SYMHC Classics: Mary, Queen of Scots

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Mary Queen of Scott's, also known as Mary Stewart, was crowned as Queen of Scotland four hundred and eighty years ago today. She had inherited the crown on December fourteenth, fifteen forty two, after the death of her father, James the Fifth, and she was only a few days old when her father died than when she was crowned on September ninth, fifteen forty three, she was only nine months old. So we are pulling one of our episodes on Mary out for today's Saturday Classic. This one is more focused on her adult life, especially the conspiracy that ultimately led to her execution in fifteen eighty seven.

00:00:41
Speaker 2: So enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

00:00:56
Speaker 1: Hello, and Welcome to the podcast I'm Tracy V. Wilson Frye. Earlier this year, the folks that Focus Features came to us about doing a podcast related to Mary, Queen of Scott's to coincide with their new film, also called Mary Queen of Scott's. Mary Stewart, as she is also known, has made several appearances on our show before Previous hosts talked about the death of her husband, Lord Darnley, as well as her lengthy rivalry with Queen Elizabeth the First. But Mary is such a memorable figure and there's so many parts of her life that we haven't talked about that it was very very easy for us to find something that we wanted to cover, and that is the Babbington plot, which ultimately led to her execution. So we're gonna set the stage with a little bit about her youth and a little about that rivalry with Elizabeth, but our focus today is really on the plot and the trial that followed. And since this is an episode about the Stuarts, Mary's beheading is only one of the gruesome executions that we're going to discuss.

00:01:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was definitely a trend in those stories where there is a lot of violence, there's a lot of killing each other in very grisly ways. Yeah, this is one of those times. Any pretty much anytime, but especially when we talk about the Stuarts and the Tutors. I kind of have that thing of like, who would want that job? Because no one's safe, Like it's one thing to have a stressful job, and I guess if you really want power, there's a draw, but I would be like, no, I'm not part of the royal family, thank you. I would completely excommunicate myself. But that is neither here nor there, so we will get into Mary's story. Mary Stewart was born on December eighth, fifteen forty two, in Linlithgow Palace in Scotland, and her parents were James the fifth of Scotland and Marie of Geese. She was their only surviving child, and less than a week after Mary was born, her father died. Mary became Queen of Scotland at the age of six days old, with her mother acting as regent. Mary spent most of her childhood and young adulthood in France, not in Scotland. She was sent there to be fostered and to escape an unwonted marriage to Henry the Yighth's son Edward, and then on April twenty fourth of fifteen fifty eight, she married Francis, the Dauphin of France. He was the son of Henri the second and Catherine de Medici. At the time, she was seventeen and he was fourteen, and they do seem to have been genuinely fond of each other, but their relationship was also more like siblings than spouse's. On November seventeenth of that same year, Elizabeth the First ascended to the English throne, and that put Mary next in the line of succession after Elizabeth, which was the focal point of the rivalry between the two of them. There was a lot more than just this one issue tangled up in this rivalry, though, including religion, politics, family dynamics, ongoing tensions between England and Scotland, and ongoing tensions between England and France. Consequently, the next decade of Mary's life was increasingly chaotic and turbulent. Onria the Second tried to make a claim to the English throne on her behalf, but he died not long after that. That made Francis the King of France and Mary was the Queen Consort. But then Francis died on December fifth of fifteen sixty, just a couple of years into their marriage. Earlier that same year, Marie of Geese had also died, so suddenly Mary was the Queen of Scotland, the dowager Queen of France, a widow, and an orphan all at the same time. She was eighteen. Maria of Geese's death also meant that Scotland no longer had its regent, and Mary returned to Scotland to take the throne in fifteen sixty one, but she immediately ran into all kinds of problems. Her upbringing and manners and education were all very French, so some Scots considered her to be an outsider. She was also Catholic, but Scotland at that point had become a Protestant country, and returning to Scotland had amped up the tension between her and Elizabeth even more since it meant that Mary and her claim to the end English throne were right there on the same island with Elizabeth instead of somewhat out of the way in France.

00:05:06
Speaker 1: In fifteen sixty five, things got even more dramatic. Mary married her cousin Henry Stewart, the Earl of Darnley. Since Darnley was both Catholic and a Stewart, Elizabeth was highly suspicious of this match and of the motivations for it. It really was just an impulsive marriage that Mary made for love, but it did not go well at all. Case endpoint, Darnley and his men murdered David Rizzio, who was Mary's secretary and favorite, and they did this in front of her at dinner while she was about six months pregnant.

