeth was already wearing Mary's favourite pearls

0:28:070:28:14

that had been stolen from Mary by her enemies and sent to the English Queen.

0:28:140:28:20

In fact, Elizabeth didn't know what to do with Mary.

0:28:200:28:24

Her royal instincts were outraged by the humiliation and indignities heaped on her royal cousin.

0:28:240:28:30

If Mary would agree to keep her hands off the English throne,

0:28:300:28:35

Elizabeth was sorely tempted to help her regain the Scottish crown.

0:28:350:28:39

Elizabeth, though, could also see the wisdom of the opposite view -

0:28:430:28:47

it was folly to restore a Catholic queen to the Scottish throne,

0:28:470:28:51

giving a back door entry to Britain for the French and the Spanish.

0:28:510:28:55

There was a safe Protestant regime in Scotland now, run by Mary's enemies - why rock the boat?

0:28:550:29:03

So, if Mary imagined she could rely on the sisterhood of queens, she was deluded.

0:29:030:29:09

The first thing that Elizabeth did was order an inquiry into the murder of Mary's husband, Lord Darnley,

0:29:090:29:15

which turned into a trial in all but name.

0:29:150:29:19

Now Mary could have no illusion that she was anything except a prisoner.

0:29:200:29:27

She was shuttled from house to house under the watchful eye of the Earl of Shrewsbury,

0:29:270:29:34

who got the unenviable job of being her jailer. Some of those houses were just a damp ruin.

0:29:340:29:40

Others, like Wingfield here, were much more tolerable places.

0:29:400:29:44

Now, Wingfield is in Derbyshire and that tells you something about the nervousness of her captors.

0:29:440:29:51

Mary Stuart had to be kept a long way away from any possibility of rescue,

0:29:510:29:57

far away from Scotland, from London, from the coast...

0:29:570:30:01

In fact, in the Midlands.

0:30:010:30:03

But wherever she was, Mary Stuart had become maximum-security problem number one -

0:30:030:30:09

not just a headache, but a magnet for conspiracy.

0:30:090:30:14

There were many political heavyweights

0:30:210:30:24

for whom Mary was a legitimate and attractive alternative to Elizabeth.

0:30:240:30:29

And they were not just a bunch of wild-eyed Catholic dreamers,

0:30:290:30:33

but men close to the heart of Elizabeth's government.

0:30:330:30:37

Their most ambitious plan was to annul the Bothwell marriage

0:30:370:30:42

and marry the Queen of Scots to the premier duke of the realm - Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.

0:30:420:30:49

Although Norfolk may have been a Catholic at heart,

0:30:490:30:52

he was, like so many at this time, outwardly at least, a conforming Protestant.

0:30:520:30:59

So it was reasonable to see the marriage plot as a way of binding up the wounds of the Reformation.

0:30:590:31:05

But the Queen wasn't fooled, not for a moment.

0:31:050:31:09

When the plot was exposed, she sent Norfolk straight to the Tower.

0:31:090:31:14

The plot collapsed. There was, though, a different kind of fury waiting to happen

0:31:200:31:26

and this WAS burning with a Catholic flame.

0:31:260:31:31

Up here in the north, Catholicism had not only NOT been rooted out,

0:31:350:31:40

it actually fed on the burning resentment and fierce independence

0:31:400:31:44

of the great aristocratic families who ran things around here.

0:31:440:31:48

They had been here for centuries and were not about to be pushed around by a bunch of Tudor bureaucrats.

0:31:480:31:55

They weren't going to be told what was what in THEIR government and THEIR religion.

0:31:550:32:01

So, for them, Mary Stuart was not just a successor,

0:32:010:32:05

she was a replacement, as in immediate replacement.

0:32:050:32:10

So the Catholic north fought the Protestant south.

0:32:130:32:17

For a while it even looked as though the north might win.

0:32:170:32:21

The rebels swept through Lancashire, Yorkshire and Northumberland,

0:32:210:32:25

and it must have seemed that Catholic Britain had been reborn.

0:32:250:32:29

Now Elizabeth's government really knew what it was up against -

0:32:300:32:36

the latest act in the religious war

0:32:360:32:39

that had begun when Henry VIII had made himself Head of the Church.

0:32:390:32:44

But 12,000 troops were eventually mustered and the rebellion brutally crushed.

