July 29, 1565: Mary I, Queen of Scots marries Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, Duke of Albany

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Crown Matrimonial, David Rizzo, Earl of Lennox, François II of France, Henry Stuart, James VI of Scotland, Lord Darnley, Mary I of Scotland, Mary Queen of Scots

Queen Mary I of Scotland was born on December 8, 1542 at Linlithgow Palace, Scotland, to King James V and his French second wife, Marie of Guise. She was said to have been born prematurely and was the only legitimate child of James to survive him.

She was the great-niece of King Henry VIII of England, as her paternal grandmother, Margaret Tudor, was Henry VIII’s older sister. On December 14, six days after her birth, she became Queen of Scotland when her father died, following the Battle of Solway Moss from drinking contaminated water while on campaign.

In 1548, she was betrothed to François, the Dauphin of France, and was sent to be brought up in France, where she would be safe from invading English forces during the Rough Wooing.

Mary married François in 1558, becoming queen consort of France from his accession in 1559 until his death in December 1560. Widowed, Mary returned to Scotland in August 1561. Following the Scottish Reformation, the tense religious and political climate that Mary encountered on her return to Scotland was further agitated by prominent Scots such as John Knox, who openly questioned whether her subjects had a duty to obey her.

Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley (1546 – 10 February 1567), was an English nobleman.

He was the second but eldest surviving son of Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, by his wife Lady Margaret Douglas which supported her claim to the English succession. Darnley’s maternal grandparents were Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, and Queen Margaret, daughter of King Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York. Queen Margaret was the widow of King James IV of Scotland.

Through his parents, he had claims to both the Scottish and English thrones, and from his marriage in 1565 he was king consort of Scotland. Less than a year after the birth of his son, Darnley was murdered at Kirk o’ Field in 1567. Many contemporary narratives describing his life and death refer to him as Lord Darnley, his title as heir apparent to the Earldom of Lennox, and it is by this appellation that he is known in history.

February 3, 1565, Darnley left London and by February 12, he was in Edinburgh. On February 17, he presented himself to Mary at Wemyss Castle in Fife. James Melville of Halhill reported that “Her Majesty took well with him, and said that he was the lustiest and best proportioned long man that she had seen.”

After a brief visit to his father at Dunkeld, Darnley returned with Mary and the court to Holyrood on February 24. The next day, he heard John Knox preach, and he danced a galliard with Mary at night. From then on, he was constantly in Mary’s company.

Darnley was his wife’s half-first cousin through two different marriages of their grandmother, Margaret Tudor, putting both Mary and Darnley high in the line of succession for the English throne. Darnley was also a descendant of a daughter of James II of Scotland, and so also in line for the throne of Scotland.

As a preliminary to the marriage, Darnley was made Lord of Ardmanoch and Earl of Ross at Stirling Castle on May 15, 1565. An entourage of 15 men were made knights, including one of Mary’s half brothers, Robert Stewart of Strathdon, Robert Drummond of Carnock, James Stewart of Doune Castle, and William Murray of Tullibardine. In England, a concerned Privy council debated the perils of the intended marriage on June 4, 1565.

One of their resolutions was to relax the displeasure shown to Lady Catherine Grey, another rival to Mary Stuart for the English throne. Mary sent John Hay, Commendator of Balmerino, to speak to Elizabeth; Elizabeth demanded Darnley’s return, and gave John Hay plainly to understand her small satisfaction.

On July 22, Darnley was made Duke of Albany in Holyrood Abbey, and the banns of marriage were called in the parish of Canongate. A proclamation was made at the Cross of Edinburgh on 28 July that government would be in the joint names of the king and queen of Scots, thus giving Darnley equality with, and precedence over, Mary. This was confirmed in the circulation of a silver ryal in the names of Henry and Mary.

On July 29, 1565, the marriage took place by Roman Catholic rites in Mary’s private chapel at Holyrood, but Darnley (whose religious beliefs were unfixed – he was raised as a Catholic, but was later influenced by Protestantism) refused to accompany Mary to the nuptial Mass after the wedding itself.

Soon after Mary married Darnley, she became aware of his vain, arrogant and unreliable qualities, which threatened the wellbeing of the state. Darnley was unpopular with the other nobles and had a violent streak, aggravated by his drinking. Henry also demanded the Crown Matrimonial. In Scots law, the Crown Matrimonial is a person’s right to co-reign equally with his or her spouse. Mary refused to grant Darnley the Crown Matrimonial.

