Dan Snow's History Hit - Rival Queens: Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots

Episode Date: February 13, 2022

Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots were cousins who never met - but their fates were intertwined. As their nations were engulfed in religious turmoil and civil wars raged on the continent, these two powerful women struggled for control of the British Isles. In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb goes to the British Library in London to meet curator Andrea Clarke and visit a stunning exhibition on the rival Queens, which uses original documents and extraordinary objects to show how paranoia turned sisterly affection to suspicion.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I'm actually on a boat in the middle of the Weddell Sea in the Antarctic at the moment. It is not the easiest place I've ever been to create new podcasts, however that's not a problem because we've got our sibling podcasts. So this is an episode of not just the Tudors with Professor Susanna Lipscomb for you to get into. Enjoy. The parallel lives of the rival queens Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots,

rightly continue to fascinate. Their lives were mirror versions of each other. The Catholic Mary and the Protestant Elizabeth, the unmarried Elizabeth and the much-married Mary, the successful sovereign and the deposed dynast. And whilst the two queens had competing claims for the English throne, they maintained an intimate correspondence, even through the period of time in which one imprisoned the other, up until the point at which one ultimately signed the other's death warrant. A fabulous exhibition at the British Library in London explores their extraordinary relationship through the words they themselves wrote and wrote to each other, as well as through objects and paintings.

I had the special privilege of being shown around it after hours by its curator, Dr Andrea Clark. Andrea Clark. Andrea, it's lovely to see you again. Thank you so much for showing me around. I'm very, very excited. Do you want to say a word about how the exhibition came about and who was involved and the kind of vision for it? Yes, so I submitted a proposal back in 2016 to do an exhibition on Elizabeth and Mary when I realised that nobody has ever done an exhibition looking at the two queens together, putting them centre stage and giving them equal billing, so to speak. So it just seemed like the next natural Tudor exhibition to do here at the British Library.

It's one that really showcases our collections. What we try to do is tell their story, the story of two powerful women bound together by their Chair Tudor ancestry and their experience as fellow Sovereign Queens, but divided by their opposing Protestant and Catholic faiths and ultimately their rivalry for the English and Irish thrones. And we try to tell their story in their own words. So we have the largest collection of Mary and Elizabeth's autographed letters here at the British Library. And so they lie at the very heart of the exhibition. And that's really important because even though they've been brought together on stage and screen,

they never actually met in real life. So they conducted their relationship very much at a distance, much of it through letters and speeches. And so we put those items at the very heart of the exhibition. We have tried to strip away all of the layers of interpretation that have been imposed on them over the centuries. We really want their voices, their words to shine through. For them to tell visitors how it was that their relationship developed from one of sisterly amity to suspicion, distrust and betrayal. Five years later, a year's delay because of COVID, here we are. And it's just wonderful to see it in place and to see people responding so positively to it.

It's very exciting to see their letters together in this way is the closest thing we have to seeing them together. I think so and I also think seeing documents written in the hands of individuals that once lived seeing words that flowed from their own pens is one of the closest ways we can get back to historical figures. You know, handwriting is a very powerful personal thing and there's a sense I think we'll see when I show you key documents as we go through the exhibition, we'll see revelation of character. I think that's really thrilling. Me too. So we are just at the beginning of the first section, standing in front of the very first exhibit, and we use this item, which is a beautiful volume.

