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In her last sickness, with the sense of her end coming on fast,

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Elizabeth the First had the ring she had worn since her coronation

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filed away from the royal finger.

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It was a tricky operation, for the skin had grown in over the gold,

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but then it was supposed to be a tight fit.

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This was, in a way, her wedding band put on when she had joined herself to England 45 years earlier.

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Now, it seemed, the two were to be put asunder.

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# Since first I saw your face

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# I resolved to honour and renown ye... #

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She was supposed to be immortal, of course.

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The odd thing was that, despite the garish auburn fright wig,

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the white face mask and the wrinkled bosom,

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diplomats who saw her at court and who had no reason to be gallant,

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swore they could still see the young woman no more than 20 years of age.

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# What I that loved and you that liked Shall we begin to wrangle...? #

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It doesn't do to be too starry-eyed about the Virgin Queen.

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Elizabeth the First was only too obviously made of flesh and blood.

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She was vain, spiteful, arrogant, she was frequently unjust

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and she was often maddeningly indecisive.

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But she was also brave, shockingly clever, an eyeful to look at

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and, on occasions, she was genuinely wise.

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In other words, she had all the qualities it took

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to make the genius politician she undoubtedly was.

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A few feet away from Elizabeth's tomb in Westminster Abbey lies the body of another woman -

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Mary Queen of Scots, the woman who had haunted and fascinated Elizabeth for so much of her life.

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No virgin, that's for sure. No politician either.

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A complete disaster as a ruler, you would have to say,

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but Mary managed something that eluded Elizabeth - she reproduced.

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This is the story of two queens and more importantly, two women,

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one a politician, the other a mother,

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and it's the story of a painful birth, the union of England and Scotland - the birth of Britain.

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A cherished tradition has it that when Elizabeth heard the news

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that she was to become queen, on November the 17th 1558,

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she was seated beneath an ancient oak tree. Her first words were from Psalm 118 -

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"a domino factum est mirabilae in oculis nostris..."

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"This is the Lord's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes."

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She was right, it WAS marvellous, in fact it was little short of being a miracle

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that she had made it to that day alive.

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Tudor royal politics were a bloody affair, especially for Tudor women.

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She had been only two when her mother, Anne Boleyn, had gone to the scaffold,

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her sin - in Henry's mind - being her failure to produce a son.

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It must have been a body possessed by others, by the devil,

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an unclean piece of flesh, it had to be cut away.

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So Elizabeth would never be free from suspicion.

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Out of her dark Boleyn eyes, she watched herself being watched.

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Inevitably, there were times when her guard was down. She was barely a teenager when trouble first struck.

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She was living with her guardian, Katherine Parr, Henry VIII's widow,

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when Parr's new husband, Thomas Seymour, started paying playful visits to her bedroom.

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When Katherine Parr died,

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a rumour started circulating that Seymour had his sights set on marrying Elizabeth.

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To even THINK of such a thing was treason.

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Even worse, some wagging tongues said that Elizabeth was pregnant with Seymour's child.

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It took all of Elizabeth's already extraordinary composure and self-confidence

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to persuade Lord Protector Somerset that she was innocent.

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"My Lord, there goeth rumours abroad, which be greatly against my honour and honesty, which be these -

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"that I am in the Tower and with child by my Lord Admiral. These are shameful slanders.

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"I most heartily desire, your Lordship, that I may come to the court and show myself there as I am.

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"Your assured friend to my little power, Elizabeth."

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She was, remember, just 14, but there was already the fortitude and clarity and the courage.

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It was just as well, for she'd need these qualities five years later

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when facing the most traumatic and dangerous crisis of her entire life.

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When her Catholic half-sister, Mary, came to the throne,

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Elizabeth found herself in even deeper trouble.

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In fact, she found herself in the Tower when a Protestant plot to get rid of Mary backfired.

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Elizabeth managed to talk herself out of being charged with treason,

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but she remained under close surveillance.

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Danger only turned to deliverance five years later, when Queen Mary died childless.

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So here she was, Elizabeth, under the oak,

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about to be the Protestant Queen.

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She had survived, just, but she must have been full of dark knowledge and experience

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about how difficult it was all going to be.

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Her mother had been killed for producing just a daughter and a stillborn,

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and her sister Mary's womb had produced nothing but the tumour that had killed her.

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So, however dazzling Elizabeth looked, however clever she was,

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she has got to have known how rough the road was going to be for a ruler of the wrong sex.

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The 25-year-old Elizabeth came into an inheritance of high hopes

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and deep anxieties.

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The celebrations at her coronation were carefully designed

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to show off the young queen as the paragon of virtue.

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This charade of piety, though, was hardly enough to compensate

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for the misfortune of having another woman on the throne.

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All the same, the sceptics must have been reassured by Elizabeth's precocious self-possession,

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the air of controlled energy she exuded in public right from the start.

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You might suppose that her first appearances at the council would have been an ordeal,

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but what the councillors saw was not some girlish ingenue,

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but someone who seemed full, it was said, of MANLY authority.

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Elizabeth did all the things women in 16th century England weren't supposed to do.

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She looked men in the eye and she spoke out of turn.

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She had been schooled to it by her tutor, Roger Ascombe.

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Ascombe was not just another low-rent don.

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He was public orator at Cambridge University and it was his outlandish idea to teach the teenage girl

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a discipline most people thought was quite unsuitable for a woman -

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the art of rhetoric, the art of public speech.

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This was Elizabeth's first and would always be her strongest political weapon.

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But there was something Elizabeth brought to the management of sovereignty

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that was entirely her own - something that none of the princely conduct manuals ever spelled out -

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that state craft was also STAGE craft.

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Her father and mother had both known this instinctively.

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Elizabeth had the actress's gift in spadefuls.

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She simply adored being adored.

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Adoration, though, wasn't the same thing as allegiance.

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For her most important adviser, in fact, her surrogate father, William Cecil,

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charisma was no substitute for the one thing which would truly secure the future of a Protestant England -

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an heir.

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Cecil knew perfectly well that the majority of the country was still Catholic,

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either actively or passively,

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and he also knew how little it would take for the hard-earned gains of the Reformation to be undone.

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So although the Queen told everyone it was none of their business,

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Cecil constantly had to remind her

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that the realm needed her to have a husband.

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For that matter, her body required it too, since in the 16th century,

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prolonged virginity was thought to bring on the potentially toxic condition known as green sickness -

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the abnormal retention of female sperm.

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Marital copulation, then, was what the doctor ordered for the good of the realm.

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The problem, though, as Cecil was painfully aware, was that if he pushed Elizabeth too hard,

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she might just end up plumping for the man everyone assumed she really loved.

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That man, of course, was Cecil's rival on the council - Robert Dudley.

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Dudley was everything Cecil was not - flashy, gallant,

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a noisy extrovert and, not least, incredibly good-looking, especially on a horse.