00:05:40
Speaker 2: Charmers everyone. And then Darnley himself died under very mysterious and extremely suspicious circumstances. We have a previous podcast on that as well, but the one sentence version is this. He was found strangled outside the house he was staying in after it exploded. Mary then got married again to James Hepburn, the fourth Earl of Bothwell, who had been one of the prime suspects in Darnley's death. There were also a lot of rumors that Mary and Bothwell had been having an affair and had conspired together to kill Darnley. Mary's marriage to Bothwell was also strange. It wasn't totally clear whether he kidnapped her or whether she willingly eloped with him, but regardless, immediately before their marriage, he divorced his wife, Jean Gordon, under very shady circumstances. Mary's sudden marriage to Bothwell caused her to lose the support of a lot of the Scottish nobility. Bothwell and his opponents each raised armies, but the French ambassador arranged peace terms. Before any of this could actually result in a war, Mary surrendered on June fifteenth, fifteen sixty seven. After she surrendered, Mary was forced to abdicate in favor of her son James, making him James the sixth of Scotland. James's father had been Lord Darnley, and since James was a little over a year old, Mary's half brother, James Stuart, Earl of Moray, was named as the regent as for bothwell. He was eventually arrested and died after spending five years in solitary confinement. Mary spent the next eleven months imprisoned at locke Leaving Castle. After one failed escape attempt, she managed to leave the island on May second, fifteen sixty eight. Willie and George Douglas, ages sixteen and eighteen, were involved in both escape attempts. In the second, they had a set of fake keys to the castle made and they swapped those for the real ones at dinner, taking the real keys right off the table concealed in a napkin.

00:07:42
Speaker 1: This castle was on an island, and once she was free of it, Mary rallied an army. She denounced her half brother, and she announced that she had only abdicated under duress, she started planning to take back the throne of Scotland by force. She didn't succeed, though she was defeated by Morey's forces at the Battle of Langside. At this point, Mary was really out of options in Scotland, so she fled to England. In spite of the ongoing layered tensions between the two queens, Mary hoped that she could take refuge with her cousin Elizabeth. This wasn't quite as far fetched as the two queen's incredibly contentious history might make it seem. Elizabeth really was appalled at what had happened in Scotland because Mary was, without question the rightful ruler of Scotland. This was not how a monarch was supposed to be treated, especially not a monarch who was her cousin.

00:08:34
Speaker 2: At the same time, Elizabeth wasn't at all ready to commit English troops to helping Mary take back her throne, or to give Mary a pass for all of those years of animosity between them. Instead, she agreed to allow Mary to stay in England while she convened a commission that would hold hearings into the matter of Lord Darnley's death. If Mary was complicit in Darnley's death, it would have been out of the question for Elizabeth to help her at all. This commission ultimately determined that England should not interfere in what was happening in Scotland, but it also found that Mary was not involved in Darley's death. Elizabeth, though, was really sure that if she just freed Mary, the result was going to be a Catholic uprising against her in England. So Elizabeth had Mary imprisoned for the next almost nineteen years. More on that after a sponsor break. Even though Elizabeth was suspicious of.

