 Ychydig i chi, rwy'n gweithio'r Llyfriddor Brythaf, yng Nghymru, yng Nghymru, yng nghymru, yng Nghymru, yng Nghymru, yng Nghymru. Yn ymlaen brysyn, rwy'n gweithio'r cyfwyr. Rwy'n gweithio'r cyfwyr i'r exibisiwn cyfwyr o'r Ffraidi, e'r Elysbydd yn Meri, y Cwyrddoedd Cysnod, yng Nghymru. Elysbydd yn gweithio'r 20 o'r Feburi, ac mae'n gweithio'r Elysbydd yn Meri, wrth gyrddwys i'r cwestiynau, yn ymgyrch nhw'r documentau i ddodill y cwyrdiadau, i ddodill nhw'n hwn i'r ddweud, i ddodill hwnnw'n gwybod. Yn siarad, rydyn ni'n gweithio'r cyfrifau cyfwyr oherwydd oherwydd o'r cyfwyr o'r Gweithio Blynydol, ac mae'n gweithio o'r ffordd o'r hwnnw oherwydd o'r Cwyrd, ac oherwydd o'r cyfrif. We would like to extend a very special welcome to those of you who are joining us online. We hope that you enjoy this evening. At the end of the lecture we'll be taking questions from our online and in-house audiences. If you're watching online, submit your questions using the question box below the video. For our audience in the theatre, raise your hands and the microphone will be brought to you. If you're watching online you can use the menu above to provide us with feedback on the event and also to donate to the British Library and to get a copy of the exhibition catalogue, which is on sale from Friday. I've got some housekeeping points for you. For our live audience, please turn off your mobile phones or put them to silent. We're not expecting any fire alarms this evening as tests, so if you do hear a fire alarm please follow the emergency exit signs. We're pleased to welcome Professor John Guy this evening. In his lecture he delves into the tense, complex relationship between the two queens, Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I. John is an eminent and award-winning historian and biographer. A fellow of Clear College, Cambridge, he has written both academic and popular books on subjects ranging from the public career of Thomas More and Tudor England, to My Heart is My Own, The Life of Mary Queen of Scots, which won the Whitbread Biography and the Marsh Biography Awards and most recently Gresham's Law. John has presented or contributed to numerous television programmes and documentaries and appears regularly on BBC Radio flagship cultural programmes. The 2018 film, Mary Queen of Scots, starring Sir Sir Ronan and Margot Robbie, was adapted from his 2004 biography. John's books are on sale outside and he's happy to sign books for anybody. I am biased. John was my PhD supervisor. So I have to say nice things. I would anyway though, don't worry John. So please join me in welcoming John to the British Library this evening. Thank you very much John. Thank you very much. This is a dynastic story but it's also a personal story. It's the personal story of two relatively young women when the story starts who became queens, who conducted a relationship that lasted for almost 30 years but a relationship which as we might say post-pandemic was decidedly virtual rather than as we say face to face because it was a relationship conducted through their letters, through the speeches of their ambassadors and through their exchanges of gifts. It was a fraught and tangled relationship. It ended up that only one of these two queens was going to survive but that was absolutely not how the story started. Quite the contrary. Let's move on. It's partly a dynastic story and of course it starts with the founder of the Tudor dynasty, Henry VII up here, Elizabeth of York. Elizabeth of course was the granddaughter of Henry VII, the daughter of Henry VIII by Anne Boleyn, his second wife. But also Henry VIII had an elder sister Margaret and she married James IV of Scotland and the result of that marriage was James V, woops, there we go, James V and he married, as his second wife, Mary of Gies, a French princess and of course Mary Queen of Scots is the daughter of James V and Mary of Gies which means that she was the great-granddaughter of Henry VII which is why they were cousins but they were cousins as you would say strictly correctly one generation removed. Now character, it seems to me, is formed in childhood and adolescence. These two women had very, very similar educations as young women, they studied French, Latin, a little bit of Greek, they studied history, a little bit of philosophy, they studied of course history and because they were women who were in the line of succession they also studied rhetoric which was normally essentially the art of public speaking oratory which is normally of course confined to boys in the 16th century and what's quite interesting of course is that when Elizabeth was in the succession she studied rhetoric and when she was out of the succession at various points rhetoric was taken away but although their educations were very similar their talents were rather different Mary, she liked music, she loved dancing, she loved poetry she loved, if you like, more sort of aesthetic things Elizabeth was very bookish, she was very good at languages she was very interested in religious studies especially later on she was hugely expert in the classics she was much less interested than Mary was in outdoor sports particularly riding, Elizabeth later did become a bit of a huntswoman and she wrote out but that was only after she teamed up as it were with Robert Dudley, really at the beginning of her reign Mary always loved the theatre and the masks and all of that George Buchanan, the great classical and expert in poetry who was one of the great humanists of the 16th century and of course he had read Livy with Mary when she returned to Scotland but the great thing about Mary was that essentially she was a natural where the outdoors were concerned Elizabeth actually was an indoor person and rather bookish until she met Dudley but where the real difference is hit is that Mary was sent to France at the age of four and three quarters because Scotland was in a state of political turbulence mainly because of Henry VIII and protector Somerset's invasions of Scotland so she was sent for safety to France and there she was brought up in luxury, in security with kindness and with deference and because of that she was gregarious she was generous she was probably too trusting she was somebody who had this enormous charisma she looked great, she was about six foot one she had this commanding presence but she was one of those women of whom it was said that when she was talking to you you were the only person that mattered at that moment she had this commanding presence she was always destined once she had gone to France to marry the Dauphin Francis who was just over one year younger than she was that happened they were married in 1558 this is probably a marriage portrait and it's in the exhibition it's a huge privilege to see that at very close quarters the image of Francis and Mary I hope is in the exhibition digitally it was actually scheduled to be in the exhibition but unfortunately the French needed it this year for an exhibition of their own so the exhibition of course was meant to be in 2020 rather than 2021 but still Mary she had this more relaxed approach but of course the consequence of that was too she could become a bit of a risk taker later in the story Mary would say a queen is not a queen unless she actually is prepared to act now Elizabeth was completely different steely, reserved, distant if you were lucky enough to have an audience with Elizabeth you'd probably get frostbite she was not a touchy-feely person and again character is shaped there are reasons for that her father executed her mother on charges of multiple adultery and incest of course those were demonstrably false but of course in Edward's reign this portrait is about there are sharp eyes in the audience who are going to tell me that actually I've got my date wrong it's not 1548 and she's not 14 or 15 but actually this painting which is probably by William Scrotts who was the court painter who basically got the best commissions once Hans Hall by the Younger was dead this painting is something like the second to the last the companion painting of Edward is also by Scrottson was done more or less at the same time something like the second to the last in the inventory of Henry's goods and Henry's inventory was being compiled as late as 1548 and 1549 so the chances are that those portraits were commissioned by Henry but they were not completed for perhaps another year or so afterwards but of course in Edward's reign Elizabeth, she and Edward got on very well but Edward did not think that women should be queens and when he got sick and made his device for the succession he cut out both of his sisters he thought they were bastards because Henry had bastardised them as part of his own dynastic succession plan he also thought the Catholic Mary was absolutely beyond the pale because she was a Catholic Mary Tudor that is Elizabeth wasn't Protestant enough and so she was to be cut out too but I think something that I think you just can't get away from once Henry was dead Elizabeth went into the household of her last stepmother Catherine Parr and Catherine Parr married her true love Thomas Seymour who's there up top right and Seymour essentially sexually abused Elizabeth and the most humiliating thing that Elizabeth ever had to do was