Queen Elizabeth I's Impressive Spymaster | Killer Queen | Real Royalty

[Music] in the summer of 1586 radical catholics plan to assassinate elizabeth the first queen of england the plotters want to place the catholic mary queen of scots on the throne mary dreamed that she was going to be freed she might even become the queen of england elizabeth spymaster sir francis woltzingham is determined to stop them walsingham's fear of catholic conspiracy really literally keeps him awake at night he masterminds an extraordinary spy war to defend the tudor dynasty double agents betray their masters they send messages written in secret inks and complex codes this is a textbook piece of espionage you couldn't make it up for the purposes of fiction to save his queen waltingham must first kill a queen [Music] in july 1586 in a moated house in staffordshire the most dangerous woman in england is practicing her catholic faith mary queen of scots had been chased out of her own kingdom 18 years earlier by rebellious nobles at first queen elizabeth had offered her fellow monarch sanctuary mary after all was her second cousin she was intelligent and charming but the mood had darkened elizabeth now saw the catholic mary as a direct threat to her protestant rule elizabeth had reigned successfully for 25 years but she had never married and she had no heir this really was tudor england looking down the barrel of a gun i mean this was a period where there was no successor elizabeth had refused pressure to marry if elizabeth died it would be the end of the tudor dynasty a dynasty that had reigned for more than a hundred years you know people had grown up knowing nothing else than the tudors her father henry viii had broken with rome setting protestants against catholics england was surrounded by powerful catholic enemies in france and spain they saw their fellow catholic mary queen of scots as the legitimate heir to the english throne mary queen of scots who represented so many dangers she was preeminently a dynastic threat to the queen elizabeth's government believed that catholics all catholics believe that mary was england's true queen and not elizabeth catholicism had been banned in england and the faith had been driven underground the priests who practiced it risked their lives just by being a catholic you were equated with being a traitor so uh religious belief catholic belief became treason this was the man charged with preventing catholic resentment turning into rebellion sir francis walshingham was an ardent protestant he was the queen's principal secretary and a leading member of her privy council wall singham's fear of catholic conspiracy really literally keeps him awake at night he's fearful of catholic rebellion he's fearful of conspiracy and he's fearful of invasion and above all he's fearful of all of these coming together around the person of mary queen of scots wolsingham even feared that mary posed a threat to england's protestant faith so long as that devilish woman liveth neither her majesty must make a count to continue her quiet possession of her crown nor her faithful servants assure themselves of safety of their lives waltzingham's fears were well founded during the early 1580s at least three assassination plots against elizabeth were exposed there was one plot that was uncovered that would have poisoned the the saddle of her horse the pommel of her horse and the belief that she you know when she touched it the poisonous vapors would be absorbed into her into her skin now this obviously didn't work but there were fears too that poison might be placed in elizabeth's food or in her bedsheets the most dangerous was an international conspiracy masterminded by a high-ranking english gentleman called sir francis throckmorton francis throckmorton is intercepted in his chamber in london when he's actually in the process of writing a letter to mary queen of scots other correspondences found in his chamber relating to safe landing places for a foreign navy and to english catholic nobles who could be expected to rise up with this foreign catholic invading force to support the liberation of mary queen of scots and waltzingham is so shaken by that i think that it puts another spur into his secret service activity to defend the realm wolsingham set up an intelligence hq at his house in the crowded streets around the tower of london he was intercepting letters passing between the catholic governments in france and spain and their embassies in london he was hunting for evidence of plots against elizabeth his team of specially recruited agents began to spy on catholic enemies we have a picture of waltzingham's study in his home in the city of london and it's an absolute mass of paper there are bundles of interrogations correspondence maps books there's information constantly flowing in there are letters constantly flowing out waltzingham's operation was mi5 and mi6 rolled into one walsingham had a very effective system of intercepting correspondence even abroad on the post roads of europe he had an expert forger on the payroll someone who was an expert at opening packets and resealing packets so he was by elizabethan standards a rather extensive intelligence operation he's also got agents operating out in the field keeping watch on catholic houses keeping watch on the ports agents who are sufficiently plausible within the catholic community that they can be dropped into prisons to listen to the kind of correspondence listen to the conversations that are going on uh in prisons amongst catholic prisoners it's a very good source of intelligence beyond that of course he's also got a much wider international network of agents all the way from lisbon to constantinople and the interesting thing about a lot of these men is they're not loyal to some uh overall overarching elizabethan secret service they're wolsingham's own servants they're personally loyal to him above all waltzingham wanted to stop the plotting between mary and her supporters he needed brilliant linguists and clever code breakers and he