00:09:37
Speaker 1: Mary, she didn't really have any legal grounds to imprison her. Mary was a monarch of another country. Her son, at this point was the King of Scotland. England and Scotland were not at war with each other, and for one monarch to just imprison another one during peacetime wasn't really within the bounds of international law, so Elizabeth's treatment of Mary was more like keeping her under house arrest. Mary spent her first night in England in Workington Hall, and from that point on she was kept under guard at a series of manors and castles. At first, many of them were owned by George Talbot, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury. He was Mary's custodian or jailer for much of her confinement. He and his wife, Bess of Hardwicke acted as Mary's keepers and Elizabeth's informants for most of those nineteen years. During those years of imprisonment, the Reformation and Counter Reformation were playing out in Europe, leading to ongoing religiously motivated violence. Just as one example, the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, in which French Catholics murdered thousands of Huguenots, was in fifteen seventy two while Mary was captive at Sheffield Castle. Religious strife also escalated in England during this time, some of it connected directly to Mary and Elizabeth, because many Catholics didn't consider Elizabeth to be a legitimate monarch at all. She was the daughter of Henry the Eighth and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. They had become secretly married in fifteen thirty three while Henry was still married to Catherine of Aragon. Henry had asked the Pope to annul his marriage to Catherine, and when he didn't, Henry declared himself head of the English Church and appointed an archbishop who would do the annulment for him. Anne was already pregnant with Elizabeth when Henry's marriage to Catherine was annulled, and an archbishop, not the Pope, had done that annulment. So a lot of people, Catholics especially, did not consider Elizabeth a legitimate successor to the throne. They thought of her as the illegitimate child of a king's concubine. In addition to all of that, on April twenty seventh, fifteen seventy, Pope Pious the fifth had issued a bull that excommunicated Elizabeth and called her a heretic and quote the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime. The bull also absolved the nobles, subjects, and people of the said Realm of any oaths and duties toward Elizabeth, and made obedience to Elizabeth punishable by excommunication. The papal bull combined with the existing questions about Elizabeth's legitimacy to spawn a whole series of plots to depose or assassinate her and replace her with Mary. The Ridolphie plot of fifteen seventy one was named for one of the conspirators Italian merchant Roberto Ridolphi. This plot was connected to a Catholic uprising called the Northern Rising, as well as to King Philip Icond of Spain. Then there was the Throckmorton plot of fifteen eighty three, named for Francis Throckmorton, who was working with agents from France. It's possible that Mary was connected to the Throckmorton plot, or at least knew about it. Throckmorton was writing a letter to her in code when he was arrested. And then there was the Perry plot of fifteen eighty five, which was named for Welsh spy and doctor William Perry. None of these plots was particularly likely to be successful, and it's not clear whether Perry really ever plotted.

00:12:59
Speaker 2: To kill the queen at all, but Elizabeth's advisers did encourage her to take them seriously. Added to all this stress was the assassination of William the Silent or William the First Prince of Orange in fifteen eighty four, who had led the Netherlands against Spanish rule and was ultimately assassinated by a Catholic fanatic. In the face of all of this, in fifteen eighty five, Mary was moved to Chartley Castle and assigned a new custodian, Sir Amiya Poulet. The move and the changing custody are widely reported to have been the work of Sir Francis Walsingham, that was Elizabeth's Secretary of State and spymaster. The move to Chartley let Walsingham keep a closer eye on Mary, it let Poulet completely cut her off from communication with the outside world. Parliament also passed a new law related to all of this. It had started with an informal agreement known as the Bond of Association in fifteen eighty four, which was formalized as an Act for the Security of the Queen's Royal Person and the Continuance of Peace in the Realm, which was past the following year.

00:14:04
Speaker 1: Under this Act, if a person conspired in a plot against the Queen, or if a plot against the Queen was concocted on a person's behalf, that person was prosecuted. Whether they knew about the plot or not. It was considered treason and it was punishable by execution. The Act also specified that anybody participating in such a plot or having such a plot carried out on their behalf was permanently and irrevocably barred from ever ascending to the throne of England.

00:14:34
Speaker 2: The bond of Association and the law that followed were clearly crafted because of Mary. They set up a legal framework to prosecute her if her supporters plotted to put her on the throne, regardless of whether she was involved or even knew about any of it.

00:14:49
Speaker 1: Okay, they might as well have just called it the law to make it so wea can behead Mary Stuart. Thanks, Yeah, because otherwise there's a logic breakdown to it.

00:14:58
Speaker 2: There are several logical breakdowns.

00:15:00
Speaker 1: Yeah. That all brings us finally to the Babington plot. Named for Anthony Babington. He was Catholic, very well off, and connected to several other people who had been involved in previous plots to try to depose or assassinate Elizabeth and replace her with Mary. He had also served as a page to George Talbot's sixth Earl of Shuebury, who had been Mary's custodian, and during that service he had become quite fond of her. One of his connections was to a Catholic priest named John Ballard, who also wanted Elizabeth off the throne and helped put him in touch with even more people who had similar goals. Babington and several co conspirators started plotting in early fifteen eighty six, using an inn as their meeting place, and they were not all that discreet about.

00:15:44
Speaker 2: Any of this. They even commissioned portraits of themselves, either because they thought that they would live and be famous for it, or because they thought they would die but be remembered as martyrs. Either way, portraits of themselves were going to come in very handy. It's like they were writing their own history books before they did the thing that was going to become historically significant. Yeah, they are often described as being arrogant and full of hubris, as sort of a pattern among them all. So meanwhile, Walsingham learned about this plot pretty quickly, and he saw it as an opportunity. He concluded reasonably that as long as Mary was alive, there were going to be ongoing attempts to get rid of Elizabeth and put Mary on the throne. Just as reasonably, he concluded there was no way Elizabeth was going to sign off on Mary's execution without some real concrete proof that she was involved in a plot to kill the monarch and take the throne for herself. So he allowed the Babbington conspirators to continue with their plotting, and even took steps to allow them to do it. When Gilbert Gifford, an English Catholic who had been in France, returned to England, Walsingham arrested him and got him to work as a double agent. Now, in some accounts Gifford volunteered, and in others this is more of a situation where Walsingham convinced him, and we're using the ear quotes around Convince threatened maybe yeah.

