Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to this history lesson on Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots.

This is part of the wider unit on why has Elizabeth been represented so differently? My name is Mr. Merrett and I'll be guiding you through today's lesson.

So, let's get started.

By the end of today's lesson, we're going to be able to explain why Mary, Queen of Scots was executed, and in order to do that we need to use some key terms. So our first key term is Presbyterian.

A Presbyterian is the type of Protestant who believes the church should be governed by a group of elders rather than bishops.

What that means is rather than having a hierarchy of people in charge, you have an elected group of people in charge instead.

Our next key term is figurehead, and a figurehead is a person who is in the position of leader but has no real power, or alternatively is a person in whose name a movement has been organized.

So they haven't organized it themselves; it's been done for them and in their name.

Our third key term is plot, and a plot is a secret plan to do something illegal or wrong.

Fourth key term is spymaster, and a spymaster is the head of an organization of spies.

And our final key term for today is execution, and an execution is the act of carrying out a sentence of death as a form of punishment.

So, let's get started in the lesson.

So this lesson will consist of four learning cycles, and the first one we're gonna be looking at is who was Mary, Queen of Scots? So, here's a picture of Mary, Queen of Scots up on your screen right now, and the first question that I'd like you to consider whilst you're looking at her is how different do you think history would've been if one family had ruled all of England, Scotland, and France? So think of all that history that England, Scotland of France have had, all that conflict they've had with each other.

Would things have turned out differently? Take a moment just to think about that question and then we'll come together.

Okay, hopefully you've had a nice time thinking about that, but what I want you to think about is actually, under Mary, Queen of Scots, that idea, that possibility was very nearly a reality.

The actual reality, though, was that Mary died a criminal, she had no kingdom, she had no close family to comfort her at her time of death, and the manner of her death was that she had her head savagely hacked from her body.

So I suppose the next real question then is how is it possible that one of the most respected women in Europe could have met such a tragic end? Well, Mary Stuart, as she was called, was born on the 8th of December, 1542, and she became Queen of Scotland at the grand old age of six days old.

She was six days old when her father, James V, suddenly dies.

That was his only surviving heir, so Mary became the Queen of Scotland.

Obviously, she's not in a position at the age of six days old to rule, so people ruled in her place.

And at the age of five years old, she moved to France to live with her family there.

And that's for her own protection, because Scotland was going through its own religious reformation.

Mary and her family were Catholic.

Scotland was turning into a strict Protestant nation.

So for her own safety, Mary was moved out of the country and moved to live with her relatives in France.

And she had a great time there, by all accounts.

She was well loved by pretty much anybody who came into contact with her.

She spent most of her time around the royal court, so it was mainly the nobles and royalty that she encountered, and she was very much loved there.

She was tall, she was beautiful, she was intelligent, she was charming.

By all accounts, she could speak five different languages.

She could charm and impress anybody she came across, so she fit in really, really well at the French courts.

So well, in fact, that at the age of 15 she was married to the guy on the screen in front of you there, who was the Dauphin of France, which means he was the crown prince, he was the next in line to be King of France, and his name was Francis.

So at 15 she married Francis, and then at the age of 16, her father-in-law, Henry II, dies in a very unexpected jousting accident.

So at the age of 16, Mary is now Queen of France as well as Queen of Scotland as well.

Not only that though, Mary was also the great granddaughter of Henry VII, Henry Tudor.

So that means that she was Queen of Scotland, she is now Queen of France, and she has a really, really strong claim to be the Queen of England as well.

In fact, many Catholics in England felt that Mary was actually the rightful Queen of England.

And the reason for that is that after Mary I died, the next legitimate heir, according to Catholics, would've been Mary.

Elizabeth was considered illegitimate because from the point of view of Catholics, Henry had no legal right to get divorced and marry Anne Boleyn, and that means that any children he had after that point were illegitimate and they should not have been a king or queen of England.

So for many Catholics, Mary was Queen of Scotland, she was Queen of France, and she should be Queen of England.

