The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots
By George Leggett, First Year Ancient History
On February 8, 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots, was executed under the orders of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I of England. The execution in itself was an unusual one, but to dive into the reasons for her execution, we have to look much further back throughout Mary’s life to gain the full context for the event.
Mary I of Scotland (Mary Stuart) became Queen of Scotland as an infant but left to go to France at age 6, eventually marrying Francis II of France. After her husband died, Mary returned to Scotland but became increasingly unpopular with her subjects for a number of reasons. Scotland, like England, was turning from Catholic to Protestant, meaning a Catholic monarch was bound to be unpopular. After rumours began to spread of an affair between Mary and her private secretary, David Rizzio, Rizzio was brutally murdered, and her negative reputation worsened after her husband, Lord Darnley, was murdered the next year. Incredibly, Mary then married the man believed to have killed Darnley, the Earl of Bothwell (Mary is sometimes believed to have had a hand in Darnley’s murder). Denounced by mass crowds (according to Alison Weir) as an adulteress and a murderer, twenty-six Scottish nobles imprisoned her in Edinburgh, and she was forced to abdicate the throne to her one-year-old son, James. Mary managed to escape and raised an army, but was defeated by forces raised by her half-brother, who was the regent king of Scotland. Desperate, Mary fled to Northern England, apparently hoping her cousin, Queen Elizabeth, would help her regain the throne, but instead, caused an immediate problem for Elizabeth.
Elizabeth’s reign had become increasingly filled with religious tension. Though Elizabeth had taken a fairly middle ground when it came to religion compared to her siblings- Edward VI having radically pushed England further towards being fully Protestant, and Mary I having persecuted Protestants on a mass scale - Elizabeth still found herself facing hostility from many English Catholics. English citizens were not allowed to worship as they wanted to, and Catholic priests were banned (meaning Catholic mass was, in turn, forbidden). However, Elizabeth often turned a blind eye to Catholics who worshipped privately.
Nonetheless, Mary’s arrival in England was a huge worry for Elizabeth’s Privy Council. As Elizabeth was childless, Mary was next in line to the English throne at that point. This provided a possibility of a Catholic Queen as an alternative monarch and the arrival of Mary provided a tempting opportunity to do so. The Pope’s ex-communication of Elizabeth from the Catholic Church in 1570 increased the Privy Council’s worry as English Catholics were given the ability to not consider Elizabeth a source of religious authority, given a religious and international legality to overthrow the Protestant throne. Elizabeth, therefore, placed Mary under house arrest in England – though while she lived in luxury, she was still a prisoner.
From this point onwards, there were three major plots during Elizabeth’s reign aiming to depose and replace her with Mary as Queen of England. The first was the Ridolfi Plot of 1571, hatched by an Italian banker with support from Spanish troops and the Duke of Norfolk, who had been involved in the Revolt of the Northern Earls two years prior. Thanks to Elizabeth’s spies, the plot was uncovered, Norfolk was executed and Ridolfi lived out the rest of his life in Europe, theorised by some historians to have been a double agent working for Elizabeth. The next plot was the Throckmorton Plot of 1583; which also failed, but significant in that in the aftermath the Bond of Association was signed. This sanctioned the killing of anyone who plotted against Elizabeth, and directly targeted Mary and any potential plotters.
The plot that resulted in Mary’s execution, however, was the Babington Plot of 1586. In this plot, evidence of Mary’s own involvement was discovered in coded letters uncovered by Francis Walsingham, whereas it is thought that Mary was not involved in the plots prior to this. Mary was put on trial and allowed no legal representation, but defended herself profusely, nonetheless being convicted of treason. Elizabeth had previously held off on executing Mary, not wanting to execute her fellow Queen and make her a martyr. But now there was proof that Mary had been planning to kill her. Urged by her advisors, she reluctantly signed Mary’s death warrant, and was furious at her Privy Council.
On the 8th of February 1587, Mary was beheaded on Elizabeth’s orders. Still, according to the eyewitness Robert Wynkfield, it was an unusual execution in several ways, not only due to it being the execution of a Queen. So the story goes, the executioner did not make a clean job of chopping Mary’s head off, having to take several blows to fully cut it off, then (according to biographer Antonia Fraser) after proclaiming “God save the Queen”, he dropped the head as Mary had been wearing a wig. Even more bizarrely, Wynkfield also reported that Mary’s lips moved for a quarter of an hour after she died. A final grim detail of her execution was that her dog had been discovered hidden underneath her dress as she was being beheaded; unable to abandon her, it refused to leave her side until forcibly removed from the scene.
Mary’s death was a catalyst for the Spanish Armada a year later. The Pope’s ex-communication of Elizabeth had signified to Europe England’s status as an enemy of Catholicism, and the execution of a Catholic monarch was just the justification King Philip II of Spain needed to launch an invasion of England, which of course ended up being a catastrophic failure. After the invasion was delayed through Francis Drake’s expedition and destroying of Spanish supplies at Cadiz, known as the “Singeing of the King’s Beard”, the 150 ship-strong Armada was largely defeated by Drake’s fireships that had been launched towards the Spanish, and was finished off at the brutal Battle of Gravelines.
Sources:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mary-queen-of-scots-beheaded
https://www.history.com/news/mary-queen-of-scots-casket-letters-scandal
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Drake-and-Singeing-Of-King-Of-Spains-Beard/