found one in his cambridge educated chief assistant thomas phillips the work that phillips was doing along with the other code breakers at the time is equivalent to the work that say turing was doing at bletchley park in the second world war is essentially the kind of cutting-edge research and and level of expertise in cryptanalysis that is currently being done by gchq in the united kingdom or nsa in america waltzingham would break all the rules in his war on catholic extremism phillips and his team of agents would forge documents torture priests and entrap suspects nothing was off limits waltingham's fear of a catholic rising in england was rooted deeply in his own traumatic experience in august 1572 he was the english ambassador in paris here he witnessed one of the bloodiest massacres in 16th century history it began early on august the 23rd saint bartholomew's day it's a bell tolling from this church saint-germain looks awa that ignites a general uprising of the catholics of paris against their protestant neighbours the slaughter began with the murder of one man but quickly spread to all protestants known as huguenots across the entire city tucked away off this busy paris street is this statue to gaspar de culini who was the first and one of the greatest victims of the same bartholomew's day massacre colony was admiral of france and he was the leader of the protestant huguenot faction of court he was a man that waltzingham knew well colony's death was particularly horrible having been shot he was then stabbed many times his body was thrown out of a window and he was mutilated my colony was a nobleman of course but the same fate befell many ordinary citizens of paris hundreds of dead and dying victims were hurled into the river saying what has to be kept in mind is the fury the rapidity of the deeds those people taken out slaughtered heaps of bodies in the streets bodies that were heaped on cart and dumped in the river the killers wanted to wipe all trace of the protestant huguenots from the city there are a number of anecdotes of witnesses that saw women pregnant women being stabbed being killed in the street and thrown into the river the water of the river at turn red red is blood and people say that there were cradles on the river of those infants that had been killed and thrown into the water to make sure that the huguenots would not survive around 3 000 people were butchered in paris a third of all the protestants in the capital thousands more were killed in other towns across france [Music] wolvinger must have been kept within the embassy so that it wasn't in the streets when the slaughter occurred but he must have heard the screams of those people that were killed in the streets he must have smelt the bodies being burnt by the murderers he must have known and seen perhaps through the windows what was occurring around the embassy [Music] woolsingham was traumatized by what he saw as a slaughter of the innocents without pity and compassion without regard had either of age or sex without ordinary form of justice nothing is meant but extremity towards those of the protestant religion he's tried to get his family out of the embassy and his wife and her entourage have been beaten up at one of the paris city gates so wilson was in genuine danger i think during the massacre and this really sears itself into his mind he never forgets what he witnesses the murder a massacre of his friends and his protestant co-religionists and from that moment on he is actually determined to prevent scenes of sectarian violence like this leeching into england in the 1580s paris remained a hotbed for radical catholics including influential english exiles fleeing from elizabeth's protestant regime we have perhaps three 400 young men women families who've gone over to paris and a number of them are just escaping persecution but there's also something else going on there i think these are people who back home in england would have been power holders power brokers they're accustomed to being involved in politics accustomed to being involved in government and in paris they have the space to start to organize and what they want to organize is the re-catholicization of england from a position of safety these exiles were a handful who preached the violent overthrow of elizabeth as a heretic queen [Music] mary queen of scots stayed in touch with them through thomas morgan her chief of intelligence [Music] thomas morgan is an absolutely key player in mary queen of scots's intelligence operation in paris he's a specialist in ciphers he's a cryptographer he devises perhaps 40 separate cipher alphabets for queen mary but he's also important because of the people he recruits in the winter of 1585 morgan was trying to send secret letters to mary he needed a trusted courier and that december he found one he was an english catholic gentleman who had once trained as a priest gilbert gifford a young catholic radical meets morgan and he evidently makes a very instantly favorable impression on morgan because morgan immediately trusts him to convey letters back to mary queen of scots we need to make sure our letters get back to our queen gilbert gifford was perfect for morgan he was a young man used to traveling he had impeccable catholic credentials in england his family came from staffordshire and staffordshire was a county where mary was held prisoner make sure you guide them home gifford's mission was immensely dangerous many catholic exiles returning to england risked severe punishment if they were picked up by the security services was even prepared to use torture to extract information from suspects he should be forced by torture to deliver what he knoweth without torture i know we shall not prevail but torture was illegal in england so waltzingham had to seek a special royal warrant to use it he argued that catholic priests brought to the tower of london for questioning posed a direct threat to england's security his prisoners were kept in the beacham tower it was reserved for the most important and dangerous