So naturally, this makes her an incredibly dangerous rival to Elizabeth I.

So, first check for understanding.

What do you think now, true or false? Some Catholics viewed Mary, Queen of Scots as the rightful ruler of England.

So decide whether you think that's true or false now.

Okay, if you chose true, then congratulations, you are correct.

Some Catholics did indeed view Mary as the rightful ruler of England.

But let's justify that answer now.

So is that true because Elizabeth was seen as illegitimate because Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn was viewed as illegal, or was she viewed as the rightful ruler of England because Mary had a stronger claim to the throne compared to her cousin Elizabeth? So choose A or B now.

Okay, if you chose A, then that is correct.

Congratulations.

Let's move on now then.

And here is our first task for today.

So I'd like to write one paragraph describing Mary's early life.

I'd like you to try and include four different events that occurred.

So pause the video now whilst you do that task and I'll see you again in just a moment.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully you got on okay with that task.

So I'm gonna go through the answer that I came up with, and hopefully you came up with, if not exactly the same as mine, at least something similar, certainly in terms of structure.

So I said, Mary Stuart was born on the 8th of December, 1542 and became Queen of Scotland six days later when her father, James V, unexpectedly died.

In 1548, at the age of five, Mary moved to France.

In 1558, when she was 15 years old, she married Francois, the heir to the throne of France.

Mary became Queen of France the next year, at the age of 16, when her father-in-law died in a jousting accident.

So hopefully you got on okay with that task.

Let's move on now then to our second learning cycle, which is thinking about, why did Mary come to England? Well, as we've already said, in 1559 when Mary was 16 years old, things were looking really bright.

She was Queen of Scotland, she was Queen of France, and she was actually heir to the throne of England.

And the reason for that is because Elizabeth at this point in time had no children, so the next blood relative to Elizabeth was her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots.

So even though some Catholics thought she should be Queen of England anyway, the reality is if she lived longer than Elizabeth, then she'll be the Queen of England as things currently stood.

So things are looking pretty good for her.

However, the next year when she was 17, things had taken a dramatic turn for the worst.

Her husband, Francis II of France, had died of an ear infection.

We're at a point in history where almost anything could kill you.

Anything pre-antibiotics meant that even the smallest cut or an infection could kill you, and that's unfortunately what happened to Francis.

Shortly before that as well, her mother, Mary of Guise, who'd been ruling Scotland on Mary, Queen of Scots behalf, she died as well.

So both her mother and her husband died in very short order.

Naturally, this means that Mary is incredibly upset.

She then moves back to Scotland.

She stops being the Queen of France, she moves back to Scotland, but that in itself is not a happy homecoming either.

While she was in France, Scotland had become a very strict Protestant country, it's the type of Protestantism known as as Presbyterianism, and it was led by the religious leader John Knox, who's the man on the screen in front of you there.

This unfortunately leaves the Catholic Mary in a very, very awkward position in her own country.

She is now queen of a country she barely knows and queen of a country that does not follow the same religion as her at a period in time when religion was incredibly important.

So in 1561 when Mary returns to Scotland, things aren't looking great for her.

Let's have a little think about a check for knowledge here and make sure we're filling this down with what we've just heard.

So John Knox helped to create what form of Protestant Church in Scotland? Was it A, Catholic; B, Protest; C, Presbyterian; or D, Reformed? So make your choice now.

Okay, if you chose C, Presbyterian, then you are correct.

Very well done.

Okay.

Very soon after she returned to Scotland in 1565, Mary married again, and she married her cousin, a man called Henry Stuart, also known as Lord Darnley.

Marrying your cousin wasn't an unusual thing for royals to do throughout most of history, actually.

So this was not seen as particularly alarming, the fact she's married her cousin.

They did have a son who went on to become James VI of Scotland, but the marriage between Henry Stuart and Mary, Queen of Scots was not a happy one.

Henry Stuart, by all accounts, was a drunkard, he was very aggressive.