0:32:450:32:51

Perhaps the brutality worked

0:32:550:32:58

because the northern rising was the last great rebellion to disturb Tudor England,

0:32:580:33:04

and it's tempting now to feel the country's settling at last into its Elizabethan finery -

0:33:040:33:11

feeling fat, safe, comfortable - but it was always a jittery kind of grandeur.

0:33:110:33:17

# Farewell!

0:33:170:33:19

# Thou art too dear for my possessing... #

0:33:190:33:24

Elizabeth was 20 years into her reign and suitors had come and gone,

0:33:260:33:31

but there was always something the matter with them - too lowly, too Catholic, too stupid.

0:33:310:33:38

And besides, now her suitors had rivals -

0:33:380:33:41

millions of Elizabeth's subjects who had become jealously possessive

0:33:410:33:45

and thought that the Queen was theirs alone.

0:33:450:33:49

In the 1570s, they got her.

0:33:520:33:55

The cult, the religion of Elizabeth was spectacularly created.

0:33:550:34:01

# For how do I hold thee

0:34:010:34:05

# But by thy granting...? #

0:34:050:34:09

Her Accession Day became the greatest of national holidays,

0:34:090:34:13

more sacred than all the heathen events on the Papist calendar.

0:34:130:34:18

# The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting

0:34:180:34:25

# And so my patent back again... #

0:34:250:34:28

Her image began to appear everywhere in allegorical pictures -

0:34:280:34:33

Elizabeth as the sun who gave the rainbow its radiant hues.

0:34:330:34:38

Even those on the inside,

0:34:380:34:41

who could plainly see the elaborate scaffolding from which this image was projected,

0:34:410:34:47

who knew that the pale moon glow of the queen's face

0:34:470:34:51

was just pulverised eggshell, borax, alum and mill water,

0:34:510:34:55

even these knowing types were still total captives to the cult.

0:34:550:35:01

She had this effect on all kinds of people, especially men,

0:35:010:35:05

even when they got older and should have known better.

0:35:050:35:08

They built huge prodigy houses in her honour. It was, in a way, a desperate need to impress,

0:35:080:35:16

a sign of culture's raw immaturity, its hunger for glitzy gorgeousness.

0:35:160:35:22

Elizabethan razzle-dazzle, thigh-hugging hose,

0:35:220:35:26

oak-panelled libraries with yards of unread classics,

0:35:260:35:30

ballrooms as big as playing fields.

0:35:300:35:33

# Farewell!

0:35:330:35:36

# Thou art too dear for my possessing... #

0:35:360:35:41

Now you might suppose that devotees would be queuing up for a glimpse of the national Madonna,

0:35:410:35:48

but many knew that hosting the show came at a heavy price.

0:35:480:35:52

If you were a Burgess of the City of Warwick,

0:35:520:35:55

it's hard to know which lot would have made you more nervous.

0:35:550:36:00

The royal wanderers, after all, came with 200 carts of the Queen's baggage,

0:36:000:36:06

each one pulled by a team of six horses - that's a lot of stable room to find, that is a lot of hay!

0:36:060:36:13

And a week before the great event, men from the office of purveyors

0:36:130:36:17

would come here and buy up everything in sight for the visit at prices THEY decided were fair.

0:36:170:36:25

Then there were the lords and ladies, notoriously hard to please.

0:36:250:36:29

Supposing they rolled their eyes at the entertainment? Supposing they wrinkled their nose at the fair?

0:36:290:36:36

And then there was Queen Bess herself,

0:36:360:36:39

a bejewelled apparition with a chalk-white face like some goddess on Earth,

0:36:390:36:45

but like the immortals, she was evidently frightening as well as majestic.

0:36:450:36:52

You could revel in the Elizabethan glamour show,

0:36:550:36:59

just so long as you didn't think too hard about what was going on beyond the sceptred isle.

0:36:590:37:05

For out there in Europe, a total war between Catholic and Protestant powers was about to ignite.

0:37:050:37:12

The rivalry between Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth was no longer a girlie soap opera.

0:37:130:37:20

It was right at the centre of that global struggle.

0:37:200:37:24

In Rome, the Pope declared that Elizabeth was to be considered a heretic.

0:37:240:37:29

"Whoever sends her out of the world," the Pope decreed,

0:37:290:37:34

"not only does not sin but gains merit in the eyes of God."