It's the only surviving contemporary literary manuscript to celebrate the marriage of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. So we're looking at an opening which contains verses in praise of Elizabeth of York and surrounded by a beautiful border decoration which contains red and white roses and at the bottom of the page there's a flowering rose bush from which both red and white roses grow. So this symbolises the newly established Tudor dynasty from which both Elizabeth and Mary come from. So we are making clear that Elizabeth and Mary had a shared Tudor heritage, that they were both descended from Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. They were in fact first cousins once removed and this really underpins the story that follows and explains their later personal and political

rivalry. And it's so important to set that out at the beginning because people easily get confused between all the Marys in this period and get confused between Mary, Queen of Scots, and Mary I and Mary Tudor, Henry VIII's sister and all the rest of it. Perhaps you can just remind us of the family tree. Yes, so the family tree that we are looking at, we have Henry VII who married Elizabeth of York in 1485. They had four children, Arthur, Prince of Wales, who died, Henry VIII who married Anne Boleyn, who gave birth to Elizabeth I. Henry VIII had two sisters, Margaret Tudor and Mary Tudor. sisters, Margaret Tudor and Mary Tudor. Margaret Tudor married James IV of Scotland. Their son, James V of Scotland, was the father of Mary, Queen of Scots. That's very helpful. It's always useful to go over that again. So we've got this relationship. They are first cousins. One is

removed, very closely related and have this shared descent. So as we walk through the first section we begin with two clusters of exhibits just really looking at Elizabeth and Mary's ancestry. So in this first case focusing on Elizabeth we have a portrait, it's a 17th century copy of a now lost portrait of Henry VIII and his three children. So we're looking at Edward VI, Mary Tudor, who went on to become Mary I, and on the far right, Elizabeth, with Will Summers lurking in the background. And we pair the portrait with this fantastic document. It's one of many circular letters that would have been written in advance of Elizabeth's birth to announce the birth of a prince. As far as I know, this is the only one to survive that has had S's added to it.

So when Elizabeth was born, the document had to be hastily amended with the addition of two S's to turn the word prince into princess. And I think never have there been two letters in the history of English writing that are so loaded, let's say. And the checker's ring, as it's often known, the locket ring. I've never seen this before in the flesh. And of course, it's a ring, so it's much tinier. You know, you see these reproductions of it all the time. And so just to see quite how miniature those pictures are, it's astonishing. I know. It's one of the highlights of the exhibition I think. I feel very privileged to be able to display this. It's absolutely minute and of course Elizabeth was famously very proud of her long slender fingers and I sort of imagine her wearing that on her

hands but the reason that we display it open because when it's closed the lid of the ring bears the ER monogram picked out in diamonds over a blue enamel. It's very beautiful. But we display the ring open to show these two miniature portraits of Elizabeth and another woman who is believed to be her mother, Amber Lynn. And so it's an incredibly personal item, very intimately connected to Elizabeth. And I think it shows that she found ways to very privately honour the memory of her mother. Yes, because there's nothing more private than this tiny

picture of her mother inside a locket on her ring. Who knows, maybe she wore this on her left hand and we famously wear wedding rings on our left hand because it was thought it connected directly to the heart. So there's a kind of sense in which her mother couldn't be closer to her and hidden unless Elizabeth chose to reveal her and then just moving over to a similar cluster of objects that mark Mary's early years we have a letter written by Sir Ralph Sadler that's a name that people who have read Hilary Mantel's novels will be very familiar with a letter that Sir Ralph Sadler. That's a name that people who have read Hilary Mantel's novels will be very familiar with. A letter that Sir Ralph Sadler, who was English ambassador in Scotland at the time, sent to Henry VIII and he's reporting that he has seen Mary as a babe in arms and that her mother, Mary of Guise, instructed her nurse to remove her from her swaddling so that Sir Ralph Sadler could

see that she was a healthy baby, as likely to live as any with God's good grace. And above the letter we have a wonderful portrait on loan from the National Trust showing Mary's parents, so James V of Scotland who married Mary of Guise, just reminding people again of Mary's Scottish and French ancestry. And then we have a beautiful carved wooden panel from Linlithgow Palace, which is the palace that Mary was born in, in 1542. Yes, these are all gorgeous items. And I think it is very useful to bear in mind these three things that Mary is, both of Tudor descent, but also very much Scottish and very much French. And those are crucially important parts of her legacy. Absolutely and as we go through the exhibition we'll see how important her Frenchness became.