to write to protect a Somerset Seymour's brother who was effectively de facto regent while Edward was in his minority to write to protect a Somerset and deny the rumour that she was pregnant by Thomas Seymour again in Mary Tudor's reign the Catholic Mary Tudor who succeeded Edward she married Philip of Spain not yet Philip II of Spain although he was to become that so the man who sent the Spanish Armada to England much later in the story was actually in charge of armaments and so on at the Tower of London and knew exactly how everything worked in England that's one of the great ironies of history but of course a white rebellion was designed in 1554 the spring of 1554 was designed to put a Protestant i.e. Elizabeth on the throne for which Mary wanted to have Elizabeth put on trial for treason she couldn't prove it so it never happened but Elizabeth was first in the tower in fear of her life and then she was held under house arrest at Woodstock for almost a year and when she spoke later to parliaments I know what it is to be a sovereign and I know what it is to be a subject I also know about the infinite cupidity of men and ambition and how they're always looking to the next successor and basically how you can't trust these blokes because they're totally unreliable and you need to watch it and also probably the last thing you want to do is marry them this is somebody who was talking from hard one experience again it's a sensational portrait but one just has to regret that at some point in the past it was catastrophically cleaned and you can't now read what the book was and what the book said because you can be absolutely sure that in the original you would have been able to do that and we would really like to know what it was that Elizabeth was reading at the time Right now let's move on Mary Francis II dies very young Mary returns to Scotland to take up her throne and she has been Queen of Scots since the age of six days because her father died six days after she was born but her mother Mary of Gies who we saw in the second slide eventually became regent she died just before this audience took place when this audience took place in August 1560 Francis II is still alive but he was to die at the end of the year but then in August 1560 Mary Queen of Scots' mother had just died and she was sent out she was now effectively titular Queen of Scotland in reality in fact and she did her first solo royal audience with the Henry Kissinger of Tudor Diplomacy a St Nicholas Throtmorton who we will meet again later in the talk and in that audience she spoke in Scots which gives the light to all those people who tried to tell me during the production of the Mary Queen of Scots film that Mary didn't speak Scots and Throtmorton spoke English of course they were emphasising their nationality they could both have conversed much more fluently and easily in French but that was how things were that was Diplomacy but Mary calls for amity saying the two queens were both of one blood of one country and in one island of one house and one stock the queen coming of the brother of the sister and a little bit later in another audience which is after Francis II has died she makes Throtmorton an offer to be taken back to Elizabeth and this gives the light to any suggestion that they were mortal enemies from the beginning of the story because Mary said I will make Elizabeth an offer if she will recognise me as her heir apparent should she never marry and have children I now will recognise her as the lawful queen of England for the whole of her life and if she marries and has children I will step back now Elizabeth when that offer was received was very tempted but for reasons that I'll explain that never really came to pass now here's another sensational portrait also probably the preliminary drawing is by Francois Clue the art historians are arguing whether this is a Francois Clue painting or a workshop painting because there are several versions of which this is the best but here Mary is now this is how she looked when Throtmorton saw her the first time she's just aged 17 she's wearing her morning dress for her mother you can see it's a black gown but with this great white elaborate veil which goes right down to the knees called the Doyle Blanc in France and this is what she was she was sitting for this portrait while Throtmorton was speaking to her and during the interview she said I'll give this portrait to Elizabeth I'll send it to Elizabeth if Elizabeth will reciprocate for I assure you if I thought she would not send me hers she should not have mine but she was curious about her sister queen and this is one of the other things we should get these two young women at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign she was 25 at the beginning of Mary's personal reign she's just 18 they had an infinite curiosity about one another and that they were the only two women on the planet who understood what it was to be like in the other women's shoes none of the men around could understand that they called each other's sister at this stage they were not just cousin my dearest cousin but my dearest sister they even talked a little bit later symbolically of marrying one another because they were two queens in neighbouring kingdoms in the same island how could this go wrong yes they were of different faiths Mary was a Catholic but when Mary returned to Scotland she respected the Protestant Reformation in Scotland the deal was which she had arranged with her councillors she could worship privately as a Catholic in her own chapel but she would respect the Protestant Reformation in Scotland and not interfere with them that is what she did for pretty much the whole of her personal rule well let's just pursue the theme of this infinite curiosity of the two queens for a little moment because this came back when in late September 1564 Mary sent Sir James Melville south to talk to Elizabeth and I'll explain why when we get to the next slide why that meeting took place but during those meetings which thank goodness Melville wrote about in this effective diary of events Elizabeth gave him a real grilling what was she like is she more beautiful than me what's her interest what can she play the virginals so Melville he's put on the spot he said both queens are the fairest ladies of your court Elizabeth was whiter but our queen was very lussan very lovely and of course there he's fibbing through his teeth because Elizabeth of course was noticeably swarvy in her complexion as was her mother Anne Boleon and although her face was usually very white that was the make up whereas Mary had this absolutely amazing translucent skin which was the envy of everyone around her because that was the fashion then and on hearing that Mary was taller because as I say Mary is about six foot one Elizabeth is sort of about we don't really know but probably about sort of maybe five six five seven something like that Elizabeth retorted that she was over high Elizabeth's arch you know she's not easy whilst she herself was neither over high nor over low and then did she play the virginals well Melville said she played the virginals reasonably for a queen he's sort of backing he sort of sends what Elizabeth wants to hear so Elizabeth frog marks him later in the evening to a gallery where he just happens to stumble on her playing the virginals extremely excellently well I mean that's the sort of this is the sort of this was a guarded if you like virtual friendship inwardly wary but outwardly very very keen that these two women should they both knew that if I could be a little bit whimsical for a minute they were both fully paid up members of the women on the trade union with all these ghastly blokes around them trying to tell them what to do and you know for that reason there was this genuine genuine rapport now what gets in the way well first of all we've got William Cecil Elizabeth's chief minister he's got definite ideas about Scotland because this man he is not just a Protestant but he is a if you like ideological Protestant and he is also absolutely determined that Scotland should end up as a satellite state of England and so with everything under Elizabeth's surveillance and the reformation because it's one if you like it's one island in his view and of course he remembers he wrote a long disposition on how Edward I established feudal superiority over Scotland so early as August 1559 and that's astonishingly early he wrote the equivalent of a film script for what was going to happen for the next sort of 10-20 years and that master plan for the future of Scotland it says basically Britain should be one monarchy with Elizabeth and maybe Mary as a sort of satellite but the crucial final clause which is again in the exhibition almost everything in these slides is in the exhibition finally if the queen shall be unwilling to this and what this was was that he said well Scotland should be ruled by a council of 24 Protestant nobles who basically sort of cross-border liaison with Elizabeth they should be the if you like the effective council of regency and Mary should just step back because she's the Catholic and finally if the queen shall be unwilling to this that's Mary as he is likely she will in respect to the greedy and tyrannous affection