Elizabeth I, target of Papal Plots |
Well, back
to the unfolding story of Mary, Queen of Scots—a pawn in this drama—the would
be Catholic replacement for Protestant Elizabeth. When we left our saga, Mary had been deposed
from the Scottish throne by her Protestant barons, ostensibly for having
married the Earl of Bothwell, the man suspect in the death of her previous
husband, Lord Darnley. Of course, the
reasons were far more complex than that and the religious tensions of Scotland
in the 1560’s and ‘70’s played a major part in the dissatisfaction of the Protestant
barons and populace with the Catholic Queen. Even more to the core of the issue,
however, was Mary’s failure to know how to rule and the consequent civil unrest. In any event, in May the deposed Queen fled
south across the border to England.
Mary’s hope
was that Elizabeth of England would help her regain her Scottish throne. They were, after all, both anointed monarchs
and it served neither that the idea should spread that an anointed Sovereign
should be forced to abdicate by the nobility of the realm. Elizabeth was sympathetic to the argument but
was caught in a difficult position herself.
Mary was her nearest relative and consequently the heir apparent to her
own throne. It did not serve Protestant
Elizabeth’s welfare to have her heir, a Catholic, in England where Mary could
be a rallying point for rebels against Elizabeth. And of course, a letter to English Catholics
from the Pope—Saint Pius V (notice the “Saint” part) and the Bull, Regnans in Excelsis—commanding English
Catholics to withhold their loyalty to Elizabeth did not make Mary any the more
welcome to Elizabeth. It would be much better for Elizabeth if Mary
were back in her own kingdom and busy with her own problems there. On the other hand, Elizabeth’s Council—all
Protestant—didn’t favor England helping a Catholic Queen regain control over
and against the Protestant rulers of a neighboring country. Moreover, Elizabeth was troubled by rumors of
Mary’s involvement in Darnley’s murder.
So Elizabeth convened an inquest to investigate Mary’s role in the
murder.
The Earl of
Moray, regent for the infant James VI and thus chief opponent of Mary’s return
to Scotland, produced a silver jewel-box with the monogram of Francis II of
France, Mary’s first husband, containing love letters and poems from Mary to Darnley’s
suspected killer, the Earl of Bothwell. If the letters were genuine they could be
construed as proof of a plot between Mary and Bothwell to do away with Darnley
and marry his murderer. Historians even
today are undecided if the letter were genuine.
As the original letters were destroyed by Mary’s son, James VI, in 1584,
they cannot be examined for evidence.
Most contemporary historians believe they were forgeries but while their
authenticity might indicate their conspiracy, their being forgeries proves
nothing either way. Mary may or may not
have been party to Darnley’s murder, but she certainly was a more than willing
partner to marriage with his alleged (and probable) murderer. Elizabeth’s inquest ended, as Elizabeth had
planned, with no verdict. Mary was kept
in England, far from the Scots border lest her allies rescue and rally around
her and yet distant enough from London to be no threat to Elizabeth.
Well, one
can’t say no-threat to Elizabeth as Mary became the focus of several plots by
English Catholic nobles and gentry to do away with Elizabeth and put Mary on
the throne. Elizabeth’s council became
increasingly anxious to be rid of Mary and wanted her executed but Elizabeth
saw that it would not set a good precedent to executed an anointed
monarch.
Mary’s
imprisonment was far from severe. She
maintained her own household with usually about twenty retainers including
Catholic chaplains. She was permitted
Catholic worship in her chapel. She had
her own cooks and ate as befits a Queen.
She received visitors seated on a chair of state under a royal canopy.
Her possessions filled over 30 wagons.
She never let those responsible for her oversight forget that she was a
Queen. She would spend nineteen years in
captivity.
Elizabeth’s
advisors wanted to be rid of Mary and while Elizabeth herself was reluctant to
move against a fellow Queen, members of her Council began to actively seek
reasons to do away with the Catholic threat to the Crown—and threat to their
influence over that Crown. In 1584,
after several Catholic plots against Elizabeth in Mary’s favor, Mary’s
imprisonment became more restrictive under the oversight of Sir Amias Paulet, a
rabid anti-Catholic Calvinist. Yet Mary
still maintained her own household and chaplains and compromised not at all
about her style and rank as a Queen. In
response to the Ridolfi plot and the Throckmorton plot—both Catholic led plots
to overthrow Elizabeth and replace her with Mary—Parliament passed ever more
severe laws against those who might plot against Elizabeth to put Mary on the
throne. Mary herself would eventually be
caught in the web of those laws.
