Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The Betrayal of Mary Queen of Scots

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

Mary Queen of Scots had a life that resembled a Game of Thrones plot: she had awful taste in men, and a cousin in Queen Elizabeth I of England, who - spoiler alert - eventually signed her death warrant.In the face of some outrageous adversity, though, Mary Queen of Scots was an extraordinary woman and queen.Was it all bad luck, or was there poor judgement from Mary, too? What are some of the conspiracies that brought about her downfall? And what's her legacy that lasts to this day?Joining Kate today is the wonderful Kate Williams, author of The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots: Elizabeth I and Her Greatest Rival. Follow her on Instagram, here.This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Voting is open for the Listener's Choice Award at the British Podcast Awards, so if you enjoy what we're doing, we'd love it if you took a quick follow this link and click on Betwixt the Sheets: https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/votingEnjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code BETWIXT sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscription/You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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and by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects and you should be an adult too. I think that that's checked all the boxes that we need to. Oh, but one more thing, dearest betwixta, whilst you are here, It's that time of year again, I'm afraid. It's the Listeners' Choice Award at the British Podcast Awards.

We were so close to winning this last year. We got into the top 10, the top 10, and that's all thanks to you. And I know it's a popularity contest, but I don't care. I want to win the popularity contest this year, and I think that we can do it. If you go to British Podcast Awards.com forward slash voting and click on betwixt the sheets, you can vote for us. I think that we can do it this year. Right, on with the show.

It's the year 1570, and the wind is howling through the cramped chambers of Tutbury Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots is spending her longer stretch as a prisoner. She must be wondering what the hell happened. She was put there by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I of England. And by all accounts, it's not a particularly nice prison to be in, if any of them are, her complaints of drafty quarters that allowed winds and injuries of heaven to pour in fell on deaf ears. Nobody allows her to upgrade. So what do you do?

Well, she passes the time with some reading, some praying and quite a lot of craftwork. Yep, it turns out that Mary was a dab hand at the old embroidering. Now in her late 20s, she was once the queen of two nations. Two! But now she is completely on her own. Although rumours of a Catholic uprising do still swore. whirl around her, but they all come to nothing in the end. For Mary, it just all went tits up.

What were the ill-fated decisions that she made? Was it all a conspiracy against her? And did Elizabeth have any choice but to betray her cousin? Axes at the ready betwixters, let's do this. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the

Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, dearie. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. You can't help but feel a little bit sorry for Mary Queen of Scots. I know she's a queen, so she had gold hats and thrones and castles and stuff. But even so, she got a pretty raw deal. I mean, her cousin ordered her...

head to be axed from her shoulders. It's all a bit Game of Thronesy, don't you think? But what were the events that led to her downfall? Today's guest is the magnificent Kate Williams, author of The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I and her greatest rival. And if anyone can help us get to the bottom of this, it's Kate. What was it like being imprisoned for 19 years?

Did Mary ever try and escape? And what was the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth really like? I am ready if you are. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Kate Williams. How are you doing? Oh, I'm fabulous. It's so good to see you, Kate. I'm so thrilled to be on your wonderful podcast. I can't believe we haven't had you on before, quite frankly. We must have just been saving you for a special occasion. You know, there's always a need for a double Kate. There is, isn't there? And you are very, very hotly requested by many of our listeners and my mum in particular who wanted to know,

why haven't you had Kate Williams on the podcast? Because what people don't know is that Kate's mum and my mum are actually, they go to craft events together. They do. They do. Now, neither us have been to those craft events. But maybe it's in the future. We'll have a kind of double date. Do you think we could do? My mum will be doing crafts while listening to this podcast. So that's how hardcore she is into it. But before we descend into crafts, we need to talk about Mary Queen of Scots. Elizabeth, queen of the rest of it? I did get a book in lockdown, crafting with cat hair because I have very, very hairy cats.

So my vision is that I might make dolls of Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth out of cat hair if we ever have another lockdown and sell them on Etsy. So I'm all set for this Mo Queen of Scots craft blend. And Mary Queen of Scots herself was, of course, a great embroiderer. She was very talented at craft. She would have been right in there at the craft afternoon. She would have been in the WI, Mary Queen of Scots. She was a brilliant embroiderer. She was a brilliant crafter. She was very skilled. And it was something that she used. We'll get on to this later, but it was something that she used to while away the long days in prison. Now, you have, well, you've written many a book, but we are here to discuss rival queens to betrayal of Mary Queen of Scots. And I know that Mary Queen of Scots, or Mary, we'll just call her Mary, is a particular fascination for you. So I suppose my first question is, what is it about this woman that keeps

bringing you back. I am fascinated by Mary Queen of Scots and I think her life, the vicissitude she went through the greatest turbulence you could possibly have on the airplane of historical flight. And what fascinates me, particularly as a historian of queenship, that's what I often specialize in, is why she's seen as such a failed queen, as such a bad queen. When really when you look at her, she did all the same things that Elizabeth I did. It was just different situations and she fought for the throne. I mean, had she just wanted to be a puppet queen, she would have lasted longer, but she wanted to be an independent female queen, not a puppet to any of the men around her. And for that, she sacrificed her life. So rather than a brave queen or someone really showing the

impossibility of female rule at the time, someone really showing how brutal the patriarchal system was, she is characterized as this failure. And it's her characterized as this failure. And it's a character I find fascinating. It's her life. It's the vague fact that she set out with everything and ended up with nothing. But also why she's so seen as a failure when to me she's one of the most successful queens in history, but she's against insurmountable odds. What she lives through, what she actually goes through in her quite short life, good Lord, I would have given up a long time ago and yet she's still in there fighting. So tell us a little bit about the world that Mary was born into because things did not go well for this woman from Daydott. So Mary's born in 1542

and she's born to the King and Queen of Scotland. Now we know that in two times the birth of a healthy baby when it's a girl is not a moment for rejoicing. It's not like now. It's like a baby, just a baby is great. No, she was a girl. So she was a disableness. So her father, James V, was already very ill after being beaten by the English on the battlefield. They were constantly at war. And the birth of a daughter, he thought, was a total disaster. He thought it would mean the English invaded. It would be the end of Scots independence.