So I'm going to show you this case here next. The idea of the first section is that we show how Elizabeth and Mary had very different upbringings and followed very different paths to the throne. So Mary became Queen of Scotland at six days old when her father died. It was probably never expected that Elizabeth would become Queen of England. She had a very difficult upbringing. She was bastardised at the age of three when her mother, Amberlynn, was executed on charges of incest and adultery. was executed on charges of incest and adultery. She was sometimes cosseted by her father, sometimes completely ignored by her father.

She was constantly fighting for her place, whereas Mary was sent to France around the age of five, and she grew up in luxury at French court, in a very secure, stable and loving environment. And I think you can really see the way their very different upbringings had shaped the women and had an impact on them. So in this case here that we're looking at we focus on the two women's education and religion. This item here is one of the treasures of the British Library. It's a tiny prayer book, you could fit it in the palm of your hand and it was made by Elizabeth as a gift for her father Henry VIII in 1545 as a New

Year's gift. Elizabeth received a fantastic humanist education, she had a great aptitude for languages and what she does here in this prayer book is she takes the English prayers that had been collected and published by Henry VIII's final wife Catherine Parr and she translated them from English into Latin, French and Italian. Wow. And she wrote them out in her beautiful exceptionally neat italic hand but not only that she's also thought to have embroidered the binding, which we can see in an image alongside the prayer book. So she embroidered intertwined H and K monogram in silver and gold and embroidered the white rays of York in each corner of the binding. Extraordinary example of virtuosity. Even the handwriting alone, this beautiful italic script speaks to a humanist education. Then that it's in three languages, then that it's embroidered.

I mean, it is extraordinary testament to her intelligence and her skill. Yeah, and it's incredible to think that she was just 12 years old. I don't know how many 12-year-olds could produce something like that nowadays. But yeah, really, really beautiful. 12-year-olds could produce something like that nowadays. But yeah, really, really beautiful. And then moving over, we have a letter written by Mary in actually an equally neat, beautifully set out Italic hand. Here, at the age of 11 or so, she's writing to her mother from France

to tell her that she's going to spend Easter with her grandmother Antoinette de Bourbon and she's going to receive the Eucharist for the first time so she's sort of reporting back home just to reassure her mother that all is well and she's doing fine. It's lovely and again one of the things that's often said about Mary is that she wasn't terribly educated by comparison to Elizabeth but this is a very disciplined hand. It shows great learning in itself. So perhaps the comparison is invidious. Yes.

And I think initially she was educated to be the future consort of the French dauphin, who she eventually married. And so the focus was very much on singing and dancing and needlework. But as the next item shows, it's written by her tutor, Antoine Foucault, and he praises in the preface Mary's learning, her aptitude for Latin and other languages. And so you get the sense that she was equally well-educated and highly intelligent. So section one ends with Mary's marriage to the French dauphin and I would just point out to you Susanna this absolutely exquisite portrait miniature on loan from Her

Majesty the Queen. I mean Mary just looks absolutely beautiful really resplendent here she's wearing a red dress the detail on it is mind-blowing really and she's placing a ring on the fourth finger of her left hand. So the miniature is thought to have been painted to commemorate her marriage to the French Dauphin. Again this is something I've seen reproduced again and again and never known that it's so small and it changes your perspective on an image completely to see it rather than see it sort of reproduced but to see it with one's own eyes and to see that it is actually it's smaller than a6 isn't it it's very tiny and very very detailed let's move into section two which takes us up to 15 60 61 so we begin section two, which we call Two Queens in One Isle, with Mary's homecoming.