The
occasion to use those laws to get rid of Mary came with the 1586 Babington
Plot, named for a twenty-five year old Catholic Nobleman, Sir Anthony
Babington, who conspired with agents of Philip II of Spain and members of
Mary’s household to assassinate Elizabeth and, with the aid of an invasion army
from Spain, put Mary on the English throne and restore Catholicism. Philip II was motivated in this by the 1570
Bull of Pius V, Regnans in Excelsis,
which declared Elizabeth an usurper and admonished Catholics not to recognize
her as Monarch. Philip had declared his
willingness to work with English rebels who would put the “rightful”
monarch—Mary—on the throne. Now Philip
was a devout, indeed fanatical, Catholic but his purposes were not to implement
a Papal Bull but rather to use that bull as the occasion to exercise Spanish
influence over England. Spain was the
greatest power of the day with its vast American colonies and the titanic
amount of gold those colonies were producing, but England was the up and coming
power that would soon challenge Spain and which, indeed, by the late 17th
century replace Spain as the greatest naval power and expand its Empire way
beyond that of Spain. In other words,
Philip wanted to crush the English serpent while it was still in the egg and
before it could be a threat to his empire.
Putting Mary on the throne of England would make England a client-state
of Spain rather than a potential rival. If
it advanced the Catholic faith—all the better, but that was a benefit not a
motivation.
The
Babington Plot failed miserably. It had
been infiltrated by Elizabeth’s security system under Sir Francis
Walsingham. Moreover, despite Pius’
injunctions in Regnans in Excelsis,
the majority of English Catholics among the nobility and gentry were loyal
subjects of Elizabeth and Babington found nowhere near the support he needed. The
end result was that Babington and thirteen coconspirators were executed for
treason. More seriously, Mary herself
was accused of treason and brought to trial.
She was convicted on October 25, 1586 and sentenced to death for
treason.
Even then,
Elizabeth was slow to act. Parliament
and Council insisted Mary be put to death.
Elizabeth didn’t like the idea.
Kill one queen, you can kill any queen and Elizabeth did want to show
that Monarchs were liable to execution.
She had a point. Her execution of
Mary would be used as a precedent when Parliament executed Mary’s grandson
Charles I in 1649. Charles’ execution in
turn would be the precedent for the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
of France in 1793. Their execution would
set the model for the murder of the Russian Imperial family in 1918. You see how these ideas spread?
Under
pressure Elizabeth reluctantly signed a death warrant but she entrusted it to
her secretary William Davison, a privy-councilor, with instructions not to part
with it—in other words, to make sure it was not used. Now it wasn’t that Elizabeth didn’t want to
see Mary dead, she just didn’t want a public execution. Elizabeth tried to use her influence to have
Mary secretly poisoned—as if that wouldn’t be suspicious under the
circumstances. No assassins could be
found, however—Sir Amias Palet, Mary’s gaoler (jailer) being a rabid
evangelical was one who refused to do such a dastardly deed. Elizabeth kept dragging her feet about
allowing the execution. William Cecil,
Lord Burleigh—Elizabeth’s first councillor—convened a meeting of the Privy
Council without Elizabeth’s knowledge and mandated the execution.
Mary was
beheaded on the morning of February 8th
1587 at Fotheringhay Castle.
Executions of this sort were state occasions and done amidst elaborated
ritual. It was, after all, a death and
so black was the color of the day. The
Hall was draped in black, the scaffold erected in the middle of the room was
draped in black, and all present wore black.
Three stools, all draped and cushioned in black were provided—one for
the victim until such time in the ceremony she was to kneel at the chopping
block, and two for the Earls of Shrewsbury and Kent, the official witnesses of
the Queen.
Mary was a
Queen and she determined to control the scene—which she did. She had been informed the night before that
she was to be executed in the morning and after writing her will and a letter
to her brother-in-law Henri III of France, spent the night in prayer in the
castle chapel. She emerged in the
morning into the Hall of the Castle carrying her rosaries, tall, strong, and
with determination. She was dressed, as
was the protocol, from head to foot in black. The axemen knelt and asked her
pardon, which she graciously and with a smile granted. Before kneeling at the block she had to
disrobe of her veil and gown to give the headsman a clear chop, and as her
dress fell to the ground the crowd gasped as she was left in her under-bodice
and petticoats which were of scarlet red—the color of martyrs. The point was lost neither on her
executioners nor on historians. Her maids blindfolded the Queen with a
gold-embroidered kerchief and she knelt and the block, extending her arms like
the crucified. Her last words were “in
manuas tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum” (into your hands, O Lord, I
commend my spirit).
Mary’s most
dramatic moment and the one in which she trumped her executioners came after
the beheading. As the executioner
held up her head by its auburn tresses
and cried out the traditional “Behold, the head of a traitor; God Save the
Queen,” Mary’s bald head fell free of what had been but a wig and rolled to the
edge of the stage, leaving the headsman holding but a wig and the audience shaken
by the display.
Mary’s
remains were conveyed to nearby Peterborough cathedral where they were interred
after a Protestant service. When her son
James VI of Scotland acceded to the English Throne as James I of England, he
had his mother’s body moved to Westminster Abbey and entombed in the chapel of
Henry VII, across the aisle from the tomb of Elizabeth. Just as a historical note, her original
gravesite in Peterborough Cathedral was directly across the Quire from the
resting place of Katherine of Aragon, first wife to Henry VIII, the remote and
indirect perpetrator of so much of this misfortune. A Saint—no.
A marty, no. A politician and an
actress—Mary Queen of Scots was among the best.
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