He was very entitled as well.

He felt that he should just be King of Scotland because he was a man and therefore he'd be a better ruler than Mary.

Again, we're in a very sexist time at this point in time.

So Mary was getting a little bit frustrated with these constant calls and this constant whining, as she saw it, from her husband.

All of this stopped though relatively soon after they were married because Lord Darnley was murdered in incredibly suspicious circumstances.

The house where he was staying blew up.

His body was found in the garden, but he hadn't been exploded, he'd been strangled to death.

So all of this naturally raises suspicions amongst the Scottish lords.

It becomes even more suspicious though when Mary married very soon after the death of her second husband.

She married a man called Lord Bothwell, who was the prime suspect in the murder of Lord Darnley.

So make of that what you will.

We don't know for certain that Lord Bothwell and/or Mary were involved in the murder of Lord Darnley, but certainly at the time it caused a huge amount of uproar.

The Scottish lords were completely up in arms about Mary's actions and they actually rose up in rebellion against her because of this event.

Lord Bothwell and Mary, they face the Scottish lords on the battlefield.

No battle, no real battle actually took place.

The Scottish lords and Mary and Bothwell negotiated, and whilst in negotiating, a lot of Mary's troops just deserted, they ran away.

And by the time negotiations were finished, they realized that there's no point in having a fight, because we'll get absolutely destroyed.

So as a result, Bothwell and Mary both surrendered at that point in time.

Bothwell managed to escape, he left Scotland, but Mary was imprisoned in the middle of an island.

She was imprisoned for about a year or so on that island before she managed to escape.

She faced the Scottish lords again, she tried to defeat them in battle again.

Once again, she lost, and this time, in 1568, she also fled Scotland as well.

And her idea was to flee to England, hoping that her cousin, Elizabeth I, would help restore her to her throne.

Okay, let's move on then to our second task for today.

And what I'd like you to do, I'd like you to describe how the Scottish people might have felt about Mary, Queen of Scots at various points after her return to Scotland.

So in order to do that, what I'd like you to do is to complete the speech bubbles that are linked to each event, and there's four different speech bubbles we're gonna complete.

So we're gonna think about what the Scottish people might have felt when a Catholic queen returned to Protestant Scotland.

We're gonna think about what they might have felt when she had a child with Lord Darnley.

We're gonna think about their reaction when she married Lord Bothwell after the murder of Lord Darnley.

And finally, we're gonna consider their reaction when she escaped from prison and battled the Scottish lords once again.

So pause the video whilst you complete that task.

Try and justify your answer.

If you don't write it in the speech bubble, at least try and have a reason for why you've written that reaction, and I'll see you again in just a moment.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully you got on okay with that task.

Let's think about then about what you might have written.

So in regards to that first event, that there's a Catholic queen returning to Protestant Scotland.

Well, I thought the Scottish people might have felt that it was good to see their queen return, but they may have hoped that she didn't try to interfere with their religion.

In regards to the second event, having a child with Lord Darnley, I considered that the Scottish people might have felt that it was wonderful news that Scotland now has an heir to the throne.

But they might have been concerned about what religion he would've followed, so they probably would've felt that hopefully he'd be raised as a Protestant.

And for our third event, when Mary, Queen of Scots married Lord Bothwell after the murder of Lord Darnley, Scottish people might have thought that that was unbelievable, that their queen has rewarded her husband's murderer by making him king.

And there's probably quite a lot of outrage, and the Scottish people felt that they simply just couldn't get away with this.

And finally, for our last event, when Mary escaped from prison and took a battle against the Scottish lords again, well, in my opinion, I think the Scottish people might have felt that the queen has no shame.

How can she defy her lords and spill Scottish blood again? And the fact that now she must be punished.

Now, if you've got a very different opinion to me in regards to how you think the Scottish people might have felt after each of these four events, that's absolutely fine, as long as you can justify and explain why you've chosen that reaction.

That's the key thing there.