00:17:07
Speaker 1: Uh.

00:17:07
Speaker 2: Gifford's mission wasn't just to gain the conspirator's trust and provide intelligence back to Walsingham. It was also to actively encourage and enable this entire plot.

00:17:18
Speaker 1: At Walsingham's instruction, Gifford went to Babington and told him he had learned about this plot from another of the conspirators, a man named Thomas Morgan. Gifford said he had worked out a way to get messages to and from Mary, even though all that communication with the outside world had been cut off for months. He said he had a friend who was a brewer and that they could smuggle messages into and out of Chartley Castle in beer barrels with false bottoms. At this point, we don't know who this brewer might have been. He was always referred to only as the honest Man. Babington approved of this plan, but he did not entirely trust Gifford with his secret correspondence, so he used to cipher to encode all his letters. Mary already had the codebook she'd need to decipher the letters and encode her reply, apparently thanks to an emissary from France. But Gifford didn't take these letters straight to his brewer friend. He took them to Walsingham, who was working with a forger to replicate the seals that were used on all the letters. So Walsingham and his forger would open up the letter, make a copy of it, reseal the original, and send it on his way, and then keep the copy. Walsingham would take that copy to his codebreaker, Thomas Phillips, to try to work out the code, and at one point he even had Philips housed at Chartley Castle to do this work more efficiently, right there where Mary also was. Babington's cipher included replacing letters of the alphabet with symbols and using other symbols to represent specific words and phrases. And he thought this cipher was secure, so he wrote a clear account about what he was doing. But Philips quickly cracked this code, or more likely, they had actually already intercepted the key and Philips was just using it to decipher what was in front of him. Mary and Babington exchanged a few letters that were mostly about Mary getting access to all the mail that had been withheld from her, and then Babington sent her a letter that referenced, quote a great preparation by the Christian Princes, your Majesty's allies for the deliverance of our country from the extreme and miserable fate wherein it hath too long remained. That letter went on to describe a plan to be carried out in the wake of such a deliverance. When these other Christian princes invaded, they would dispatch the usurping competitors, being Elizabeth, and then quote myself, with ten gentlemen and one hundred of our followers, will undertake the delivery of your royal person from the hands of your enemies. For the dispatch of the usurper from the obedience of whom we are by the excommunication of her made free. There be six noble gentlemen, all my private friends, who for the zeal they bear to the Catholic cause, and your Majesty's service will undertake that tragical execution. Mary's response to this letter, which was intercepted, is dated July seventeenth, and it was also intercepted, and it said, in part quote, when all is ready, the six gentlemen must be set to work, and you will provide that on their design being accomplished, I may be myself rescued from this place and be in safe keeping till our friends arrive. It will be hard to fix a day for the execution. You must have a party therefore in readiness to carry me off, and you will keep four men with horses saddled to bring word when the deed is done, that they may be here before my guardian.

00:20:45
Speaker 2: Here's of it. Mary's response didn't really get into the idea of assassinating Elizabeth. It rested on the idea of a foreign invasion. If that invasion were successful, she might logically become queen, But she really left the question of who should be Monarch of England in the hands of God and the invasion's outcome. Her letter expressed clear support for the conspirators freeing her from her confinement, but not for the idea of assassinating the Queen. Yeah, people hang on the word execution a lot, but in the context of this, she was talking about executing the plan.

00:21:20
Speaker 1: Yes, in the sense of to do a thing right, not to assassinate the monarch. So, of course Walsingham intercepted this letter and all of these other letters, and even though he had Babbington's outline of the plot and Mary's support for at least part of it, he didn't have the names of all the conspirators or a clear statement that Mary hoped for or planned the assassination of Queen Elizabeth. So before passing Mary's letter on to Babbington, Walsingham had his forger at a PostScript. So in this fake PS, Mary asked to know the names of the six men, under the grounds that she might have some information about one or more of them that could let her give him further advice. His hope with adding this fake PS was that Babbington would reply and name more names, But before.

