The Rest Is History - 584. Mary, Queen of Scots: Birth of a Legend (Part 1)

Episode Date: July 20, 2025

Where was Mary Queen of Scots - Elizabeth I’s most famous rival - born, and who were her parents? What was the nature of the turbulent politically and religiously divided world she was born into? How did she become a queen at only one week old, and betrothed to a French Prince at five? Why was it so dangerous to be a Scottish monarch in the 16th century? And, was she really the rightful heir to the English throne….? Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the early life of one of history’s most famous women: the brave, charming, famously glamorous but also tragic; Mary Queen of Scots.  The Rest Is History Club: Become a member for exclusive bonus content, early access to full series and live show tickets, ad-free listening, our exclusive newsletter, discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, and our members’ chatroom on Discord. Just head to therestishistory.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestishistory. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude  Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is the restishistory.com. She held the crucifix high, visible all down the long hall, as she flung defiance at her judges, and her voice rose with a kind of triumph above the voice of the Dean of Peterborough, always higher and clearer than his rising tones, arching over the vehement English prayers, the mysterious dominating invocations of the ancient faith. The Queen's voice held on for a minute after the clergyman had finished. Her words were in English now. She was praying for the people of England,

and for the soul of her royal cousin Elizabeth, she was forgiving all her enemies. Then for a moment her ladies were busy about her. The black velvet gown fell below her knees, revealing underbodies and petticoat of crimson silk. And she stepped forward suddenly, shockingly, in the colour of martyrdom, blood red from top to toe against the sombre background. Quietly she knelt and bowed herself low over the little chopping block. In manus tuas domine, and they heard twice the dull chunk of the axe. There was one more ceremony to accomplish.

The executioner must exhibit the head and speak the customary words. The masked black figure stooped and rose, crying in a loud voice, long live the queen. But all he held in his hand that had belonged to the rival queen of hearts was a kerchief and pinned to it an elaborate auburn wig. Rolled nearer the edge of the platform, shrunken and withered and gray with a sparse silver stubble on the small shiny skull, was the head of the martyr. Mary Stuart had always known how to embarrass her enemies.

So that was the American historian Garrett Mattingly in 1950, and he was writing about the execution of Mary Stuart. Mary Queen of Scots of Fotheringay Castle on the 8th of February 1587. Tom Holland, it is one of the most dramatic, one of the most celebrated moments in British history. Iconic because Mary is a bit of an icon isn't she? She's a fashion icon. She is. She's famously beautiful and stylish and well-dressed and all of these kinds of things. And also loads of history about men. Yeah. But now we're absolutely hitting the jackpot. So I would say Mary Queen of Scots is probably the most celebrated

Scot who's ever lived and she celebrated because she is a byword for glamour and romance and tragedy which seems to be what people like in Scottish history. So I guess Bonnie Prince Charlie would perhaps be her only rival, who's also glamorous, romantic and tragic. The story of Mary Queen of Scots is extraordinary. So she becomes the Queen of Scots when she's only one week old. She then goes to France and as a teenager, she briefly rules as Queen of France. And then when she's 19, she comes back to Scotland,

a country that she barely remembers. And she has this incredibly convulsive and ultimately calamitous reign, which is marked by plots and rebellions and two disastrous marriages and two very notorious murders. And as a result, mystery and controversy completely shadows her. So there are all kinds of questions that people are always debating. Was she an adulteress?

Was she a murderess? Was she a victim of rape? And she's a very polarizing figure and she always has been. So to her admirers of whom there are lots, she's the archetype of a heroine brought low by duplicitous and brutal men. So she was a figure of romance and now a kind of feminist heroine. But there are lots of people who think she's a complete waste of space, useless, a traitor, conniving, an inept at conniving. So that's even worse than conniving, right? Yeah. I mean, she ends up deposed. You know, that's pretty much the marker of being a failure

as a ruler. And back in the 16th century, the justification for this was precisely that she was a Jezebel, that she was a kind of monstrous archetype of everything that made women rulers a terrible idea. And today, there are absolutely historians who will say that she's one of the most calamitous rulers in Scottish history. And the doyen of these historians who condemn her as a disastrous queen, who is herself Scottish, Jenny Wormald, wrote a brilliant groundbreaking book on Mary Queen of Scots, and she condemned her as a monarch of little wit and no judgment.

A woman who absolutely brought about her own downfall. And so Dominic, we will be sifting the evidence for this today and over the next five episodes of the series and lots to discuss but important to emphasize you were worried that this was maybe an overly Scottish theme I wouldn't say worried I would say excited you will be relieved to know that this isn't just a Scottish story There's quite a lot of England in it as well and I guess that that's evident from the account of the execution that you read, which we opened this episode with because fathering gay, of course, where she ends up being beheaded is in England. I mean, it's in middle England. It's in Northamptonshire. But what that passage also alluded to is the sense in which in death as throughout her adult life, Mary Queen of

Scots is shadowed by a rival Queen and this Queen is her own cousin. In fact, it's the woman who had agreed to her death. And that of course is Elizabeth Tudor, Elizabeth the first. Yes. So Mary was the Queen of Scots, Tom Elizabeth was Queen of England. Mary was a Catholic. Elizabeth was a Protestant. And Mary, of course, was married three times but Elizabeth was the Virgin Queen married to her people and to her country and here's the thing we always think of them as the sort of supreme arch rivals but they never actually met they never

even were in the same building at the same time. No and I think that people ever since have felt that this was a slightly wasted opportunity and that in so many fictional treatments of Mary Queen of Scots, she's always meeting up with Elizabeth I. So there was Schiller in Germany, wrote a famous play about it. Donizetti wrote an opera again where Mary and Elizabeth meet up. And I suppose the most recent example is the 2018 film starring Saoirse Ronan as Mary Queen of Scots. And actually I have next to me and I will hold it up for the benefit of those on YouTube. It's this titanic definitive biography of Mary by John Guy, which came out about 20 years ago.