But hopefully though, you understood the task and you got on okay with that.

Let's now think about our third learning cycle, which is the imprisonment of Mary.

So Mary thought that she'd be safe in England, and the reason for that is because both England and Scotland were on relatively good terms at this point in time, especially compared to how their relationship had been in the past.

Not only that, the Queen of England was Mary's cousin, Elizabeth I, and she was also a female ruler, so she knew exactly the sort of problems that Mary was having because Elizabeth was facing them as well.

So for all of these reasons, Mary thought that going to England, going to see Elizabeth would be a really, really good choice and would help to return her to her throne in Scotland.

From Elizabeth's perspective, however, Mary's arrival was just an absolute disaster.

Elizabeth, for a start, wasn't sure that her Catholic subjects in England were fully on board with Elizabeth as the queen.

She didn't know that she could fully trust them.

And having this Catholic Scottish queen who many Catholics thought should be the rightful Queen of England come to stay, potentially it was gonna lead to rebellion.

So Elizabeth was very upset about that.

In terms of what to do about it, Elizabeth did actually have several options.

So she could send her back to Scotland, that could be option number one, and that would undoubtedly make the Scottish Protestant lords very happy that they've got their runaway queen back.

However, that would mean though that Elizabeth would've helped to put her own cousin back in prison, definitely back in prison, potentially she'd have got her own cousin executed as well, depending on how the Scottish lords would've dealt with Mary.

So she's got that to consider as well.

Not only that, but if Mary once again managed to escape imprisonment, then she could blame Elizabeth and start to act against her as well, so potentially a war could have been started in this situation as well.

So a bit dangerous one, that one.

Another option could be that Elizabeth could send Mary to her family in France.

She's not Queen of France anymore, but she's still got powerful family members living over there, so Mary would've been well taken care of.

The question though would've been that, would Mary have been happy with that? If not, then Mary may well have tried to act against Elizabeth.

She had a lot of respect from a lot of the nobles and royalty in the French court, so she might have stirred up trouble and tried to encourage the French to actually act against England, maybe to go to war against England as well.

So again, that's potentially a troublesome situation that Elizabeth would be keen to avoid.

Her third option would be to keep her in England, but to imprison her herself.

So if Elizabeth imprisons Mary, then she knows where she is all time and potentially she can't cause any trouble there.

The problem, of course, is that Mary is not an English subject.

So she's not one of Elizabeth's subjects, she's not bound by English laws.

She hasn't actually broken any laws in England either.

I mean, she might have helped to murder her second husband, but there's no proof of that, and even if she did, she did that in Scotland.

She didn't do that in England.

So Elizabeth doesn't really have any legal right to imprison Mary, so that potentially could cause problems, but it could also make Mary a figurehead for Catholic rebels as well.

Knowing that the rightful, in their view, Queen of England is within their realm, a lot of Catholics could have rallied to her cause and started a rebellion against Elizabeth there as well.

The final option, and arguably the most drastic option that Elizabeth could have taken, would've been to execute Mary.

And this, of course, means that Mary is not gonna cause any troubles anymore.

She's not allowed to do so.

So that's one way to get rid of your problems. But the reality is is that that could have caused a whole host of more problems as well, from one monarch killing another monarch for no good reason at all, it sets a dangerous precedent.

And that means that other people within England might have thought that it's okay to execute Elizabeth, because Elizabeth's already done it once, why not just do it again? It could also have caused trouble in Europe as well.

So a lot of European monarchs would've been absolutely astonished that somebody would go and do this and might have taken revenge on Elizabeth for doing so.

So Elizabeth does have options.

Arguably, she doesn't have good options though.

So let's have a quick check for understanding.

So true or false, Elizabeth was delighted to welcome her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots to England.

So make your choice now.

All right, if you chose false, then that is correct.

Well done.

Let's justify this answer though.

So was she not in the least bit happy to welcome Mary to England because Mary was a threat because she brought a large army with her, which looked like an invasion force, or Mary was a threat because she gave Catholics a reason to try to get rid of Elizabeth? So make your choice now.