0:37:340:37:38

In response, England became a national security state.

0:37:380:37:42

Infiltrators and double agents were recruited by the government.

0:37:420:37:46

Gentlemen vigilantes were sworn to take out, in advance,

0:37:460:37:51

anyone so much as suspected of plotting against the Queen.

0:37:510:37:55

At the heart of the operation was Elizabeth's chief spymaster, Francis Walsingham.

0:37:570:38:03

"Intelligence is never too dear," was Walsingham's motto,

0:38:040:38:09

and his whole career was an applied demonstration that knowledge is power.

0:38:090:38:15

But if Walsingham was ferocious, he was not paranoid.

0:38:160:38:20

There were underground conspiracies organised in France, Rome and Spain,

0:38:200:38:26

and they were all working towards one end - the assassination of Elizabeth

0:38:260:38:32

and the enthronement of Mary Stuart.

0:38:320:38:35

Elizabeth might have been queasy about taking care of Mary, but Walsingham wasn't.

0:38:370:38:43

It was his job to get his hands dirty for England - that's what spymasters do,

0:38:430:38:49

but he knew he couldn't just do her in. Elizabeth had to be free of any suspicion of complicity in murder.

0:38:490:38:56

On the other hand, the Mary problem could not be allowed to drag on for another 15 years.

0:38:560:39:03

Walsingham realized he would have to force a solution.

0:39:030:39:08

So he engineered a trap... and it was a gem.

0:39:080:39:13

Mary may have been under house arrest, but she been allowed to lead the life of the country lady.

0:39:140:39:21

Then, in December 1585, Walsingham made a change.

0:39:210:39:27

Mary and her household were suddenly packed up and sent to close confinement

0:39:270:39:33

at Chartley Manor in Staffordshire,

0:39:330:39:36

where she was guarded by the unsmiling puritan, Amias Paulet.

0:39:360:39:41

As Walsingham had intended, Mary was furious,

0:39:420:39:46

desperate to find a way out of her prison.

0:39:460:39:50

So of course she was thrilled when she discovered an ingenious means

0:39:500:39:55

to smuggle coded letters to her supporters.

0:39:550:39:58

The letters were secretly put in a watertight packet, slipped through the bunghole of beer casks,

0:39:580:40:05

delivered to and from Chartley.

0:40:050:40:07

What Mary didn't know, of course, was that this was a trap.

0:40:070:40:13

Walsingham set the whole thing up.

0:40:130:40:16

The letters were intercepted.

0:40:160:40:19

When Mary's latest champion, the rich merchant, Anthony Babbington,

0:40:190:40:23

supplied Mary with details of a plot to murder Elizabeth and put Mary on the English throne,

0:40:230:40:29

Mary wrote back with encouragement.

0:40:290:40:32

The trap was sprung.

0:40:340:40:37

At Chartley, Mary felt the skies lighten.

0:40:400:40:44

After nearly 20 years of unjust imprisonment,

0:40:440:40:48

she could feel liberty so close she could practically taste it.

0:40:480:40:52

One morning, and very unusually,

0:40:520:40:55

Paulet allowed her to go out riding, have a day's hunting.

0:40:550:40:59

From a distance she could see a group of horsemen approach.

0:40:590:41:03

Mary must have thought, "This is it!

0:41:030:41:06

"News from Babbington, freedom at last!"

0:41:060:41:10

But it was, in fact, the warrant for her arrest.

0:41:120:41:16

Babbington and his fellow plotters had been tortured and had already confessed.

0:41:160:41:21

Mary was taken away while her rooms at Chartley were searched,

0:41:230:41:28

turning up hundreds of incriminating documents.

0:41:280:41:32

In London, Elizabeth wrote an ecstatic letter to Amias Paulet.

0:41:330:41:40

"Amias, my most faithful and careful servant,

0:41:400:41:43

"may God reward thee treble-fold for the most troublesome charge so well discharged."

0:41:430:41:50

There was just one more stop, one more castle in the career of the wandering Queen -

0:41:570:42:04

Fotheringay in Northamptonshire.

0:42:040:42:07

It's just a grassy mound now, which is just as well, since no ruin, no standing building for that matter,

0:42:070:42:14

could possibly take the weight of the drama that was to follow.