And it's been retitled for the purposes of the film. And on the cover you get Saoirse Ronan as Mary Queen of Scots, but you also get Margot Robbie as Elizabeth the first. And the subtitle is two Queens, one future. Yeah. So that sense that to write about Mary immediately means that you have to write about Elizabeth is really, really powerful and part of the story that we'll be telling. But it's not just an English or Scottish story.

It's also a European story, right? Because as you've pointed out, the book that we read from in the beginning, the Garrett Mattingly book is actually a book about the defeat of the Spanish Armada. So Spain and France are involved in this story too. Yeah, so actually that account that you read, it's the first chapter in Mattingly's account of the Spanish Armada. He frames it as the key event that results in Philip II of Spain launching his doomed attempt to conquer England the following year in 1588. And that reflects the fact that throughout her life, Mary was a figure of absolutely European significance and not just for Spain, but even more for France. So although she was the Queen of Scots, actually, I think the kingdom that she loved

best, the place probably where she felt most at home was France. So like, actually very like Theo, her father was Scottish, but her mother was French. And she goes to, Theo just briefly flashed in and out there. She goes to France when she's very young, she gets educated there, she grows up there, that's where she first marries and becomes a queen. And I think there's a sense in which all through her subsequent life she's a little bit homesick for it. And so perhaps the great irony of her reign and the key to understanding her ultimate tragedy is that the preference of this most famous of all Scots wasn't actually for Scotland at all. Her heart was probably French. Enough preamble, let's get right into the story. So she is born in Linlithgow, west of Edinburgh,

one of the great palaces of Scotland on the 8th of December, 1542. So set the scene for us a little bit, Tom. It's perishingly cold, even by the standards of Scotland in winter. So the Tweed, which is the fast flowing river on which I have my Scottish estate and which marked the frontier between Scotland and England, had completely frozen over, which anyone who

knows the Tweed, I mean, it's an extraordinary thing. But despite these perishing conditions, it hasn't stopped the Scots and the English from fighting one another, which for generations after generation, they're always at it. And this is why Mary's father, who is James V, he's 30 years old, he's the King of Scotland, that's why he's not present at Llynlithgow for her birth. And the reason for this is that two weeks earlier, he'd been fighting the English on the western border of Scotland, and he had suffered a humiliating defeat, Solway Moss in Cumberland in England.

He'd managed to escape the battlefield, he'd ridden back, he'd stopped by at Linlithgow where his wife had been entering her confinement, but he hadn't stayed there. Basically, I think because he was kind of too depressed and miserable at his defeat, he felt he had lots to organize. So he went to Edinburgh. In Edinburgh, he felt, oh, I'm just too depressed. And so he went on to a hunting lodge at Falkland and basically he seems to have gone there to commune with his sense of failure, I think. And he basically goes to bed.

He's very depressed. He's also pox ridden. Okay. He's a great one for the ladies and is absolutely right. Ridden with syphilis. And while he's in bed, he has brought the news that his wife has given birth and it's a daughter. And this plunges him even deeper into misery. Yeah, gutting.

Well, over the course of his life, as we will see, he's fathered a lot of bastard sons, but he has no legitimate male heir. And he'd really been hoping for that. So having a daughter is a huge disappointment to him. Meanwhile, back in Lithgow, the newborn daughter and her mother are doing very well. And this is because a Scottish palace in the mid-16th century is actually an incredibly civilized place to be. Really? Yeah, it's great. It's hung with magnificent tapestries to provide insulation.

It's got the cutting edge glazed windows, you know, tremendous glaziers on hand. It's very, very sophisticated. And in the opinion of Mary's mother, the palace at Linlithgow is equal of any chateau to be found in France. She would know. Absolutely, Dominic, because she herself is French. So she's Mary of Guise. She's from a noble family in France, right? And she's famously beautiful and smart, cunning, all of these kinds of things.

And I mean, no son. I mean, we're in the same century as Henry VIII and all his carry on. So no son is, you know, always a bad thing. But on the other hand, at least James has an heir of a kind. And you say she's of a noble family. I mean, the Guise are the most influential and domineering noble family in France. And as we will see, they have essentially their eyes on the throne. So she's a very formidable person in her own right. And her marriage

to James V, the King of Scotland, it bears witness to what for generations and generations has been the foundation stone of Scotland's foreign policy, which is known by the Scots as the Old Alliance, A-U-L-D, so the Scots spelling, and it is underpinned, I'm afraid to say, by a visceral hostility to England. Which makes complete sense. I mean, strategically, England is the adversary for both countries. The English had fought the French in the Hundred Years War, memories of which are still around obviously in the 16th century. The Scots, so their memories are of their wars of independence, which were 300 years earlier, Robert the Bruce, all of that kind of thing. And actually, both of these have been English defeats, hadn't they? They had, yeah.