Okay, if you chose B, then congratulations, that is indeed correct.

Mary gave Catholics a reason to rebel against Elizabeth.

Right, let's look at this task now then.

So I'd like you to imagine that you are Elizabeth I.

What would you have done with Mary, Queen of Scots? Would you send her home? Would you send her abroad to France, or perhaps somewhere else? Would you imprison her, or would you execute her? Whichever choice you make, absolutely fine.

There's no right or wrong answer.

What I'd like you to do though is make sure that you explain the reasons behind your answer.

So make sure you explain which one you've chosen.

So pause the video, have a go at that task now.

Okay, welcome back.

So, here you go, what would you have done with Mary, Queen of Scots? I've come up with a model answer.

Your answer could say, if I was Elizabeth, I would've sent Mary back home to Scotland.

I would've done this because it would've pleased the Protestant Scottish lords, which would've made the relationship between England and Scotland even stronger.

Now, it could be argued that sending Mary home to be imprisoned or worse was a bad thing, as Mary was Elizabeth's cousin and another female ruler.

But by sending Mary home, Elizabeth would've stopped Catholics seeing Mary as a figurehead and trying to put her on the English throne.

So you can see that I've given my reasons for why I've chosen this particular option, and I've also explained it as well.

I've also explained that I don't necessarily think it's a great option, but it's the best of a bad bunch.

It genuinely doesn't matter if you've chosen a different option to me.

That's absolutely fine.

What I'm most concerned about is have you given your explanation for your choice as well? Right, let's move on now to our final learning cycle for today, which is the execution of Mary.

Now, Elizabeth reluctantly chose to imprison Mary.

I say reluctantly.

Elizabeth really didn't want to do this.

She didn't want anything to do with this whatsoever, but she had to choose something, and so she chose to imprison Mary.

She hadn't committed any crimes though.

She wasn't one of Elizabeth's subjects, she was of royal blood, and she was actually Elizabeth's cousin.

So for all of those reasons, although Mary was technically in prison, the reality is she was in relatively comfortable conditions.

I say relatively comfortable.

At certain times, she was in a quite a cold and damp castle.

At other times though, she was in very nice country houses.

She also had over 50 servants to look after her, and she regularly had 16-course meals served to her four times a day.

So it's not all bad.

I wouldn't necessarily mind being a prisoner in those conditions myself.

Despite this, the problems that Elizabeth feared would come about by imprisoning Mary did indeed happen.

In 1569, so just the year after Mary arrived, there was a rebellion in the north of England, which aimed to replace Elizabeth with Mary and make England a Catholic country again.

So immediately, Elizabeth's fears about what would happen if Mary was in the country, they come true.

Now, luckily, the Northern Earls' Rebellion was put down relatively easily, but it didn't stop there.

In 1571, there was a plot that was uncovered to replace Elizabeth with Mary.

That was squashed fairly easily.

But there was another plot again in 1583, again to assassinate Elizabeth, to replace her with Mary, and these plots just keep on coming, unfortunately, as well.

The interesting thing about these plots though is that we don't actually have hard evidence to say that Mary was involved in these plots.

She almost certainly was, but for historians, and most importantly for Elizabeth at the time, there's no proof, hard and fast proof that Mary is involved in these plots.

So there's nothing much that Elizabeth can do about it.

Mary, though, had become a figurehead for Catholic rebels, just as Elizabeth had predicted, Elizabeth had feared.

In response to this, Elizabeth places Mary in less comfortable living conditions, which once again inspires Mary to start plotting against her.

So in 1586, another plot known as the Babington Plot, named after the man who organized it, a man called Anthony Babington, it was uncovered.

But crucially, this time, Elizabeth's spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, who's on the screen in front of you there, he managed to gain proof that Mary was behind the planning of it all.

And because of that, Mary was put on trial, she was found guilty, and she was sentenced to execution.