of France it's apparent that almighty God is pleased to transfer from her the rule of that kingdom for the wheel of it, for the good of it well look if this guy talks to God and knows what God's going to do who can stand in the way and so what we're dealing with here Cecil had a wonderful later in William Camden who wrote the annals of Elizabeth was really hired by the Cecils I mean remember the church who said history will be kind to me because I intend to write it very much the same sort of a trick but he's determined that this is the guy who gets up every morning and says I've got to basically box in the queen of Scots or I've got to kill the queen of Scots this is an opposition he can't even call her Mary throughout his entire life he calls her SQ the Scottish Queen he calls her by an acronym and who else is around who's a if you like a threat to Mary John Knox of course the famous Protestant preacher Calvinist religious leader in Scotland he had a number of spats verbal spats with Mary during her personal rule he writes this book called the first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women a title that leaves nothing to the imagination and you can see how it begins to promote a woman to bear rule superiority dominion or empire above any realm, nation or city continent and nature, continually to God a thing most contrarious to his reviled will and approved ordinance and finally it is the subversion of good order of all equity and justice and Knox had a very simple formula he wrote this book he wrote it came out in 1558 he was a bit unlucky that it came out on sailing the streets of London just as Elizabeth proclaimed queen but he actually wrote it against the Catholic Mary Tudor and Mary of Gees he did not write it expressly against Mary Queen of Scots because he was writing it a little bit ahead of when she was going to come back but he has a very simple theorem a very simple hypothesis Catholic women rulers are idolatruses like Jezebel and a failure in the Old Testament and they should be deposed they can be deposed and killed and the dog should lick their blood like they did Ahab's or Jezebel's for that matter now when Elizabeth came to the throne again and if you're if you're watching in Scotland I have to be a little bit careful what I say about what actually Knox wanted to do when he came back and he was in Diep waiting to come back to the British Isles after he'd come back from Geneva and elsewhere what he really wanted to do was to come back to London where he'd been in Edward VI and sent his sons to Oxford or Cambridge he did not want to go back to Edinburgh for that to him and so he wrote to Cecil this is all in the library it's not in the exhibition but I'm just telling you this because it's just a great story he wrote to Cecil and said well I want to come back but look what I wrote doesn't apply to Elizabeth she's an extraordinary queen because she's queen by an extraordinary dispensation of God like Deborah well this was shown to Elizabeth and she said the last thing I am is an extraordinary queen by a dispensation of God because that means that I'm getting the throne on a religious ticket not on the dynastic ticket and if I get it on the religious ticket the Protestant ticket then the dynastic ticket is out there and that's almost certainly going to be with Mary because Mary whatever else you thought about Mary she was uncontestably legitimate she had never been bastardised by anybody, by actor parliament or anything else so he never did get back to to London but of course Cecil took the other take he believed that now that the Protestant Reformation had come in religion should be a test of eligibility for the succession he put religion first and dynasty second and Elizabeth took it the other way around and that ladies and gentlemen is the great seismic floor that underpins the whole of Elizabethan history until Mary Queen of Scots is dead now these two women they got on so well they were exchanging gifts in 1561 and early 1562 they were even talking of marrying each other and the great plan was that there was going to be a personal interview they almost met twice actually this was the first occasion I'll tell you later what the other one was they were going to meet originally the idea was knotting them all York and then it was settled on York it was going to be in the summer of 1562 everything was arranged travel X UK had been hired to set up the Bureau de Chambres so that the Scots would change their money into English money everything was set but Cecil was determined that they should not meet determined of course the French was he got his cue when the French was of religion broke out broke out first in France and of course these are his the great thing about Cecil is he sat up all night writing memos to himself so that you can actually you can get into his head like you can get into the head of no other Tudor character but here we go I put little sort of arrows to give you a bit of a cue the affairs in France remain not only uncompounded but by bloodshed on both parts likely to increase well yes and that was the eventual reason why the meeting was cancelled but the second one the Queen of Scots will insinuate herself to some sorts of people of this realm to further her claim and she'll give occasion to such people as love change this woman was so charismatic I mean when she was a prisoner in England people were sent to basically get things out of her or quiz her and they all started thinking she's just this wonderful person I mean she is just so charming and she's just so able to just capture your heart and your thoughts so she was dangerous in the end the meeting was cancelled because Mary's uncle Francis Duke of Gees was leading his troops back towards basically he was he was moving through his home territory and he came across a couple of hundred Huguenot worshipping in a barn near Vassie and 23 Protestants were killed and so that did it and you can see why the thing is that Cecil had written to communicate the equivalent of the press release cancelling the meeting two weeks before that happened and he just had it in his pocket ready to pull out so he was trying to persuade Elizabeth but she wanted Elizabeth wanted the meeting and there were these two possibly three occasions when Elizabeth and Mary did almost meet and they could have actually done Mary always believed a woman to woman settlement Elizabeth now makes her biggest I think probably one of the biggest mistakes of her reign actually because it's absolutely untrue to say that Elizabeth ruled all the time from the head and Mary ruled from the heart that of course comes from Nox's paradigm Catholic women rulers are Catholics who rule from passion not reason because they're Catholics whereas Protestants rule from reason and not passion and this is where it comes from but here Elizabeth had one of her big ideas that was actually rather a foolish idea because she decided that she needed to control who was Mary going to Mary she wanted to control Mary's marriage so she decides the best way to do that is to marry her to an English nobleman whom she can trust and who does she front but her very own I wouldn't say discarded lover but basically the only guy she ever truly loved Lord Robert Dudley with whom she had herself created a sex scandal in 1559 to 60 by spending night after night with him in his chamber which caused when Mary was having her portrait painted and so on this was the talk and the scandal of Europe then Mary was the absolute model of respectability but anyway Elizabeth got this idea and not only that they were all to live together in a menage au toire with Elizabeth going round the standing palaces up and down the Thames this was absolutely mad idea and of course the last person who wanted to marry Mary was Dudley please find someone else he was almost working with Mary to actually put a kibosh on this that's another sensational portrait Stephen van der Merlin he was a fura art person he was a sort of chum of Antonis Moore and of course Antonis Moore was a great sort of he became one of Charles V painters Philip II's court painter for a while of course he knew the work of Titian and anyone who looks at that painting knows that whoever painted that had either seen an engraving or an original of the Emperor Charles V with his dog a painting which by the way could have been in Brussels because of course the Habsburgs were based in Brussels in this period that was where their main sort of cultural centre was not in Spain well of course Mary was incensed you know I mean Doth your mistress in Good Ernest he's the English ambassador to Scotland Doth your mistress in Good Ernest wished me to marry my Lord Robert does that conform to her promise to use me as her sister or daughter to marry her subject when in the Josie Rock film at 2018 Mary turned around and said Doth it stand with my honour to marry my sister's subject she was quoting straight out of the out of the archives so that fell flat on its face but Mary was determined to marry and this is another great big difference with Elizabeth Mary knew that in a dynastic monarchy you marry if you're a female ruler you marry and you settle the succession by having a son or preferably an heir and a spare and that is what