The Crown Matrimonial of Scotland was sought by King François II of France, husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, by the Parliament of Scotland and Mary’s mother, Marie of Guise, who was regent of Scotland. It would make King François II of France legal co-sovereign of Scotland with Queen Mary, and would also grant François II the right to keep the Scottish throne if he outlived her.

By the terms of the offer, he would be able to pass the Scottish crown to his descendants by a wife other than Mary. The Crown of Scotland was to be sent to France, where it was supposed to be kept at the Abbey of Saint Denis. However, the offer was never realised, as the Hamilton family, who were close to the throne, joined the Protestants and opposed it.

The Protestant peers promised to make Henry sovereign by the consent of Parliament. They agreed that Henry, as the new sovereign, would pardon all the exiled Protestants and allow them to return to Scotland. However, the plan was never realised.

By August 1565, less than a month after the marriage, William Cecil heard that Darnley’s insolence had driven Lennox from the Scottish court. Mary soon became pregnant.

Mary’s private secretary, David Rizzio, was stabbed 56 times on March 9, 1566 by Darnley and his confederates, Protestant Scottish nobles, in the presence of the queen, who was six months pregnant. According to English diplomats Thomas Randolph and the Earl of Bedford, the murder of Rizzio (who was rumoured to be the father of Mary’s unborn child) was part of Darnley’s bid to force Mary to cede the Crown Matrimonial. Darnley also made a bargain with his allies to advance his claim to the Crown Matrimonial in the Parliament of Scotland in return for restoring their lands and titles.

June 16, 1586: Mary I, Queen of Scots names King Felipe II of Spain as hier and successor

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Elizabeth I of England, Felipe II of Spain, Henry VIII of England, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, jure uxoris, Mary I of England, Mary I of Scotland, Spanish Armada, Spanish Empire

Felipe II (May 21, 1527 – September 13, 1598) was the son of Emperor Charles V and Isabella of Portugal. Felipe II inherited his father’s Spanish Empire and was the King of Spain from 1556, and succeeded as King of Portugal in 1580 following a dynastic crisis. Felipe II was King of Naples and Sicily from 1554 until his death in 1598.

Felipe II was also jure uxoris King of England and Ireland during his marriage to Queen Mary I of England and Ireland from 1554 until her death in 1558. He was also Duke of Milan from 1540. From 1555, he was Lord of the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands.Upon Mary I of England’s death, the throne went to her half-sister as Queen Elizabeth I. Felipe had no wish to sever his tie with England, and had sent a proposal of marriage to Elizabeth.

However, she delayed in answering, and in that time learned Felipe was also considering a Valois alliance. Elizabeth I was the Protestant daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

This union was deemed illegitimate by English Catholics, who disputed the validity of both the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon and of his subsequent marriage to Boleyn, and hence claimed that Mary I, Queen of Scots, the Catholic great-granddaughter of Henry VII, was the rightful monarch.For many years Felipe maintained peace with England, and even defended Elizabeth from the Pope’s threat of excommunication.

This was a measure taken to preserve a European balance of power.Ultimately, Elizabeth allied England with the Protestant rebels in the Netherlands. Further, English ships began a policy of piracy against Spanish trade and threatened to plunder the great Spanish treasure ships coming from the New World.

English ships went so far as to attack a Spanish port. The last straw for Felipe was the Treaty of Nonsuch signed by Elizabeth in 1585 – promising troops and supplies to the rebels. Although it can be argued this English action was the result of Felipe’s Treaty of Joinville with the Catholic League of France, Felipe considered it an act of war by England.

On June 16, 1586 Mary I, Queen of Scots, recognizes Felipe II of Spain as her heir and successor to her English claim to the throne. Selecting Felipe II of Spain as heir Mary’s English throne was a move to return both England Catholic Churc. as Mary’s son, King James VI of Scotland, had been raised as a Protestant and was ruling that Kingdom.

However, the execution of Mary I, Queen of Scots for treason against Elizabeth I, in 1587 ended Felipe’s hopes of placing a Catholic on the English throne. He turned instead to more direct plans to invade England and return the country to Catholicism.In 1588, he sent a fleet, the Spanish Armada, to rendezvous with the Duke of Parma’s army and convey it across the English Channel.

However, the operation had little chance of success from the beginning, because of lengthy delays, lack of communication between Felipe II and his two commanders and the lack of a deep bay for the fleet.