00:22:09
Speaker 2: His correspondence with Mary got much further. Babington learned that Walsingham had discovered the plot. He fled, but was captured on August fourth. In his confession, he implicated all his other co conspirators and also said he had gotten a letter from Mary saying that she had supported the entire plot. Here's the thing about those letters.

00:22:30
Speaker 1: Though the originals don't exist, and this is not a recent development, by the time the case came to trial, all the originals had been burned or otherwise destroyed, as is common practice when you get some secret correspondence from somebody. So all that was left of the letters were copies copies made by a forger employed by Walsingham while trying to ferret out a plot to overthrow the queen. So this raises some questions about their authenticity. In fact, Walsingham laid such a key role in all of this that the Babbington plot has been described as a double conspiracy, with Walsingham conspiring against Mary and Babbington and his crew conspiring against Elizabeth. Each plot could only exist in conjunction with the other. The conspirators had no way to communicate with Mary without Walsingham's double agent and that honest man with the beer barrels, and Walsingham had no plot to use against Mary without Babbington and his crew.

00:23:28
Speaker 2: Okay.

00:23:29
Speaker 1: One of the articles that I read about this was basically like, this whole thing is so convoluted that even now, hundreds of years later, it's sometimes.

00:23:37
Speaker 2: Hard to tell who is tricking who.

00:23:39
Speaker 1: At which point we will talk about the trials of Babbington, his co conspirators, and Mary. After another sponsor break. Based on his confession and the copies of all this correspondence, Anthony Babington and twelve co consin inspirators were put on trial on September thirteenth through fifteenth, fifteen eighty six. Initially, the men all pleaded guilty to everything except plotting to kill Elizabeth, although they all changed their not guilty please on that charge to guilty under pressure from the prosecution. Those portraits that they'd commissioned of themselves were also brought up as part.

00:24:21
Speaker 2: Of the evidence. The method of execution was gruesome. Babbington and the first seven conspirators were executed on September twentieth, fifteen eighty six. They were hanged, cut down while still alive, and then again while still living, disemboweled and castrated in front of throngs of spectators. Queen Elizabeth decided that this method of execution was excessively cruel, so when the rest of the co conspirators were executed the next day, they were hanged until they were dead, and then their bodies were disemboweled and castrated. Mary was arrested on August eleventh, fifteen eighty six, while she was out riding. She was taken to Fotheringay, cast where she was held prisoner until her own trial, which took place on October fourteenth and fifteenth of fifteen eighty six. It was held before an assembly of forty six Commissioners, as had been outlined in the law that had been passed the year before.

00:25:13
Speaker 1: The evidence against Mary included the confessions of Anthony Babington and John Ballard. Confessions from her secretaries, Gilbert Curle and Jacques Now were included as well, but both of the secretaries made their confessions under duress.

00:25:29
Speaker 2: They were deceived.

00:25:30
Speaker 1: Into thinking that the prosecution had copies of letters that they had written and ciphered, which was not true. The letters between Mary and Babington were also part of the evidence, but as we noted before, these were the copies, not the originals. But Mary consistently and stridently denied all involvement in this plot. She said she had never spoken to Babington, had never written or dictated those letters. Mary said these copied letters used as evidence were forgeries in their entirety. She also made the point that it was not possible for her, the Queen of Scotland, to be charged with treason against England, a nation of which.

00:26:08
Speaker 2: She was not a citizen. She said, quote, it seemeth strange to me that the Queen should command me, as a subject, to appear personally in judgment. I am an absolute queen and will do nothing which may prejudice either mine own royalty, or other princes of my place and rank, or my son. The laws and statutes of England are to me most unknown. I am destitute of counselors, and who shall be my peers? I am utterly ignorant. My papers and notes are taken from me, and no man dareth step forth to be my advocate. I am clear from all crime against the Queen. I have excited no man against her, and I am not to be charged but by mine own word or writing, which cannot be produced against me. Yet I cannot deny that I have commended myself and my cause to foreign princes. She also argues that the power of a monarch came directly from God, something that she and Elizabeth both believed. If Elizabeth's power was bestowed by God, then so was Mary's, and that meant that these proceedings were under God's jurisdiction, not the jurisdiction of a bunch of men, who, while prominent and powerful, were mere mortals. Although by all accounts, Mary bore herself well and argued her own case impeccably, even though she was denied her papers and any advisers or representation, and then she was found guilty. She was convicted on October twenty fifth, fifteen eighty six, without being present, without having any further chance to be heard, and without even being told that these proceedings were concluding that day after the conviction, though it took Elizabeth months to sign Mary's death warrant. In spite of the law that England had passed, it would set a dangerous precedent for one monarch to execute another, especially a relative in this way, but elizabeth' knew Secretary of State William Davis did finally get her to sign the warrant on February first, fifteen eighty seven, although she told her counselors not to carry out the order until she gave the final word. Her Privy Council ignored that instruction, though, and decided to proceed with the execution without waiting for her to finally okay it. Mary got word.