prisoners of the elizabethan era and at that time those prisoners were the jesuits or um fanatical catholics who would whose mission was to come over to england and bring the country back to the catholic fold most the men who were brought here suffered horrific torture at the hands of elizabeth's interrogators that included the rack uh where they would literally be pulled apart and then the reverse of that was called the scavenger's daughter which was a horrible contraption which should literally compress the air and even the blood from their bodies it was horrific torture and it was employed justifiably because these men were accused of treachery of being a traitor to the state the fear of arrest and torture forced many radical catholics like gilbert gifford underground but during the 1580s support networks grew up across england rich catholic families build secret chambers in their country houses to conceal priests john cooper is visiting harvington hall built by the packington family to discover some of the most remarkable hiding places in britain the house has seven secret chambers or priest holes john has not visited harvington before and his challenge now is to find them it's actually very difficult to find priestholes in a house of this period the first priest holes that were constructed were pretty rudimentary i think but by the time that this house was built the 1580s or this part of the house they're really becoming very sophisticated and very complicated they needed to be to be because by the 1580s to be a catholic priest is to lead a hunted existence oh that's it my first priest hole in the 16th century the entrance to the pit would have been disguised as part of the floor my word it is terrifying it's a pit 12 maybe even 14 feet down my word it must have been claustrophobic down there it's really scary actually time to come out i think i feel quite unsettled having been in there it was as i say it was cold and claustrophobic but there is actually there's an atmosphere as well i think i mean i'm not sure i believe in ghosts in the supernatural but you can certainly feel the presence of history in a place like that but while john was first walking up the main staircase he missed the most cleverly concealed priest hole of all the men who built it knew they were playing a deadly game of hide and seek with waltzingham's agents catholic households sometimes concealed priests like gilbert gifford for days while their homes were searched repeatedly in the end guide barbara parks had to reveal the hall's most secret chamber good heavens look at that do people have any idea that this is here when visitors come to the house they must just walk up the stairs as i walked up the stairs and walked straight over it yes what do you think it was like to be hidden away in a priest hall like that must have been terrifying they were usually very very dark you'd have nothing to eat or drink no toilet facilities and all you could do was wait and hope and pray that you wouldn't be found and all the time around you you could hear the searchers knocking the house to pieces to try to find you and you knew what would await you at the end of it if they did gilbert gifford reached charlie hall where mary was under house arrest in early 1586 he now had to smuggle his secret correspondence pass mary's jailer to amy's paulette he was a brute he would come into her presence chamber and he would tear down her cloth of estate uh he would pull down the sort of the regalia you know that um it was associated with her queen ship because he said there could only be one queen in england and mary would protest and sometimes she would burst into tears and then he would sort of storm off paulette ordered regular unannounced searches but he insulted mary's royal status even further he would strip search some of mary's servants including women servants because some of them clearly did have to have access to the outside world i mean if only for sort of domestic things like laundry of course that was all hugely uh offensive i mean it breached all sort of diplomatic protocol i mean mary was actually rather experienced and rather clever at getting correspondence in and out after she had quite a lot of practice you know since she'd been under house arrest and so as well as letters just photoshop being slipped in either through the pages of books that were coming in or possibly through uh you know through small packets um letters were put inside the heels of her shoes and remember she was still a queen and so she was getting you know the sort of top shoe makers of paris to send her smart shoes mary dealt with the security clampdown by turning to spycraft herself she even sent messages in invisible ink professor james daybell is an expert in the history of secret writing i'm now going to perform an experiment of invisible ink one of the classic ways in the 16th century of sending secret correspondence the experiment that i'm going to be doing is based on lemon juice and the writer would write a secret message in lemon juice and then in order to read it you would warm it in front of a flame such as the candle that we have here and reveal the hidden writing one needs to keep it in front of the flame in one spot in order to allow the juice to warm up james knows there's a message written on the paper but he has no idea what it says it looks like a k here followed by an i and an l just about discernible kill t h e the q and a you kill the queen did you know that was the message no no it was completely completely invisible to me nobody holding a piece of paper like this would have known that there was something written on it and this was indeed what was intended that it was supposed to pass as an ordinary piece of writing only to be revealed by the holding in front of a flame but secret inks were no use when walt singham's men were intercepting all mary's letters the catholic courier gilbert gifford had to find a new way of breaking the security cordon around mary the solution was spycraft genius every day barrels of