The English defeat in the Scottish wars of independence had been much more humiliating for the English than their defeat in the hundred years war, basically because Scotland is to England or England is to France, namely less rich, less powerful, fewer reserves of manpower. And this is as true in the time of Mary, the Queen of Scots, as it had been back in the time of Robert Bruce. So the population of England is about three and a half million. Yeah. And Scotland's is well under one million.

The only sizeable town in Scotland at this time is Edinburgh. Even then, I mean, it's only just under 10,000. So London, by way of comparison, is over 60,000. And its entire machinery of government is much less centralized than you get in England or France. And so therefore it's harder to raise and sustain armies in the field. Right.

And the corollary of that is that generally provided the English aren't distracted by kind of wars in France, they can pretty much be relied upon to defeat the Scots in battle. As they have done in recent years, right? So the 16th century has been pretty good for England in this regard. You mentioned Solway Moss, but they also famously won the Battle of Flockdon. Yep. 1513, a lot of business with pikemen running down into bogs and things.

And Mary's grandfather was killed at Flockdon, wasn't he? James the fourth. And a lot of the English people said that he'd been killed by his own side, which is poor from the Scots. Well I think not just English people that Scots thought that too. Right. It's unclear but these rumors certainly play into a kind of opinion that is very common in England and indeed France that Scottish affairs are exceptionally brutal and murderous and that the nobility in Scotland are kind

of very, very thuggish and dangerous. Do you think that's true? Well we'll see. Mary certainly grows up to think it's true. In due course, she would say of the Scots that they are, as is known, a people as factious amongst themselves and as factious towards their ruler as any other nation in Europe. And I guess that she could look back at her forebears, those who had sat on the throne before her, and found plenty of evidence to support this. So Mary is a steward. The name steward derives from the position held by one of

her ancestors who'd been a high steward of Scotland and he had then married the daughter of Robert Bruce, a woman called Marjorie, which I think is an improbable name for Scottish Queen, and thereby founded the Stuart dynasty. And it's true that very few of the Stuart kings kind of die in their beds. So there are lots who die in battle against the English, but there's another who gets assassinated while being pursued down a sewer, another gets killed in battle fighting his own son, and actually the son who kills his own father is the guy who goes on to become James the fourth, the one who dies at Flawdon. So I think there is a general sense that to be

a Scottish monarch is a dangerous thing. And this, I think, is why James is particularly depressed at the news that he's been given a daughter rather than a son, because he's worried that to have a woman on the throne will, by its very nature, be threatening, not just for Scotland, but more specifically for his own line, his own regime. Here's this brilliant line, doesn't he? The devil go with it. It will end as it began.

It came from a woman and it will end in a woman. What's all that about? Yeah, it's kind of paraphrased, it came with a lass and it will pass with a lass. So in other words, the Stuarts inherited the throne via Margaery, the daughter of Robert Bruce and with Mary Stuart, it will finish. And so he's very depressed. He gets worse and worse and then he dies. And we're told by someone who records the details that he died amid a marvelous vomit.

So I'm horrid. And so this is one week after Mary has been born. And so she's now the Queen of Scotland and she is one week old. Right. And obviously, if the stereotypes, which very strongly held by foreigners, but also it would seem by James V himself, if the stereotypes of Scottish savagery and backwardness are true, then you would think that the Stuarts are doomed.

You know, a one week old baby girl on the throne, it doesn't look promising. And even more threatening is the fact that there are a couple of noblemen on the scene who themselves have a possible claim to the throne, and who even more threateningly for Scotland absolutely test each other. Okay.

Everybody basically is called James. So one of these is James Hamilton, he is the Earl of Aaron and he is the grandson of the daughter of James the second. So that's going quite a few generations back, but he is now the heir apparent. So if Mary dies, he gets the throne. Right. He's very scheming, but he's also very slippery and very, very inconstant. And Mary of Gies, Mary, Queen of Scots mother despises him.

And she says of him that he was a simple and the most inconstant man in the world for whatever he determineth today, he changes tomorrow. So you can't pin him down. Okay. And the other Blake? So he is called Matthew, Matthew Stewart, and he's the Earl of Lennox. And like the Earl of Arran, he's a grandson of James II's daughter, but he stands behind Arran in the ranking because his claim derives from a female rather than a male line.

So the inherent sexism of the Scottish laws of inheritance. Right, yeah. And he is in exile in France at this time when Mary is born, but he's obviously itching to return and he's described by one admirer as having been a strong man of personage well proportioned in all his members. So that's nice. In all his members. That's nice. Potentially a very impressive figure. Right.

So in a sane world, one of these men would have got the baby, taken it to some equivalent to the Tower of London, Scottish equivalent, some shack in Scotland and smothered or otherwise dealt with her, princess in the tower style, bang, job done. Let's get on and have a nice stable government for a happier Scotland. But no, forage from the Scots. They could have done it and they would have been right to do it, I guess, would be definitely your take on it. But actually this doesn't happen at all. And this is because actually Scotland is much more politically stable, I think, than the negative perspective abroad allowed. And the measure of this is that since 1437, so that's more than a century before Mary's

birth, four kings in succession had come to the Scottish throne as children and all of them had survived their minority and all of them had grown up to become very powerful and intimidating rulers. And the reason for this is that actually the Scottish monarchy has a number of advantages that aren't immediately apparent, I think, to, you know, sneer us in London or Paris. And one of these advantages is that actually the aristocracy are not as feral as, say, the English aristocracy had shown themselves to be in the 15th century when England had collapsed into the Wars of the Roses. And as you mentioned, the princes and the tower end up being murdered. There's no equivalent of that in Scotland. And Jenny Wormald, who we mentioned, the great historian of late medieval and 16th century Scotland,