And he's actually said that his race, the Stuarts, began with a lass by whom he meant Marjorie Bruce, and would end with a last by whom he meant Mary Queen of Scots, his daughter, by whom Princess Mary, as she was. So unfortunately he died just a few days into her life when she was six days old. The king died. So she is queen at six days old. So she is doubly vulnerable. Well, triply vulnerable. Not just is she female, not just is she the monarch of a country of which the neighbouring country really, really wants to batter to pieces.

Henry VIII has got his sight set on Scotland, but also she is a baby. She's a baby queen. And with the infant mentality that they had at the time, it was seen as very likely that she'd die and pitch Scotland into total disaster. But you can't rule a country when you're a baby. That's a terrible foreign and domestic policy. So who was, somebody must have stepped in and be like, look, we can't have a baby doing this. Who was ruling in her stead? So her mother, the Queen of Scotland, Mary of Gies, she was the second wife of the King of Scotland. Initially, he'd be married to her. her French princess. She died quite early on and apparently the Scottish climate was just too much for her. He'd married again to Mary of Gies. She'd born him, Mary Queen of Scots. She born him sons, but they hadn't lived. And so she is the regent. And it already is a situation in which that she's surrounded by danger. But actually what happens is Henry VIII doesn't immediately invade.

What he says is, well, actually, let's just make a marriage. Let's marry baby Mary Queen of Scots to my son, the future Edward V. 6th, and therefore unite the countries in marriage. And we know what kind of unity marriage was at the time. The woman was subservient. So it would have been a country subservient to him. And that's the approach he has. But then Mary of Ghees is very sure what happens is Mary of Gilles won't send Mary Queen of Scots to live at the English court. And that angers Henry VIII. Then as we know, Henry the 8th is not the kind of guy who likes to sit down and negotiate and see both sides. He wanted Mary, and because he didn't get her, he starts to invade. And the only choice that Mary of Guise feel she has, I think, is that she makes a deal with the French king.

And the deal is that the French king, the French will protect Scottish sovereignty. And in return, what they'll get is the young Mary Queen of Scots. And the young Mary Queen of Scots will marry the king's son, the future king of France. So Mary, age five, is sent off to the French court. where she's going to be brought up. And I subtitled my book, The Betrayal of Mary Queen of Scots. Now, there are many people who betray Mary Queen of Scots. She does have the worst husbands in royal history. And there is competition. We know this, but hers are very bad. But what about her early experiences from her mother? Because yes, her mother's protecting her from sending her overseas.

But also, she's being treated like a princess, like a consort. She's treated like Catherine of Aragon, not like a queen. And so what happens is she sends overseas. sees and this is going to be a problem when she's older. She isn't familiar with the social networks of Scotland and she's seen as a foreigner. So how long does she stay in France for? Like is she raised as a French woman, a French princess? She's raised in the French court. It is a pleasant life, but there are vipers all around you. It's a lovely rich life with pets and dresses and lovely education. But Catherine and Medici's her mother-in-law and, you know, that is tough. So she does hone her embroidery skills, her craft skills, because she's a

She has to impress Catherine Demodici. But things are tough there. And she marries to the Dauphin, the future king when she's just 15. She marries the Dauphin. They have a great grand wedding. She comes to the throne. But then he dies and she is a widow at the age of 18. And what is her choice? You can't stay in the court, really. Catherine Dermedici does not want her around. The mother and now power behind the throne of the king. And so therefore she comes back to her. to Scotland. And she comes back to Scotland, particularly at the invitation of someone who is the baddie in all of our story. Now, everyone really in Mary story is called Mary or James. It's quite confusing from that sense. So everyone in this entire podcast is called Mary, James or Kate.

That's just the way it's going today. And she has four ladies in waiting in France, all called Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary. And her half-brother, her brother by her father and a mistress is called James and he really wants her back on the throne to exercise power through her. He wants to be the power behind the throne and use her as this puppet, this marionette. But she wants to be like Elizabeth I. She wants to come to the throne by her own right like Elizabeth the first. And that is where the problem starts because Mary wants to be an independent queen. The men around her have been used to being doing what they want pretty much for the last dozen or so years. And also have also her brother wants to have the power behind the throne. So as soon as she comes back to

Scotland, the ordinary people welcome her, she arrives with boatloads of beautiful dresses and furniture and fabulous things to put in the Scottish castles. And she comes to be queen. And yet almost immediately the men around her are trying to undermine her. And the first way they try and undermine her is by pushing her to marry one of them. And she's suddenly surrounded by, very quickly, by these kidnap plots to try and seize her and take her. Kidnap plots to marry her. When she goes aboard, you might get kidnapped by someone's going to want you to marry them. So everyone wants her to marry them so they can have power over her. And at this point, Mary is, she's doing exactly what she should do. She's listening to Protestant and Catholic. She's got a balanced set of people

on the council. She's doing exactly what Elizabeth is congratulated for, seeing both sides, listening to everyone's advice. But we are in totally different situations. no one's going to try and kidnap Elizabeth and try and force her to marry them. That's just not what's going to happen. In Scotland, that's exactly what Mary is surrounded by, this fear, this completely impossible situation. I can't imagine how messed up that must make you at the age of 18 to have gone through all of that and to have on your shoulders,

on top of it all your queen. Because when you were saying there that, oh, a husband died and she was in France, I thought, couldn't she have gone and lived at a nice little chateau somewhere and just gone, I'm all right, I've got my embroidery. But she can't, can she? Because she's the Queen of Scotland as well. Like, she's absolutely trapped by this wherever she goes with people vying for power, trying to marry her off, trying to kidnap her, trying to get to marry this person or that person, or just generally scheming against her. You're exactly right, Kate. She hadn't been Queen pregnant. She could have perhaps gone and lived on her estate because usually you're

