Cecil's conviction that Protestant England is locked in a cold war against a Catholic international conspiracy — with France, Spain, the Pope, and domestic traitors all working to destroy the true faith — is fundamental to understanding Elizabethan politics.

15:55On top of that, they see her as a morally evil person, as someone who is supposed to have have killed um her own husband, Lord Darnley, um who, uh listeners may remember was described as the great chick, um kind of terrible man. Um we actually concluded that Mary probably didn't kill him, but there was a kind of insane murder plot that involved explosions and people being found in gardens and chairs and

16:22and all kinds of mad stuff. But definitely in Scotland as well as in England, people do think that Mary was responsible for uh killing her husband. And in summer 1567, the Protestant establishment in Scotland had decided that they had had enough and they'd risen in rebellion. They defeated Mary in battle. They'd imprisoned her on an island on a lonely lock and they had forced her to abdicate. Now Mary is kind

16:48of irreressible. She's always bouncing back from seemingly total disaster. And on the 2nd of May 1568, she'd managed to escape from this kind of keep on this lonely island and she'd set about trying to win her throne. But the attempt had um had been a disaster. She'd lost her battle. Um and so she had decided, "What can I do now? The only thing I can really do is to go to England and ask my

17:14cousin Elizabeth for help." And so on the 16th of May, she had left Scotland forever from this very romantic spot below Dundrenan Abbey in Goreway. Very eerie place. I went and visited it um at the new year. And she gets into a fishing boat and she rows across the Sowway FTH to Cumbria in England, West Mulland as it was. and she steps foot onto English soil and she immediately