So shortly after marrying the French Dauphin, the following year he became King of France and then died quite quickly. And Catherine de' Medici made it quite clear to Mary, Queen of Scots, that there was only room for one Dowager Queen in France. Mary Queen of Scots' mother had been acting as Regent on her behalf in Scotland, so it made sense for her to return to Scotland. As I'm speaking, I'm looking at a really beautiful portrait of Mary that was painted shortly before she returned to Scotland. She's dressed in white, which is the colour of mourning in France. Beneath the portrait we have on display part of a report that was sent to Elizabeth I by Nicholas Throckmorton,

who by this time was English ambassador in France, and he has had an audience with Mary. And during that audience she discusses with him how she sees her relationship with Elizabeth. And she tells Throckmorton that he should remind Elizabeth that there is a bond that exists between them because they are fellow sovereign queens. But she says, tell her that there's so much more than that because we are of one blood, of one country, in one island. And that will become a constant refrain of Anglo-Scottish diplomacy as she moves back to Scotland. So as soon as Mary arrived she tried very hard to forge a personal connection with Elizabeth. She sent her letters full of sisterly amity, constantly reminding her of their shared Tudor heritage. They exchanged expensive gifts and they started to discuss a meeting between the two women and they came very close to meeting in 1562 they were supposed to meet in the summer in Nottingham

and at the very last minute the meeting was cancelled because Mary's uncle the Duke of Guise had been involved in the massacre of French Huguenots and for Cecil this was the reason that he was looking for to cancel the meeting because as he notes here one of the disadvantages of the meeting would be that Mary would press her case to be recognised as Elizabeth's successor. He also admits that one of the reasons for the meeting was that they both had a genuine desire to meet each other. So the meeting was cancelled and at that point Mary seems to have decided to turn her attention to marrying again as a way of strengthening her claim to the English throne and Elizabeth makes it equally clear that if Mary considered marriage to any of Elizabeth's powerful European rivals she would see that as an aggressive act. And so she

offers the hand of either the Duke of Norfolk or the Earl of Leicester, her great favourite. And we actually have a wonderful portrait of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in the exhibition, looking rather like Errol Flynn, I think. Extremely handsome, but also slightly arrogant. Oh, yes. And Mary is greatly insulted by this suggestion. She says, why on earth would I want to marry her horse master? And possibly she might know her cast off. Yes. And so she turns her attention. She's already, I think, by this point spotted Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who was also descended from Henry VII, and so sort of strengthened Mary's claim to the

English throne. On paper, he seemed like a really good choice. He was charming. We have on display some love verses that he wrote to Mary, written in the most beautiful handwriting. That is interesting. So he at first very much seems to come across as this great lover. Turns out to be obviously a great disappointment. He was extremely tall, as was Mary, so everything seemed to be a perfect match. And then at the point of marrying, he started to reveal his true colours and turned out to be violent, unreliable, a drunkard, and things from that point started to really unravel for Mary. a drunkard and things from that point started to really unravel for Mary.

As we've already started to see this section really focuses on the themes of marriage and succession so we've started to talk about Mary but I just wanted to point out a couple of items that relate to Elizabeth. We actually have three of her parliamentary speeches on the subject of marriage and succession. The first one from her first parliament is quite measured, it's quite polite. The second one from 1563 is a little less so, but this one just fizzes with her anger. Tell me who wrote this. So this is in Elizabeth's hand. Okay.

It's certainly more animated than the 12-year-old script. Exactly. So when I talk about revelation of character, I think that this is a great example. There are only two parliamentary speeches to survive in Elizabeth's own hand. We have both of them here, and this is one of them. And I think you can just see from her sort of furious scribblings and multiple scorings out, as well as the really vigorous language that she uses. It oozes her personality and she has again been petitioned to consider marriage and succession and so she says that she is fed up with the lip-laboured orations coming out of such jangling subjects' mouths. It's absolutely brilliant.