Mary intended to do you know I mean Diana knew exactly what dynastic monarchy is Kate Middleton knows exactly what dynastic monarchy is and in conversation with a great thing about this story is that because they were a part all the time and because there were these ambassadors you keep getting their words reported word for word by the ambassadors so absolute gift to a a gift to a biographer and Mary assessed a Randolph at St Andrews in February 1565 not to marry you know it cannot be for me to defer it long many incomodities in Siw and by then she's cast her eyes on the bloke who she thinks can fulfil this role Henry Lord Darnley who also is a great grandson of Henry the 7th because the same Margaret who was Henry's older sister had a second marriage to the Earl of Angus and the result of that was Lady Margaret Douglas who then married the Earl of Lenox and Darnley is their son and here we are they married in 1565 that was probably once upon a time a really good picture but it's all the suffered from the ravages of time but you know I mean it is it is a great thing but of course the thing about Mary and the thing about Darnley and this is something I say to all my to all my students in Cambridge Darnley was one of those those people who and for the students they'll meet them maybe you've met some of them in the course of your lives and careers he's one of those guys who knows how to behave for six months till the rings on the finger and then the trouble starts and that was Darnley and Mary married him but when she married him he demanded to be king and she was to be pushed aside and initially she had thought okay I mean Henry and Henry and Mary King and Queen of Scotland that sounds alright and then when she discovered what it was going to be like she pulled back it was the worst actually because she'd moved a little bit too fast you know she pulled back you see Elizabeth was never like that when Mary once said if you wait for time to solve something you know that's not what a queen should be doing Elizabeth always said let time take its course do nothing, do nothing hopefully the problem will solve itself and of course once Cecil heard this I can't resist putting that in he was absolutely well I mean he was just almost apoplectic because what he says in this memo is the people of England will flock to her whether they're Protestants or Catholics because she's done what a woman ruler ought to do she's going to marry and settle the succession and that of course is exactly what she sets about doing never mind that she's a Catholic of course remember that the Protestant Reformation at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign was very fragile you know I mean I've often said that the Protestants at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign were like the Bolsheviks in 1917 they were trying to take over an entire country and re-culturalise it Elizabeth has this very different take and maybe it doesn't look great but I can tell you this is one of the great stars of the show because while all this was going on Cecil was pushing for Elizabeth to marry and settle the succession he wanted her to marry Charles of Austria the Archduke Charles of Austria because he was a Catholic but he was thought that he would be a moderate Catholic Elizabeth certainly didn't want to do it she had no intention of doing it but he went much further and here you see that any modern politician up to you know if you like tricks has nothing on William Cecil because he got planted speeches in parliament he got people to stand up and petition that Elizabeth should marry and settle the succession he tried it in 1563 he tried it again in 1566 and he even infiltrates through his personal secretary a Commons committee to make the preamble to the tax bill of 1566 to make the granting of the tax conditional on Elizabeth marrying or settling the succession and that is in a dynastic monarchy in a if you like a divine right monarchy which these monarchies are that is absolute dynamite and Elizabeth knew pretty much exactly what she was doing so when she dissolved the session at the end normally although we think of Elizabeth as a great orator who always gave her own speeches normally she would actually draft a speech in outline I feel like just give briefing notes and send in the Lord Keeper old Lord Chancellor in this case Nicholas Bacon to give the speech and that's exactly what she does here except this she keeps back I love to think that the foals were already there and she just pulled it out of her pockets and yes ladies and gentlemen costume the costume of costume history that Elizabethan formal dress did actually have pockets inside I love to think that she pulled this out and at the very end after the speech she got up and made a supplementary and this was her speech and in that she said it would have been much better if this if all of this activity had had its original from a prince's consideration not from the laboured erasions out of such jangling subjects mouths and by the jangling subjects she meant her own chief minister she was absolutely livid not only had Cecil been trying to marry to the Archduke he had a plan B he had been basically plotting he had been researching the claim of Catherine Grey Jane Grey's next sister and the logical heir under Edward VI's device for the succession and possibly also Henry VIII's will behind Elizabeth's back even sending Robert Beal the man who later carried the execution warrant from Mary Queen of Scots to Fatheringay around Europe seeking opinions on the lawfulness of this just as of course as Cranmer had canvassed Henry's divorce in 1530 and 1531 now Mary does incredibly well for the first really for the first five years of her reign the problem comes when she marries Donnelly and Donnelly upsets the political equilibrium in Scotland Mary's half-brother James Stewart, Earl of Murray he rebels he can't take Donnelly he doesn't like Donnelly he doesn't want to be subordinate to Donnelly who thinks he's king he leads a rebellion and Mary proves herself to be the warrior queen she gets on her horse she puts on a steel helmet she puts a pistol in her holster it's all described by Randolph in his dispatches and she leads her army and Murray is driven out of the kingdom but from this point onwards she's up against it by men who essentially either don't want to be ruled by a woman or they can't stomach Donnelly because the next thing that happens of course is that Donnelly in an attempt to unsettle Mary but also he allies essentially with those Scottish lords who want to get Murray back who's fled into exile in England and the way they think they're going to do this is that David Ritcio of whom they become jealous and jealous of his relationship or his regular contact with Mary I mean there's nothing whatever in the story that Mary and Ritcio were having some sort of affair on the contrary actually Donnelly who was actually bisexual and Ritcio were probably the ones who were actually caught red-handed in bed together and so Mary's secretary is killed in her presence in her presence he's stabbed multiple times by the conspirators and in the course of that event one of the sort of lesser Scottish lords called Andrew Carr of Fordensides he's the one that points a loaded pistol at Mary's pregnant stomach and it has her absolutely in terror of her life. Mary recovers from that she rebuilds she woos Donnelly back which of course means that because Donnelly's signed a bond with all of these other people he renais now there after Donnelly she in the middle of all this her baby is born James is born in Edinburgh castle she is afraid she does it right inside the castle where you can still see the room where it's all very very well defended there's also a moment because of this she is after the after the birth she is extremely unwell and at the point of death probably from she probably had a gastric ulcer and this gastric ulcer probably burst at around this moment and she made her will the first of her wills and in that will she committed her son James to bring up and look after and there was a new round of diplomacy about which we don't know very much because the documents probably disappeared in the Cotonian library fire in 1732 but there is this letter from Mary to the English Privy Council expressing thanks for the good offers just received from our good sister in November 1566 Elizabeth is so prone now to make some sort of settlement with Mary she sends an ambassador to James' christening she sends a font which weighs 333 ounces which I think is 21 pounds of solid gold and she opens up negotiations again and Robert Melville and not James this time but Robert Melville his brother goes as Mary's ambassador and what these offers are are to be a new treaty of inviolable amity in which queen to queen woman to woman they settle their differences and the future of England and Scotland and I know about that because very fortunately Bishop Keith who wrote a history of Scotland I mean essentially in the late 18th early 19th centuries he had a copyist no one then took their own notes they sent a copyist in to do it he had a copyist who had access to the Cotonian manuscripts before the fire of 1732 and the notes are in the National Library of Scotland and that's