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To a queen who liked being surrounded by lookers and who could dismiss those she thought ugly,

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this mattered a lot.

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And they shared a past - the same tutors, the same childhood traumas.

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Dudley's father had been executed for treason, which made them both orphans of the scaffold.

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In the grim years of Mary's reign, he'd sold lands to help Elizabeth -

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that sort of thing she never forgot.

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But how much of a couple were they?

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Did they, as all the gossips and all the diplomats and most movie-makers since have assumed, become lovers?

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What was in the way was Dudley's wife, but she had been ailing for years.

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When she died, Dudley would be free and sleeping with your intended was not that unusual in Tudor England.

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But this would have been outrageous for a Queen who had paraded her virginity at her coronation

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by leaving her hair down.

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When pressed about the rumours, Elizabeth airily retorted that such things were impossible

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when she was surrounded day and night by her ladies.

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With the terrible example of the fate of her own mother before her,

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it would have been foolhardy for her to sleep with Dudley.

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The politician in her was, as always, ruling the lover.

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In any case, something then happened which did terrible damage to their relationship -

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Dudley's wife, Amy, was found at the bottom of a staircase, dead from a broken neck.

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An accident seemed altogether too convenient to be credible.

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This was, after all, the golden age of gossip

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and gossip did not believe Amy had fallen, gossip believed she had been pushed.

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Elizabeth immediately sent Dudley away until cleared of suspicion.

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Officially, he was and although the Queen always insisted that Dudley had been completely vindicated,

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it still cast a shadow over their relationship just at the moment when they had become free to marry.

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Perhaps it was a case of "beware of wishing for your heart's true desire lest you end by getting it."

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For the next few years, Elizabeth swung mercurially between endearment and exasperation,

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drawing up documents to make Dudley an earl,

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only to shred them in front of him -

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and other times, especially when she felt nagged by the council,

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she would torment them by pretending their marriage was just about to happen. It never did.

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By 1563, Elizabeth seems to have given up on the possibility of ever marrying Robert Dudley,

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because she was prepared to offer him to someone else,

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someone whose own marriage prospects were of tremendous significance for the balance of power in Britain.

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That someone was Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots.

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Throughout the whole tortured history of their relationship,

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Elizabeth was eaten up with curiosity about her cousin, Mary,

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stuck in a neurotic beauty contest,

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interrogating her ambassadors as if they were the mirrors on the wall,

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as to who was the taller, the fairer, the wittier, the cleverer.

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Elizabeth might have won the prize for brains, but from the few pictures we have of her,

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Mary, with her heart-shaped face, heavy eyelids and creamy complexion,

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evidently had the stuff to reduce men to warm puddles on the floor.

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She was more than just competition, though. To Elizabeth, Mary, Queen of Scots was a menace.

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The reason was obvious. Mary was a Catholic

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and the Catholic church did not recognize Elizabeth's right to be Queen of England.

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To them, Elizabeth was the product of Henry VIII's illegal marriage to Anne Boleyn.

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In Mary's Catholic eyes, then, Elizabeth was simply illegitimate.

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How could Elizabeth not take this personally?

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What's more, Mary was not only a Stuart,

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she was also a Tudor through her great-grandfather, Henry VII,

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and so long as Elizabeth was childless, Mary was next in line to the English throne.

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From the moment Mary Stuart arrived in Scotland at the age of 18,

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from the French court where she had been brought up,

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the relationship between the cousins was tainted with mutual suspicion.

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At the first opportunity, Elizabeth behaved badly, almost irrationally,

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denying Mary safe conduct through England to her new realm

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and forcing her to sail the long way round to Scotland.

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Though very much the injured party, Mary's response already betrayed the theatrical self-pity,

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which so got up Elizabeth's nose.

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"I trust the wind will be so favourable as I shall not need to come on the coast of England,

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"and if I do, Monsieur L'Ambassadeur, the Queen, your mistress, shall have me in her hands to do her will of me

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"and if she be so hard-hearted as to desire my end,

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"she may then do her pleasure and make sacrifice of me."

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Perhaps things might be better between the two of them

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if Mary could accept Elizabeth's choice of a safe Protestant husband for her -

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in the form of Robert Dudley.

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One tiny problem with this plan, though.

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Mary had no intention of being told what to do by Elizabeth,

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and, anyway, everyone knew that after the death of his wife, Robert Dudley was spoiled goods.

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Lord Henry Darnley, though, the handsome poster boy of the Scottish nobility,

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seemed a much better prospect. One look at Darnley's shapely calves and Mary decided she must have him.

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It helped that he, too, had Tudor blood flowing through his veins -

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unfortunately a lot of whisky ran through them too.

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Too late, Mary discovered that she had married a lazy, dissolute drunk,

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incapable of doing even the minimal things required of a co-sovereign.

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Stuck at Holyrood with the task of ruling Scotland without him,

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Mary increasingly relied on her private secretary,

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the Italian Catholic, David Rizzio.

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Naturally, the Protestant nobles in Scotland

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were convinced that Mary was plotting to turn Scotland back into a Catholic country once more.

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So Darnley's increasing estrangement from his wife gave the Lords -

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most offended by Rizzio's access to the Queen - the opening they were looking for.

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In 1566, a group of them approached Darnley and proposed what amounted to a violent coup -

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get rid of David Rizzio, who was her lover, they said, not just her secretary.

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"Ah!" thought Darnley, "Now that'd explain why she's such a bitch.

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"I'll show her who's in charge!"

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On March the 7th, while she was dining,

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Darnley and his fellow plotters burst into Mary's chamber,

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tore the terrified Rizzio from Mary's skirts and stabbed him to death in front of her.

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Between 50 and 60 wounds were discovered on his body, after it was thrown down the privy staircase.

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At some point, the murderers turned to Mary, pointing a pistol at her heavily pregnant belly...

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..and perhaps, at that moment, Mary knew how to turn terror into power,

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for in the months that followed,

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she milked the melodrama of the threatened womb for all it was worth.

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Instead of being reduced to a weeping wreck, Mary was strangely calm.

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She knew she could be strong because she was carrying her greatest weapon inside her womb.

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Whatever happened to her useless, drunken, homicidal nitwit of a husband,

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she knew that a baby would be born. Mother and child were going to survive.

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On June the 19th, at Edinburgh Castle,

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Mary gave birth to the boy who would become James VI of Scotland.

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On hearing the news, Elizabeth's reaction was to cry -

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"Alack, the Queen of Scots is lighter of a bonny son,

223
00:20:45,200 --> 00:20:49,440
"and I am of the barren stock."

224
00:21:06,800 --> 00:21:13,040
Mary was by now so consumed with contempt for Darnley, that she resolved to be rid of him.

