The trial of Mary Queen of Scots was a legal charade in which the defendant was denied counsel, confronted by her enemies Burghley and Walsingham, and confronted with evidence of correspondence she believed was secure.

38:55Elizabeth. So she has a kind of a bit of a strop about that. She does have three ladies in waiting attending her. These are the only women obviously in the courtroom, and these ladies in waiting are the only people who are sympathetic to Mary. Mary does not have a lawyer with her. She doesn't have a kind of barrister who is speaking on her behalf, and instead she is completely surrounded

39:16by enemies and by two in particular because just across from where she is sitting, so right in her eye line, next to the Lord Chancellor is Lord Burghley. And at a further remove on the bench reserved for knights, so this is the bench that is facing the throne of the empty throne of Elizabeth, is a man that she had only met for the first time that very morning, and this is Sir Francis

39:40Walsingham. >> So she's looking at the two men who basically done more than anybody else to bring her to this point. And do you think she thinks at that point you know, that she's been told, "If you're innocent, you've got nothing to fear." But do you think she thinks at this point when she sees them looking at her, so when she sees that her chair is lower than Elizabeth's throne, all that

39:58stuff, do you think she thinks, "Okay, this is a done deal. Like this is a show trial. I'm never going to get off." Or is she thinking, "I can still turn this around." >> It's hard to know. I imagine that that probably in her heart she knows that she would not have been brought to trial had the determination of her enemies not being to see her executed.

40:20But against that, she doesn't know what evidence is going to be presented against her. And the whole way through, she has been insistent that um you know, she's put nothing to paper in her own handwriting. She's been very careful about that. And you know, she must assume that people haven't seen the letters that she wrote to Babington. She doesn't know about this. No one's told her. So, you know,

40:40she probably has a kind of scintilla of hope. But I think the moment that the proceeding starts, she must have felt this kind of sickening cold hand of dread clamping at her heart. Because Thomas Phillips, you know, the the fair-haired young man that she seen from her carriage, he has prepared the evidence against her very diligently and very very remorselessly, and it is all laid out there for the commissioners to

41:08study. So, Babington's correspondence with Mary, Mary's correspondence with Babington and her various friends and allies abroad. And most fatefully of all, that letter which Phillips had termed the bloody letter and illustrated with the gallows. I mean, that is the letter that is going to destroy her. And when Mary realizes that all her correspondence had been penetrated by Walsingham, I mean, she is stunned. At that point, surely she knows the game is

41:40up. And she she sobs. You know, she she is good at at at weeping on demand. Um and at other times when she's not weeping, she goes very spiritedly on the attack. And she she plays all her favorite cards. She says, you know, I'm not answerable for what people like Babington wrote to me. I had no influence on him whatsoever. She says that the letters attributed to her were