beer were sent from a brewery in burton to mary's prison in charley hall the bung of the barrel made a perfect hiding place for secret messages the brilliance is in a sense that it's concealing a secret in plain sight nobody would think to search a large barrel full of beer this is a textbook piece of espionage you couldn't make it up for the purposes of fiction um because actually what they were doing was getting the very letters the correspondence that everybody most wanted to see under the noses of the guards just to and fro it was just openly paraded of course nobody knew about it it was so well concealed at last there was the promise of a secure channel to communicate with mary in the summer of 1586 extremists planning the downfall of elizabeth could now tell the queen of scots about their astonishing plan wolsingham's agents gathered intelligence about these plots against queen elizabeth one of their targets was a group of rich young catholics whose ringleader was a gentleman called anthony babington babington had met thomas morgan mary's agent in paris what runs in parallel with gilbert gifford's efforts to get letters to him from mary a chartly was a group of young catholic men began to talk about how difficult it was to be catholic in elizabethan england their worries are about persecution their worries are about their families and their livelihood and it would seem that over time and conversation disgruntlement turns and shapes into a plan well singham already has anthony babington in his sights and he knows about some of the other conspirators as well and the really frightening thing about a number of the babington plotters and conspirators is how close they are to the royal court some of them have positions minor positions at court or they have access to the court and that means that they are a genuinely credible threat to the person of the queen to do the same at first babington's group talked only of freeing mary queen of scots but that summer their plan became even more ambitious the big twist and the big development of the june and july of 1586 was that plan became an effort to get rid of elizabeth once and for all and it became a plan for assassination the plan grew into an international conspiracy when a catholic priest called john ballard arrived in london from paris this meeting between babington and ballard is absolutely crucial what happens apparently is that babington tells ballard there are four gentlemen who are willing to assassinate elizabeth ballard then goes over to france reports this to mendoza the spanish ambassador who then reports it to his master philip ii so it seems to phillip and the other catholic powers of europe that there are men willing and able and ready to kill their queen on the 15th of july anthony babington wrote an infamous letter to mary queen of scots myself with 10 gentlemen and 100 of our followers will undertake the delivery of your royal person from the hands of your enemies the letter also described how another group would assassinate elizabeth for the dispatch of the usurper there'd be six noble gentlemen who for the zeal they bear the catholic cause and service to your majesty will undertake that tragical execution i think there would have been a huge gulp as she read that letter because of course in that letter was everything that mary had hoped for that those around her had sought to mastermind for years but of course there it was written down in so many words and the very fact that it was on paper was also hugely dangerous the thing about mary is that you know she's actually very clever she's not at all stupid about this and of course she's quite experienced and she's very experienced in diplomacy she's also by this time quite experienced in intrigue and you know she is suspicious naturally of of what should happen and she also knows that she has to be very circumspect in the way that she replies to babington mary's reaction when she received the letter was to proceed very very cautiously this was a point of contention what did she do what did she write probably very little if mary responded it was by dictation notes were taken by her secretaries and it took them a long time to compose the letter it was composed over just over a week but on july the 21st disaster struck mary's letter was intercepted by her enemies it was meant for babington and the plotters who wanted to free her but it went straight to thomas phillips waltzingham's right-hand man and chief code breaker the spymaster had outwitted the queen of scots he'd been intercepting every single letter sent by the barrel method [Music] gilbert gifford the courier who mary had entrusted with her secret correspondence was in fact a double agent yes he'd been turned by waltingham when he first arrived in england the truth was that gilbert gifford was captured was picked up at the port of rye in december and that from that moment after an interview with walt singham perhaps with phillips too he was under their control and he was their man my family and your father the genius of francis wallsingham as an intelligence chief is revealed by the fact that he has been running the action of the babington plot since the beginning so in effect the babington plot is a sting operation it was a brilliant coup at last it seemed that elizabeth's greatest enemy mary queen of scots could be exposed and destroyed but the letter they had intercepted from mary was in code one of the most sophisticated of its day if you'd intercepted one of mary's coded letters what you would have seen on the page is just what looks like a random set of symbols that have been various marks and it would just look like someone it looked almost looked like a spider had crawling across the piece of paper cracking mary's codes takes us deep into the elizabethan love of strange symbols and hidden meanings she used substitution codes in which unusual characters represent individual letters of the alphabet what we're looking at the screen now is a fragment of one of the letters that would have been sent by