who's very down on Mary, Queen of Scots, she's brilliant on this kind of quality of essential stability that Scotland has. And she writes, the evidence is that the magnates infinitely preferred strong royal rule to lack of it. So they're not looking to overthrow kings. Essentially they want a king to grow up and provide authoritative rule because that's better for Scotland. Yeah. And they're doing that partly because they're frightened of

the English or they're not frightened of the English. I think they are constantly aware of the English threat on their southern border. They're well aware that in pitch battle, the English are probably going to win, but they're also aware that as long as there is a strong, stable state in Scotland, the English will never be able to conquer Scotland. The Highlands in particular are effectively impregnable. You know, it's not just the English who failed to conquer Scotland. The Highlands in particular are effectively impregnable. It's not just the English who failed to conquer Scotland, the Romans had failed earlier. It's just Scotland is a very, very difficult country to subdue. And so as a result, the English are kind of like a tide,

they're constantly flowing in, but they're almost bound to flow back out again. And this is why ever since Edward I tried to conquer Scotland and Edward II had then been defeated at Bannockburn, it's just a relentless sequence of wars and squabbles that are never resolved. The Scots can't stop the English attacking, but the English can't subdue the Scots. And so you just have this kind of three centuries long stalemate. One of the reasons that the Scots are able to see the English off is that

actually in kind of geopolitical terms, they're quite well set. So if you think of France, France has the English to deal with, but they've also got the Spanish, they've got problems on the Italian frontier. They've been fighting in Italy, yeah. Yeah, they've got Italy, they've got the low countries, they've got problems potentially along the Rhine. So they have enemies on almost every corner. The English are sandwiched between France and Scotland. So whenever the English go and attack France, as Shakespeare puts it, the weasel Scott, darts out down into Northern England.

The Scots only have the one natural enemy and that's England. And this is one of the reasons why it doesn't actually need the centralized bureaucracy that had developed in England and France, say, over the course of the Hundred Years War. They don't need excessive amounts of money or men because the only sphere where they're going to be fighting is that very narrow border that constitutes the line between England and France. And so such taxes as they raise, the Stuarts can blow it on fancy ships or guns and they love a fancy ship. They love a massive cannon, but they can still have enough to then spend it on building glorious

palaces like at Linlithgow. This is why you have the wonderful glazing and the tapestries and stuff. It's because the Scottish monarchy has money to spare. Basically, James V is a great builder of kind of the Scottish equivalent of Chateau. He can enjoy French style interior decoration, but massively on the cheap. And because of this, the Scots themselves do not feel that they're peripheral barbarians. And Scots monarchs certainly don't think that. They don't see themselves as being remote or isolated or backwards.

They see themselves absolutely as being the peers of the King of England or the King of France. And so that's why I think, although it's not optimal to have a one week old baby girl on the throne, it doesn't doom Mary and it doesn't mean that Scotland is doomed to fall to pieces. Well let's find out because you know Tom that's very optimistic. Are we looking to a golden age of Scottish history? Is Mary Queen of Scots life going to be all sweetness and light? Find out after the break. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Now, if you're not a member of The Rest Is History Club, I know what you've been doing. You've been listening to the adverts. More fool you. You should join the club and you won't have to listen to them.

But while you've been listening to the adverts, extraordinary scenes. Nine months have passed and Mary has just been crowned in Stirling Castle. A slightly bad omen here Tom, because she was crowned on the anniversary of the Battle of Flodden. Yes, so the 9th of September 1543, 29 years after the Battle of Flodden. So big disaster in Scottish history, why on earth have they chosen that date? Well it will be seen by Mary's enemies as a bad omen,

but I think you could just as easily see it as a mark of Scottish insouciance. They've already got overflodden, forget it, you know, yeah who cares. As you said she's crowned in Stirling Castle, which has always been viewed as the key to Scotland. Bannockburn is kind of fought in its shadow, it guards the lowest crossing point on the River Forth, and it's pretty much impregnable. So that is one of the reasons why Mary is there. The crown has to be held over the baby Queen's head because obviously it would crush her if it was laid on top of her. And Mary cries and balls and

sobs the whole way through the ceremony which again, bad bad omen people might see as an omen, but you know, very clearly if she's being crowned, she hasn't been murdered. No coronation is going ahead. The country hasn't collapsed into civil war and great news deals of Aaron and Lennox. So the two men who we mentioned in the first half, who both have claims to be her successor, they've been there. So the first one, massive snake. Yeah, always changing his mind.

The other bloke. Good members. Well proportioned members. Exactly. So Aaron has carried the crown in the coronation procession. Lennox has carried the scepter. If you throw in the sword of state as well, these constitute the honours of Scotland, as they're called, and you can see them to this day in Edinburgh Castle. Attentive listeners may remember that

Lennox had been in exile in France, so obviously if he's there in Stirling, he's negotiated his return. So it's good for him, but it's Aaron probably at this point who is ahead because he has won the backing of Scotland's Parliament to serve both as regent and to be nominated as Mary's official heir. So yeah, watch out for him. If he had a Richard the third vibe, we know what would happen. Yeah. But we will see in one sense as a kind of surprising degree of political stability. These two worlds are kind of, you know, they're eyeballing each other, but they're not trying to kill Mary, they're not in open opposition to one another. But the state of Scotland is unsettled even so, and this is due not so much to the rivalry between Aaron and Lennox, but to a much more formidable and enduring

rivalry which is that between France and England. So both of those kingdoms, they've obviously heard the news. There's this infant girl and they're both thinking, oh, you know, this opportunity here. Now you would think, wouldn't you, that the French would be the people who would do a deal with Scotland because of the old alliance and all that kind of thing. And the English are kind of the, you know, they're the old enemy and all of that stuff. And it's a little bit more complicated, isn't it? So the English are actually at war with Scotland at this point, technically, is that right?