asked to marry again, you're sent to marry again for the good of your family. But there wasn't really anyone to tell her to marry again so much. So she probably could have done. that and had a rather jolly, quiet life as a widow in France. And certainly that's what she realizes many years later that she should have done that after she loses her throne. But that's not going to happen. She comes back and she fights for the throne to be queen. And I think she herself didn't realize quite how much opposition there'd be and quite how much people were trying to control her. And you have these very powerful Scottish families, these very powerful families. Henry the 8th has long sat on the aristocratic families of England. They are beaten down

from the days in which they demanded power over medieval kings. Now they really are stuck in the world of the court. But in Scotland, these families still have a lot of power and they are all chivying for control of Mary Queen of Scots. And her half-brother, who is our baddie, James Stewart, he is trying to fight for power over her as well. So Mary really sees her salvation in all of this as creating a relationship with Elizabeth. So she writes to Elizabeth. And what is Mary's problem is what makes her very powerful is also what makes her very dangerous to England.

So she is really the next in line to the throne if Elizabeth does not have children because they are, strictly speaking, cousins. So Henry Leix has two living sisters and the younger sister, she generates the grey line, Lady Jane Grey, but also there's the older sister, Margaret, who marries into her.

of a Scottish royal family, and she's Mary Queen of Scott's grandmother. So when we exhaust Henry the 8th line, we would move to Margaret's line, and that's Mary Queen of Scots. So she is very powerful. She has Scots blood, French blood, English blood, royal blood, but she also, that's what makes her scene as so dangerous to Elizabeth's advisors. They are terrified that Elizabeth will die without children, and Mary Queen of Scots will take the throne, and Mary's not going to turn the country back to a Catholic country. I mean, absolutely, you know, way. She's not doing that to Scotland. Why would she do that to England? But this is what they put about her, the propaganda they put about her. And it's because they're so fearful that

Mary's going to take all their privileges away. So everything around Elizabeth is trying to make her not recognise Mary Queen of Scots, not be friendly with her, not have any kind of relationship with her, and certainly have children. So Mary is pushed out of the line of succession. She becomes seen in England by many of those around Elizabeth as public enemy number one. Wow. How old was Elizabeth when Mary turned up back in Scotland being all of 18 and recently widowed? So Elizabeth is nine years older than Mary. So Elizabeth's been on the throne for a couple of years.

She is loved. She's admired. Everyone thinks she's marvellous. But it's fascinating that the men around her are so convinced that she could fall. at any time. And they are fearful of the simple fact that Elizabeth is seen by many people across Europe as illegitimate because she's Henry VIII's daughter with Anne Berlin, whereas Mary Queen of Scots is, of course, the product of a strictly legitimate marriage. So that's what Mary Queen of Scots has over as well. So we do have this fear around Mary. So Mary has all the problems

in front of her. She has Scotsmen at home are trying to seize her, trying to grab her. The English next door, they don't like her, they don't trust her. and the Secret Service, Elizabeth's brilliant network of Tudor spies, they are really trying to undermine Mary. And they already have, sort of what we call agitators in Scotland, trying to undermine Mary, trying to take from her and trying to get in some kind of Protestant ruling class, as opposed to the Catholic Queen.

So I can understand why Mary would think, I know, I'll write a letter to Elizabeth. We're both queens, we're cousins. She'll help me out and support me because I'm surrounded by people that seem to want to do me ill. I'd have this image of writing a letter, like all full of hope and, you know, oh, we're going to be bestest mates. And Elizabeth receiving it and just being like, fuck you.

Like, what was the relationship between the two of them? Maybe Elizabeth got the letter and was like, oh, lovely, I can't wait to learn more about this woman. Please come down for some tea. You are brilliant in your image there, Kate, because exactly that's what we have. Mary writes letter after letter. She's convinced that the answer to her problems is being best chums with Elizabeth. It's like the great unrequited love story is Mary Queen of Scots trying to be chums with Elizabeth I. Now, we've all had times when we've been desperate to be

friends with someone and they just don't want our friendship. They keep ghosting us. They keep ignoring us. This is what we've got here. And Elizabeth is more amenable to Mary Queen of Scots that, her ministers. She's quite interested in meeting her. She wants to be friends with her. She does see there's a relationship with her. She recognises this fact that there are two queens and one island. And there is talk of a meeting in York, which obviously has to be terribly grand, with angels playing trumpets and all kinds of gold and Tudor glitz and bedazzle and all the, all the snazziness. And then that's cancelled. Elizabeth has other matters to deal with. And that's the end of that. and Mary keeps begging for it our whole life.

And I always feel so many other people get a meeting with Elizabeth and including the great female pirate and Irish landowner Gronierre O'Malley who actually gets in to see the Queen with a knife. She's allowed to go in to see the Queen holding her own knife. I mean, she's not going to doubt it's in her skirts, but she's allowed to do that. But Mary Queen of Scots can't go. So she is desperately writing to Elizabeth,

and Elizabeth is saying no over and over. And they kind of get on quite well initially. And Mary says to Elizabeth, now, dear cousin, I have to find a husband. I know this is the case. Do you have any advice for me? And Elizabeth thinks, well, Mary, well, I tell you who I think you should marry. You should marry my best friend, Robert Dudley. Look at that.