mary so as you can see it just looks like a bunch of random symbols and characters we can't see any information about what the underlying english will be and if you look at it it just does seem random but if we look at it more closely we suddenly see that some letters are more common than others now it's a pretty good guess that if the underlying language is english then the most common letter that we see is likely to correspond to the letter e because the letter e is the most common letter in english and then we start pursuing other letters within english the letters t and o are very common in english so we try and work out what the next most common letters are and substitute those in for the underlying plain text suddenly starting to look a bit more english if only it was that simple but mary's code writers knew how wellsingham's cryptographers worked so they built in some clever little traps to complicate matters for the person trying to break the code the person who's made the code has added in extra details that hide the underlying english so for example they've added in letters which correspond to complete words so for example they'll have a character which will correspond to a common word like but or the or and and this makes the task of the crypt analysts much more difficult because they've got much more statistical information they need to recover [Music] as phillips labored over the letter unlocking its secrets he made an extraordinary discovery babington had told mary about the six noble gentlemen who would assassinate elizabeth mary's reply was cautious but it contained one incriminating sentence by what means to the sixth gentleman deliberate to proceed phillips must have been amazed at what he saw this is the piece of evidence of mary's complicity in babington plot it this is the piece of evidence that phillips and walt singham need to prove that mary queen of scots is guilty of treason it's the evidence that they've been hunting for months and years and phillips has it in his hand and he's so delighted with this that he draws a gallows on his copy of the original because he realizes this is the piece of evidence which is going to hang mary queen scots he's at least at first he's absolutely euphoric and of course he writes those little gallows on the on the back you know which is to say gotcha the thing is though that he then reflects upon it a little bit more and then he starts to worry have we really got her you know there's this problem the letter of babbington and mary's letter have got to be read together and what does and now set the gender and then set the sixth gentleman to work what does that actually mean merry queenscon yes yes wolsingham and phillips worried that mary's phrase was not enough to guarantee her conviction so they decided to let the plot continue to see if babington and mary would incriminate themselves further from the spanish ambassador it's very important for walt singham to wait and see how many people will respond when mary sends the letter to anthony babington mobilizing this conspiracy incredibly philips now forged a postscript to mary's coded letter the news section asked babington for more information about the six gentlemen who are going to kill elizabeth it's as if mary is asking babington to prove his allegiance by naming his co-conspirators that is something of a gamble [Music] but wall walsingham's gamble went horribly wrong although phillips was tracking anthony babington on august the second he lost him the would-be assassin was loose on the streets of london then walt singham got lucky by pure chance another of his agents spotted babington the next day the spymaster now had to decide whether to pull him in or to leave him free to reply to mary's letter it is a hard matter to resolve only this i conclude it would better to lack the answer than to lack the man come on but wolsingham acted too late enrichment i don't know the conspirators were already fearful of discovery then by chance one of them was arrested for an unrelated offense babington panicked on the fourth of august when john ballard was picked up not as a conspirator but as a catholic priest babington was profoundly worried he panicked he ran the conspirators the group of conspirators dispersed with babington on the run wollsingham turned his attention to mary on august the 11th she was offered a brief taste of freedom a chance to go out riding mary's been kept in she's been catching actually for weeks and months the one thing she wants to do is to get outside and they say you can go riding her legs are quite good that day she mounts her horse it's the first time in fact for ages that she's been on horseback come out she has her servants with her they ride out and then just as they're going over the brow of a small hill in front of her she sees what she believes to be ten catholic gentlemen and a hundred followers riding towards her and for her this is an apocalyptic moment because it seems that it's all going to come true she's going to be rescued she's going to be freed she may even become the queen of england but the riders were wall singham's men mary had been lured out that summer's day so that her lodgings could be searched for evidence now waltzingham's trap was about to spring shut when the leader of the posse approached he spoke to emmaus paulette and paulette told mary that she was to be taken here to tixel through this gateway at this she attempted to lie her way out of the situation she said you know why would i plot against my good cousin elizabeth you know this isn't this is not me i know nothing about this so-called plot to kill her paul it wasn't having any of this you know you're coming with us you know this is it you've got to do what you're told mary queen of scots the thorn in the side of protestant england had finally been snared now walsingham had to persuade elizabeth to order the execution of her fellow queen [Music] to waltzingham mary was public enemy number one his spy operation had trapped the queen of scots a few days later england's