0:42:140:42:19

Anyone expecting Mary Stuart to crumble into tearful confession had seriously misjudged her.

0:42:220:42:29

Up against it, she had drawn something inside her long and mostly disastrous career,

0:42:290:42:35

which made her resolute and unnervingly lofty as if she was suddenly above this squalid charade.

0:42:350:42:43

From the moment of her arrest to the moment of her execution, she gave as good as she got.

0:42:430:42:51

As a sinner I am truly conscious of having often offended my creator.

0:42:530:42:58

I beg him to forgive me,

0:43:000:43:02

but as queen and sovereign, I am aware of no fault or offence

0:43:020:43:07

for which I have to render account to anyone here below.

0:43:070:43:12

Her second tactic was to lie her head off, denying all knowledge of the Babbington plot,

0:43:120:43:18

although she was on stronger ground

0:43:180:43:20

when she accused Walsingham of setting up the whole thing to get rid of her.

0:43:200:43:27

Elizabeth, of course, did not see it exactly in this way.

0:43:280:43:34

She wrote to Mary as if the Queen of the Scots was a houseguest who'd made off with the towels.

0:43:340:43:40

"You have planned to take my life and ruin my kingdom by the shedding of blood.

0:43:430:43:49

"I never proceeded so hastily against you.

0:43:490:43:53

"I have maintained and preserved your life with the care I use for myself."

0:43:530:43:59

On the 15th of October 1586, the formal trial began.

0:44:030:44:09

In a typical gesture, half plea, half threat,

0:44:090:44:13

Mary warned her prosecutors to look to their consciences.

0:44:130:44:18

Remember, she said, the theatre of the world is wider than the realm of England -

0:44:180:44:24

and it was to that audience, worldwide and across the ages, that she now took centre stage.

0:44:240:44:31

Mary hobbled into the room, by now painfully infirm,

0:44:340:44:39

dressed head to foot like a glamorous mother superior in swathes of velvet and a white headdress.

0:44:390:44:45

Deprived of any lawyer, she turned to the Privy Council facing her.

0:44:450:44:50

There is not one, I think, among you, let him be the cleverest man in the world,

0:44:500:44:56

who would be capable of resisting or defending himself if he were in MY place.

0:44:560:45:04

Of course, it wouldn't have mattered what she said -

0:45:050:45:10

the trial resumed in London without her and passed swiftly to her conviction.

0:45:100:45:17

All her adult life, Elizabeth had been spooked by her fascinating, infuriating cousin,

0:45:170:45:23

who seemed to personify all the cliches about women which Elizabeth herself had rejected.

0:45:230:45:29

Now she had a precious opportunity to get mother Mary off her back.

0:45:290:45:34

Parliament was impatient to be rid of her and the people were positively baying for Mary's blood.

0:45:340:45:41

Yet somehow, Elizabeth couldn't bring herself to do the deed,

0:45:410:45:45

not because she was sentimental, but because she was scared -

0:45:450:45:50

scared of being seen by the world to have her fingerprints on the axe.

0:45:500:45:55

This was what was robbing Elizabeth of her sleep -

0:45:570:46:02

the tormenting question whether by killing Mary she was getting rid of trouble or inviting it.

0:46:020:46:09

On February 1 1587, Elizabeth finally put her signature on Mary's death warrant.

0:46:120:46:19

# There were three ravens Sat on a tree

0:46:210:46:25

# Down-a-down Hey, down-a-down

0:46:250:46:30

# They were as black as they might be... #

0:46:320:46:35

All the chaos, squalor, reckless adventuring, rash conspiracies, pathetic delusions,

0:46:370:46:44

histrionic self-pity, all the escapes, all the rescues had all led her to this one supreme moment -

0:46:440:46:52

she would be a Catholic martyr.

0:46:520:46:54

So when Mary was told she was to be executed the next morning, by a weeping Scottish courtier,

0:47:010:47:08

she told him to be joyful instead, for the end of Mary Stuart's trouble, she said, was now done.

0:47:080:47:16

Carry this message for me and tell my friends that I died a true woman to my religion

0:47:160:47:24

and like a true Scottish woman and a true French woman.

0:47:240:47:29

When she undressed for the executioner,

0:47:400:47:44

the demure black gown fell away to reveal a crimson petticoat, the blood-red hue of the martyr.