Yeah, you know, I mean, Mary's father died of a broken heart after being defeated by them. Right. And of course, also, Mary is under the wing of her mother, Mary of Guise, who's very much a French woman. So why is this even an issue? Why the English, even in in play as a possible ally? Doesn't make sense. Because over the decade before Mary is born, something very kind of novel, unexpected, and I think for relations between Scotland, England and France,

I think for relations between Scotland, England and France, very destabilizing has begun to emerge which is a pro-English faction in Scotland. Absolute scenes, I mean unheard of. So people may wonder how on earth is it that a pro-English faction has grown up in Scotland? And the answer to that is that the storm clouds of the Reformation have been massing not just over Europe, but over Scotland. Because just as has been happening in England at the same time, the country is being shaken by the emergence of a novel and very fast growing heresy in Germany. So we did five episodes on this, the life of Martin Luther, yeah, kind of a father of the Reformation. And his writings had been detected in Scotland as early

as 1524. So that's only a few years after he nailed up his theses in Bittenberg. And then three years later, so in 1527, there is a report from a concerned Catholic that Luther's writings are circulating widely in Edinburgh and St Andrews. And then the following year in 1528, you get the first martyrdom of a Protestant. And this is a former Catholic priest called Patrick Hamilton. And he's burnt at the stake in St Andrews, which is one of Scotland's three universities at this point, and the oldest and most prestigious. So this is all going on. But surely there's a huge thing. It's not just coming from Germany or from Flanders or other places the tracks are coming from, but the fact that England has been embroiled

in the Reformation because of Henry VIII's marital issues, presumably has a massive knock-on effect on Scotland because now all sorts of tracts and ideas can arrive across the very porous Anglo-Scottish border. Yeah, and of course they're written in a form of English, so Scots, which is pretty different from the kind of English that is being written by Protestant reformers in London or Cambridge or whatever. But I mean, it's much easier for Scots to read than say German. And so these pamphlets have an outsize effect on Scottish opinion, as you said. And of course, as you also said, there is the outsize figure of Henry the eighth. And by this point, I mean, he really is outsize. He's, he's very much a person of bulk. Yeah.

He's got that massive ulcer. Yes. All those injections up his ass and stuff. I mean, it's all, it's all happening. So, so his kind of beady piggy little eyes have lit up at the prospect that the spread of Protestantism in Scotland offers him to make mischief. So actually four months after Mary was born, he'd written to the Earl of Arran, the slippery guy has become the Regent. He proposes a raft of Protestant style reforms. So he says that the Scots should have the Bible freely available in their own language, that tracts opposed to the English Reformation should be cracked down on. So that's kind of pro-Catholic ones. And also he tells the Earl of Arran, you know, get on and dissolve

the monasteries. It's absolutely brilliant. And he very overtly frames this not as being justified by, you know, the true religion of Protestantism or whatever, but it's brilliant. You'll make so much money. Look how much cash I've got. It's great. Tom, you can fat shame Henry VIII as much as you like, but those are all actually quite good ideas. The Scots would have done well to profit from them. Anyway. You're right, because the Earl of Arran, who is actually quite a devout Catholic, I mean, he's pretty tempted by this. Henry, in his own way, is Catholic as well. Yeah. There's a kind of streak of opportunism there that I think is as evident

in the higher reaches of Scotland as in England. And there's a further aspect of Scottish affairs that Henry finds tempting, which is that having a girl as a queen means that she's obviously going to have to be married off. And Henry's heir is a young boy, the male heir that he'd done so much to try and secure. And this boy, Edward, he's going to need a wife. So Henry says to Aaron, why don't we match them up? It would be brilliant. And so in July, 1543, Henry and the Earl of Arran duly sign a treaty in Greenwich, just down the Thames from London. And its provisions from the point of view of Henry VIII are brilliant. So Mary is going to be brought up with English speaking attendance. So not Scott speaking attendance. She'll grow

up with a nice received pronunciation accent. Okay. Then at the age of 10, she'll marry Prince Edward. Their children will rule a United Kingdom of Great Britain. Aaron will commit to pursuing essentially Protestant policies. So all of these are wins for Henry and England. The only concession that Henry grants to the Scots is that Mary's kingdom will continue to be called Scotland and retain its ancient laws and liberties.

It'll be a bit of a dual monarchy, I guess. Yeah, that's the plan. Like an Austro-Hungarian empire. So there's a massive road not taken. What a historical what if that is, because if that had happened, the story of the 17th century and thereafter would have been completely different. Why does it not happen when they've done this deal in Greenwich? Because Aaron finds it impossible to take the rest of the country with him.