00:28:20
Speaker 1: That she was to be executed on February seventh, fifteen eighty seven. She responded, quote, as for the death of the Queen, your sovereign, I call to God to witness that I never imagined it, never sought it, and never consented to it. She asked for some more time to put her affairs in order, but that was denied, so she spent most of her remaining time that night writing letters to loved ones, arranging gifts for her servants, and praying. One of her final letters was to Henri, the third brother of her late first husband, which said, in part quote, tonight after dinner, I have been advised of my sentence. I am to be executed like a criminal at eight in the morning. I have not had time to give you a full account of everything that has happened. But if you will listen to my doctor and my other unfortunate servants, you will learn the truth. And how thanks be to God. I scorn death and vow that I meet it innocent of any crime, even if I were their subject. In this letter, she also described how her chaplain had been taken away from her and she'd been refused permission to have him come back and give her the last sacrament. She also asked Henri to pay all of her servants for any wages that were still owed to them, and towards the end of the letter she wrote, as for my son, I commend him to you in so far as he deserves, for I cannot answer for him. She had actually been prevented from keeping in touch with him in any way during her imprisonment. Mary was beheaded in the Great Hall of Fatheringay Castle on February eighth, fifteen eighty seven, in front of an assembly of at least three hundred people. She was forty four, As was the case with her trial. In the last days of her imprisonment, she's consistently described as going to her execution with a stoic and graceful perseverance in the account of Pierre de Bordailla quote. After kissing her women once more, she bade them go with her blessing. As she made the sign of the Cross over them. One of them was unable to keep from crying, so that the queen had to impose silence upon her by saying she had promised that nothing of the kind would interfere with the business at hand. They were to stand back quietly, pray to God for her soul, and bear truthful testimony that she had died in the bosom of the Holy Catholic religion. One of the women then tied the handkerchief over her eyes. The queen quickly and with great courage, knelt down, showing no signs of faltering. So great was her bravery that all present removed, and there were few among them that could refrain from tears and their hearts. They condemned themselves for the injustice that was being done. Walsingham had Mary's clothing, crucifix, and prayer book from the execution destroyed so they wouldn't be made into relics of a religious martyr. Her body was placed in a lead coffin and buried in Peterborough Cathedral. After this execution, Elizabeth really started to distance herself from it. She was outraged that Davison and her counsel had carried out this execution without waiting for her order, and she actually had Davison sent to the tower. She also expressed that the manner of the execution was sacrilegious, and she knew that Catholic monarchs of other countries were going to see it as a sacrilege as well.

00:31:31
Speaker 2: For a time, Elizabeth's behavior was interpreted in a pretty cynical way, as though she were just trying to cover herself with a show of anger over an execution that she had actually secretly been eager for. But letters unearthed in the nineteen sixties suggest that England's nobility was truly alarmed at her displeasure, which seemed very genuine and not something that she was just performing for the sake of appearances.

00:31:56
Speaker 1: Almost immediately, this whole affair became part of Little Richer and art. There are so many paintings of the trial and the beheading. There were ballads written about the execution in the weeks immediately after it happened, and from there. They have been plays and novels and poems and TV shows and movies, and many of them approached Mary as a very doomed and romantic heroine. There are certainly accounts and versions that do not take that perspective, but she's very frequently depicted with like a stoic grace and a sense of impending destruction that she couldn't really control. And of course Mary's son James, became James the sixth of Scotland and first of England on March twenty fourth, sixteen oh three. After the death of Queen Elizabeth in sixteen twelve, he had Mary's body exhumed and placed in Henry the Seventh's chapel in Westminster Abbey. He also had a white marble tomb constructed that has an effigy of Mary on the lid. Her hands are folded in prayer and there is a crowned Scottish lion at her feet. And then at the opposite end of that chapel there's the tomb of her cousin Elizabeth. I thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive. If you heard an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us all over social media at missed Indistory, and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.