Mary, Queen of Scots: plots, trial and execution
Mary’s Arrival in England, 1568
In May 1568, Mary, Queen of Scots, crossed the Solway Firth in a small fishing boat and threw herself on Elizabeth’s mercy. She was Elizabeth’s first cousin once removed, a Catholic, the great-granddaughter of Henry VII, and — for any English Catholic who rejected Henry VIII’s divorce — the rightful queen of England. She was also a fugitive: deposed by Scottish lords, suspected of involvement in the murder of her second husband, Lord Darnley, and forced to abdicate in favour of her infant son James. Elizabeth would not see her in person. Instead, Mary was placed under guard, first at Carlisle, then at a series of country houses in central England. She would remain a prisoner for the next nineteen years.
Mary, Queen of Scots, fled to England in May 1568 after losing a Scottish civil war. She was Elizabeth’s Catholic cousin and a rival claimant to the English throne. She was held under house arrest for 19 years, until her execution in February 1587.
Why Mary Was a Problem — Not Just a Prisoner
Killing Mary in 1568 was politically impossible. She was an anointed queen, a guest of the Crown, and a foreign sovereign. Releasing her was equally dangerous: she would head for France or Spain and become a Catholic figurehead abroad. So Elizabeth chose a third option — house arrest — and hoped the problem would solve itself. It did not. Mary was a magnet for every Catholic who hoped to undo the 1559 settlement. Within eighteen months her presence had helped trigger the Northern Rebellion of 1569, which aimed to free her and marry her to the Duke of Norfolk.
A common confusion at GCSE is between Mary, Queen of Scots, and Mary I — Elizabeth’s Tudor half-sister, who died in 1558 and never appears in this depth study. Mary Queen of Scots is the Stuart cousin, captured 1568, executed 1587. Keep them apart.
A Decade of Plots
Two major Catholic plots between 1571 and 1583 turned on Mary’s claim to the throne. The 1571 Ridolfi Plot proposed a Spanish invasion timed with an English Catholic rising; Norfolk was executed for treason in 1572, although Elizabeth spared Mary. The 1583 Throckmorton Plot proposed a French invasion led by Mary’s cousin the Duke of Guise; Walsingham’s agents discovered it and the Spanish ambassador was expelled. Each plot tightened the laws against Catholics and pushed Parliament to demand Mary’s execution. Each time, Elizabeth refused.
Elizabeth’s reluctance to execute Mary was not only personal. Killing an anointed queen would set a dangerous precedent for her own throne. It risked open war with Catholic France and Spain. It would damage her image as a merciful ruler. And it would martyr Mary — arguably making her more dangerous dead than alive. For nearly twenty years, Elizabeth chose the political risk of keeping Mary alive over the legal risk of killing her.
The Babington Plot, 1586
The last and decisive plot was led by Anthony Babington, a young Catholic gentleman, in the summer of 1586. The plan was to assassinate Elizabeth, free Mary, and place her on the throne with Spanish backing. The plotters wrote to Mary in cipher, smuggling letters in and out of her household at Chartley Hall hidden inside a beer barrel. What Babington did not know was that the brewer was working for Walsingham. Every letter was intercepted, copied, and read before being sent on. Walsingham’s code-breaker Thomas Phelippes deciphered them, including Mary’s reply approving the plot.
The trap closed in August 1586. Babington and his fellow conspirators were arrested, tried, and executed by hanging, drawing, and quartering in September. Mary was put on trial in October at Fotheringhay Castle. The court of nobles and judges found her guilty of complicity in plotting Elizabeth’s death.
The 1586 Babington Plot was uncovered when Walsingham’s agents intercepted ciphered letters smuggled in beer barrels at Chartley Hall. Mary’s written approval of Elizabeth’s assassination became the legal evidence that justified her trial and execution.
Execution at Fotheringhay, 8 February 1587
Parliament demanded Mary’s death; Elizabeth signed the death warrant in February 1587 but afterwards claimed she had not meant it to be carried out. Her secretary William Davison was sent to the Tower as a scapegoat. On 8 February 1587 Mary was beheaded in the great hall of Fotheringhay Castle. She wore a red petticoat — the colour of Catholic martyrdom — and forgave the executioner. The first axe blow missed her neck and struck her skull; it took three blows to kill her.
The execution shocked Catholic Europe. Philip II of Spain, who had until then preferred a Mary-led coup to a full invasion, now committed himself to launching the Armada the following year. Mary’s son James VI of Scotland, who would become James I of England in 1603, made a formal protest but accepted a pension and stayed quiet. Within England, the immediate effect was relief: the long source of Catholic plotting was gone.
Mary’s execution is the hinge between the religious crisis of the 1570s and the war crisis of 1588. Without her death, Philip II might have continued to wait. Without her death, the recusancy laws of the late 1580s would not have had Parliament’s full support. And without her death, the 1603 succession of her son James to the English throne — the Stuart line that would rule until 1714 — would have been politically impossible. Following these consequences across the years shows much more than treating 1587 as an isolated event.