225
00:21:13,040 --> 00:21:17,080
Possibly all she meant by this was to be rid of him as a husband,

226
00:21:17,080 --> 00:21:19,720
but some of her devotees,

227
00:21:19,720 --> 00:21:26,880
in particular the Earl of Bothwell, who took her sighs to mean something altogether more decisive.

228
00:21:26,880 --> 00:21:30,920
Bothwell, one of the great landowners of Scotland,

229
00:21:30,920 --> 00:21:33,640
was rich, promiscuous and dangerous,

230
00:21:33,640 --> 00:21:37,800
but he could also turn on the gallantry, and in her distress,

231
00:21:37,800 --> 00:21:40,640
Mary now turned to him as protector,

232
00:21:40,640 --> 00:21:46,080
and Bothwell was only too happy to solve Mary's Darnley problem.

233
00:21:49,960 --> 00:21:52,720
On the evening of March 9th 1567,

234
00:21:52,720 --> 00:21:55,760
while Mary was attending a masked ball,

235
00:21:55,760 --> 00:21:59,800
Bothwell supervised the lighting of a fuse that, at 2am,

236
00:21:59,800 --> 00:22:06,600
would detonate an immense quantity of gunpowder beneath the house where Darnley was asleep.

237
00:22:06,600 --> 00:22:10,120
EXPLOSION

238
00:22:10,120 --> 00:22:13,720
The house was blown sky-high.

239
00:22:13,720 --> 00:22:19,840
Darnley was dead, but not bumped off according to plan. Minutes before the explosion,

240
00:22:19,840 --> 00:22:25,520
he'd heard suspicious noises and had himself lowered out of his bedroom window on a chair.

241
00:22:25,520 --> 00:22:31,080
Running through the garden in his nightshirt, Darnley ran straight into the plotters

242
00:22:31,080 --> 00:22:34,240
who promptly throttled him to death.

243
00:22:40,480 --> 00:22:45,400
Darnley's murder was a turning point in Mary's life.

244
00:22:45,400 --> 00:22:50,840
From now on, death followed Mary Stuart like a lady-in-waiting.

245
00:22:50,840 --> 00:22:54,520
She was already sick, vomiting black mucus.

246
00:22:54,520 --> 00:22:59,360
She needed help and the unscrupulous Bothwell was at hand to give it.

247
00:22:59,360 --> 00:23:03,040
His power over Mary now made him recklessly bold

248
00:23:03,040 --> 00:23:09,080
and he announced to the Scottish Lords that for the proper government of the country,

249
00:23:09,080 --> 00:23:15,720
it was necessary for Mary to have a husband. Very decently, he offered himself for the job.

250
00:23:17,960 --> 00:23:24,840
Bothwell's idea of a marriage proposal was to abduct Mary and take her to his grim castle in Dunbar.

251
00:23:24,840 --> 00:23:29,400
There, he planted his flag as prospective King of Scotland

252
00:23:29,400 --> 00:23:35,400
by planting himself, violently it was said, inside her body.

253
00:23:35,400 --> 00:23:39,440
Now he supposed the traumatised Mary would HAVE to marry him

254
00:23:39,440 --> 00:23:42,960
and, to most of the country's horror,

255
00:23:42,960 --> 00:23:47,120
Mary did just that, a few weeks later, at Holyrood.

256
00:23:48,440 --> 00:23:52,240
It was at this point that Mary lost it -

257
00:23:52,240 --> 00:23:58,520
lost control over her own body, lost the priceless political asset of her motherhood -

258
00:23:58,520 --> 00:24:05,120
soiled by her relationship with Bothwell - lost Scotland, lost the whole damned shooting match.

259
00:24:05,120 --> 00:24:11,480
The thing is, that it never needed to have happened. Had she been half the politician Elizabeth was,

260
00:24:11,480 --> 00:24:15,040
she would have distanced herself from Bothwell,

261
00:24:15,040 --> 00:24:19,080
and then she would have condemned Darnley's murderers,

262
00:24:19,080 --> 00:24:23,720
professing herself to be shocked at the crime, truly shocked,

263
00:24:23,720 --> 00:24:28,600
and presenting herself to the Scots as a doubly victimised mother.

264
00:24:28,600 --> 00:24:33,480
Instead, the mother let herself be turned into a whore.

265
00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:40,160
Mary now faced the rebel armies loyal to the murdered Darnley,

266
00:24:40,160 --> 00:24:47,240
but on the verge of battle, Bothwell conveniently disappeared to gather reinforcements, or so he said,

267
00:24:47,240 --> 00:24:53,800
leaving Mary to face the enemy on her own. It was the last she would ever see of him.

268
00:24:53,800 --> 00:24:58,960
Dragged back to Edinburgh, a captive, filthy and dishevelled,

269
00:24:58,960 --> 00:25:03,840
she appeared at a window, her dress torn from her shoulders,

270
00:25:03,840 --> 00:25:08,120
her breasts exposed, and was greeted by a mob howling abuse.

271
00:25:08,120 --> 00:25:12,400
Handbills, featuring her as a mermaid, began to appear -

272
00:25:12,400 --> 00:25:15,960
a mermaid being another name for a prostitute.

273
00:25:15,960 --> 00:25:20,560
Mermaids, of course, were not fit to sit on the throne of Scotland,

274
00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:25,160
so Mary was forced to renounce it in favour of her baby son.

275
00:25:25,160 --> 00:25:28,720
Her Protestant half-brother, the Earl of Moray,

276
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:32,440
took charge of baby James and made himself Regent of Scotland.

277
00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:36,920
Mary was 25 years old -

278
00:25:36,920 --> 00:25:39,760
her history seemed done,

279
00:25:39,760 --> 00:25:42,280
but of course it was not.

280
00:25:53,160 --> 00:25:55,960
She had one last weapon to deploy -

281
00:25:55,960 --> 00:25:59,480
her air of tragically damaged beauty.

282
00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:04,680
Incarcerated in the castle of Loch Leven, in the middle of a deep lake,

283
00:26:04,680 --> 00:26:08,200
she unleashed her seductive charm on her jailer,

284
00:26:08,200 --> 00:26:14,280
one of the usually hard-bitten Douglas clan, who melted in adoration.

285
00:26:16,880 --> 00:26:19,800
After ten months of imprisonment,

286
00:26:19,800 --> 00:26:24,840
in May 1568, Mary made a getaway across the loch.

287
00:26:26,320 --> 00:26:31,240
But there was really only one way she could get her throne back -

288
00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:34,480
an appeal to her cousin, Elizabeth.

289
00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:40,560
So her next journey, across the border, was to be in the nature of a temporary refuge.

290
00:26:40,560 --> 00:26:46,640
She must have supposed her stay would last perhaps a month, a year at the most.

291
00:26:46,640 --> 00:26:50,160
Had she known the real answer - 19 years -

292
00:26:50,160 --> 00:26:54,640
she would surely have avoided the passage across the Solway Firth.