how I know about this so that's another crucial moment when if you like we're not really yet ready to talk about reconciliation because the falling out is not yet so great but this is a moment when there could have been some definite settlement in which Cecil sort of got squeezed to the side but no no the next thing of course is that Darnley has now made so many enemies in Scotland and he's plotting to go abroad and to take Prince James with him he's plotting to have Mary basically ousted the Scottish lords get fed up with him and he's murdered rather famously or infamously at Kirkafield in the first British gun powder plot at two o'clock in the morning on the 10th of February 1567 that's a narrative history painting in which the whole story is told on the one sheet it's rather like the narrative history paintings in the, what does it say, marvellous in the Great Council Chamber in the Palazzo Ducali in Venice so you can see the whole saga here that was the house where Darnley was lodging that night it's destroyed and an explosion he clearly heard rattling of keys or some sort of intruders he and his his valet William Taylor they left the building they climbed out using a rope that's the rope meant to be and a chair which was the standard method of escaping from a fire in 16th century Scotland ropes and chairs that was the way to do it that's Darnley's police they got down into the alley just behind the property which was called Thieves Row and they went into a nearby garden where they were strangled by these people here on horseback the leader of whom was none other than Andrew Carr of Ford inside so there you go that was how that happened there was not a mark on Darnley's body but Darnley is dead and of course this causes an absolute ruction in Scotland and Mary now is I mean there's only so much you can take you can take a rebellion your secretary's murdered in front of your eyes and a loaded revolver pointed at your your pregnant stomach and then Darnley is murdered Step forward James Hepburn Earl of Bothwell who is the only nobleman in Scotland and he's an important nobleman because he's one of only two solvent noblemans in Scotland he's one of only two nobleman who were able to raise an army off their own bat and he steps forward as Mary's protector which is okay that's what happens in Scotland that is what happened when James IV was killed and Margaret the Earl of Angus became Margaret Tudor's protector and then he insisted on marrying her that's what happens and this happened again but then he demanded the price of protection and whether or not he certainly abducts her on the way back from Stirling at Arman Bridge as she just comes into Edinburgh Arman Bridge is basically just next to where Edinburgh airport is today he abducts her he takes her to Dunbar castle a lot of historians think that he raped her I don't think he raped her or if he did I think she would never have married him because she valued her honour above her life but I do think this was a man for whom psychological coercion was second nature and three days later she had agreed to marry him she was boxed into a corner she later says how highly offended she is with his use of force to have us in his power but then goes on very interesting to say this realm being divided in factions as it is cannot be contained in order unless our authority be assisted and set forth by the fortification of a man of course Bothwell then falls out with everybody else because he wants to be king and none of the nobles want that and so Mary and Bothwell are cornered at Carbury hill up here it was a bad day for them because at Carbury hill is just near Inveresque which is just near Musselborough just outside Edinburgh they went up on the high ground the confederate lords the Protestant lords with their forces were down here it was a very long hot day that was the stand off they had water they had not got water with them but somebody did turn up with a large barrel of wine at which point that was it the troops got dehydrated and a little bit tipsy and that was the end of the day so Mary comes down on her pony in a borrowed dress with Mary Seton one of her four Marys next to her they agree a settlement and she will be given an honourable safe conduct security and so on in fact what they do is they take her and lock her up and lock leave and castle they imprison her and force her to abdicate Elizabeth is horrified to force an anointed queen to abdicate is worse than whoever killed Lord Darnley she sends Throtmorton back up to Scotland get her out get her restored absolutely to her former position Cecil sends Throtmorton with different instructions keep her in Scotland is to be ruled by a council of 24 nobles all of this stuff she used to have no power no money and at the end of the memo I have to say my heart lept when I saw that in the archives when I first stumbled across it that document was not unknown but nobody had got their heads around that Othalia for Reg Othalia interremptor per Joesh Regan Othalia was assassinated so that Joesh could be king it comes from the second book of chronicles their bible had four books of kings we have two books of kings and two books of chronicles you look it up it's spot on and it's the very same quote that Nox used in the first blast of the trumpet and of course now I can tell you that in the end of the sixth reign Nox and Cecil had been great chums they were on the same wavelength that's how you position Cecil in the order of the order of things Mary escapes from Langside she loses, escapes from not leaving she raises a force she loses thanks to very bad luck the battle of Langside she flees to England she writes an appeal to Elizabeth her hope and expectation was that Elizabeth would come to meet her you're very faithful and affectionate good sister and cousin and escape prisoner and Elizabeth seriously considers going she's just about to make a decision but Cecil's already got Mary locked up in Carlisle Castle and then events take on their own momentum let's see if we can get the next one Mary's flight to England precipitated a crisis in England Cecil writes the memo setting out the options one is a if you like a conference into whether Mary should be restored to her throne by a conference they meant Elizabeth was to act as a so-called impartial empire who would adjudicate between the rebel lords in Scotland and Mary and basically decide who was right and by then of course Mary had discovered the so-called casket letters the so-called incriminated letters that purportedly showed that Mary was having an affair with Bothwell while Donnelly was alive and had connived in Donnelly's murder and this is too big a subject for tonight but if you if you read my book and I was able to show that these letters all of these letters are based on if you like parts of genuine originals by Mary but with catastrophic interpolations or changes of date and place to make them looking incriminating when Elizabeth finally saw them she realized that something was fishy here but didn't know quite what it was and so there was a conference Elizabeth adjourned it and everyone was sworn to Cecil and everyone was sworn to secrecy so it was as if nothing had happened the other option was that Mary might be married off and returned to Scotland perhaps to rule conjointly with her son and a plan was devised by Mary's supporters with Leicester of course also prominent in this idea to marry Mary to the Duke of Norfolk that was a really respectable idea it was actually rather a good idea he was a reasonably trusted ostensibly Protestant nobleman he did have Catholic sympathies but so many did in Elizabeth in England he was quite taken by the idea but no one told Elizabeth even though she had previously actually suggested Norfolk as a possible husband for Mary when she proposed Leicester as Robert Dudley as a candidate for Mary's hand so Elizabeth that's it, it's off everyone made their peace with Elizabeth except the dukes of the earls of Northumberland and Westberland who were sort of the ones at the party when the music stopped who had no chairs they bring about the northern rising they feel they have no choice they're not imprisoned or whatever and their estate's confiscated the northern rising in turn leads to this rather elaborate first plot of the rain involving Spain the pope Mary's relatives in France Mary has got some wind of it but doesn't expressly connive it in so many words Cecil's response is simply to publish the casket letters in phony Scots with a a little bit of a treatise at the front which is said to be by George Buchanan and never was his chum Thomas Wilson his old chum from St John's College Cambridge ffaked it up in phony Scots you cannot believe this stuff and it was given in brown envelopes to members of the commons going into the 1572 parliament who quote from it his short friends quote from it and of course the point of this is to get Mary into this is the first genuine sexed up dossier Mary is this it's all sex violence murder and adultery conspiracy and it had a great mileage the Victorians believed this stuff this is one reason why Mary has had such a terrible terrible press Mary now in prison she's in prison for almost 19 years she appeals for a reconciliation 1571 Sheffield I am your