Robert Dudley is Elizabeth's long-term chum, many-send lover, master of the horse, yes, made Earl of Lester. And I don't, maybe, maybe Mary didn't really like Lester. maybe that was it. And Mary is very insulted by this. He's a commoner, even though he's been known of Leicester. He's a commoner. He's hardly fit for a woman who's been married to the French king. That's what she sees it as. His father was a traitor. And all added on to that, he's suspected by many people across Europe for bumping up his wife, for Amy Robsard having falling down, that short little spread of stairs at home and broken her neck when all the servants

were out, which was all very suspicious. I don't know what you think on this great murder mystery case. I don't think that Dudley was involved, but I do think that people around him wanted to frame and make it look like he was involved to push him out of the influence of Elizabeth. So here was Mary being told she has to marry a man who she sees as a commoner, a traitor, that people say is a murderer. And on top of all that, Elizabeth says,

the thing is, when you two get married, you've got to come and live here in my court, in this lovely little threesome. So not only is Mary not going to be on the throne of in Scotland, she's also living with Elizabeth. And we know that if Mary and Robert had married, Elizabeth would always be popping in, wouldn't she popping in, saying, coee, let's go riding?

And Mary says no. She says absolutely not. And she chooses her own husband, handsome, rather weak-spirited and charactered, Henry Lord Darnie and that choice drives Elizabeth crazy because he has a claim to the English throne so not only does that strengthen Mary's claim to the English throne but their child has an even stronger claim to the English throne so Mary is really for her she's marrying who she thinks is a good husband for many of Elizabeth's ministers it is a declaration of war

Wow. That wasn't Dudley rumoured at the time to be having shenanigans with Queen Elizabeth. So in many ways, not only is he a traitor and a wife murderer and a commoner, but he's Elizabeth sloppy seconds. Sloppy seconds. Now, exactly. When you look at the choices, I actually think it might have been... That's really bad, isn't it? I mean, he's terrible. He's terrible from Mary's point of view. On the 16th century Tinder, she ain't swapping right for him. I mean, this is what he's got. or commoner, you know, people think he killed his wife. And everyone knows he's making a bit of friendly whoopee with Elizabeth. And yet, perhaps if she had married him and she lived in Scotland, he lived in England, and maybe he just got her pregnant with a son. And there we go.

And he wouldn't have been trying to get control. There's no way that Robert Dudley wants to live in Scotland and get control over Scotland. He wants to be controlling Elizabeth's horses. That's what he wanted. And I don't really know how much he'd have been amenable to the marriage. But certainly we remember that great classic phrase. There were three of us in the marriage and it was a bit crowded really. Well, that would have been a very crowded marriage. Elizabeth, Mary and Dudley altogether. So tell me about the fella that she does marry because if there's one thing we can say about Mary Queen of Scots is that like she has very poor taste in men.

Like Pamela Anderson makes better choices than Mary Queen of Scots. Tell me about this fella that apart from. the fact that it's a declaration of war, but just as a person, what was he like? I mean, there weren't strong choices. It wasn't a 16th century Tinder populated with marvellous choices of husbands out there. I mean, many of them were very poor. I often think that Elizabeth and Mary should just have got married and popped out a surrogate baby, and that would have been the answer. But yes, Henry Lord Darnley, he's handsome, he's young, he looks good on paper, he does have this strong claim to the English throne through his family, and so therefore

he strengthens Mary's claim. And they get married, and it seems all marvellous, but almost immediately Henry wants power. He wants to be king. He doesn't want to be consort. He wants to be king. And he and Mary are almost immediately caught up in a battle for power. And what happens quite swiftly is that after the wedding, she gets pregnant. And that is, for any male, monarch when your consort gets pregnant, what a moment for rejoicing. For a queen, it's much more complex. Yes, it's rejoicing. Yes, your ultimate job as a monarch is to procreate is to have another monarch. But this is one big problem that Mary, as soon as she has a child, a son, can be deposed for him because a baby, a boy baby is superior to a woman. I mean, even if a baby has no teeth,

can't sit up and lying there in the cot, he is superior to Mary. and immediately when she's pregnant, this means that there is a possibility that Darnley can be the regent for this baby and she can be pushed out of power. So the lords, these powerful Scottish aristocrats who've always caused Mary problems and her half-brother start clubbing together and they clubbed together around Darnley and they start to plot to push Mary out of power. And what happens, it all culminates in what's called the Ritsio. plot, the death of David Ritzio. So when Mary's six-month pregnant, she's having a very pleasant Saturday evening dinner with a few friends and her Italian secretary, David Rizio. Now, he's not liked in the court. He's seen as having been given too much influence. He's a Catholic. But I think he's a red herring. The whole point of the plot is to get control of Mary's person. So what happens is the lords, when they're

having this lovely Saturday night dinner with Rizio and a few little chums, very pleasant, the equivalent of 16th century deliveroo. They're having a lovely 16th century deliveroo and kicking back. And in come all the lords, they go in and they seize Rizio and they start to attack him. And Mary tries to protect him. One of them waves a gun at her pregnant stomach. She thinks they're trying to kill her. They take Rizio off.

They stab him. And they say to Lord Darnley, you've got to stab him. Make sure you stab him. You know, it's like, we're not taking responsibility for this. everyone's got to stab him and you stab him. It's like murder on the Orient Express when everyone killed the individual. Everyone was stabbing.

And after this, Mary's taken prisoner and she knows that she's been taken prisoner by the lords. But then very swiftly, Darnley realizes that the lords aren't going to give him the power that he wants. So he swaps back to Mary and back they go on the throne again. And that seems to be the uneasy piece. I think Darnley thinks, better the devil I know. Let's stick with the wife who I can to a degree control

rather than all these lords who might just do me dirty, who might say, okay, you can be in power, now you can't. So then Mary stays on the throne. She has her son, who is called James. Like I said, everyone in its entire story is called James. The throne is secure. What a moment of triumph. The rider from Scotland, who writes to Elizabeth that Mary, Queen of Scots, had a boy baby. well, he's a bit smug, he's a bit triumphant. And Elizabeth does actually record we see a moment of vulnerability from Elizabeth. She feels sad. She feels, she said, I'm from Baron Stock. I think that there are many reasons why Elizabeth doesn't marry and have children, one of which is the horrors that her mother went through, the horrors that her stepmothers went through. She's not, her childhood was not a good