293
00:26:54,640 --> 00:27:01,520
But there she was, an exhausted, bedraggled figure, her hair cropped for disguise,

294
00:27:01,520 --> 00:27:04,120
sitting hunched up in a small boat,

295
00:27:04,120 --> 00:27:08,600
her eyes fixed on the disappearing shoreline of Scotland.

296
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:20,640
Mary's appearance on English soil threw Elizabeth into turmoil.

297
00:27:20,640 --> 00:27:23,840
Was Mary her heir or wasn't she?

298
00:27:23,840 --> 00:27:30,200
After all, Elizabeth wasn't getting any younger - 35 in 1568.

299
00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:34,480
The royal laundresses were still sending Cecil monthly evidence

300
00:27:34,480 --> 00:27:39,560
of her capacity to produce children but she was no nearer to getting married.

301
00:27:41,360 --> 00:27:45,520
So would the fugitive Queen of Scots be treated like the next in line,

302
00:27:45,520 --> 00:27:49,120
or at least as a fellow sovereign, a guest?

303
00:27:49,120 --> 00:27:54,040
Well, not exactly. Mary's first request to Elizabeth

304
00:27:54,040 --> 00:28:00,160
was for some clothes that befitted her status rather than the rags she had fled in.

305
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:05,240
What she got, after much complaining, was a packet of linen.

306
00:28:07,720 --> 00:28:14,320
Just as well, perhaps, that she didn't know Elizabeth was already wearing Mary's favourite pearls

307
00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:20,520
that had been stolen from Mary by her enemies and sent to the English Queen.

308
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:24,600
In fact, Elizabeth didn't know what to do with Mary.

309
00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:30,960
Her royal instincts were outraged by the humiliation and indignities heaped on her royal cousin.

310
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:35,000
If Mary would agree to keep her hands off the English throne,

311
00:28:35,000 --> 00:28:39,960
Elizabeth was sorely tempted to help her regain the Scottish crown.

312
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:47,280
Elizabeth, though, could also see the wisdom of the opposite view -

313
00:28:47,280 --> 00:28:51,760
it was folly to restore a Catholic queen to the Scottish throne,

314
00:28:51,760 --> 00:28:55,800
giving a back door entry to Britain for the French and the Spanish.

315
00:28:55,800 --> 00:29:03,280
There was a safe Protestant regime in Scotland now, run by Mary's enemies - why rock the boat?

316
00:29:03,280 --> 00:29:09,320
So, if Mary imagined she could rely on the sisterhood of queens, she was deluded.

317
00:29:09,320 --> 00:29:15,520
The first thing that Elizabeth did was order an inquiry into the murder of Mary's husband, Lord Darnley,

318
00:29:15,520 --> 00:29:19,320
which turned into a trial in all but name.

319
00:29:20,640 --> 00:29:27,960
Now Mary could have no illusion that she was anything except a prisoner.

320
00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:34,000
She was shuttled from house to house under the watchful eye of the Earl of Shrewsbury,

321
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:40,560
who got the unenviable job of being her jailer. Some of those houses were just a damp ruin.

322
00:29:40,560 --> 00:29:44,640
Others, like Wingfield here, were much more tolerable places.

323
00:29:44,640 --> 00:29:51,360
Now, Wingfield is in Derbyshire and that tells you something about the nervousness of her captors.

324
00:29:51,360 --> 00:29:57,440
Mary Stuart had to be kept a long way away from any possibility of rescue,

325
00:29:57,440 --> 00:30:01,160
far away from Scotland, from London, from the coast...

326
00:30:01,160 --> 00:30:03,520
In fact, in the Midlands.

327
00:30:03,520 --> 00:30:09,880
But wherever she was, Mary Stuart had become maximum-security problem number one -

328
00:30:09,880 --> 00:30:14,720
not just a headache, but a magnet for conspiracy.

329
00:30:21,120 --> 00:30:24,640
There were many political heavyweights

330
00:30:24,640 --> 00:30:29,120
for whom Mary was a legitimate and attractive alternative to Elizabeth.

331
00:30:29,120 --> 00:30:33,360
And they were not just a bunch of wild-eyed Catholic dreamers,

332
00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:37,200
but men close to the heart of Elizabeth's government.

333
00:30:37,200 --> 00:30:42,120
Their most ambitious plan was to annul the Bothwell marriage

334
00:30:42,120 --> 00:30:49,000
and marry the Queen of Scots to the premier duke of the realm - Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.

335
00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:52,600
Although Norfolk may have been a Catholic at heart,

336
00:30:52,600 --> 00:30:59,080
he was, like so many at this time, outwardly at least, a conforming Protestant.

337
00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:05,720
So it was reasonable to see the marriage plot as a way of binding up the wounds of the Reformation.

338
00:31:05,720 --> 00:31:09,800
But the Queen wasn't fooled, not for a moment.

339
00:31:09,800 --> 00:31:14,240
When the plot was exposed, she sent Norfolk straight to the Tower.

340
00:31:20,600 --> 00:31:26,600
The plot collapsed. There was, though, a different kind of fury waiting to happen

341
00:31:26,600 --> 00:31:31,120
and this WAS burning with a Catholic flame.

342
00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:40,240
Up here in the north, Catholicism had not only NOT been rooted out,

343
00:31:40,240 --> 00:31:44,360
it actually fed on the burning resentment and fierce independence

344
00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:48,920
of the great aristocratic families who ran things around here.

345
00:31:48,920 --> 00:31:55,040
They had been here for centuries and were not about to be pushed around by a bunch of Tudor bureaucrats.

346
00:31:55,040 --> 00:32:01,560
They weren't going to be told what was what in THEIR government and THEIR religion.

347
00:32:01,560 --> 00:32:05,600
So, for them, Mary Stuart was not just a successor,

348
00:32:05,600 --> 00:32:10,280
she was a replacement, as in immediate replacement.

349
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:17,200
So the Catholic north fought the Protestant south.

350
00:32:17,200 --> 00:32:21,120
For a while it even looked as though the north might win.

351
00:32:21,120 --> 00:32:25,360
The rebels swept through Lancashire, Yorkshire and Northumberland,

352
00:32:25,360 --> 00:32:29,880
and it must have seemed that Catholic Britain had been reborn.

353
00:32:30,840 --> 00:32:36,520
Now Elizabeth's government really knew what it was up against -

354
00:32:36,520 --> 00:32:39,200
the latest act in the religious war

355
00:32:39,200 --> 00:32:44,160
that had begun when Henry VIII had made himself Head of the Church.

356
00:32:45,560 --> 00:32:51,640
But 12,000 troops were eventually mustered and the rebellion brutally crushed.

357
00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:58,360
Perhaps the brutality worked

358
00:32:58,360 --> 00:33:04,400
because the northern rising was the last great rebellion to disturb Tudor England,

359
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:11,080
and it's tempting now to feel the country's settling at last into its Elizabethan finery -

360
00:33:11,080 --> 00:33:17,640
feeling fat, safe, comfortable - but it was always a jittery kind of grandeur.