At the point of attack, a storm struck the English Channel, already known for its harsh currents and choppy waters, which devastated large numbers of the Spanish fleet. There was a tightly fought battle against the English Royal Navy; it was by no means a slaughter (only one Spanish ship was sunk), but the Spanish were forced into a retreat, and the overwhelming majority of the Armada was destroyed by the harsh weather.

Whilst the English Royal Navy may not have destroyed the Armada at the Battle of Gravelines, they had prevented it from linking up with the army it was supposed to convey across the channel. Thus whilst the English Royal Navy may have only won a slight tactical victory over the Spanish, it had delivered a major strategic one—preventing the invasion of England.Through a week of fighting the Spanish had expended 100,000 cannonballs, but no English ship was seriously damaged.

However, over 7,000 English sailors died from disease during the time the Armada was in English waters.The defeat of the Spanish Armada gave great heart to the Protestant cause across Europe.

The storm that smashed the Armada was seen by many of Felipe’s enemies as a sign of the will of God. Many Spaniards blamed the admiral of the Armada for its failure, but Felipe, despite his complaint that he had sent his ships to fight the English, not the elements, was not among them.

March 24, 1603: Death of Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland

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Anne Boleyn, Elizabethan Era, Henry VIII of England and Ireland, House of Tudor, James VI of Scotland, Mary I of Scotland, Pope Pius V, Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland, Regnans in Excelsis, Robert Cecil

Elizabeth I (September 7, 1533 – March 24, 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from November 17, 1558 until her death in 1603. Sometimes referred to as the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth was the last of the five monarchs of the House of Tudor.

Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife, who was executed when Elizabeth was 2 and a half years old. Anne’s marriage to Henry was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Her half-brother Edward VI ruled until his death in 1553, bequeathing the crown to Lady Jane Grey and ignoring the claims of his two half-sisters, the Roman Catholic Mary and the younger Elizabeth, in spite of statute law to the contrary.

Edward’s will was set aside mostly because it never had Parliamentary approval and Mary became queen, deposing Lady Jane Grey. During Mary’s reign, Elizabeth was imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels.

Upon her half-sister’s death in 1558, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne and set out to rule by good counsel. She depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers led by William Cecil, whom much later she created 1st Baron Burghley.

One of her first actions as queen was the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the supreme governor. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement was to evolve into the Church of England.

It was expected that Elizabeth would marry and produce an heir; however, despite numerous courtships, she never did. She was eventually succeeded by her first cousin twice removed, James VI of Scotland; this laid the foundation for the Kingdom of Great Britain. She had earlier been reluctantly responsible for the imprisonment and execution of James’s mother, Mary I, Queen of Scots.

In government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father and half-siblings had been. One of her mottoes was “video et taceo” (“I see and keep silent”). In religion, she was relatively tolerant and avoided systematic persecution.

By means of the papal bull of 1570, Regnans in Excelsis, Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth I of England for heresy and persecution of English Catholics during her reign. The Pope also released her subjects from obedience to her, several conspiracies threatened her life, all of which were defeated with the help of her ministers’ secret service, run by Francis Walsingham.

Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs, manoeuvring between the major powers of France and Spain. She only half-heartedly supported a number of ineffective, poorly resourced military campaigns in the Netherlands, France, and Ireland. By the mid-1580s, England could no longer avoid war with Spain.

As she grew older, Elizabeth became celebrated for her virginity. A cult of personality grew around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day. Elizabeth’s reign became known as the Elizabethan era.

The period is famous for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, and for the prowess of English maritime adventurers such as Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh.

Some historians depict Elizabeth as a short-tempered, sometimes indecisive ruler who enjoyed more than her fair share of luck. Towards the end of her reign, a series of economic and military problems weakened her popularity.

However, Elizabeth is acknowledged as a charismatic performer and a dogged survivor in an era when government was ramshackle and limited, and when monarchs in neighbouring countries faced internal problems that jeopardised their thrones. After the short reigns of her half-siblings, her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped to forge a sense of national identity.

Death

Elizabeth’s senior adviser, William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, died on August 4, 1598. His political mantle passed to his son, Robert Cecil, who soon became the leader of the government. One task he addressed was to prepare the way for a smooth succession. Since Elizabeth would never name her successor, Cecil was obliged to proceed in secret.

Robert Cecil therefore entered into a coded negotiation with James VI of Scotland, who had a strong but unrecognised claim. Cecil coached the impatient James to humour Elizabeth and “secure the heart of the highest, to whose sex and quality nothing is so improper as either needless expostulations or over much curiosity in her own actions”.