The execution took place in February 1587 in a place called Fotheringhay Castle, which is in Northamptonshire, and it was a bit of a botch job, really.

It was a really sad end for the once proud Mary.

The executioner needed three blows of the axe to chop off Mary's head.

He wasn't particularly good at his job.

But not only that, when he then picked up the head, which he's supposed to do, then announce, "Here lies the head of a traitor," he picked it up by Mary's wig, which meant that after a few seconds the head came falling down onto the floor and just kind of rolled sadly away.

So just a real gruesome and unfortunate end for this really, really influential character in Tudor society.

The execution of one monarch by another monarch shocked people across Europe.

Elizabeth also appeared shocked as well, and we have evidence to suggest that she didn't know that this was actually going to happen, that she dithered over whether to execute Mary or not, and she was tricked into signing the death warrant by one of her subjects.

This, though, may well have all been an act.

Certainly this is the public response of Elizabeth, but she might have been saying this to try and make other Catholic countries calm themselves down a little bit and not want to invade England in revenge for Elizabeth executing this other Catholic monarch.

The reality is though, is that if this was an act or not, it didn't work.

Just the next year in 1588, Spain sent a huge naval force to invade England, which meant that even in death, Mary, Queen and Scots was still causing problems for Elizabeth.

Let's have a little think about these check for knowledges then.

So which of these was a reason why Elizabeth decided to have Mary, Queen of Scots executed? Was it because A, she was involved in the Babington Plot to kill Elizabeth? Was it because of B, she made speeches in Parliament mocking Elizabeth? Or was it because of C, she asked Catholic countries to attack Elizabeth? Make your choice now.

All right, if you chose A, then congratulations.

That is correct.

Mary was involved in the Babington Plot to kill Elizabeth.

Just one more check for knowledge there before we go to our final task though.

What was the name of Elizabeth's spymaster? Was it A, Sir Francis Drake; B, Sir Francis Bacon; or C, Sir Francis Walsingham? Choose now.

If you chose C, then congratulations.

It was indeed Sir Francis Walsingham.

Okay, let's move on to our final task for today then, which is, in your opinion, was Elizabeth right to execute Mary, Queen of Scots in 1587? I want you to write a balanced answer, which means you can demonstrate understanding of both sides of the issue.

So provide one reason to say that Elizabeth was right, one reason to say that she was wrong, and an explanation of what your opinion is.

And ideally what I'd like you to do is try and include those three words that I've got on the screen in front of you as well.

So try and include the words plot, assassination, and Catholic.

Pause the video now and have a go at that task.

Okay, welcome back.

So what you could have written is what I've got on the screen in front of you now.

So your answer could include, in some ways, Elizabeth was right to execute Mary, Queen of Scots in 1587.

Mary had repeatedly tried to plot the assassination of Elizabeth, and keeping her alive would have almost certainly meant more plots against her.

In other ways though, Elizabeth was wrong to execute Mary in 1587.

Killing another monarch, and a Catholic one at that, would've angered a lot of other kings and could have led to a large-scale war.

I think Elizabeth was wrong to execute Mary in 1587, as the plots didn't have much chance of success and it led to war with Spain.

Now, it doesn't really matter what your opinion is.

If it's different to mine, it's absolutely fine.

The key thing is that you can demonstrate you understand both sides of this issue and you can explain your point of view.

So make sure you've done that.

So just to summarize this lesson then.

Mary, Queen of Scots was a powerful figure, as she was Queen of Scotland, Queen of France, and had a strong claim to be Queen of England.

Scotland became a Presbyterian country whilst Mary was in France, which made it difficult for her to rule when she returned.

Mary fled to England after the Scottish lords rebelled against her.

Elizabeth in turn had her imprisoned.

And Mary was in prison for 19 years before being executed for her role in the Babington Plot to kill Elizabeth.

Thank you very much for joining me during this lesson.

I hope you learnt something, I hope you had a nice time, and I'll see you for the next one.

Bye-bye.