Most people in Scotland do not want to end up as they would see it subordinated to England, even the Protestants. And at this point, most people in Scotland are still very much Catholic, so it's just impossible. But more than that, he has a very, very effective opponent in Scotland in the form of Mary of Guise, the French mother of Mary, Queen of Scots, who is absolutely determined not to let her daughter become a kind of an English queen. And so this is one of the reasons why she's removed Mary to Stirling Castle, which is effectively impregnable. It had been a personal gift from James V to Mary of Guise. So it's her own personal stronghold. This

means that Aaron cannot get his hands on the infant queen. I mean, if he had been able to, then maybe history would have been different if Mary had been kind of packed off to London. I mean, who knows what would have happened. But Mary of Guise has her daughter and Stirling is not going to be captured. More than that, of course, Mary of Guise is very effective at playing the rival would be strong men of Scotland. So as well as Aaron, there is Lennox. She drops subtle hints to Lennox that perhaps she might be interested in marrying him. This would be great for Lennox. That might help solidify his claim to the throne. And at the same time, Mary of Gies, very kind of cunning and clever, she's also giving a kind of little hint of

her ankle to another of Scotland's most powerful noblemen. There's a guy called Patrick Hepburn, and he is the Earl of Bothwell and he's a very big player. So he, by hereditary right, is the Lord Admiral of Scotland and he's the Sheriff of Edinburgh. So to control both the fleet and the capital, I mean, that's quite something. And his castle is, I mean, I think probably the most sinister, brooding and atmospheric castle in the whole of Britain. It's called the Hermitage. It's right on the borders of England and Scotland. It's in what at the time was the most dangerous area in the whole of Britain. It was called

the debatable lands. It was given over to bandits called Reavers. I don't know if you've ever been to it, Dominic. It's like something out of Game of Thrones. We say that about so much that we talk about, but it really is. If you imagine the kind of terrifying place you would not want to end up, this is the castle, the Hermitage. And so unsurprisingly, with all these attributes, the Earl of Bothwell, he doesn't suffer from self-esteem issues. So Henry VIII's ambassador to Scotland described him as the most vain and insolent man in the world, full of pride and folly. Poor old Aaron, he's up against Lennox, he's up against the Earl of Bothwell and he's up against Mary

of Gies and basically he finds himself with no option but to reverse ferret. So, you know, he's very changeable. Whatever he determineth today, he changes tomorrow, as Mary of Guise had said of him. And so having signed this treaty with Henry VIII, he gets back to Scotland, discovers nobody's in favour of it, and so he completely rips it up. He abandons the English alliance. He stops pretending to be Protestant, and he submits to attending Mary's coronation alongside Lennox and Mary of Gies. So that's what he's doing, holding the crown over Mary. And this is obviously very, very humiliating for him,

but it's also humiliating for Henry VIII in England. Right, and Henry VIII. So Mary of Gies is delighted, but Henry VIII is absolutely furious, isn't he? And actually... Livid. Yeah, he demands vengeance. So what are we 1544, April 1544? He tells one of the Seymours, so Jane Seymour's brother Edward, and he basically says, get into Scotland, put all to fire and sword, burn Edinburgh town. So raised and defaced when you've sacked and gotten what you can of it, as there may

remain forever a perpetual memory of the vengeance of God for their falsehood and disloyalty. Put all the men and women and children to the sword, do all this, do all that, destroy the villages. He's not messing around. No. So Seymour leads a massive English army into Scotland and what follows is the most brutal war of destruction that the English have ever waged in Scotland. And obviously there have been quite a few brutal wars of destruction. And it goes on for eight years. It outlasts Henry VIII himself. And it was memorably termed by Sir Walter Scott in the early 19th century as the rough wooing. Right. So basically there's this idea that you go and destroy everything in your path and this is somehow

supposed to persuade the Scots to give Mary Queen of Scots to Prince Edward in London. And so on one level, this is obviously self-defeating because it only confirms the majority of Scots in their kind of ancestral loathing for the English. And also, of course, playing into Mary of Guise's hands, really, it only confirms them in their view of France as their natural kind of essential ally. But having said that, I think the most striking thing about the rough wooing, this kind of brutal English campaign against the Scots, isn't that it kind of gives fresh impetus to the kind of traditional Scottish Anglophobia, but what's most amazing, what's most unexpected is that actually not everyone in Scotland is alienated by it. And the reason for that is that there's

now a constituency of support for the English as co-religionists, as fellow Protestants that actually can survive all the kind of the bloodshed and the slaughter and the ruin and the burning that the English are now inflicting on Scotland. The Reformation has got a sufficient hold on Scottish opinion that ties of religion are coming to seem to some Scots more important than the traditional hatred of the English. But it's also surely that thing that always happens when you have a smaller country and a larger country. There's always going to be a faction who see the opportunities and align themselves with

the big overbearing neighbor just because of the internal dynamics of kind of court politics. There's always ins and outs. So for people who hate the English, there's always mileage to be had, surely, in allying yourself with a very powerful patron across the border. I mean, kind of, but essentially that would be seen by Scots in the centuries since the Wars of Independence as treason. Okay. You know, you would be a traitor for doing that. What has changed with the Reformation is that

there are now Scots who can say, well, my conscience requires me to ally myself with fellow people who have cast off the Whore of Babylon. And that in turn does enable a kind of novel political faction to develop, which sees an alliance with England as something that is preferable to the traditional French alliance, because the French alliance doesn't come without strings either. France is even more of a preponderant power than England. And so it does mean that to a degree the Scots are subordinated. And so there is now scope for kind of pro English and pro French factions actually to be a kind of genuine dynamic in Scottish politics. And that in turn means, you know, if you are a player in Scottish politics, you can kind