The advice worked. James’s tone delighted Elizabeth, who responded: “So trust I that you will not doubt but that your last letters are so acceptably taken as my thanks cannot be lacking for the same, but yield them to you in grateful sort”. In historian J. E. Neale’s view, Elizabeth may not have declared her wishes openly to James, but she made them known with “unmistakable if veiled phrases”.

The Queen’s health remained fair until the autumn of 1602, when a series of deaths among her friends plunged her into a severe depression. In February 1603, the death of Catherine Carey, Countess of Nottingham, the niece of her cousin and close friend Lady Knollys, came as a particular blow.

In March, Elizabeth fell sick and remained in a “settled and unremovable melancholy”, and sat motionless on a cushion for hours on end. When Robert Cecil told her that she must go to bed, she snapped: “Must is not a word to use to princes, little man.”

She died on March 24, 1603 at Richmond Palace, between two and three in the morning. A few hours later, Cecil and the council set their plans in motion and proclaimed James VI of Scotland as the new King of England and Ireland.

One interesting fact is that Queen Elizabeth I actually never lived to see the year 1603.

While it has become normative to record the death of the Queen as occurring in 1603, following English calendar reform in the 1750s, at the time England observed New Year’s Day on March 25, commonly known as Lady Day.

Thus Elizabeth died on the last day of the year 1602 in the old calendar. The modern convention is to use the old calendar for the date and month while using the new for the year.

February 8, 1587: Execution of Mary I, Queen of Scots

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Abdication, Execution, François II of France, James Bothwell, James VI of Scotland, Lord Darnley. Henry Stuart, Mary I of Scotland, Queen Elizabeth I of England, The Babington Plot

Mary I, Queen of Scots (December 8, 1542 – February 8, 1587), also known as Mary Stuart, was Queen of Scotland from 14 December 1542 until her forced abdication in 1567.

The only surviving legitimate child of James V of Scotland, Mary was six days old when her father died and she acceded to the throne. During her childhood, Scotland was governed by regents, first by the heir to the throne, James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, and then by her mother, Mary of Guise.

In 1548, she was betrothed to François, the Dauphin of France, and was sent to be brought up in France, where she would be safe from invading English forces during the Rough Wooing. Mary married François in 1558, becoming queen consort of France from his accession as King François II of France in 1559 until his death in December 1560.

Widowed, Mary returned to Scotland in August 1561. The early years of her personal rule were marked by pragmatism, tolerance, and moderation, with Mary retaining advisers such as James Stewart, Earl of Moray and William Maitland of Lethington.

Following the Scottish Reformation, the tense religious and political climate that Mary encountered on her return to Scotland was further agitated by prominent Scots such as John Knox, who openly questioned whether her subjects had a duty to obey her. Mary was tolerant in religious matters, issuing a proclamation accepting the religious settlement in Scotland as she had found it upon her return, and governing as the Catholic monarch of a Protestant kingdom.

Mary married her half-cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, in 1565, and in June 1566, they had a son, James. In February 1567, Darnley’s residence was destroyed by an explosion, and he was found murdered in the garden.

James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, was generally believed to have orchestrated Darnley’s death, but he was acquitted of the charge in April 1567, and the following month, he married Mary.

Following an uprising against the couple, Mary was imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle. On July 24, 1567, she was forced to abdicate in favour of her one-year-old son. After an unsuccessful attempt to regain the throne, she fled southward seeking the protection of her first cousin once removed, Elizabeth I of England.

Mary had once claimed Elizabeth’s throne as her own and was considered the legitimate sovereign of England by many English Catholics, including participants in a rebellion known as the Rising of the North. Perceiving Mary as a threat, Elizabeth had her confined in various castles and manor houses in the interior of England. After eighteen and a half years in captivity, Mary was found guilty of The Babington Plot, a plot to assassinate Elizabeth in 1586.

The Babington Plot was a plan in 1586 to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I, a Protestant, and put Mary I, Queen of Scots, her Roman Catholic cousin, on the English throne.

It led to Mary’s execution, a result of a letter sent by Mary (who had been imprisoned for 19 years since 1568 in England at the behest of Elizabeth) in which she consented to the assassination of Elizabeth.

The long-term goal of the plot was the invasion of England by the Spanish forces of King Felipe II and the Catholic League in France, leading to the restoration of the old religion. The plot was discovered by Elizabeth’s spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and used to entrap Mary for the purpose of removing her as a claimant to the English throne.