361
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:19,760
# Farewell!

362
00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:24,760
# Thou art too dear for my possessing... #

363
00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:31,760
Elizabeth was 20 years into her reign and suitors had come and gone,

364
00:33:31,760 --> 00:33:38,040
but there was always something the matter with them - too lowly, too Catholic, too stupid.

365
00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:41,760
And besides, now her suitors had rivals -

366
00:33:41,760 --> 00:33:45,880
millions of Elizabeth's subjects who had become jealously possessive

367
00:33:45,880 --> 00:33:49,400
and thought that the Queen was theirs alone.

368
00:33:52,280 --> 00:33:55,280
In the 1570s, they got her.

369
00:33:55,280 --> 00:34:01,440
The cult, the religion of Elizabeth was spectacularly created.

370
00:34:01,440 --> 00:34:05,800
# For how do I hold thee

371
00:34:05,800 --> 00:34:09,320
# But by thy granting...? #

372
00:34:09,320 --> 00:34:13,400
Her Accession Day became the greatest of national holidays,

373
00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:18,040
more sacred than all the heathen events on the Papist calendar.

374
00:34:18,040 --> 00:34:25,040
# The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting

375
00:34:25,040 --> 00:34:28,920
# And so my patent back again... #

376
00:34:28,920 --> 00:34:33,800
Her image began to appear everywhere in allegorical pictures -

377
00:34:33,800 --> 00:34:38,600
Elizabeth as the sun who gave the rainbow its radiant hues.

378
00:34:38,600 --> 00:34:41,560
Even those on the inside,

379
00:34:41,560 --> 00:34:47,880
who could plainly see the elaborate scaffolding from which this image was projected,

380
00:34:47,880 --> 00:34:51,440
who knew that the pale moon glow of the queen's face

381
00:34:51,440 --> 00:34:55,640
was just pulverised eggshell, borax, alum and mill water,

382
00:34:55,640 --> 00:35:01,240
even these knowing types were still total captives to the cult.

383
00:35:01,240 --> 00:35:05,240
She had this effect on all kinds of people, especially men,

384
00:35:05,240 --> 00:35:08,800
even when they got older and should have known better.

385
00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:16,200
They built huge prodigy houses in her honour. It was, in a way, a desperate need to impress,

386
00:35:16,200 --> 00:35:22,240
a sign of culture's raw immaturity, its hunger for glitzy gorgeousness.

387
00:35:22,240 --> 00:35:26,040
Elizabethan razzle-dazzle, thigh-hugging hose,

388
00:35:26,040 --> 00:35:30,760
oak-panelled libraries with yards of unread classics,

389
00:35:30,760 --> 00:35:33,800
ballrooms as big as playing fields.

390
00:35:33,800 --> 00:35:36,000
# Farewell!

391
00:35:36,000 --> 00:35:41,520
# Thou art too dear for my possessing... #

392
00:35:41,520 --> 00:35:48,440
Now you might suppose that devotees would be queuing up for a glimpse of the national Madonna,

393
00:35:48,440 --> 00:35:52,520
but many knew that hosting the show came at a heavy price.

394
00:35:52,520 --> 00:35:55,600
If you were a Burgess of the City of Warwick,

395
00:35:55,600 --> 00:36:00,360
it's hard to know which lot would have made you more nervous.

396
00:36:00,360 --> 00:36:06,360
The royal wanderers, after all, came with 200 carts of the Queen's baggage,

397
00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:13,280
each one pulled by a team of six horses - that's a lot of stable room to find, that is a lot of hay!

398
00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:17,960
And a week before the great event, men from the office of purveyors

399
00:36:17,960 --> 00:36:25,080
would come here and buy up everything in sight for the visit at prices THEY decided were fair.

400
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:29,600
Then there were the lords and ladies, notoriously hard to please.

401
00:36:29,600 --> 00:36:36,520
Supposing they rolled their eyes at the entertainment? Supposing they wrinkled their nose at the fair?

402
00:36:36,520 --> 00:36:39,800
And then there was Queen Bess herself,

403
00:36:39,800 --> 00:36:45,800
a bejewelled apparition with a chalk-white face like some goddess on Earth,

404
00:36:45,800 --> 00:36:52,360
but like the immortals, she was evidently frightening as well as majestic.

405
00:36:55,360 --> 00:36:59,440
You could revel in the Elizabethan glamour show,

406
00:36:59,440 --> 00:37:05,480
just so long as you didn't think too hard about what was going on beyond the sceptred isle.

407
00:37:05,480 --> 00:37:12,360
For out there in Europe, a total war between Catholic and Protestant powers was about to ignite.

408
00:37:13,400 --> 00:37:20,760
The rivalry between Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth was no longer a girlie soap opera.

409
00:37:20,760 --> 00:37:24,480
It was right at the centre of that global struggle.

410
00:37:24,480 --> 00:37:29,800
In Rome, the Pope declared that Elizabeth was to be considered a heretic.

411
00:37:29,800 --> 00:37:34,040
"Whoever sends her out of the world," the Pope decreed,

412
00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:38,480
"not only does not sin but gains merit in the eyes of God."

413
00:37:38,480 --> 00:37:42,560
In response, England became a national security state.

414
00:37:42,560 --> 00:37:46,920
Infiltrators and double agents were recruited by the government.

415
00:37:46,920 --> 00:37:51,040
Gentlemen vigilantes were sworn to take out, in advance,

416
00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:55,280
anyone so much as suspected of plotting against the Queen.

417
00:37:57,760 --> 00:38:03,960
At the heart of the operation was Elizabeth's chief spymaster, Francis Walsingham.

418
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:09,560
"Intelligence is never too dear," was Walsingham's motto,

419
00:38:09,560 --> 00:38:15,080
and his whole career was an applied demonstration that knowledge is power.

420
00:38:16,480 --> 00:38:20,960
But if Walsingham was ferocious, he was not paranoid.

421
00:38:20,960 --> 00:38:26,520
There were underground conspiracies organised in France, Rome and Spain,

422
00:38:26,520 --> 00:38:32,480
and they were all working towards one end - the assassination of Elizabeth

423
00:38:32,480 --> 00:38:35,000
and the enthronement of Mary Stuart.

424
00:38:37,760 --> 00:38:43,840
Elizabeth might have been queasy about taking care of Mary, but Walsingham wasn't.

425
00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:49,240
It was his job to get his hands dirty for England - that's what spymasters do,

426
00:38:49,240 --> 00:38:56,480
but he knew he couldn't just do her in. Elizabeth had to be free of any suspicion of complicity in murder.

427
00:38:56,480 --> 00:39:03,120
On the other hand, the Mary problem could not be allowed to drag on for another 15 years.