0:47:440:47:51

Mary's eyes were bound with a white silk handkerchief embroidered with gold

0:47:510:47:57

and she lay with such utter stillness on the block that it actually unnerved the executioner.

0:47:570:48:04

# His hawks they fly so eagerly

0:48:090:48:13

# Down-a-down Hey, down-a-down... #

0:48:130:48:17

His first blow cut deep into the back of her head,

0:48:170:48:22

the second severed it but for a hanging thread of flesh.

0:48:220:48:27

Even now, Mary contrived to remain centre stage.

0:48:280:48:32

For 15 minutes after the last blow of the axe

0:48:320:48:36

the lips on her severed head, so witnesses reported, continued to move, as if in silent prayer.

0:48:360:48:44

# She lifted up his bloody head... #

0:48:460:48:51

And when the executioner, by now probably wanting to die himself, held up the head to the spectators,

0:48:510:48:57

he made the mistake of grasping it by the mass of auburn curls.

0:48:570:49:02

But that was a wig.

0:49:020:49:04

To general horror, Mary's skull, the hair cropped into grey stubble,

0:49:040:49:09

fell from his grip and rolled along the floor.

0:49:090:49:13

At that moment, a terrible howling came from the crimson blood-soaked petticoat.

0:49:210:49:29

Mary's lapdog had to be taken away from the wreckage of her mistress.

0:49:290:49:34

They tried and tried to scrub it clean of the clotted blood.

0:49:340:49:39

They did so but it wouldn't eat. It languished, it died.

0:49:390:49:44

It was just another martyr to Mary's pathetic, tragic life.

0:49:440:49:49

If that dog was the first mourner, it certainly wouldn't be the last.

0:49:490:49:55

Among the mourners, astoundingly, was Queen Elizabeth, in deep denial of what she had done.

0:49:590:50:06

"When she heard, her countenance changed, her words faltered

0:50:060:50:11

"and with excessive sorrow she was in a manner astonished, in so much as she gave herself over to grief,

0:50:110:50:18

"putting herself into mourning weeds and shedding an abundance of tears."

0:50:180:50:23

Some of Elizabeth's anguish may have been genuine remorse.

0:50:380:50:43

Some of it was downright fear -

0:50:430:50:45

and she was right to worry.

0:50:450:50:48

Even before Mary's execution, King Phillip of Spain had accelerated his plans for the enterprise of England,

0:50:480:50:55

and with Mary now dead, there would be no stopping him.

0:50:550:51:00

Suddenly, Elizabethan England looked very small, very vulnerable.

0:51:010:51:07

This was always Elizabeth's worst nightmare - a full-scale Catholic invasion.

0:51:100:51:17

And now Phillip was launching one.

0:51:170:51:19

The Spanish admirals, however, were deeply pessimistic about the chances of success.

0:51:190:51:26

English ships were vastly superior in speed and manoeuvrability.

0:51:260:51:31

The miracle was not that England was saved,

0:51:310:51:35

but that the Spanish came so close to pulling it off.

0:51:350:51:39

Only a few miles of the Channel and an unhelpful wind direction made the difference.

0:51:390:51:46

The weather, as usual, batted for England.

0:51:460:51:49

But it was a close thing. The English were right to be scared in the summer and autumn of 1588.

0:51:540:52:02

What do you do when you're weepy and terrified?

0:52:020:52:06

Well, you cry for Mummy.

0:52:060:52:08

And that, courtesy of Robert Dudley, dying of cancer now but still the impresario of Elizabeth's shows,

0:52:080:52:15

is how she appeared to the troops at the armed camp at Tilbury -

0:52:150:52:20

the mother at last, the virgin mother of England and the kind of mother you'd want on your side.

0:52:200:52:27

A mother in a breastplate of steel.

0:52:270:52:29

Everything Elizabeth had ever learned came together at Tilbury -

0:52:310:52:36

charisma in a costume, the shell-burst of oratory,

0:52:360:52:40

and, perhaps most important, what all mothers know instinctively -

0:52:400:52:45

that there's no substitute for BEING there.

0:52:450:52:49

And there, on August 8th and 9th, she certainly was,

0:52:490:52:54

arriving in a gilded coach escorted by 2,000 ecstatic troops.

0:52:540:52:59

What she produced for the expectant crowds was pure gold -

0:52:590:53:04

the first great speech by a queen recorded in history.