cousin the nearest you have in the world if it please you think what you would do in my place that's a great line as is if it does not please you to have regard for me you can have my life but not my heart that's our Mary you know my heart is my own she used that expression a couple of couple of times Elizabeth didn't reply another 11 years Mary writes again a 10 page letter her so-called day profundis or perpetual testimony she's been seriously ill again she thinks she's going to die let this letter serve for perpetual testimony and engraving upon your conscience let me have the satisfaction before I die of seeing all matters happily settled between us believe madam I shall not live long so there cannot remain to you any foundation for jealousy trust on my account Mary ends with a renewed appeal for a good amity and a perfect intelligence between these two realms that's been her line really since the beginning of the story nothing happens until 1584 1583 the Throckmorton plot which is really a plot by Mary's Catholic relatives the Geese family in France who've come into a ton of money in the heartland of Lorraine and are in a position to fund an invasion fleet from the channel ports to come in and do a sort of view like an early Armada but a French Armada now Mary's Elizabeth steps back and this is one of the great stars of the exhibition I wrote about this in the telegraph last Tuesday at some considerable length because this turned up in a cache of documents not seen since 1762 when if I'm allowed to speak very freely they had been clearly which is very delicately in the catalogue that the early provenance remains very obscure which basically means they'd been nicked probably during the house move ripped out so roughly that the original binding thread, sewing thread was still hanging to the pages the pages the pages ripped out but Elizabeth now thinking that she might actually have to do something and even put Mary on trial to sign a death warrant steps back she wants a reconciliation she wants to settle this and she writes this letter for she herself knoweth how great contentment and liking we had for a time of her friendship which as we then esteemed as a singular and extraordinary blessing of God to have one so nearly tied onto us in blood and neighbourhood so greatly affected towards us as we then conceived so are we now as much grieved to behold an interruption thereof it wasn't all plain sailing because Elizabeth referred back rather textually to this reference which is really two years before please remove the jealousy or mistrust there's no reason for you now to harbour any jealousy or mistrust on my account and Elizabeth rather frosty about that and did answer it and said there was the only jealousy and mistrust was caused by Mary's own actions and not by anything that Elizabeth had done but she ends the letter by saying Mary should send one of her secretaries to acquaint us with such matter as she shall meet by him to impart to us if she wants a settlement send your secretary she sends actually Claude nor her confidential secretary he was to bring with him such proposal as might work upon good ground a thorough reconciliation between us oh wow the possibilities there are endless was there really going to be was she really right in you know I mean in Mary Stuart was Donizetti right in Marina Stimarda you know was Josie wrthright and Bo Willerman in the one one of the very rare excursions into fiction in the 2018 Hollywood in the Hollywood film this is now on long loan along with all 43 items from the cash to the British Library which is absolute coup for the library and five of the absolute stars of this cash are actually in the exhibition but of course you can follow it up because Claude I always knew about this but I wise Claude nor sending these proposals now we know that Elizabeth had invited them it's the missing piece of the jigsaw and Elizabeth had invited them he'd gone to see her he'd taken the proposals she withdrew for a month in conditions of absolute secrecy ministers shewed away the central ideas of the proposal she's basically she's the white flag it's surrender she recognises Elizabeth as lawful queen will not claim the English succession drawing Elizabeth's life will not support Elizabeth's rebels will not enter into a treaty with foreign rulers against England on returning to Scotland will continue to defend the religious status quo will give past opponents an amlesty Elizabeth to have a vita on James's marriage James to join with Mary in this treaty Elizabeth was taken by this what went wrong but it wasn't Mary and it wasn't Elizabeth, it was James he's now 18 he doesn't want Elizabeth to fix his marriage he certainly doesn't want to be a joint sovereign in Scotland with Mary he writes to Mary and says I'll always honour you with the title of queen mother but forget coming back here as queen you know it's too bad it's gone the moment's passed from that moment that explains why with the babbington plot in 1586 this is the first moment that Mary unguardedly dangerously involves herself in conspiracy up to that point she's never endorsed a conspiracy specifically by letter and that's what she does but unfortunately Walsingham Elizabeth's spy master trained by Cecil who's really the first spy master and Walsingham is his successor Walsingham catches her out this is a very famous very famous story she's put on trial she is condemned but it needs Elizabeth to sign the death warrant Cecil does get her to sign the warrant on the 1st of February but she back tracks he's had the warrant by the way in his pocket for the best part of two, three weeks he gets her to sign it by telling her that the Spanish Armadas landed a year early in Wales that's how he does it this gets lost to history but that's how these politics went but despite signing the death warrant Elizabeth backtrack she didn't want to be responsible for Mary's death because for one sovereign to order the execution of another in writing with her own hand was to attenuate the ideal of monarchy divine right monarchy could not be attenuated in that way and of course if you if you hadn't executed Mary Queen of Scotch it would have probably been much more difficult to execute Charles I in 1649 so she back tracks she is willing she instructs Walsingham to write to Amias Paulet the last jailer of Mary she says why don't you Walsingham tell Paulet to do away with Mary quietly and of course Walsingham's appalled and Paulet won't do it because he knows he'll get the blame Elizabeth's walking away much much later my time is running out so I need to bring it to an end but much later Robert Cecil Cecil's son in the 1590s writes a memo by the side of the letter which she's been ordered to write by Elizabeth saying the Queen will have her ministers do what she will disavow and Elizabeth had learnt this trick because of Wyatt's Rebellion you don't get caught out first hand it's a possibility for anything you're the cavity, you're the cat that's never there but nobody will do it so in response Cecil just convenes selected privilege councillors clandestinely they agree to send the warrant to fathering gay regardless the proceedings were to be kept very secret Elizabeth was to know nothing until Mary was dead and they all sign it it's almost like a covenant they sign it and send it to the Earl of Kent who's one of the commissioners for Mary's execution they send another one to the Earl of Shrewsbury but that doesn't survive that's another jewel another Sotheby's discovery but not from this cash it was from an earlier cash I think that's sold about something like 1997 so there it happens that's the end and of course now Elizabeth sinks into a deep despair because she has done or she is to be held accountable for the thing that she regards as regicide whatever Mary has done it's her armada of the soul there's a whole area of activity associated with the fallout because in that fallout Cecil gets his comeuppance for the very first time and he knows that he will never cross Elizabeth again and she never speaks to Walsingham again directly and she won't even go to his funeral or acknowledge anything when Walsingham dies but that's another story and it's for another occasion thank you very much well thank you John for a wonderful paper we've got about 10 minutes for questions does anyone in the audience have a question for John a microphone we brought down to you then so if you just wait till the microphone comes down Professor Guy first of all thank you very much for a fascinating and entertaining as well as a very informative lecture you mentioned that Elizabeth made one crucial mistake is there something on Mary's side as well where you'd say she made one crucial mistake absolutely you could argue that her choice of husbands wasn't great but in every case you could see why she did it at the time they all seemed perfectly reasonable and she never intended to marry Bothwell of course he pushed her into it but her biggest mistake was to flee after Langside because she had not lost support in Scotland she had the misfortune to lose one battle because her commander actually had the equivalent of a sort of minor stroke just as it was beginning but she had support and even people who had opposed her even people like