advertisement for marriage, as was her sister, Mary the First, but also seeing what happens to Mary Queen of Scots, she knows that if she was to get married and have that baby, no matter how much everyone said, the Virgin Queen, we love you, we love you, we love you, we love you. It's a boy. Let's have him. And so Elizabeth is sad at this point. She is vulnerable, but Mary is very vulnerable because now that she's had a son, she can be shoved off that throne, because there was a chance that she might have had a daughter and, you know, half, half too. I can't believe decide what the lawyers, which is worth, a baby girl or an adult girl, can't decide which we hate the most. So then they start to have full-scale machinations to get rid of her, but then there's also Darnley, who's suddenly

proving weirdly loyal to his wife, and they want to get rid of him as well. And baby James is born in the summer of 1566, and then on the 10th of February 1567, there is one of the most shocking events in Scottish history. Everyone's fast asleep in Edinburgh and there's this huge explosion, huge explosion, and it is revealed that Lord Darn this house has been blown up. He was staying just a little bit away from Mary's Palace from Hollywood because he was ill, he was convalescing and the house was blown up and Darnley is found in the nearby orchard and he and his valet are found smothered and beside them are a chair, a rope, a dagger and two dressing gowns. So Darnley has been murdered and this is the most extravagant murder you could imagine. Had he just been blown up in

his house, he might say, well, that was a bit of dodgy Tudor wiring, equivalent of Tudor wiring. Certainly his house was blown up by gunpowder. You do occasionally get houses that, you know, explode or set on fire. It happens. But it is clear his house was blown. up, he's found smothered. It's definitely a murder. I'll be back with Kate and Mary after this short break. Do we know who did that? Was anyone caught? Was Tudor CSI called? Was there anybody who's in the frame? Was it Mary? Well, Robert Dudley is not around by this point, so he is not out of the picture.

It might have been suspected for his wife, but he's not guilty of this one. And the first on the scene, pretty much, are the English spies, who draw this rather a marvellous, splendid police procedural map. I've showed it to some crime writer, so that's exactly like a police procedural map. They draw this police procedural map with a, with a house, with Darnley, with a dressing gown, with the rope. And I mean, I think looking at the map, what was happening was Darnley and his servant realized what was happening. They realized that men were coming into the house to get them and kill them. So they got out of the house with the chair and the rope and they had the dagger and they had the dressing gowns to

to keep themselves warm, and that's where they got smothered. It was a huge plot. The English spies draw the diagrams. Now, it's very clear. Who benefits? When we look at a murder in history, who benefits? It's not really Mary Queen of Scots. She doesn't benefit from losing her husband.

She'll only have more trying to seize her. And darnly hasn't been the best of husbands. He hasn't been the best husband ever. We think that possibly he was ill with syphilis at this point. It's possible. But he's not as bad as some of the others. And he has allowed her to have power. He's given her a son.

I think Mary would have liked to have more sons, more children to secure the throne. So certainly, I think if she had wanted to kill him, why not just push him down the tutor stairs? Why not just poison him a bit? You know, give him some bad meat. There's plenty of food poisoning going on. The entirety of Lady Jane Grey's wedding goes down with food poisoning. These things do happen in the times. So there are plenty ways that she could bump him off subtly if she was so minded to do.

I don't think she wants to because I think she knows that out of the frying pan into the fire, get rid of him and another one will come in and try and seize her. So who wants him out of the way are the lords around Mary, her half-brother. They want to depose Mary for this baby boy, and they want Darnie out of the way, because if Mary's out of the way, Darnie's father to the little baby, he is the one who should be regent. So they want him out of the way, they want Mary out of the way. And this is brilliant. In quite a similar parallel to if we do think that Robert Dudley was framed for the death of his wife to try and get him out of influence, we have a similar setup here. Mary is essentially framed.

She's without alibi. She had gone to see. She'd gone over to see her husband and then gone back to her palace where there'd been a wedding going on, a wedding of one of the servants. So although there were lots of servants around, there was no one really saying, where exactly are you? So people start suspecting her. Now, what she should have done is put some people on trial. That's exactly what happens when she gets deposed later on. They just put some poor servants on trial.

And the servants go on trial, she's basically shouting. It wasn't me. It was you, but people are like a show trial. And she's told that people are suspecting her. She's disliked. Elizabeth I writes to her saying, you've got to hunt these people down. And eventually, Mary does put one of the conspirators on trial, who is James Bothwell, who's someone who's been friendly to her.

He had actually rescued her from the Ritsio plot along with Darnley. She puts him on trial. He's found not guilty, but no one really believes that's true. He certainly was involved. I think it's very likely that he was definitely involved. And he put some of the gunpowder under Darnley's house. He was one of many who were involved. And people start to say that she's in love with him.

There were cartoons that are made of her as a topless mermaid. nearby him. Now, we all love mermaids, but mermaids at the time, that means you're the expert on this, you know exactly what it means, and it doesn't mean a good girl, it means a bad girl, doesn't it? No, no. It's one of the nicer symbols for a sex worker throughout history,

but mermaids, yeah, for some reason, they were a big symbol, weren't they? They were. I mean, it's interesting, it's a symbol, isn't it? Because you rather think, I mean, I know that sailors sexualized mermaids that probably just were seals. They sexualized the seals line

on the rocks and they probably were seals, not mermaids. I don't mean to, any seals who are listening, I don't mean to do you down in all your glory. But the mermaid is absolutely seen as a cortisans, as a sex worker. As you say, it's a more polite way of talking about it. But if you are comparing a queen to a top of sex worker, probably a mermaid's one of the more polite ways of doing it, but still that's how she's seen as. And Mary's in this very vulnerable position. Those two even be in circulation shows a very strong contempt of this queen.