0:53:040:53:08

This is where the real event of 1588 happened, not out on the high seas but on the soapbox at Tilbury.

0:53:080:53:15

My loving people, I come among you, not for my recreation and disport,

0:53:180:53:24

but being resolved in the midst of the heat of the battle to live and die amongst you all,

0:53:240:53:33

to lay down for God and my kingdom and for my people,

0:53:330:53:39

my honour and blood even in the dust.

0:53:390:53:44

I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman,

0:53:450:53:50

but I have the heart and stomach of a king and a king of England too,

0:53:500:53:56

and think foul scorn that Spain or any prince of Europe should dare invade the borders of my realm,

0:53:560:54:05

to which rather dishonour I myself will take up arms.

0:54:050:54:11

Oh, I know it's all spin and hype,

0:54:150:54:19

but it was hype for England and it did make a difference, just like Churchill's rhetoric in 1940.

0:54:190:54:26

Almost instinctively the Queen seemed to know what it was her people needed to hear.

0:54:260:54:32

"Look," she said, "I may be a goddess but I'm also flesh and blood - YOUR flesh and blood.

0:54:320:54:38

"Whatever you go through, I'll go through it with you."

0:54:380:54:43

That made the difference between terror and determination. That is what we have queens for.

0:54:430:54:49

You couldn't top that and Elizabeth couldn't.

0:54:520:54:56

The euphoria of 1588 was short-lived.

0:54:560:54:59

In the closing years of the Tudor century, famine across the country triggered food riots.

0:54:590:55:06

Cut-throats and beggars prowled the roads,

0:55:060:55:10

the Irish, referred to as "savages", were driven into a nine-year war

0:55:100:55:15

and for the queen herself,

0:55:150:55:17

the distance between the mythology of Elizabeth's ageless body and the shrivelled reality

0:55:170:55:24

became more glaring.

0:55:240:55:26

Thoughts inevitably began to turn to her succession.

0:55:260:55:31

Everybody knew who that would be -

0:55:310:55:34

James, son of Mary, Queen of Scots.

0:55:340:55:37

So in the end, did Mary, Queen of Scots, the mother, triumph from the grave over her rival Elizabeth?

0:55:420:55:49

Elizabeth had one comfort though.

0:55:490:55:53

James had been brought up a Protestant, forced to disown his own mother after her disgrace.

0:55:530:56:00

But still, he was Mary's child - the fruit of her womb, not Elizabeth's.

0:56:010:56:09

And when Elizabeth died in 1603, nearly half a century after that day under the oak,

0:56:130:56:19

as gently as an apple falling from a tree, as someone said,

0:56:190:56:24

and when her underthings were taken from her body,

0:56:240:56:29

it was seen that they still fitted the contours of the virgin -

0:56:290:56:34

wasp-waisted, slim-hipped, long-limbed.

0:56:340:56:37

It was a body, which, according to some, had not fulfilled the purpose God intended.

0:56:370:56:43

It was supposed to have joined itself to a husband - to have given him and the country posterity.

0:56:430:56:50

She had done none of this, but no-one in their right mind thought she had failed her people.

0:56:500:56:57

She had been different, that's all.

0:56:570:56:59

When the ring which had united Elizabeth to her country was finally removed from her finger,

0:57:040:57:11

it was carried 400 miles north, to Scotland.

0:57:110:57:15

Now it symbolised a new marriage, this time between two nations.

0:57:160:57:21

Elizabeth and Mary Stuart never met.

0:57:220:57:26

It took James the First to bring the two women together at last -

0:57:260:57:31

closer in death than they had ever been in life.

0:57:310:57:35

There had been an old, wonderful joke doing the rounds in the 1560s

0:57:350:57:40

that all of their problems would be solved

0:57:400:57:43

if only Mary and Elizabeth could marry each other.

0:57:430:57:49

And in one sense they had.

0:57:490:57:51

Or at least together - and at a terrible price and with so much pain - they had had a baby.

0:57:510:57:58

It was a little thing with a big name - Magna Britannia...Great Britain.

0:57:580:58:05

There's much more to discover and debate about the history of Britain on the BBC history website.

0:58:280:58:35

Subtitles by Gillian Frazer and Anne Morgan BBC Scotland 2000

0:58:490:58:55

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