428
00:39:03,120 --> 00:39:08,200
Walsingham realized he would have to force a solution.

429
00:39:08,200 --> 00:39:13,240
So he engineered a trap... and it was a gem.

430
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:21,640
Mary may have been under house arrest, but she been allowed to lead the life of the country lady.

431
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:27,640
Then, in December 1585, Walsingham made a change.

432
00:39:27,640 --> 00:39:33,280
Mary and her household were suddenly packed up and sent to close confinement

433
00:39:33,280 --> 00:39:36,040
at Chartley Manor in Staffordshire,

434
00:39:36,040 --> 00:39:41,400
where she was guarded by the unsmiling puritan, Amias Paulet.

435
00:39:42,560 --> 00:39:46,760
As Walsingham had intended, Mary was furious,

436
00:39:46,760 --> 00:39:50,280
desperate to find a way out of her prison.

437
00:39:50,280 --> 00:39:55,200
So of course she was thrilled when she discovered an ingenious means

438
00:39:55,200 --> 00:39:58,760
to smuggle coded letters to her supporters.

439
00:39:58,760 --> 00:40:05,280
The letters were secretly put in a watertight packet, slipped through the bunghole of beer casks,

440
00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:07,800
delivered to and from Chartley.

441
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:13,000
What Mary didn't know, of course, was that this was a trap.

442
00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:16,440
Walsingham set the whole thing up.

443
00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:19,440
The letters were intercepted.

444
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:23,880
When Mary's latest champion, the rich merchant, Anthony Babbington,

445
00:40:23,880 --> 00:40:29,920
supplied Mary with details of a plot to murder Elizabeth and put Mary on the English throne,

446
00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:32,720
Mary wrote back with encouragement.

447
00:40:34,520 --> 00:40:37,480
The trap was sprung.

448
00:40:40,760 --> 00:40:44,800
At Chartley, Mary felt the skies lighten.

449
00:40:44,800 --> 00:40:48,000
After nearly 20 years of unjust imprisonment,

450
00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:52,480
she could feel liberty so close she could practically taste it.

451
00:40:52,480 --> 00:40:55,080
One morning, and very unusually,

452
00:40:55,080 --> 00:40:59,120
Paulet allowed her to go out riding, have a day's hunting.

453
00:40:59,120 --> 00:41:03,880
From a distance she could see a group of horsemen approach.

454
00:41:03,880 --> 00:41:06,680
Mary must have thought, "This is it!

455
00:41:06,680 --> 00:41:10,400
"News from Babbington, freedom at last!"

456
00:41:12,240 --> 00:41:16,280
But it was, in fact, the warrant for her arrest.

457
00:41:16,280 --> 00:41:21,960
Babbington and his fellow plotters had been tortured and had already confessed.

458
00:41:23,800 --> 00:41:28,320
Mary was taken away while her rooms at Chartley were searched,

459
00:41:28,320 --> 00:41:32,040
turning up hundreds of incriminating documents.

460
00:41:33,040 --> 00:41:40,040
In London, Elizabeth wrote an ecstatic letter to Amias Paulet.

461
00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:43,600
"Amias, my most faithful and careful servant,

462
00:41:43,600 --> 00:41:50,120
"may God reward thee treble-fold for the most troublesome charge so well discharged."

463
00:41:57,240 --> 00:42:04,040
There was just one more stop, one more castle in the career of the wandering Queen -

464
00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:07,360
Fotheringay in Northamptonshire.

465
00:42:07,360 --> 00:42:14,680
It's just a grassy mound now, which is just as well, since no ruin, no standing building for that matter,

466
00:42:14,680 --> 00:42:19,400
could possibly take the weight of the drama that was to follow.

467
00:42:22,000 --> 00:42:29,480
Anyone expecting Mary Stuart to crumble into tearful confession had seriously misjudged her.

468
00:42:29,480 --> 00:42:35,520
Up against it, she had drawn something inside her long and mostly disastrous career,

469
00:42:35,520 --> 00:42:43,240
which made her resolute and unnervingly lofty as if she was suddenly above this squalid charade.

470
00:42:43,240 --> 00:42:51,120
From the moment of her arrest to the moment of her execution, she gave as good as she got.

471
00:42:53,120 --> 00:42:58,400
As a sinner I am truly conscious of having often offended my creator.

472
00:43:00,120 --> 00:43:02,720
I beg him to forgive me,

473
00:43:02,720 --> 00:43:07,720
but as queen and sovereign, I am aware of no fault or offence

474
00:43:07,720 --> 00:43:12,280
for which I have to render account to anyone here below.

475
00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:18,320
Her second tactic was to lie her head off, denying all knowledge of the Babbington plot,

476
00:43:18,320 --> 00:43:20,920
although she was on stronger ground

477
00:43:20,920 --> 00:43:27,280
when she accused Walsingham of setting up the whole thing to get rid of her.

478
00:43:28,880 --> 00:43:34,280
Elizabeth, of course, did not see it exactly in this way.

479
00:43:34,280 --> 00:43:40,760
She wrote to Mary as if the Queen of the Scots was a houseguest who'd made off with the towels.

480
00:43:43,160 --> 00:43:49,200
"You have planned to take my life and ruin my kingdom by the shedding of blood.

481
00:43:49,200 --> 00:43:53,240
"I never proceeded so hastily against you.

482
00:43:53,240 --> 00:43:59,000
"I have maintained and preserved your life with the care I use for myself."

483
00:44:03,960 --> 00:44:09,200
On the 15th of October 1586, the formal trial began.

484
00:44:09,200 --> 00:44:13,240
In a typical gesture, half plea, half threat,

485
00:44:13,240 --> 00:44:18,560
Mary warned her prosecutors to look to their consciences.

486
00:44:18,560 --> 00:44:24,960
Remember, she said, the theatre of the world is wider than the realm of England -

487
00:44:24,960 --> 00:44:31,000
and it was to that audience, worldwide and across the ages, that she now took centre stage.

488
00:44:34,520 --> 00:44:39,080
Mary hobbled into the room, by now painfully infirm,

489
00:44:39,080 --> 00:44:45,120
dressed head to foot like a glamorous mother superior in swathes of velvet and a white headdress.

490
00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:50,280
Deprived of any lawyer, she turned to the Privy Council facing her.

491
00:44:50,280 --> 00:44:56,520
There is not one, I think, among you, let him be the cleverest man in the world,

492
00:44:56,520 --> 00:45:04,040
who would be capable of resisting or defending himself if he were in MY place.

493
00:45:05,040 --> 00:45:10,120
Of course, it wouldn't have mattered what she said -

494
00:45:10,120 --> 00:45:17,200
the trial resumed in London without her and passed swiftly to her conviction.

495
00:45:17,200 --> 00:45:23,760
All her adult life, Elizabeth had been spooked by her fascinating, infuriating cousin,

496
00:45:23,760 --> 00:45:29,800
who seemed to personify all the cliches about women which Elizabeth herself had rejected.