Like, would anyone have done one of those of Elizabeth? Like, I don't know if they would have dared. They might have thought it. They would never have dared. Of course, everyone makes jokes about monarchs and jokes about the elites. And everyone makes bawdy jokes about women. That's just the way it goes. But to draw her as one, to put it around Edinburgh,

and to have Bothwell underneath, the version of him as his family crests surrounded by knives. So there's a sort of sexualising of the... the knives and the fact that she's a killer as well. I mean, it's hard to know exactly how many of these posters were around Edinburgh, because obviously a lot of them were conserved by Mary's enemies, the English spies who wanted to show that she was a bad queen. But certainly, they did exist. And Mary is really struggling at this point. And we see what exactly happens to a woman when she hasn't got her husband. When she hasn't got a husband, she's immediately seen as sexual

fair game. So Mary's in this impossible position, and it shows that keeping a bad husband, even the very about husband is better than no husband. And after the show trial, she has a equilibrium. But then her little boy, he goes to Sterling Castle, and that's what they do with children at the time. You don't keep them in the very bad air of Edinburgh. You keep them in the countryside. So he's kept in the countryside, goes to Sterling Castle, which is seen at the countryside. And on the way back, she got back to Edinburgh, there James Bothwell, who was on show trial, there'd been these cartoons about him. He meets her when she's riding towards Edinburgh. And he stops her. He has many men with him. And he says, you've got to come back to my castle with me because there's rioting in Edinburgh. And he's surrounded by many men. She's totally outnumbered. She sees him as one of her subjects. In fact, she actually bought him this castle that they're going to and gave it to him as many men around who were given castles. They go back to the castle. And this is one of the most controversial aspect of Mo Queen of Scots.

life. She's taken back to this castle. And there, Bothwell sexually assaults her. And the reason why he does that is because he wants to marry her. And so this episode really fascinated me. Because Mary says doing's rude. The lords around Mary, they say he did it. Bothwell admits he did it. and yet there's been a great investment in saying that it was a setup. It was consensual. She just wanted it to happen and they just pretended it was a rape because she wanted to get married to him and this was how she did it, which is totally ridiculous if she wanted to marry him.

Well, just marry him. She just say. And people have said to him, but she was a queen. You can't rape a queen. I think this is the whole setup. At the time, people very much accepted that that's what had happened. But they said, I'm sorry, the way it goes is that when you are sexually assaulted, raped, you marry the man. I mean, this was what happened.

It was rough justice. And that was what would happen in the period. If you have an heiress, you want to marry the eras. Dad is saying, no way, can you marry my lovely young daughter? You take her, you kidnap her, and dad is forced to come to terms. And we see this happening in many countries across the world, even still, that that is seen as a way of getting the wife you want. And Mary, Queen of Scott, she does marry Bothwell. She feels she has to.

She thinks she's pregnant. She is pregnant. And people say, well, why can't she just not marry him? You know, because she can have a baby out of wedlock. She's the queen. And she is this, there's no way. She's this deeply religious woman. She believes that children are made in wedlock.

And she knows that this is what happens to women. She may be a queen. She may be the richest, most powerful woman in Scotland. But still to the Lords, to Bothwell, to the men, she's just a woman and you treat her like any other woman and you use violence and you use sexual violence to get what you want out of her. And this, you know, it's so interesting to me.

We even see people saying, oh well, in recent exhibition was saying Bothwell probably raped Mary, but she married him anyway. And this is to me a total misunderstanding of how women behave after they've been raped, sexually assaulted. You know, the idea which all of us men women and feminists, we're all battling together to undermine, is this principle that you have that after you're sexually assaulted, you never speak to your rapist again. You don't perhaps try and

befriend them. You might not marry them. You don't spend more time with them. This is what we battle with in terms of rape and rape convictions every day. So it fascinates me to see those attitudes sort of compressed back onto Mary Queen of Scots. So how does she end up imprisoned in a tower then plotting against her cousin Elizabeth? Because it's horrendous. That poor, poor woman. She's basically forced into marriage. She marries Bothwell. She's got a son who's going to be the king. What gets even worse for Mary? How does, how does it get even worse for at this point? Having a son was to Mary, she didn't know it, the beginning of the end. So she has the son. Dawn is killed. Bothwell assaults her. She marries Bothwell. And Bothwell, actually, before he'd assaulted Mary,

had agreed with the other lords. I mean, this just makes me. it works. He got together with all his lord mates in the pub and said, okay, I'm going to get Mary. If you all support it, I'll share power with you. And they were like, yeah, bro, yeah, go and go and get Mary, go and do it, go and marry her, and we'll all share power. Woo-hoo! And then he won't share power when he becomes husband. He won't. So they all turn against him and they go to war against him. So James Stewart, Mary's half-brother, and all of the lords go to battle against Mary and Bothwell. Mary in Bothwell, they're totally outnumbered. They lose. Mary's taken prisoner. She's taken to Edinburgh. The ordinary people want her freed. And as a consequence, she is taken to Lock Leaven, really in the middle of nowhere. That's what it's supposed to be. She's in the middle of Lock Levin Tower, Lock Levin Castle, in the middle of a lock. And there she's forced to abdicate. She miscarries the pregnancy she had. She's forced to abdicate a knife point, which isn't really an abdication. And she threatened with death. And then her little boys put on the throne with her half-brother as regent and the English spies support this because

he's a Protestant. And what happens is Mary gets free of Locke Liven. She escapes. She runs away. And she manages to get to a stronghold, a castle. And this point she has a choice, where she's got three choices. She could either stay in Scotland, try and get her throne back. She could either go to France. Just as we were talking about Kate, she could go and live in a nice little chateau in France. Or she could go to England and, encouraged the English to put her back on her throne, throw herself on the mercy of Elizabeth I first. And she should have chosen one or two.