The chief conspirators were Anthony Babington and John Ballard. Babington, a young recusant, was recruited by Ballard, a Jesuit priest who hoped to rescue the Scottish Queen. Working for Walsingham were double agents Robert Poley and Gilbert Gifford, as well as Thomas Phelippes, a spy agent and cryptanalyst, and the puritan spy Maliverey Catilyn.

The turbulent Catholic deacon Gifford had been in Walsingham’s service since the end of 1585 or the beginning of 1586. Gifford obtained a letter of introduction to Queen Mary from a confidant and spy for her, Thomas Morgan. Walsingham then placed double agent Gifford and spy decipherer Phelippes inside Chartley Castle, where Queen Mary was imprisoned. Gifford organised the Walsingham plan to place Babington’s and Queen Mary’s encrypted communications into a beer barrel cork which were then intercepted by Phelippes, decoded and sent to Walsingham.

On July 7, 1586, the only Babington letter that was sent to Mary was decoded by Phelippes. Mary responded in code on July 17, ordering the would-be rescuers to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. The response letter also included deciphered phrases indicating her desire to be rescued: “The affairs being thus prepared” and “I may suddenly be transported out of this place”.

At the Fotheringay trial in October 1586, Elizabeth’s Lord High Treasurer Lord Burghley and Walsingham used the letter against Mary who refused to admit that she was guilty. But she was betrayed by her secretaries Nau and Curle who confessed under pressure that the letter was mainly truthful.

Mary was beheaded the following year at Fotheringhay Castle on February 8, 1587.

The executioner Bull and his assistant knelt before her and asked forgiveness, as it was typical for the executioner to request the pardon of the one being put to death. Mary replied, “I forgive you with all my heart, for now, I hope, you shall make an end of all my troubles.” She was blindfolded by Kennedy with a white veil embroidered in gold, knelt down on the cushion in front of the block on which she positioned her head, and stretched out her arms. Her last words were, In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum (“Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit”).

Mary was not beheaded with a single strike. The first blow missed her neck and struck the back of her head. The second blow severed the neck, except for a small bit of sinew, which the executioner cut through using the axe. Afterwards, he held her head aloft and declared “God save the Queen.”

When the news of the execution reached Elizabeth, she became indignant and asserted that Davison had disobeyed her instructions not to part with the warrant and that the Privy Council had acted without her authority. Elizabeth’s vacillation and deliberately vague instructions gave her plausible deniability to attempt to avoid the direct stain of Mary’s blood. Davison was arrested, thrown into the Tower of London, and found guilty of misprision. He was released nineteen months later, after Cecil and Walsingham interceded on his behalf.

Mary’s request to be buried in France was refused by Elizabeth. Her body was embalmed and left in a secure lead coffin until her burial in a Protestant service at Peterborough Cathedral in late July 1587. Her entrails, removed as part of the embalming process, were buried secretly within Fotheringhay Castle. Her body was exhumed in 1612 when her son, King James VI and I, ordered that she be reinterred in Westminster Abbey in a chapel opposite the tomb of Elizabeth.

Mary’s life, marriages, lineage, alleged involvement in plots against Elizabeth, and subsequent execution established her as a divisive and highly romanticised historical character, depicted in culture for centuries.

December 5, 1560: Death of King François II of France and Scotland

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Catherine de Médici, Francis II of France, Henry II of France, Jousting, Marie de Guise, Mary I of Scotland, Mary Queen of Scots, Regency

François II (January 19, 1544 – December 5, 1560) was King of France from 1559 to 1560. He was also King consort of Scotland as a result of his marriage to Mary I, Queen of Scots, from 1558 until his death in 1560.

He ascended the throne of France at age 15 after the accidental death of his father, Henry II, in 1559. His short reign was dominated by the first stirrings of the French Wars of Religion.

Although the royal age of majority was 14, his mother, Catherine de’ Medici, entrusted the reins of government to his wife Mary’s uncles from the House of Guise, staunch supporters of the Catholic cause. They were unable to help Catholics in Scotland against the progressing Scottish Reformation, however, and the Auld Alliance was dissolved.

François was succeeded by two of his brothers in turn, both of whom were also unable to reduce tensions between Protestants and Catholics.

Childhood and education (1544–1559)

François was born 11 years after his parents’ wedding Henri II and Catherinede Médici. The long delay in producing an heir may have been due to his father’s repudiation of his mother in favour of his mistress Diane de Poitiers, but this repudiation was mitigated by Diane’s insistence that Henri spend his nights with Catherine.

