Mary Queen of Scots gave explicit approval for the assassination of Elizabeth I through her letter to Anthony Babington on 17 July 1586.

4:01friends, who for the zeal they bear to the Catholic cause and your majesty's service, will undertake that tragical execution." In other words, the assassination. So, Mary, you know, 17 days to write her reply. She has been mulling over what she should say, mulling over and over in her mind. But now at last, she has made up her mind. And that's the significance of that otherwise kind of enigmatic phrase,

4:30"Then shall it be time to set the six gentlemen to work." In other words, get the assassination squad out there. Let them kill Elizabeth. >> So, this is the sixth episode we've done in this series on the the sort of the the Golden Age of Elizabeth I, the rivalry with Spain, the kind of the the war in the shadows, but also the war at sea with Sir Francis Drake and all of

4:53this. And Mary Queen of Scots has been this presence throughout the whole series. She's been in captivity, but she hasn't really been center stage. Now, we did a previous series about Mary Queen of Scots, which listeners can look up. We did that in 2025 if they're interested. Let's pull back the camera and talk about exactly who she is. She is Elizabeth's cousin. She is her obvious heir if anything