8 February 1587
Mary Queen of Scots is beheaded.
If Mary never existed, some cheap romance novelist would have dreamed her up. She was queen of France, then queen of Scotland, but in 1567, only 24, she was forced to flee Scotland because the nobles believed she conspired to kill her (second) husband to marry his murderer. She fled to England, where she, unfortunately, had a claim to the throne. Elizabeth didn't quite know what to do with her - she couldn't let her go to France, where the king would surely raise an army on her behalf and invade at the very least Scotland and possibly England, but Elizabeth couldn't execute her either, because that would set a very bad precedent for a queen who wasn't entirely secure on her own throne. So she shut her away for 19 years. Mary became the focus of several Catholic plots to free her and set her on the English throne, and finally, Elizabeth's head of the secret police, Sir Francis Walsingham, had had enough. He embroiled Mary in the Babington Plot (named after one of the conspirators) and gave Elizabeth just enough proof that Mary was plotting treason. Her fate was sealed. In what must have been a particularly nasty scene, it took three blows from the axe to sever her head. Legend has it that the dead queen's lips kept moving for ten minutes. Eeeeewwww! In death she got a tiny bit of satisfaction when her son, James, became king of England on Elizabeth's death in 1603, inaugurating the ill-starred Stuart dynasty.
If Mary never existed, some cheap romance novelist would have dreamed her up. She was queen of France, then queen of Scotland, but in 1567, only 24, she was forced to flee Scotland because the nobles believed she conspired to kill her (second) husband to marry his murderer. She fled to England, where she, unfortunately, had a claim to the throne. Elizabeth didn't quite know what to do with her - she couldn't let her go to France, where the king would surely raise an army on her behalf and invade at the very least Scotland and possibly England, but Elizabeth couldn't execute her either, because that would set a very bad precedent for a queen who wasn't entirely secure on her own throne. So she shut her away for 19 years. Mary became the focus of several Catholic plots to free her and set her on the English throne, and finally, Elizabeth's head of the secret police, Sir Francis Walsingham, had had enough. He embroiled Mary in the Babington Plot (named after one of the conspirators) and gave Elizabeth just enough proof that Mary was plotting treason. Her fate was sealed. In what must have been a particularly nasty scene, it took three blows from the axe to sever her head. Legend has it that the dead queen's lips kept moving for ten minutes. Eeeeewwww! In death she got a tiny bit of satisfaction when her son, James, became king of England on Elizabeth's death in 1603, inaugurating the ill-starred Stuart dynasty.
posted by Greg | 2:08 PM
2 Comments:
And I didn't even get the day off! Isn't that a paid holiday?
One would think ...
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