Posted by Johan
on 8/9/2009, 8:49:59, in reply to "Re: Mary,Queen of Scots' last letter to go on show "
164.140.159.143
By signing the order to behead Mary, Elisabeth created a dangerous example. Mary's grandson Charles I may not have been beheaded. I've no doubt he would not have come out of the civil war alive, but an official execution would have been much more difficult.
Without Charles I's execution Louis XVI may not have ended up on the scaffold either.
--Previous Message--
:
: Damian
: Those were very interesting comments. You
: are right in the end Mary did get her
: revenge on Elizabeth because her descendants
: are the ones who inherited the throne after
: Elizabeth's death.
: --Previous Message--
: --Previous Message--
: Queen Elizabeth I legally had no right to
: arrest her and excute her but she did
: anyways for the same reasons that Mary had
: to kill her second husband To survive.
:
: The question of the legality of Mary's trial
: and execution is an interesting one.It is
: true that Mary was not a subject of
: Elizabeth but nevertheless even foreign
: residents were and are still subject to the
: country's penal laws.The real problem was
: that Mary was no ordinary foreign resident
: but a crowned sovereign who had officially
: been given asylum from her ememies by Queen
: Elizabeth.In practice,Elizabeth had kept
: Mary in close confinement ever since she
: arrived in England and she never once
: visited her or allowed her to come to
: London.Ostensibly this was supposed to be
: for Mary's own protection.In reality it was
: for Elizabeth's.Odd behaviour towards
: somebody who was a fellow sovereign who had
: been officially granted asylum.
:
: By 1587,after nearly twenty years in
: confinement,Mary had become so desperate to
: regain her liberty that she lent her ear to
: anyone willing to help her regain her
: freedom even if this meant having to take
: Elizabeth's throne.Elizabeth's advisers, who
: wanted to get rid of Mary, secretly fed her
: desperation by deliberately encouraging her
: admirers to devise impractical and foolhardy
: plots to free her.This was all done under
: the auspices of Walsingham's secret
: police.The Babington plot was their most
: successful attempt to trap and frame the
: Scottish queen.
:
: Elizabeth also wanted to get rid of Mary.But
: she was loathe to put her on public trial
: and execute her.She rightly foresaw that
: executing a crowned sovereign would set a
: very dangerous precedent.Instead she asked
: Mary's jailor,Sir Amyas Paulet if he would
: somehow arrange to dispose of Mary
: quietly,eg.by poison or suffocation rather
: than making a public spectacle of it.But
: Paulet,a prim and proper Puritan,refused to
: shed blood without a legal warrant from the
: Queen.Pressured from her chief advisers who
: all wanted a public example to be made of
: Mary in order to permanently deter her many
: admirers and supporters,especially the
: Catholics,Elizabeth went into one of her
: characteristic bouts of indecision and
: prevarication before finally agreeing to
: sign Mary's death warrant.But she then went
: through the motions of trying to hide it
: until her secretary,Sir Willam Davison,found
: it and despatched it to Paulet at
: Fotheringhay Castle where Mary was being
: held.The latter now had his legal warrant
: from the Queen.Elizabeth then tried to pass
: the buck and blame Davison for Mary's death
: by despatching the (signed) warrant without
: her express permission and she sent him to
: the Tower for a few months.But no-one was
: convinced by her attempts to portray it all
: as some kind of tragic mistake least of all
: her fellow sovereigns across the Channel.
:
: Realising she was doomed,Mary tried to put
: the best complexion on her miserable fate by
: portaying herself as a martyr for the
: Catholic cause in Scotland and England,to
: which to a large extent she was.She realised
: the valuable propaganda for her followers by
: depicting herslf in this way as the example
: of her last letter shows.If she had to go
: down then Mary was determined she would do
: her best to take her chief enemies down with
: her including cousin Elizabeth.In this,if
: little else in her life,Mary was remarkably
: successful as for instance Philip II of
: Spain used it as additional justification
: for his subsequent attack on England and
: Mary has kept legions of admirers and
: devotees down through the ages to this day.
:
: Mary's final,posthumous revenge over
: Elizabeth was of course the fact that today
: it is her direct descendants who sit on
: the English throne and not Elizabeth's.
:
:
:
Message Thread:
« Back to thread