Mary Queen of Scots gave written approval for the assassination of Queen Elizabeth, thereby committing treason and sealing her own fate.

1:57await the arrival of the foreign aid, which then must be hastened with all diligence. >> So, that is an extract from one of the most consequential letters in all British history. It was written on behalf of Mary, Queen of Scots, brought up, educated in France, hence the accent. And it was written actually by one of her secretaries, and it was written on the evening of the 17th of

2:23July, 1586. It was then transcribed into a secret code, and then early the following morning, it was sent to a young Catholic gentleman whose name was Anthony Babington. And at the end of the letter, there was a PS, which read as follows, "Fail not to burn this present quickly." And you can understand why somebody put that PS in there, because what is in this letter could not be more

2:55sensitive, more incendiary, because what Mary's doing there, Tom, she's giving the green light, isn't she, to something that has been mooted for so many years. The operation to overthrow her cousin, Queen Elizabeth of England, and take the throne herself. >> Yes, and um it is projected that um this will be combined with an armed uprising in England itself, and that um this uprising will release Mary from her captivity. It will be

3:27coordinated with an invasion from France, and Elizabeth's fate, Mary does not explicitly say what this is to be, but her meaning is clear, because 17 days earlier, this young Catholic gentleman, Anthony Babington, had written a letter to Mary, and had proposed in this letter the assassination of the woman he described as the usurper, in other words, Elizabeth. So, he'd written, "There be six noble gentlemen, all my private

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

5:19happens to Elizabeth. But the issue is that she's not only French and Scottish, but she's a Catholic, and that is the main problem as far as Elizabeth sees it. >> Yeah, and this has obvious consequences for the kind of the general climate of suspicion and paranoia that has prevailed throughout this series. Because Catholics in England, in Scotland, and on the continent all dream of seeing Mary on the throne of England