Maitland of Lethington who had been involved in Ritseo's murder had been involved in Donnelly's murder there were people who formed the backbone of a Queen's party and if she had stayed in Scotland she might well have got it back Scottish politics are very turbulent and it's like a kaleidoscope and if she had somehow managed to just hang on in there people I think could have come and rallied round her the problem by fleeing to England was she completely miscalculated what would happen and the crisis that it would cause in England even though Elizabeth did a diamond ring which Elizabeth had sent to her in 1562 one of those gifts that I mentioned in the hope that Elizabeth would be activated and Elizabeth was moved when woman to woman this is the tragedy this is the tragedy Thank you. How much did Elizabeth know of Berlin's maneuvers and why did she let herself be manipulated so much? Well I think the thing is that she and Cecil go back to 1548 and Cecil he's on her side he's probably all she's got in the sense that there are the alternative a man as clever as Cecil who would have coped just as well and did under James I of course Henry Howard but he's a sort of crypto Catholic and rather risky Elizabeth and Cecil have this it's not a romantic relationship like Elizabeth and Robert Dudley whom she makes her love Leicester but it is a close relationship and in those horrible years in Edward's reign and in Mary's reign Cecil had been protecting her and of course our sensitivities have changed Cecil's argument was the things that he did he did them to save Elizabeth from herself because she was far too generous to Mary in 15 just before the 1572 parliament he's in the British Library he wrote a long memo setting out all the things that Elizabeth's done wrong since the beginning of reign it's like she's done nothing wrong she doesn't create enough Protestant nobles she doesn't back the Protestant Reformation enough she's too generous to Mary Queen of Scots she needs to sort Mary Queen of Scots out she's just incredibly dangerous but we now think it's absolutely insufferable for a man to say to a woman that he has to save her from herself but of course then I suppose the mores and the culture were sort of slightly different but that was the attitude that he took she sorted him out Elizabeth sorted him out though after that warrant was sent boy did he never cross her again I mean much earlier he'd said to serve Your Majesty in anything that I cannot allow must be a non-profitable service and he said that if I'm caught between Alfred and Omega between God and the Queen I know which way I'm going to jump but later after this experience that he had which lasted six months she really went for him he said basically as advice to Robert Cecil serve God by serving the Queen because all other services bondage to the devil The Lady here Thank you very much You talked about Elizabeth's reluctance to have Mary not assassinated sorry, executed Could that have been influenced by her own feelings about her father's attitude to having lots of his wives executed also probably in the beginning I mean that's an interesting question and I mean a sort of reading into what you might have gone on to say next sort of have a supplementary when Mary the Catholic Mary Tudor put some Elizabeth in the tower she wrote this famous tide letter which is in the exhibition basically pleading that before she was condemned would Mary please give her an audience so she could basically be reconciled in person and Mary Tudor refused and of course Elizabeth didn't remember that when it came to Mary Queen of Scots I mean yes there was a proposal for reconciliation and she was very taken with this idea that Mary gave this total total surrender I'm not sure that I think that Elizabeth was certainly influenced by what had happened to her mother but I'm not sure you see the thing is that Elizabeth was by then after the Babington plot Elizabeth was not reluctant that Mary should be killed she wanted her assassinated by somebody else in the middle of the night like Richard II or Henry VI because she didn't carry the can for us this is a very sort of technical distinction but for her it was the difference between bearing responsibility for an event which attenuated the ideal of monarchy and basically her security and survival that was the sort of because then it was only one of them could really one of them could survive say to us it seems very artificial but to her it was very real and when James VI you've killed my mother Elizabeth writes back says well it was an unfortunate accident and she spends quite a while bit like I suppose I'm allowed to say this about Boris Johnson because before he does one of his U-turns she's pushing this unfortunate accident line and then basically reality sets in and Walsingham has to sort of step in and explain certainly to the French government how Mary had been so incredibly dangerous and Elizabeth's life was in peril and so this was really the only course that they could have taken but I actually do believe I'm not saying this directly because of course there isn't but Henry IV speech at the end of Richard II when he laments what's been done to Richard and sort of where he stands in conscience and how he stands with God that's exactly how Elizabeth was Elizabeth believed this was an unbearable blot on her conscience that she had signed this warrant and it had gone and Mary had been killed in that way and I say when I when I wrote about this a little bit in Elizabeth had forgotten me years in 2016 by which time I'd had a preview of the the letter from the Sotheby's cash but of course I hadn't actually got a copy of it because then it was in private hands it's only been possible to get a photograph or an image of it or to transcribe it since the thing has come to the British Library on loan but I say there that this was Elizabeth's armada of the soul and I absolutely believe it was Would you mind if I asked you a very brief frivolous question earlier on you talked about when Mary had her baby I've read that in the French court there were very strong rumours that that child was David Ritcio's son and now when you look at him pictured of him he does look Italian I have to say But the thing about this is that that was what Darnley was telling the French Darnley was negotiated with the French and with the Catholic powers with a view basically to becoming if Mary wouldn't sort of settle with him and make him king to become king of Scotland in exile and take James with him as a sort of hostage I mean Darnley was absolutely incredibly dangerous and if you're going to I mean somebody is going to ask me was Mary involved in in Mary's in Darnley's death no I absolutely don't think that she was I think she was absolutely stunned by what happened at Kirkafield but Mary was quite a realist when she went to fetch Darnley from Glasgow to bring him back to Edinburgh a treatment for syphilis she wanted to take him to Craig Craig Miller Castle and keep him locked up for a very long time she didn't want to kill him any more than Henry II wanted Becket to be killed it was other people that did that work and Bothwell played an important part of that but Mary knew about it and Maitland of Leffington certainly knew about it and I mean they were all up to their necks in this there is a passage in one of the casket letters which talks about Craig Miller and think you think you what may happen when he's treated by a physic and so on they were going to give him his treatment for his syphilis at Craig Miller Castle but he was going to be kept locked up because that was the only thing that you could do to stop him in this endless plotting otherwise Scotland would just fall into the sort of chasm that briefly it did and when Donnelly chose to go to Kirkfield and not basically to Craig Miller he feared because the keeper of Craig Miller was Simon Preston who he knew to be hostile very much in Mary's pocket and he wanted to go to he chose to go to Kirkfield Mary did not as the casket that was falsely claimed did not take him to Craig Miller but no I mean Mary was look these queens were living in the 16th century you know Mary knew what had to be done in the end with Donnelly but not to kill him and Elizabeth wanted Mary dead but she didn't want to have the responsibility right at the end but she only wanted Mary dead right at the end I mean it's this idea that they were mortal enemies is incredibly late in the in the story Thank you very much for the lecture I noted down that you said that Elizabeth trying to control Mary's marriage through Robert Dudley was one of the biggest mistakes of her reign Do you think other than Howard there was a better nobleman she could have proposed a marriage to or do you think the whole idea of trying to control her marriage was wrong in itself You said about Elizabeth's marriage trying to marry Robert Dudley to Mary being one of the biggest mistakes of her reign Do you think that she should have proposed Howard or was there a better option or in fact was the whole idea of trying to control the marriage trying to control the marriage in itself The idea of marrying Robert Dudley was that he would be totally safe he'd do whatever Elizabeth wanted him to do Dudley was the only man that Elizabeth