But we see that she's actually crossed out jangling because, of course, she's speaking to, amongst the ministers, William Cecil. And so she can only push too far. She can't really be too rude to him because she needs him. He's her right-hand man, her principal secretary. And so she clearly thinks better of, including the word jangling. And we display it underneath this wonderful portrait of Elizabeth, which is on public display in the UK for the first time since 1933. Wow. It's the earliest

and best likeness of Elizabeth as queen. You look into those eyes, she has the eyes of her mother. There's a real steely determination there, but it's just beautiful. And it's sort of unlike any other pictures we have of her, isn't it? Yeah, I think visitors are quite surprised to see it because, of course, she looks really human here. You know, this is painted before she disappears behind the mask of Gloriana, much later on when she's depicted as a very kind of majestic and powerful ruler but here I feel as if I'm looking at her woman to woman but getting a real sense of her sort of steely determination and strength of character. Her mother's eyes but her father's nose and mouth and that curly red hair. I've never seen her hair depicted so realistically.

It looks like a photograph. And if you look at her temples, you can even see the little veins. It's incredible. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history.

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By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. so as we turn the corner our focus returns to Scotland the first item in this very tall case is a new year's gift roll so we're showing about a meter and a half of a roll that's probably about seven or eight meters in length and the reason that we show this one is that at the bottom, we can see that it records a gift that Elizabeth sent to the Queen of Scots. And the gift is of a solid gold baptismal font to be used for the baptism of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Darnley's son, James. By this time, the marriage between Mary and Darnley had pretty

much broken down, and then Darnley refused to attend James' baptism. And from this point on, the situation unravels very, very quickly, and we're now looking at a very famous drawing of the Darnley murder scene. So we can see Darnley and his manservant lying dead in the garden just outside their lodgings in Kirkerfield in Edinburgh. Because of course, Darnley's marriage to Mary really alienated Mary's supporters. He was a very disliked individual, and he really embroiled Mary in Scottish noble factionalism. Instead of going into mourning for Darnley, three months later she married the principal suspect in the Darnley murder,

the Earl of Bothwell, and at that point her decision unified opposition against her. All hell breaks loose. And here we can see the culmination of the situation. This is a wonderful drawing, again on loan from the National Archives, of the Battle of Carberry Hill. And we can see Mary, she's depicted twice. She's shown riding with her troops. There's a label that says the Queen's Camp underneath the drawing of her, surrounded by her men. She's sitting side saddle. She was quite a warrior queen, actually. She seemed to love nothing. She was quite a warrior queen, actually. She seemed to love nothing more than going into battle wearing her tin hat. And John Knox,

who absolutely detested Mary, couldn't help but admire her for her bravery. And he said that she led her troops like a real man. Highest possible compliment. Yes. But actually, it's interesting because we often think of Elizabeth because of the Tilbury speech as a warrior queen. But actually, it's interesting because we often think of Elizabeth because of the Tilbury speech as a warrior queen. But actually, Mary really deserves the title far more. Absolutely, yeah. And then in the centre of the drawing, we're looking at her negotiating with the Confederate lords, her opponents. And at this point, I think Mary genuinely believed if she handed herself in that she would be treated honourably as a queen. But she was very much mistaken, and instead she was paraded through the streets of Edinburgh,

had all sorts of awful insults hurled at her. She was basically accused of being a prostitute because of the suspicions around her relationship with Bothwell while she was still married to Darnley, and she was imprisoned in Lochleven Castle. Of course, Elizabeth was absolutely horrified. She thought this was an abhorrent act, worse than treason or rebellion, the deposition of a queen, and she sent a letter to her ambassador in Scotland,

instructing him to sort the situation out, to tell the Scottish lords in no uncertain terms that the feet should not rule the head and that Mary should be restored to the Scottish throne. But at the same time, Cecil is writing to Throckmorton, giving counter-instructions, saying, keep her in, don't let her out. So Cecil is acting against what Elizabeth is saying. He's undermining her rule. I don't suppose Elizabeth ever realised that.