I think she wouldn't have got her throne back for that long in Scotland, but certainly it was possible. Her half-brother was not popular. She goes to England, expecting when she arrives in England, to be escorted to see Elizabeth at Hampton Court, blowing angels, trumpets, the whole lot, masks, dancing. Instead, she's put under house arrest for the rest of her. her life. She's put under house arrest for essentially the next 20 years. Initially, they're saying

they're investigating her for the murder of her husband. There's no evidence. In fact, you have a situation by which the English court write to Scotland saying, can we have some evidence that Mo Queen of Scots killed her husband and the Scottish ministers now around power? So yeah, yeah. And they send back a letter saying, Mary did it. And English like, yeah, this is, sorry, can we have something better than this? That's enough for us. Something a bit better. And what they find under someone's bed in Edinburgh under the bed. is a casket of letters by which Mary's sort of saying she did it. But when you look at the dates of the letters, they don't match up at all.

They're all just random love letters. And some of them are just letters to God. So it's all a set up. But she's not found guilty. She's not found innocent. And then she continues under house arrest. So she's only mid-20. She spends, you know, the next 20 years, pretty much under house arrest.

Can't see her son. Can't see her associates. Her arrest gets sort of closer and closer. So initially, she's allowed to have attendance. she's allowed to have visitors. She has a much more free life, and that's when she should have escaped, shouldn't she? She'd have tried to escape at this point

when she was still in the north of England, surrounded by supporters. But I think she believes that you play by the rules and eventually they'll let her out and she'll go and see Elizabeth. It doesn't happen. Where's Bathwell in all of this when she's under house arrest?

Well, Bothwell tries to get away, ends up being imprisoned by the King of Denmark and who uses him as sort of a way to, it's a hostage really, against Scotland, England and Bothwell is then chained upright to a post and lives out the rest of his life like that in terrible torture. Wow. Well, I'm not going to feel too sorry for him to be completely honest. Husband number three, he is to the live, but obviously Mary isn't still with him. And so she lives out this life. She has a lot of embroidery in her house arrest. And she's approached by

various people plotting against Elizabeth. And Elizabeth's position is by now getting more and more vulnerable because she isn't going to have a child. It seems obvious to her ministers. Mary's situation gets very much more risky after Elizabeth's final suitor, the Duke of Enjou, when everyone realizes, despite all the folder on and the parties, that Elizabeth isn't going to marry him, that makes everyone very worried because Mary is younger, Mary has a son. And if Mary, Queen of Scots, takes a throwing after Elizabeth, she ain't going to be very nice to all those ministers who put her under prison. It's going to be payback time. So they really try and undermine her in every way.

They try and capture her urban plots. She's not having it. And eventually they just imprison her in more and more situations. And what happens is her castles, they have an actual code breaker in her castles. So Mary starts writing these coded letters to her supporters. And she thinks it's brilliant. She writes them in this special code. Then she folds them up really tiny.

And then she puts them into a cork. But everyone knows. Everyone knows what's going on. And so, the code breakers sitting in her castle, every letter she writes, he gets it out. And most of them are like, bubble, burble, burble, shoes, bow, bubble, my estate, boom, verbal, I wish I could get free. I said, oh, boring, boring, boring. And then finally, some very idealistic young men write to Mary and say, I've got an idea, let's have a plot, let's do a plot, let's rise up all the Catholics,

let's free you, let's get you on the throne, the Spanish can come, ha-ha. And these are the kind of plots that Mary has said before. What a load of rubbish. Absolutely not. And this time to Anthony Babington and his mates, she says yes. And when she says yes, they've got her. They have got her. They've absolutely got her. And she's allowed to go out riding. She's quite thrilled. She's like, oh, I'm out riding. That's nice. She's allowed to go out riding. The only reason why she's allowed to go out riding is because they want to search her rooms, get together all her letters or any codes. And they do find the codes, the code systems, which are in. in the National Archives. Fascinating. And Mary is arrested. And that is the end of that. She's put

on trial for treason. And the fake former trial before for the death of her husband, well, she wasn't guilty of that. But she did agree to this plot against Elizabeth. So strictly speaking, she is guilty of treason. She's put on trial for treason. And she says, I can't be put on trial for treason. I can't have a queen. You can't put me on trial. You can't put a queen on trial. But she's put on trial and found guilty. And then Elizabeth's got a question. What's she going to do. Really, you should execute someone who's committed treason. Elizabeth's executed any old person. She's chopped any old head off before. She's like, absolutely. It's difficult for her now. She doesn't want to execute Mary because, partly because they're cousins, partly because she feels

some loyalty to her. She sees that Mary's life's being hard. She also, I think, very much sees that it's a strange plot. But I think above all, it's because she worries that if you execute a queen, you do undermine monarchy, you do undermine queenship. And she fears that if she does it, that people will see her as a bad person for having executed a woman, a cousin, and that Spain might invade to defend the Mary Queen of Scots. So she doesn't want to do it. And she keeps saying, well, can we push her down the stairs? And her ministers say, no, no, no, we can't do anything like that? We doesn't explicitly say, push her down the stairs, but she says, can you not, can make something else not happen? I think what Elizabeth wants, Mary's health isn't good, is that,

Just Mary will be on death row and she'll get iller and iller and then she'll die. And she hopes that perhaps someone who's terribly loyal to her might push it downstairs or give her some poison chicken, something like that. And after a while, Elizabeth, she's being pressured. She says, oh, okay, I'll sign the death warrant. I'll sign it. Now, I think that what Elizabeth thinks here is that she can sign it and then she can shooy, shally, about whether or not it's put into process. She can just say, oh, I don't know.

Let's wait. you know, how do we execute a queen? That's not quite sure how to do it, got to think about it. Let's plan. And by the time you're doing all the planning, Mary will be dead. Instead, the ministers around Elizabeth, they get that execution warrant. And their little minds are like, bingo, we've got it. And they do meetings without Elizabeth knowing about them, setting up Mary's execution.