497
00:45:29,800 --> 00:45:34,840
Now she had a precious opportunity to get mother Mary off her back.

498
00:45:34,840 --> 00:45:41,040
Parliament was impatient to be rid of her and the people were positively baying for Mary's blood.

499
00:45:41,040 --> 00:45:45,840
Yet somehow, Elizabeth couldn't bring herself to do the deed,

500
00:45:45,840 --> 00:45:50,640
not because she was sentimental, but because she was scared -

501
00:45:50,640 --> 00:45:55,760
scared of being seen by the world to have her fingerprints on the axe.

502
00:45:57,400 --> 00:46:02,160
This was what was robbing Elizabeth of her sleep -

503
00:46:02,160 --> 00:46:09,760
the tormenting question whether by killing Mary she was getting rid of trouble or inviting it.

504
00:46:12,920 --> 00:46:19,440
On February 1 1587, Elizabeth finally put her signature on Mary's death warrant.

505
00:46:21,080 --> 00:46:25,600
# There were three ravens Sat on a tree

506
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:30,640
# Down-a-down Hey, down-a-down

507
00:46:32,320 --> 00:46:35,760
# They were as black as they might be... #

508
00:46:37,200 --> 00:46:44,080
All the chaos, squalor, reckless adventuring, rash conspiracies, pathetic delusions,

509
00:46:44,080 --> 00:46:52,120
histrionic self-pity, all the escapes, all the rescues had all led her to this one supreme moment -

510
00:46:52,120 --> 00:46:54,720
she would be a Catholic martyr.

511
00:47:01,560 --> 00:47:08,880
So when Mary was told she was to be executed the next morning, by a weeping Scottish courtier,

512
00:47:08,880 --> 00:47:16,840
she told him to be joyful instead, for the end of Mary Stuart's trouble, she said, was now done.

513
00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:24,640
Carry this message for me and tell my friends that I died a true woman to my religion

514
00:47:24,640 --> 00:47:29,080
and like a true Scottish woman and a true French woman.

515
00:47:40,840 --> 00:47:44,800
When she undressed for the executioner,

516
00:47:44,800 --> 00:47:51,240
the demure black gown fell away to reveal a crimson petticoat, the blood-red hue of the martyr.

517
00:47:51,240 --> 00:47:57,200
Mary's eyes were bound with a white silk handkerchief embroidered with gold

518
00:47:57,200 --> 00:48:04,320
and she lay with such utter stillness on the block that it actually unnerved the executioner.

519
00:48:09,080 --> 00:48:13,240
# His hawks they fly so eagerly

520
00:48:13,240 --> 00:48:17,240
# Down-a-down Hey, down-a-down... #

521
00:48:17,240 --> 00:48:22,400
His first blow cut deep into the back of her head,

522
00:48:22,400 --> 00:48:27,080
the second severed it but for a hanging thread of flesh.

523
00:48:28,320 --> 00:48:32,600
Even now, Mary contrived to remain centre stage.

524
00:48:32,600 --> 00:48:36,840
For 15 minutes after the last blow of the axe

525
00:48:36,840 --> 00:48:44,320
the lips on her severed head, so witnesses reported, continued to move, as if in silent prayer.

526
00:48:46,720 --> 00:48:51,400
# She lifted up his bloody head... #

527
00:48:51,400 --> 00:48:57,640
And when the executioner, by now probably wanting to die himself, held up the head to the spectators,

528
00:48:57,640 --> 00:49:02,400
he made the mistake of grasping it by the mass of auburn curls.

529
00:49:02,400 --> 00:49:04,880
But that was a wig.

530
00:49:04,880 --> 00:49:09,920
To general horror, Mary's skull, the hair cropped into grey stubble,

531
00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:13,960
fell from his grip and rolled along the floor.

532
00:49:21,880 --> 00:49:29,840
At that moment, a terrible howling came from the crimson blood-soaked petticoat.

533
00:49:29,840 --> 00:49:34,880
Mary's lapdog had to be taken away from the wreckage of her mistress.

534
00:49:34,880 --> 00:49:39,920
They tried and tried to scrub it clean of the clotted blood.

535
00:49:39,920 --> 00:49:44,880
They did so but it wouldn't eat. It languished, it died.

536
00:49:44,880 --> 00:49:49,920
It was just another martyr to Mary's pathetic, tragic life.

537
00:49:49,920 --> 00:49:55,560
If that dog was the first mourner, it certainly wouldn't be the last.

538
00:49:59,560 --> 00:50:06,400
Among the mourners, astoundingly, was Queen Elizabeth, in deep denial of what she had done.

539
00:50:06,400 --> 00:50:11,440
"When she heard, her countenance changed, her words faltered

540
00:50:11,440 --> 00:50:18,720
"and with excessive sorrow she was in a manner astonished, in so much as she gave herself over to grief,

541
00:50:18,720 --> 00:50:23,760
"putting herself into mourning weeds and shedding an abundance of tears."

542
00:50:38,080 --> 00:50:43,120
Some of Elizabeth's anguish may have been genuine remorse.

543
00:50:43,120 --> 00:50:45,720
Some of it was downright fear -

544
00:50:45,720 --> 00:50:48,280
and she was right to worry.

545
00:50:48,280 --> 00:50:55,280
Even before Mary's execution, King Phillip of Spain had accelerated his plans for the enterprise of England,

546
00:50:55,280 --> 00:51:00,320
and with Mary now dead, there would be no stopping him.

547
00:51:01,920 --> 00:51:07,080
Suddenly, Elizabethan England looked very small, very vulnerable.

548
00:51:10,600 --> 00:51:17,120
This was always Elizabeth's worst nightmare - a full-scale Catholic invasion.

549
00:51:17,120 --> 00:51:19,720
And now Phillip was launching one.

550
00:51:19,720 --> 00:51:26,240
The Spanish admirals, however, were deeply pessimistic about the chances of success.

551
00:51:26,240 --> 00:51:31,320
English ships were vastly superior in speed and manoeuvrability.

552
00:51:31,320 --> 00:51:35,200
The miracle was not that England was saved,

553
00:51:35,200 --> 00:51:39,480
but that the Spanish came so close to pulling it off.

554
00:51:39,480 --> 00:51:46,000
Only a few miles of the Channel and an unhelpful wind direction made the difference.

555
00:51:46,000 --> 00:51:49,440
The weather, as usual, batted for England.

556
00:51:54,560 --> 00:52:02,000
But it was a close thing. The English were right to be scared in the summer and autumn of 1588.

557
00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:06,160
What do you do when you're weepy and terrified?

558
00:52:06,160 --> 00:52:08,760
Well, you cry for Mummy.