I mean, that in itself is treasonous, isn't it? They had a very interesting relationship, though. You know, Cecil had been there right from the outset, before Elizabeth became queen. During the reign of Edward VI, he was managing her estates for her. There was a really interesting, her estates for her. There was a really interesting, almost I would say slightly paternal relationship and I think he felt that he knew what was best for her. Well also I suppose the other perspective would be that Elizabeth did know what he was saying but was saying one thing publicly and another thing privately. It's possible, although at this point I think that she really did want to defend Mary, a fellow sovereign queen. I think she was absolutely appalled at the way in which she'd been treated and she wanted to support her, as indeed she continued to try and support her for quite a few years to come.

It's got to be a sensitive point of your mother, as a queen, has lost her head. Absolutely, yeah. So as we go into section three, at this point we begin with Mary having escaped imprisonment and fled over the border into England. And we're looking now at the letter that she sent to Elizabeth the day after she arrived in England, landing at Workington in Cumbria, I find this an incredibly moving letter. At this point, Mary really believes that Elizabeth will help her. She is asking for asylum.

She expects to be invited to court. She expects Elizabeth to help her to get her Scottish crown back. And she signs the letter, Your faithful and affectionate good sister and cousin and escaped prisoner. And I always look at those words, escaped prisoner, and think that she had absolutely no idea that she was about to enter two decades of imprisonment in England. The letter alongside it is in the hand of Sir Francis Knowles,

who was her first keeper. So she was not invited to court. She was instead held in Bolton Castle under the watchful eye of Sir Francis Knowles. And this is a really interesting letter because he's, we think, writing to Cecil. And he's really rather taken with Mary. Even as a man of firm Protestant convictions, he can't help be charmed by Mary. And he describes her as very familiar. She talks a lot.

And we get a sense of the Mary who was very gregarious and loved people and full of charisma coming through in the letter. But interestingly, he says, most of all, she wants revenge. And I think that's a really interesting observation to note. She seems really vital. There's also this other one next to it which is catching my attention, a letter from Mary to Francis Knowles. So all of the letters in the exhibition that are in Mary's hand, she's writing in French except for this one.

Francis Knowles tries to teach her English which is actually a different language to Scots and in this letter she's practising her English. I think she's trying to impress him, her keeper. It's quite an awkward attempt at writing in English, and she signs the letter at the bottom and she finishes by saying, excuse my evil writing, this is the first time, the first time that she's trying to write in English.

So it's quite sweet. So Mary's arrival in England really caused a great political predicament for Elizabeth and Cecil. I think Elizabeth really wanted to help her cousin, but she was persuaded by Cecil that this wouldn't be the appropriate thing to do. For Cecil and the English government, the best outcome was for Scotland to be ruled by an English-friendly Protestant regency on behalf of James. And here we can see Cecil thinking through all the options. And it's really interesting to see that each one, this is one of his famous pro and contra memoranda, and he thinks through the options, allowing Mary to return to Scotland, allowing her to go to

France or keeping her in England but each one really interestingly begins with the word danger so he only sees danger everywhere he looks he sees danger and so they reach a compromise and instead of inviting Mary to court Elizabeth agrees to hold a conference to investigate the reasons behind the Scottish Lords' actions and rebelling against their Queen. The conference very quickly turns into a trial when the casket letters appear which suggest that Mary was involved in Darnley's murder and having an adulterous affair with Bothwell. And Mary claims that they're forgeries, but she refuses to give evidence at the trial. And so the final verdict is one of not proven. And that justifies keeping her as a prisoner for the next two decades in England. I wonder why she didn't give evidence. Did she not think it

was the place of a queen, perhaps? It could have changed so much. I think that she didn't feel that it was in the place of a queen and also an English court had no authority over a Scottish queen and so I don't think she felt that she should have to answer to a body that had no authority over her. And we display Mary's longest letter. So this is actually the first and the last page of a ten-page letter. And it's sometimes called the De Profundis letter. And it's written in Mary's neatest handwriting.