of switch between them. And I guess the classic example of this is Lennox. Mary of Guise has been kind of saying, maybe I'll marry you, whatever, maybe I will, maybe I won't. But she'd actually been playing him along, she's been playing the field, she's been winking at the Earl of Bothwell as well, and so Lennox realizes this, realizes that Mary of Gies has no intention of marrying him and has a massive strop and openly turns pro-English. He basically yells at Mary of Gies, says you're terrible, you're an absolute slag, I'm off,

storms off to England. And when he's there, remember he has a claim to the Scottish throne. He assigns this claim to the Scottish throne, to the English king. Ooh, that's a big decision. It is a big decision. And he is very royally rewarded. So he's given extensive lands in Yorkshire in the north of England, but he's also given the hand of one of Henry VIII's nieces in marriage. And this is potentially, I mean, looking ahead,

a very momentous development because it means that any children, and perhaps more specifically any sons he has, will not just have Stuart blood in his veins, but the blood of the Tudors as well. And so therefore potentially a claim to the throne of England, as well as Scotland. Right. All of this, of course, well in the future. If you're Mary of Gies, presumably you look at this and you think, Oh, this is terrible. This is a very ominous development.

Oh, does she not care? And she thinks it's fine. I mean, she thinks Lennox is, I mean, the kind of peripheral figure who cares. Okay. She's got the rough wooing going on all around outside Stirling Castle. The castle is so secure that she can basically ride it out. So she sits in Stirling Castle with her daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, even as the countryside is on fire.

And the brilliant thing from her point of view is that the blame for the rough wooing does not fall on her but on Aaron, who completely gets the blame for it. And she's able to take advantage of this to leverage her own position of authority within Scotland. So Aaron is forced to accept her presence alongside him in the Privy Council and in Parliament. And this now means that Mary of Gies doesn't have to operate in the traditional way that women do in Scotland, kind of behind the scenes. She has her hands directly on the levers of power, and so she's therefore in pole position to push her dream policy, which is to marry her daughter directly into the French royal family. And this is obviously a great way of renewing the old alliance between Scotland and France and potentially subordinate Scotland permanently to French interests.

But more than that, I mean, you know, she's a geese. She's part of this incredibly ambitious family in France. To marry her daughter into the royal family of France, I mean, that's brilliant. It would be to kill two birds with one stone. So you know, she has everything to play for here. And it works right. Because in 1547, two things happen that play very much into her hands. And the first one is the death of the French king, Francois

Premier or Francis the first. So he was the great guy, massive nose, always wrestling Henry the eighth. He was Henry the eighth's big rival. Hanging out with Leonardo da Vinci, all of that. Right. He's dead. And now his son Henry or Henry becomes Henry the second and Henry's a big pals with the Guise family.

His advisors are Guises, Tom. Nice one. Her brothers actually, Mary of Guise's brothers, Francois and Charles. And because of that, basically she has a massive in with the new King of France. Yeah. So Francois and Charles is calledis and Charles. And because of that, basically she has a massive in with the new King of France. Yeah, so Francois and Charles, it's called Francis and Charles. We're very anglophone. So Francis is a military man. He's going to become the Duke of Guise. He's the most brilliant military strategist in France. He's been playing a key part in Francis' wars in Italy that we talked about in the Medici episodes. And his brother, Charles, is the Cardinal of Lorraine,

and he's one of a long line of Machiavellian cardinals who are kind of brilliant behind-the-scenes operators, gifted ministers. So Richelieu and Mazarin the next century, very much part of that tradition. And having these two guys, Francis and Charles, at the side of Henry II, Mary of Guise now has a hotline directly to the King. But ironically, this is not the only thing that serves to secure a French royal marriage for the infant Queen of Scots. I say ironically because the key event is actually a really, really disastrous Scottish defeat. So the third great military defeat in Scottish history in the 16th century. But actually what ironically serves to make the match between the infant Queen of Scots

into the Royal French line absolutely a banker is a disastrous Scottish military defeat, the third of the three great military debacles that Scotland suffers in the 16th century. And the context for this is again the rough wooing. So you mentioned Edward Seymour, the brother of Jane Seymour, so the uncle of Henry's son Edward who is now Edward VI, back in London. He's the law protector for Edward VI. And in September 1547, he launches another massive invasion of Scotland. He advances on Edinburgh and the Earl of Arran has raised just about every man that he can

to confront this onslaught. And he masses his forces on the hills above a small hamlet called Pinky, which I think is a great name. And this is probably the largest Scottish army ever assembled. And an English observer seeing it is very intimidated. And he says that the spears of the Scots were as thick as the bristles of a hedgehog. And the result of this exceptional Scottish effort is utter defeat. Aaron runs away, he flees scant with honour, as the description has it, and behind him

he leaves 10,000 dead Scots on the battlefield. And Mary of Gies is so panicked by the news of this debacle that for the first time she worries that Stirling Castle will not be able to hold out. And so she flees with her baby daughter westwards to a remote priory, the Priory of Inchmahome, some 80 miles west of the battlefield of Pinkie, and set on an island in a lock. And just to give a taster of what is to come, this is not the first island in a lock that Mary, Queen of Scots will find herself on. How tantalising.

Something to look forward to. What an exciting thought. So basically because the Scots have had this massive debark and they've shamed themselves on the battlefield, they now have to leap into bed with the French. They don't want to be subordinate to England. They have to be subordinate to anybody. They'd rather be with the French.

And Henri, Henry II, the King of France, thinks, brilliant, this is my chance. I can now get in bed with the Scots and probably marry this girl. Yeah. And he acts very, very rapidly because the situation is actually quite dangerous because should the English get hold of Mary Queen of Scots, it's game over for everybody. So what Henry does is he sends a massive expeditionary force. It lands in Leith.