They try and execute her very swiftly. Mary is told she's in, fathering her castle, she's told, I think it's about 8 o'clock, if I remember rightly, that they come to her and they say, you're going to be executed. next morning and Mary says, well, could I have a bit more time to set my affairs in order? They say, no, tomorrow morning, absolutely. So Mary, she's writing frantically these letters. The last one she writes about 2 o'clock in the morning is to the King of France saying, I am to go. And that, I think, is really heartbreaking. She doesn't write letters to Elizabeth anymore. There's no point. And she writes letters. She knows she's going to be executed.

It wasn't a good execution either, was it? I know that none of them really are great, but hers in particular went badly. Yes, it was rough and ready. It was planned quickly and she went down there. It was late. And they told her that she couldn't be undressed by her ladies, that the executioner would have to do it. They didn't treat her with respect,

alone as the queen. And actually, there were local men watching, local aristocrats watching. And one of the men in the crowd, one of the aristocrats said, she can't do this. She has to be undressed by her lady and waiting. It's just not appropriate. So they're really treating her as coolly as they can.

And there's a Protestant minister who's on there saying, convert, convert. But Mary is undressed and then she reveals the red colours, the petticoat and the bodice of a Catholic martyr. So she dies, determined to show herself as a Catholic martyr. And all this goes on without Elizabeth knowing. How did Elizabeth react to this? Well, initially when Mary Queen of Scots is executed,

a conspiracy of silence is put into it. to place. The ports are shut. Her servants are locked up so they can't tell anyone. All her belongings are burned so no one can keep them or talk about them. And also to be this huge secret. And when Cecil, her beloved Cecil tells Elizabeth, she's horrified. She's scandalized. She's so upset. He has to beg for forgiveness. She's just devastated because she knows that it'll be blamed on her. She knows that maybe Spain will invade. She knows that she'll be seen as an unnatural Queen for executing another Queen. So she's angry. And then she has to beg forgiveness from Mary's son, from James 6th of Scotland, the future James I of First of England,

who is strictly speaking Elizabeth Sayre, but she won't designate him as such. So she has to beg forgiveness. So she's horrified. She's really horrified. But what can she do? The deed has been spellbinding. I could list, honestly, I've kept you here far longer than I was supposed to do, because you've been so amazing to listen to. But my final question, As someone that studied the life of this woman, this incredible tragic but also amazing life, what is Mary Queen of Scott's legacy today, beyond the fact that it's a hell of a story? What lasting legacy do you think she left? Well, one key legacy that she left was that of the royal family because it was her son who took the throne, James the...

That's kind of the last laugh, isn't it? James the sick took the throne as James I first and then generated the stewards. So the current monarchy really does descend from Mary Queen of Scots. So if the job of the monarch is to continue the monarchy, it was done via Mary. So that is one of her legacies. And it's really interesting because James, he doesn't talk much about his mother. He didn't know her. He never knew her.

I mean, he was a baby. He was a toddler when she was pushed out of power. When he comes to the throne, he does, after a few years, take her out from where she was in Peterborough Cathedral, with poor Catherine of Aragon, also in Peterborough. cathedral and he puts her in Westminster Abbey and he gives her the most blinging tomb you can imagine. He gets the biggest most fancy tomb and he puts on there what a shocking thing it was for the wife, the daughter, the mother of kings to be executed. What a shockingly bad thing it was, you know, outrageous to royalty. He has this

big statement on there on how can you treat Mo Queen of Scots. So, and I find that fascinating because Henry the 8th, he says to everyone, can you make me a nice big tomb after I've gone? I've done some of it, but can you do the rest? And all of his children say, no. So Henry the 8th just has a stone slab, which actually wasn't directed until the time of William IV in St George's Chapel, Windsor, when Henry the 8th wanted,

as you can imagine, big, big gold and snazzy and snazzy and marble and everyone crying because what would we do with that Henry the 8? So in the end, Mary gets the best tomb, and she's very, very close to Elizabeth. So she gets to meet her in death. So that's quite a legacy. I think in terms of queenship, her legacy is that she really fought for a woman to have the throne.

She absolutely fought for a woman to have the throne. And we should see her as someone who made the best possible fight. When we think of who we see as great monarchs, great female monarchs, if we put very powerful individuals in there, I don't know how much better they'd have done against the solid brick wall of these men who were determined to get power from her. There's just no way anyone would have tried to kidnap Elizabeth, force her into marriage. It would have been a total outrage.

I mean, it drove the ministers crazy. It drove the public crazy that Elizabeth wouldn't marry, but they weren't going to force her. And so I think the Mary Queen of Scots, the legacy is that she was a great queen. And one day, hopefully, we'll all see her as such. Kate, you have been wonderful. Thank you so much. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Well, my book of Mary Queen of Scots is the betrayal of Mary Queen of Scots. And I do have my website and I'm on Instagram and I'm on Twitter. And I'm making quite a lot of videos at the moment.

I'm going to put them up. I've decided I'm going to start putting up my videos. I'm making them, making my Queen videos. And isn't it so great, Kate, to talk about something from the 16th century that doesn't have many Catharines in it because you normally, every story is full of Catharines and full of Kate's. So it's quite fascinating not to be talking about Catharines. I really had a few. to that. Thank you so much for talking to me today. One Catherine to another. You have been

wonderful. Thank you, Kate. It's been amazing. I've been so grateful to be on. I'm such a fan of the podcast. So I'm thrilled to be on. Certainly, being betwixt the sheets of Mary Queen of Scots was often quite a dangerous place to be. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Kate for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you'd just fancied saying hi, then you can email us at betwixt at historyhit.com. We have got episodes on everything from Tudor Lesbians in the Netherlands to the final episode in our real Bridgeton mini series, which will recap the latest season in all its historical accuracy slash inaccuracy. This podcast was edited

and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The Senior Producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound. Thank you.