François was at first raised at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. He was baptised on February 10, 1544 at the Chapelle des Trinitaires in Fontainebleau. His godparents were François I (who knighted him during the ceremony), Pope Paul III, and his great-aunt Marguerite de Navarre. He became governor of Languedoc in 1546 and Dauphin of France in 1547, when his grandfather François I died.

King Henri II, his father, arranged a remarkable betrothal for his son to Mary I, Queen of Scots, in the Châtillon agreement of January 27, 1548, when François was only four years old. Mary had been crowned Queen of Scotland in Stirling Castle on September 9, 1543 at the age of nine months following the death of her father James V. Mary was a granddaughter of Claude, Duke of Guise, a very influential figure at the court of France.

Once the marriage agreement was formally ratified, the six-year-old Mary was sent to France to be raised at court until the marriage. She was tall for her age and eloquent, and Francis was unusually short and stuttered. Henri II said, “from the very first day they met, my son and she got on as well together as if they had known each other for a long time”.

On April 24, 1558, François and Mary married in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It was a union that could have given the future Kings of France the throne of Scotland and also a claim to the throne of England through Mary’s great-grandfather, King Henry VII of England. As a result of the marriage, François became King Consort in Scotland until his death. The marriage produced no children, and may never even have been consummated, possibly due to François illnesses or undescended testicles.

Becoming king

A little over a year after his marriage, on July 10, 1559, François became king at age 15 upon the death of Henri II, who died from injuries that he suffered in a jousting accident. On September 21, 1559, François II was crowned king in Reims by his uncle Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine. The crown was so heavy that nobles had to hold it in place for him. The court then moved to the Loire Valley, where the Château de Blois and the surrounding forests were the new king’s home. Francis II took the sun for his emblem and for his mottoes Spectanda fides (This is how faith should be respected) and Lumen rectis (Light for the righteous)

Death

The king’s health deteriorated in November 1560. On November 16, he fainted. After only 17 months on the throne, François II died on December 5, 1560 in Orléans, Loiret, from an ear condition. Multiple diseases have been suggested, such as mastoiditis, meningitis, or otitis exacerbated into an abscess.

Ambroise Paré, the royal surgeon, considered performing a trepanation. Some suspected Protestants of having poisoned the king, a view held by Catholics as the tensions between them and Protestants were on the rise, but this has not been proven.

François II died childless, so his younger brother Charles, then ten years old, succeeded him as King Charles IX of France. On December 21, the council named Catherine de Médici Regent of France. The Guises left the court, while MaryI, Queen of Scots, François II’s widow, returned to Scotland. Louis, Prince of Condé, who was jailed and awaiting execution, was freed after some negotiations with Catherine de Médici.

On December 23, 1560, François II’s body was interred in the Basilica of St Denis by the Prince of La Roche-sur-Yon.

These Dates in History: October 14, 1066, 1322 & 1586

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Battle of Hastings, Battle of Old Byland, Duke of Normandy, Edward II of England, Elizabeth I of England, Fotheringhay Castle, Harald Hardrada, Harold Godwinson, King of Scots, Mary I of Scotland, Robert the Bruce, Tostig, William the Conqueror

1066 – The Norman conquest of England begins with the Battle of Hastings.

The Battle of Hastings was fought on October 14, 1066 between the Norman-French army of William, the Duke of Normandy, and an English army under the Anglo-Saxon King Harold II Godwinson, beginning the Norman conquest of England. It took place approximately 7 mi (11 km) northwest of Hastings, close to the present-day town of Battle, East Sussex, and was a decisive Norman victory. Senlac Hill (or Senlac Ridge) is the generally accepted location in which Harold Godwinson deployed his army for the Battle of Hastings. It is located near what is now the town of Battle, East Sussex.

The background to the battle was the death of the childless King Edward the Confessor in January 1066, which set up a succession struggle between several claimants to his throne. Harold Godwinson was elected by the Witan Council and crowned king shortly after Edward’s death, but faced invasions by William, his own brother Tostig, and the Norwegian King Harald Hardrada (Harold III of Norway).

Harald Hardrada and Tostig defeated a hastily gathered army of Englishmen at the Battle of Fulford on September 20, 1066, and were in turn defeated by Harold at the Battle of Stamford Bridge five days later. The deaths of Tostig and Hardrada at Stamford Bridge left William as Harold’s only serious opponent.

While Harold and his forces were recovering, William landed his invasion forces in the south of England at Pevensey on September 28, 1066 and established a beachhead for his conquest of the kingdom. Harold was forced to march south swiftly, gathering forces as he went.