559
00:52:08,760 --> 00:52:15,440
And that, courtesy of Robert Dudley, dying of cancer now but still the impresario of Elizabeth's shows,

560
00:52:15,440 --> 00:52:20,640
is how she appeared to the troops at the armed camp at Tilbury -

561
00:52:20,640 --> 00:52:27,080
the mother at last, the virgin mother of England and the kind of mother you'd want on your side.

562
00:52:27,080 --> 00:52:29,600
A mother in a breastplate of steel.

563
00:52:31,480 --> 00:52:36,520
Everything Elizabeth had ever learned came together at Tilbury -

564
00:52:36,520 --> 00:52:40,560
charisma in a costume, the shell-burst of oratory,

565
00:52:40,560 --> 00:52:45,600
and, perhaps most important, what all mothers know instinctively -

566
00:52:45,600 --> 00:52:49,320
that there's no substitute for BEING there.

567
00:52:49,320 --> 00:52:54,000
And there, on August 8th and 9th, she certainly was,

568
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:59,040
arriving in a gilded coach escorted by 2,000 ecstatic troops.

569
00:52:59,040 --> 00:53:04,080
What she produced for the expectant crowds was pure gold -

570
00:53:04,080 --> 00:53:08,600
the first great speech by a queen recorded in history.

571
00:53:08,600 --> 00:53:15,840
This is where the real event of 1588 happened, not out on the high seas but on the soapbox at Tilbury.

572
00:53:18,920 --> 00:53:24,080
My loving people, I come among you, not for my recreation and disport,

573
00:53:24,080 --> 00:53:33,080
but being resolved in the midst of the heat of the battle to live and die amongst you all,

574
00:53:33,080 --> 00:53:39,360
to lay down for God and my kingdom and for my people,

575
00:53:39,360 --> 00:53:44,560
my honour and blood even in the dust.

576
00:53:45,560 --> 00:53:50,920
I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman,

577
00:53:50,920 --> 00:53:56,320
but I have the heart and stomach of a king and a king of England too,

578
00:53:56,320 --> 00:54:05,040
and think foul scorn that Spain or any prince of Europe should dare invade the borders of my realm,

579
00:54:05,040 --> 00:54:11,080
to which rather dishonour I myself will take up arms.

580
00:54:15,960 --> 00:54:19,360
Oh, I know it's all spin and hype,

581
00:54:19,360 --> 00:54:26,720
but it was hype for England and it did make a difference, just like Churchill's rhetoric in 1940.

582
00:54:26,720 --> 00:54:32,800
Almost instinctively the Queen seemed to know what it was her people needed to hear.

583
00:54:32,800 --> 00:54:38,840
"Look," she said, "I may be a goddess but I'm also flesh and blood - YOUR flesh and blood.

584
00:54:38,840 --> 00:54:43,280
"Whatever you go through, I'll go through it with you."

585
00:54:43,280 --> 00:54:49,680
That made the difference between terror and determination. That is what we have queens for.

586
00:54:52,400 --> 00:54:56,440
You couldn't top that and Elizabeth couldn't.

587
00:54:56,440 --> 00:54:59,880
The euphoria of 1588 was short-lived.

588
00:54:59,880 --> 00:55:06,640
In the closing years of the Tudor century, famine across the country triggered food riots.

589
00:55:06,640 --> 00:55:10,320
Cut-throats and beggars prowled the roads,

590
00:55:10,320 --> 00:55:15,280
the Irish, referred to as "savages", were driven into a nine-year war

591
00:55:15,280 --> 00:55:17,880
and for the queen herself,

592
00:55:17,880 --> 00:55:24,040
the distance between the mythology of Elizabeth's ageless body and the shrivelled reality

593
00:55:24,040 --> 00:55:26,840
became more glaring.

594
00:55:26,840 --> 00:55:31,160
Thoughts inevitably began to turn to her succession.

595
00:55:31,160 --> 00:55:34,200
Everybody knew who that would be -

596
00:55:34,200 --> 00:55:37,560
James, son of Mary, Queen of Scots.

597
00:55:42,200 --> 00:55:49,840
So in the end, did Mary, Queen of Scots, the mother, triumph from the grave over her rival Elizabeth?

598
00:55:49,840 --> 00:55:53,160
Elizabeth had one comfort though.

599
00:55:53,160 --> 00:56:00,320
James had been brought up a Protestant, forced to disown his own mother after her disgrace.

600
00:56:01,880 --> 00:56:09,960
But still, he was Mary's child - the fruit of her womb, not Elizabeth's.

601
00:56:13,400 --> 00:56:19,920
And when Elizabeth died in 1603, nearly half a century after that day under the oak,

602
00:56:19,920 --> 00:56:24,640
as gently as an apple falling from a tree, as someone said,

603
00:56:24,640 --> 00:56:29,320
and when her underthings were taken from her body,

604
00:56:29,320 --> 00:56:34,040
it was seen that they still fitted the contours of the virgin -

605
00:56:34,040 --> 00:56:37,520
wasp-waisted, slim-hipped, long-limbed.

606
00:56:37,520 --> 00:56:43,640
It was a body, which, according to some, had not fulfilled the purpose God intended.

607
00:56:43,640 --> 00:56:50,960
It was supposed to have joined itself to a husband - to have given him and the country posterity.

608
00:56:50,960 --> 00:56:57,040
She had done none of this, but no-one in their right mind thought she had failed her people.

609
00:56:57,040 --> 00:56:59,840
She had been different, that's all.

610
00:57:04,680 --> 00:57:11,960
When the ring which had united Elizabeth to her country was finally removed from her finger,

611
00:57:11,960 --> 00:57:15,480
it was carried 400 miles north, to Scotland.

612
00:57:16,560 --> 00:57:21,480
Now it symbolised a new marriage, this time between two nations.

613
00:57:22,440 --> 00:57:26,080
Elizabeth and Mary Stuart never met.

614
00:57:26,080 --> 00:57:31,280
It took James the First to bring the two women together at last -

615
00:57:31,280 --> 00:57:35,320
closer in death than they had ever been in life.

616
00:57:35,320 --> 00:57:40,360
There had been an old, wonderful joke doing the rounds in the 1560s

617
00:57:40,360 --> 00:57:43,960
that all of their problems would be solved

618
00:57:43,960 --> 00:57:49,000
if only Mary and Elizabeth could marry each other.

619
00:57:49,000 --> 00:57:51,640
And in one sense they had.

620
00:57:51,640 --> 00:57:58,960
Or at least together - and at a terrible price and with so much pain - they had had a baby.

621
00:57:58,960 --> 00:58:05,000
It was a little thing with a big name - Magna Britannia...Great Britain.

622
00:58:28,280 --> 00:58:35,600
There's much more to discover and debate about the history of Britain on the BBC history website.

623
00:58:49,920 --> 00:58:55,560
Subtitles by Gillian Frazer and Anne Morgan BBC Scotland 2000