So the port that serves Edinburgh in June 1458, 130 ships, 5,500 infantry, 1,000 cavalry, and they basically roll the English back, the English are forced back towards Berwick. The French have a meeting with the Earl of Arran at a nunnery in a small town called Havington, which is about 20 miles east of Edinburgh, and here they sign a treaty. It's agreed that the Earl of Arran at a nunnery in a small town called Havington, which is about 20 miles east of Edinburgh. And here they sign a treaty and it's agreed that the Earl of Arran will become a Duke of France. So he becomes the Duke of Châtel-l'Erore. And it is also agreed more significantly that Mary, Queen of Scots, who at this point is still only five and a half will marry the eldest son of Henry the second, the Dauphin Francis.

And so as a result of this, the Queen of Scots is destined to become the Queen as well of France and she is shipped off to France very, very rapidly. So the next month, the 29th of July, she boards the ship that will take her to France. She leaves the great fortress of Dumbarton on the Clyde and the ship she boards is the Royal Galley, the galley of the King of France himself that the King has sent to Scotland, this particular mark of honour to Mary. And her escort is the fleet that had sailed to Leith and has now sailed round the northern coast of Scotland and back down to the Clyde. And all the French crews are very impressed by the Queen of Scots.

They find her very pretty, very charming, very poised. You know, she's an adorable little muppet, basically. I mean, how poised can you be at five years old? Very apparently. I'm very sceptical of this, Tom. I think five-year-olds by by and large, are not poised. She is simultaneously poised and charming, and these are aspects of her character that will run throughout her life.

I know you love Mary Queen of Scots. I absolutely do believe it. You've drunk the iron brew, I think it's fair to say, Tom. Well, we will see. But just to say, they're actually held up for a week because there are storms. I mean, storms in the Scottish summer, who's heard the like. But but very impressively again, Dominic, Mary doesn't fall seasick. Oh, amazing. How remarkable that all these French sailors used to life at sea do fall seasick, but this

five year old girl doesn't. I absolutely believe you. It's not the French sailors. It's her retainers. And we know that because they wrote about it later in life. Anyway, so eventually they sail off and they're rounding Cornwall again. There's a massive storm. The rudder of the galley gets smashed.

She single-handedly sails the ship to France. No, again, poise, I think is the word. Not a sign of fear, perfectly calm, incredibly admirable. Well, I mean, you've got a report here. Yeah, so they finally land. They make land on French soil on the 13th of August, 1548. And Dominic, you've been skeptical, but do you want to know what one of the commanders of the French fleet said about her? No, I don't. But you're going to read it anyway. I absolutely am,

because I think the listeners want to know. So this French commander said, she, Mary, is one of the most perfect creatures that ever was seen. Such a one as from this very young age with its wondrous and estimable beginnings, has raised such expectations that it is not possible to hope for more from a princess on this earth." So I don't think you can argue with that. Well, Elizabeth I will have something to say about that, Tom. And if listeners want to find out how Mary measures up to these gushing previews, how she gets on in France, why she ends up going back to Scotland and all of the extraordinary melodramatic details of the rest of her life. The explosions, murders, all kinds

of plots and conspiracies. Just an amazing, amazing story. So the next episode is coming in a couple of days, but you can get all five remaining episodes of this epic series by signing up to the rest is history club at the rest is history.com. And on that Scottish bombshell. Goodbye. Bye bye. I'm David Oleshoge. And I'm Sarah Churchwell.

Together we're the hosts of Journey Through Time, where we explore the darkest depths of history through the eyes of the people who live through it. Today we're going to tell you about our new series on the Great Fire of London, one of the great pivotal events of the 17th century, one of the most important events in all of English and British history. It began at a bakery on Pudding Lane and quickly turned into a catastrophe. It consumed 13,000 houses, decimated London and caused 10 billion pounds worth of damage in today's money. It even burned down the iconic St. Paul's Cathedral.

The city was already devastated by the Great Plague, but rumors of foreign invasion led mobs to attack innocent foreigners on the streets. In this episode, we'll explore the chilling consequences of rumors of fake news of xenophobia, problems that clearly are not unique to today. From desperate attempts to save their homes and belongings, to the struggle to assign blame which turned deadly. This is the story of the fire as it was lived through by the people on the ground and the lasting impacts it left on the city.

We've got a short clip at the end of this episode. It's David Olusoga from Journey Through Time. Here's that clip that we mentioned earlier. If you look at all of the accounts of the fire at this point, as we get to the end of Sunday the second, the first day, this fire is not behaving in any way the way fires traditionally did in London. And there is some people who've argued that it was becoming a firestorm, that the heat and the wind and the movement of air caused by the fire was feeding it, was becoming self-sustaining as it were. John Evelyn, who's a great writer and a diarist of this moment, he talks about the

sound of the fire. He said it was like thousands of chariots driving over cobblestones. There are descriptions in Peeps and elsewhere of this great arc of fire in the sky. I mean, imagine that everything around you is colored by the flames, yellows and oranges, and above you is this thick black smoke. This is a city you know, these are streets you walk, this is a place that's deeply familiar to you and it looks completely otherworldly. It looks like another, like a sort of landscape

you've never seen before. People describe the fire almost as if it's supernatural. If you wanna hear the full episode, listen to Journey Through Time wherever you get your podcasts.