The exact numbers present at the battle are unknown as even modern estimates vary considerably. The composition of the forces is clearer; the English army was composed almost entirely of infantry and had few archers, whereas only about half of the invading force was infantry, the rest split equally between cavalry and archers.

Harold appears to have tried to surprise William, but scouts found his army and reported its arrival to William, who marched from Hastings to the battlefield to confront Harold. The battle lasted from about 9 am to dusk. Early efforts of the invaders to break the English battle lines had little effect; therefore, the Normans adopted the tactic of pretending to flee in panic and then turning on their pursuers. Harold’s death, probably near the end of the battle, led to the retreat and defeat of most of his army. After further marching and some skirmishes, William was crowned as king on Christmas Day 1066.

There continued to be rebellions and resistance to William’s rule, but Hastings effectively marked the culmination of William’s conquest of England. Casualty figures are hard to come by, but some historians estimate that 2,000 invaders died along with about twice that number of Englishmen. William founded a monastery at the site of the battle, the high altar of the abbey church supposedly placed at the spot where Harold died.

1322 – Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England at the Battle of Old Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland’s independence.

The Battle of Old Byland (also known as the Battle of Byland Abbey, the Battle of Byland Moor and the Battle of Scotch Corner) was a significant encounter between Scots and English troops in Yorkshire in on October 14, 1322, forming part of the Wars of Scottish Independence. It was a victory for the Scots, the most significant since Bannockburn.

Ever since Robert Bruce’s victory at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, the Scots had taken the initiative in the wars with England, raiding deep into the north of the country repeatedly and with comparative ease to attempt to force the English to the peace-table.

The English king, Edward II seemed incapable of dealing with the problem, distracted, as he often was, in a political struggle with his own barons and refused to even begin peace negotiations with the Scots which would have required recognizing Robert the Bruce as King of the Scots. In early 1322 the situation had become critical, with some senior English noblemen, headed by Thomas of Lancaster, preparing to enter into an alliance with the Scots.

It seems unlikely that Bruce had much confidence in Lancaster, who referred to himself as ‘King Arthur’ in his negotiations with the Scots, but he was quick to take advantage of the threat of civil war in England. Scarcely had the truce of 1319 expired in January 1322 than Sir James Douglas, Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray and Walter Stewart came over the border on a large-scale attack on the north-east.

The three commanders fanned out across the region: Douglas to Hartlepool, Moray to Darlington and Stewart to Richmond. Lancaster with his army at Pontefract did nothing to stop them. Edward ignored the Scots, instructing his lieutenant in the north, Sir Andrew Harclay, the governor of Carlisle, to concentrate his efforts against the rebel barons, whom he finally defeated at the Battle of Boroughbridge. In the wake of this the Scots raiders slipped back across the border.

Edward’s invasion

Boroughbridge was a new beginning for Edward. The baronial opposition had been defeated and tainted with treason: the king had at last enjoyed his long-awaited revenge for the murder of Piers Gaveston. This was the high point of his reign and, emboldened by this rare triumph, he decided to embark on what was to be his last invasion of Scotland. It was to be a disaster.

By the time Edward was ready to begin his advance in early August, Bruce was more than ready. He deployed his usual tactics: crops were destroyed and livestock removed and his army withdrawn north of the River Forth. In all of Lothian the English are said only to have found one lame cow, causing the Earl of Surrey to remark; This is the dearest beef I ever saw. It surely has cost a thousand pounds and more!

In the Scalacronica, Sir Thomas Grey describes the whole campaign thus;
The king marched upon Edinburgh, where at Leith there came such a sickness and famine upon the common soldiers of that great army, that they were forced to beat a retreat for want of food; at which time the king’s light horse were defeated by James de Douglas. None dared leave the main body to seek food by forage, so greatly were the English harassed and worn out by fighting that before they arrived in Newcastle there was such a murrain in the army for want of food, that they were obliged of necessity to disband.

Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh, and the border abbeys of Melrose and Dryburgh were destroyed in revenge by the English. The invasion had achieved precisely nothing. More seriously, the effect on national morale of the ignominious retreat of a starving army was almost as bad as the defeat at Bannockburn. Worse was to follow; for, as always, an English retreat was the signal for yet another Scottish attack.

Old Byland

Bruce crossed the Solway in the west, making his way in a south-easterly direction towards Yorkshire, bringing many troops recruited in Argyll and the Isles. The boldness and speed of the attack, known as The Great Raid of 1322, soon exposed Edward to the dangers on his own land. On his return from Scotland, the king had taken up residence at Rievaulx Abbey with Queen Isabella.