ever really loved but I've been in this game for 40 years now and you can't go to one document or one source and say this proves that Elizabeth was determined never to marry but when you add it all up and read through her weasel words to parliament about how she'll marry at the right time and when she finds the right bloke and all the rest of it I mean she did say right at the beginning of the reign let it be that basically a marble slab proclaims that this queen reigned for so long so many years of virgin and Robert Dudley who did know tells the the secretary of the French ambassador I think something that in the early 1560s they're having a glass of wine late in the evening and chatting away and Dudley says I've known this woman since she was 8 which in itself is a really interesting statement I've known this woman since she was 8 and I know now that she never intends to marry and then he spoils it by adding unless perhaps she marries me but we think we think we think and I'm not the only one who thinks this Simon Adams in Edinburgh who's a very eminent Elizabethan historian thinks exactly the same that the last bit is really Dudley playing up just keeping that possibility open so he's seen as an important important person I think really and I mean you learn one of the great things about this subject all the subjects I've worked on is that you can learn something new every day and one of the things that I think I've learned as the years have gone by is that your adolescent experience is a really important part of shaping who you are and I really do think that what happened to Elizabeth with Thomas Seymour really messed her up in terms of how she could relate to men and she says when she's talking to Macleon of Leffington who's the Scottish Cecil Mary's Secretary of State Macleon comes down to England during the East Anglican Progress of 1561 to talk to to basically reiterate Mary's offer to Cecil et al and recognise Elizabeth as Queen in return get the nomination as heir apparent he keeps diary again of what was said and he says that's when Elizabeth says basically princes have to fear their own children think I should love my own winding sheet and she talks about the infinite cupidity of men and how basically it was all it was all faction and conspiracy in her brother and sister's reign and you know if you name your successor in those circumstances everybody's plotting to basically see who's the next one and then if you're on the throne they're still plotting to see who the next one is and ladies and gentlemen let me tell you Dudley Robert Dudley whom she makes Earl of Leicester you do realise that right through Mary's captivity he's sort of writing to her and when she goes to Buxton when she's a chef and goes to Buxton to take the waters for her rheumatism he nips up and there's a little chat with her he's keeping in with her she might be the next one she might be the next one you never know dynastic politics can go anywhere Any more questions for John? Thank you very much for your lecture I was just wondering when Elizabeth names James Mary's son as her successor apart from it being perhaps a politically savvy decision to secure the succession would you perhaps emotionally think that it's one final act of reconciliation between her and Mary Queen of Scots? Did you get that? Elizabeth names James her successor Elizabeth names James her successor is that an act of reconciliation? Elizabeth James Elizabeth names Elizabeth names James Yes, it's an act of reconciliation between the two You mean to read If you were to read My Elizabeth Forgotten Years I had absolutely spectacular fine right at the very end because I got hold of the French ambassador I think his name was de Beaumont's Dispatches at the time of Elizabeth's death and he's absolutely emphatic about this there is no way that Elizabeth by word or gesture named James as her successor she couldn't stand James for a whole variety of reasons which I explained in that book they were really not least that he was politicking all with the Catholic powers he was seen as a credible successor by Catholic powers and his wife Anne of Denmark converted to Catholicism and Elizabeth was very suspect about all of this but actually what de Beaumont says is that the story that she recognised James by this gesture was put about by Robert Cecil and the man who became the Earl of Northampton Henry Howard something like nine or ten days after Elizabeth's death and that was the first that anybody ever heard of it and another thing by way of if you like sort of oblique corroboration when Robert Carey rode to James to tell him that Elizabeth was dead and gave him the ring and so on and got him up at night and told him this news but we don't have a report of what exactly he said but James very conveniently for us tells us exactly the next day what he said by reporting it to somebody else and he does not mention that Elizabeth had recognised him by word or gesture this is all part of the making of the new regime under James where Robert Cecil and Henry Howard become absolutely the central pillars of the first ten years of James's reign and getting in with James and of course also they need to preserve a bit of harmony and stability because James doesn't just go to Edinburgh airport and get on the first plane down to Heathrow he wonders sort of enjoying himself through his kingdom for something like what ten days, two weeks coming down to London and this is regime change and it's going to be very dangerous and there are plots so there are possibly reasons why they did it most of them totally self-interested I don't think the men in this story come out terribly well actually at any point Time's getting on but is there one last question for John or should we Lady at the back in black with a quick question Hi, thank you That was fantastic When you're talking about the recent Sotheby's finds that have come up and have completely added new light to this narrative are there any other papers or documents that might be out there you might have heard of them through other sources that you think could really add more to the narrative or do you think there would be some out there that would change you know change everything Do you know of any other documents that have come to light that would add to this story recent documents, recent finds Or no things that haven't been found Who knows what's going to turn up I predicted that Elizabeth had to have written a letter like the one that's turned up Lisa Jardine once did the same thing with one of her subjects I knew somewhere that was going to be psychologically it has to be there I have to say that saying that psychologically it has to be there that historians don't like to hear other historians talking about because it shows that I've sort of gone over to writing biography rather than what some of them would call proper history but of course this is the great period particularly that the post 1550 part of the 16th century when the archives absolutely explode absolutely explode and you can't you probably can't read it all all of it if you work through the state papers of Henry VIII and came here and worked through the relevant cotton manuscripts you could probably read the lot in about 20 years I doubt that you could read the papers even for this subject not all of them in every detail in a lifetime in a career lifetime and look I mean I thought I'd slog my guts out writing this Mary Book and yet I overlooked the Nor proposals because I didn't know where they'd come from just one more lot of proposals what are they for it's when you get that missing piece of the jigsaw so that's what you want who knows what could turn up that's what's great about and that's why if we sort of end this on the exhibition what's great about this exhibition got 150 exhibits absolutely fabulous but what it is is it's a new beginning it's not if you like the culmination of what's happened this is now to see these papers put together in this way in which these two queens are seen on their own terms and are judged on their own terms and without if you like gender bias or the misogyny of male Victorian historians or all this propaganda put out by Cecil and his jums which we've now learned to see see through the extent of cross-border collusion this is a new beginning and for anybody who's just getting started doing a PhD or whatever there is still a whole lot of wealth of material here to really get your teeth into there's an embarrassment of Richies for the 16th century it's an embarrassment of Richies he suffered when I was his supervisor it was very very thoroughly trained by John I'd like to thank you all for being our audience on site here in the Knowledge Centre of the British Library and to thank you for being our audience online we've got an exciting range of programmes and events coming up this autumn especially linked to the exhibition and we'd love to welcome you back for more lectures, conversations and performances please keep an eye out on our what's on page on the website and for more information on the best events on the British Library player the very last thing I'd like to do is to thank John Guy for an informative and a wonderful talk on Elizabeth and Mary so please join me in thanking John see you again John