So she's clearly writing for posterity here. This is her version of events. This is her putting down her own record. She starts by reminding Elizabeth of how badly she's been treated. She's been very ill, she thinks she's dying and she writes a litany of complaints and then she goes on to plea for freedom. She asks Elizabeth to allow her to return to France where she can seek some comfort for her body and her soul. She says God is daily calling for it. Again, it's a really, really moving letter. the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends,

murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. So we are now entering the penultimate and climactic section of the exhibition. We're now in the 1580s, which was a time of deepening religious conflict

and a time when Elizabeth's ministers were becoming increasingly fearful for the safety of not only Elizabeth, but for the safety of Protestant England. And in this section, we take visitors through the most famous plots against Elizabeth the Throckmorton plot the Parry plot and the Babington plot and as we do that we try to display some of the different methods that would have been used by the intelligence services to try to keep Elizabeth safe because Malsingham and Cecil by this time understood that it was the effective use of intelligence networks that would help them to keep Elizabeth safe

and so they really developed the Elizabethan secret service. So we're standing in front of a video which demonstrates letter locking methods created by a wonderful conservator called Jana D'Ambrogio from MIT University in the States, who taught me to look at letters completely differently. I used to look at written words on paper, and now I look at all of the tears and the slits and the folds and see them as engineered objects, sort of secure letter packets. It's such a clever video. Everybody must come and see this. And this is the first time I've seen such a wonderful video actually showing how well they're made and what they would have looked like. And this is a facsimile of a letter that we have on display alongside. So visitors can look at the original letter, which is signed by Elizabeth,

look at the original letter which is signed by Elizabeth, a letter from 1584 and then they can watch the video which shows them how it would have been folded and sealed and secured and we also have a model of the letter in its locked state so people can see it in all of its stages and we also have ciphered and deciphered letters and then I'm going to show you a really exciting letter in this case here which talks about a recipe for secret ink. So it's a letter written by Arthur Gregory who was one of Francis Walsingham's men. He was an expert at breaking and resealing seals so that letters could be intercepted secretly and in this letter he's writing to Walsingham to tell him that he has discovered a new recipe for invisible ink and he encourages Walsingham to have a go. He says I've written some text in the square box at the bottom of the letter and he's enclosed a packet of coal

dust and charcoal and he instructs Walsingham to rub it over the words written in invisible ink. And we can see that Walsingham's actually done that because at the bottom of the letter there's a big dirty smudge. Of course you get a sort of a faint hint of some writing but it's very hard to read with the naked eye and so we've put the letter under multispectral imaging and we've actually been able to recover the words that Arthur Gregory wrote and Walsingham recovered. cover the words that Arthur Gregory wrote and Walsingham recovered. It's not a very exciting or secretive message. He's wishing Walsingham health, wealth and success. But it's wonderful to be able to use modern technology to recover sort of 16th century modern technology. And also just to have a document that has that sense of being touched, of the coal dust being rubbed into the letter and

the excitement of that moment of deciphering it you can really feel. Well it was like the moment I guess when I saw the words come to life again through multispectral imaging a similar feeling and then we come to the most famous plot of all against Elizabeth the 1586 Babington plot. And in this case, we have three items. The first item is the best surviving copy of the Gallows letter, which, of course, is the letter that finally entrapped Mary. And I say entrapped because, of course, the English government knew about the Babington plot from the start, but they let it run long enough to finally sort of let Mary implicate herself.

And then this item is a wonderful item. I think it's on loan from the National Archives. And it's set out by Thomas Phillips, who was Walsingham's master cryptographer. I heard him described recently as a one-man Bletchley Park, which I thought was a wonderful description. And he's setting out the cipher, one of over 100 ciphers that were found in Mary's rooms at Chartley after she was arrested. This was shown to Anthony Babington during his interrogation and Anthony Babington has confirmed in writing that this last is the alphabet by which only I have written unto the Queen of Scots, or receive letters from her.