most wanted man anthony babington was finally tracked down hiding in a barn near harrow babington and the other conspirators were taken to the tower [Music] this is a piece of graffiti by one of the key conspirators in the babington plot john ballard in 1586 after he'd been arrested he was here in the beecham tower and here he says hope in god he realizes that the end is nigh these were men who devoutly believed in their cause they were not just going to crumble at the first sign of torture or threat and so they really withheld as much as possible uh the interrogations of elizabeth ministers but eventually they had to give way and they suffered terribly for that [Music] babington and 13 others were sentenced to a hideous death elizabeth had intervened and wanted their deaths to be especially horrible as a warning to all conspirators they were hanged until they were nearly dead they were taken down from the scaffold their bodies were ripped open and they were disemboweled their bowels were burnt in front of them and then their limbs were removed and put on poles at prominent public sites all around london this was an appalling and visceral warning against treason three weeks after the execution of the babington plotters mary herself was brought to trial she denied the charges and turned on wallsingham accusing him of entrapment mary put her finger on this because at the trial she actually calls waltzing and briefly to account you know she says um you know basically you you've used immoral methods you've trapped me she knew that she'd been got by some form of entrapment but didn't know quite exactly what it was mary even dared to ask waltingham whether he was an honest man i assure you that i bear no ill will to no one i have attempted no one's death i protest that i am a man of conscience and a faithful servant to my mistress [Music] waltzingham would not admit that he had actively controlled the entire plot no mention of recruiting gilbert gifford no acknowledgement that mary's letters had been sent via the beer barrel system set up by waltzingham's men he sidestepped all mary's accusations by making just one bland admission i confess that i am ever vigilant regarding all concerning the safety of my queen and country i have closely watched all conspiracies against either these are weasel words really i mean the fact is she'd been framed yes that was the plot but you know if you would if this if this was a case that was going to be heard in the u.s supreme court she'd get off because it was entrapment he does engage in acts of entrapment but at the core of it some of these conspiracies some of this catholic threat is real i think and there is this shadow of a chance that without francis waltingham one of those assassins would have got through elizabeth might have been poisoned she might have been shot she might have been run through with a rapier and then the course of english history would have been very different there could only be one verdict in mary's trial on october the 25th she was sentenced to death for conspiring to murder elizabeth but elizabeth delayed signing mary's execution warrant she was a fellow monarch blessed by god however many crimes she had committed and elizabeth i think really felt that uh to execute mary was in a sense to set a pretty awful precedent elizabeth finally signed the warrant in february 1587 but even then she wouldn't release it elizabeth signed barry's death warrant pretty reluctantly she appears or at least she said that she countermanded her action fairly quickly but the warrant was whisked away on the orders of the privy council it was carried to father and gay it was taken to sir amy's paulette mary's keeper and mary was executed within practically hours elizabeth was furious she says that she hadn't sanctioned this she threatens to throw all of her counsellors in the tower in the days after the execution elizabeth you know neither eats nor sleeps i mean she she's completely tormented by what's happened she actually feels like it's undermined her position uh or the by virtue of the fact that she says that she was you know that the counselors had acted without her direct say-so wolfsingham escaped the queen's rage he'd been absent from court suffering from a serious illness the terrible pressure the stress of dealing with all of these catholic conspiracies increasingly begins to break him his eyesight starts to fail this is the point which his handwriting becomes very very difficult to read he starts suffering from mysterious pains that leave him bedridden sometimes for weeks sometimes even for months at a time and yet he's forced to carry on working the queen won't let him go over the next few months elizabeth would rely even more heavily on waltzingham's spy operation the consequences of executing the queen of scots were serious from elizabeth's point of view in executing mary what had happened was that she had been a party to the killing of a divine right queen these were rulers who they believed had been put there by god and they were accountable only to god if you become a party to killing a fellow ruler you have in effect devalued monarchy and indeed in england it did largely make it accountable to parliament after that time and you couldn't have cut off charles the first head in 1649 with quite such ease if you hadn't first of all cut off mary stuart's head waltzingham had hoped that mary's death would remove the catholic threat instead her execution enraged the catholic world a year later king philip of spain launched an armada against england once again walsingham's intelligence operation turned to the defense of the realm he'd saved his queen now he had to save his country

Channel: Real Royalty

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Keywords: real royalty, real royalty channel, british royalty, royalty around the world, royal history, queen elizabeth 1, robert dudley, elizabethan, elizabeth i, queen elizabeth

Id: OoKt2soJeKs

Length: 47min 22sec (2842 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021