And then he adds his signature, Anthony Babington. I find this a really quite a spine-chilling object, actually. It's a lived document. It takes you straight back to the moment in time. It gives you a sense of proximity to the past. Because this man, writing this message on here and signing his name, goodness knows in what circumstances, knew that he was therefore signing his death warrant. Yeah, with these words he was sealing not only his but also Mary's fate. So at this point Elizabeth, who has always done her utmost to protect Mary,

realises that her execution has become a political necessity. Things again move very quickly from this point on. We have a number of documents relating to Mary's trial and plans for her execution. We have a letter written in the hand of James, her son, sent to Elizabeth begging for his mother's life. But he only goes so far because, of course, we have to remember that this is a woman that he didn't really know. She hadn't really been his mother in the real sense of the word and he felt no emotional attachment for her. So he's very much focused on how it's going to reflect

on him if his mother is executed as an anointed monarch. And he's already by this point got one eye on the English throne and so he only pushes so far. So we're looking at the letter that was sent up to Fotheringay to the Earl of Kent, who was one of the two men appointed to oversee Mary Queen of Scots execution. And it's full of energy because it's signed by all the members of the Privy Council. It's really interesting to look at. So we can see here we've got Christopher Hatton. We've got William Davison, the secretary who unfortunately ended up in the tower when Elizabeth discovered that the execution warrant that she had signed had been sealed and enacted upon. We can see the signature of the Earl

of Leicester, William Burley, Sir Francis Knowles, Wosingham down at the bottom. And this is the warrant for Mary's execution? So it's the letter that accompanied a copy of the execution warrant that was sent up to Fotheringay Castle to be read aloud to Mary before her execution. Wow. And we're now standing in what I think of as the sort of emotional, dramatic high point of the exhibition. So we have in one case four items. The sonnet that Mary wrote the night before she was executed, which is an incredible item.

She's written it in French, again reminding people that she remained at heart a French queen. people that she remained at heart a French queen. It's full of composure. It's sorrowful, but she's resigned to her fate and determined to die a good Catholic death. And what's really moving, I think, in this corner, it's lit in red and we project the sonnet in Mary's handwriting onto the wall and translate it into English. So during the day when visitors are in, they

can hear the words being spoken and they can read the translation. And it's very moving. Alongside the sonnet, we have the Pinnacle Jewels on loan from National Museum of Scotland. They're absolutely beautiful and are believed to have been handed over by Mary shortly before her execution to Gillian Mowbray, one of her gentlewomen. Gosh, this is all so moving. The poem she wrote the night before, the jewels she was wearing that she handed over, and then a picture. A lovely portrait miniature. This is the Blair's Reliquary, and it, at the very centre, has a really miniature portrait of Mary and this is the only portrait that was painted of her during her English captivity and again she's believed to have handed it over to

one of her ladies shortly before her execution. So these are items that have an intimate connection with Mary and it's wonderful. What I've really loved about doing the exhibition is being able to bring together objects with a tangible connection with the two women and displaying them alongside related documents, letters, speeches. You can tell some really powerful stories. You said earlier that it was thrilling and I think that's the word for it. It's just thrilling to be able to see these letters in these hands and portraits and other items and it brings these people to life

as nothing else does really. Anyone listening who wants to kind of get a sense of getting close to the history, this is as close as you can get. I think so. We really wanted people to leave feeling as if they've met the real Elizabeth and the real Mary. And one of the best comments I have read so far is from somebody who said that she left feelings if she'd had a conversation with the two women. And that is exactly what we wanted to achieve.

Thanks for listening, everyone. That was an episode of Not Just the Tudors on my feed. Professor Susanna Lipscomb is a complete legend. She's one of my greatest friends and colleagues in the world of history. If you enjoyed it, please head over to Not Just the Tudors wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe and rate and review and all that kind of thing. Share it with friends. It just makes a really big difference to us.

And we're really, really grateful for you guys doing that. Thank you very much