His peace was interrupted when the Scots made a sudden and unexpected approach in mid-October. All that stood between them and a royal prize was a large English force under the command of John of Brittany, Earl of Richmond. John had taken up position on Scawton Moor, between Rievaulx and Byland Abbey. To dislodge him from his strong position on the high ground Bruce used the same tactics that brought victory at the earlier Battle of Pass of Brander.

As Moray and Douglas charged uphill a party of Highlanders scaled the cliffs on the English flank and charged downhill into Richmond’s rear. Resistance crumbled and the Battle of Old Byland turned into a complete and bloody rout of the English. Richmond himself was taken prisoner, as were Henri de Sully, Grand Butler of France, Sir Ralph Cobham (‘the best knight in England’) and Sir Thomas Ughtred. Many others were killed in flight. Edward – ‘ever chicken-hearted and luckless in war’ – was forced to make a rapid and undignified exit from Rievaulx, fleeing in such haste that his personal belongings were left behind.

After Byland, says Sir Thomas Gray, the Scots were so fierce and their chiefs so daring, and the English so cowed, that it was no otherwise between them than as a hare before greyhounds. This was a significant victory for the Scots after their success at Myton on Swale and was soon followed 5 years later by their victory at Stanhope Park over Edward III.

1586 – Mary, Queen of Scots, goes on trial for conspiracy against Queen Elizabeth I of England.

On 11 August 1586, after being implicated in the Babington Plot, Mary was arrested while out riding and taken to Tixall Hall in Staffordshire. In a successful attempt to entrap her, Walsingham had deliberately arranged for Mary’s letters to be smuggled out of Chartley. Mary was misled into thinking her letters were secure, while in reality they were deciphered and read by Walsingham. From these letters it was clear that Mary had sanctioned the attempted assassination of Elizabeth. Mary was moved to Fotheringhay Castle in a four-day journey ending on September 25.

On October 14, she was put on trial for treason under the Act for the Queen’s Safety before a court of 36 noblemen, including Cecil, Shrewsbury, and Walsingham.

Spirited in her defence, Mary denied the charges. She told her triers, “Look to your consciences and remember that the theatre of the whole world is wider than the kingdom of England”. She protested that she had been denied the opportunity to review the evidence, that her papers had been removed from her, that she was denied access to legal counsel and that as a foreign anointed queen she had never been an English subject and thus could not be convicted of treason.

She was convicted on October 25, and sentenced to death with only one commissioner, Lord Zouche, expressing any form of dissent. Nevertheless, Elizabeth hesitated to order her execution, even in the face of pressure from the English Parliament to carry out the sentence. She was concerned that the killing of a queen set a discreditable precedent and was fearful of the consequences, especially if, in retaliation, Mary’s son, King James VI, formed an alliance with the Catholic powers and invaded England.

Elizabeth asked Paulet, Mary’s final custodian, if he would contrive a clandestine way to “shorten the life” of Mary, which he refused to do on the grounds that he would not make “a shipwreck of my conscience, or leave so great a blot on my poor posterity”. On February 1, 1587, Elizabeth signed the death warrant, and entrusted it to William Davison, a privy councillor. On February 3, ten members of the Privy Council of England, having been summoned by Cecil without Elizabeth’s knowledge, decided to carry out the sentence at once.

Mary was beheaded on February 8,1587 at Fotheringhay Castle. Mary’s life, marriages, lineage, alleged involvement in plots against Elizabeth, and subsequent execution established her as a divisive and highly romanticised historical character, depicted in culture for centuries.

Excommunication of Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland

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 Act of Supremacy of 1559, Church of England, Church of Ireland, Duke of Norfolk, Irish Catholics, Mary I of Scotland, Papal Bull, Pope Gregory XIII, Pope Pius V, Pope Sixtus V, Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland, Regnans in Excelsis, Ridolfi Plot, Thomas Howard

The other day I wrote about how Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk was arested for his role in the Ridolfi Plot. The Ridolfi Plot was the plan to murder Queen Elizabeth I, and replace her on the English throne with Mary I of Scotland. The historical event that paved the way for this plot was the excommunication of Queen Elizabeth I.

Regnans in Excelsis (“Reigning on High”) was a Papal Bull that Pope Pius V issued on February 25, 1570. The Bull excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I of England, referring to her as “the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime”, declared her a heretic, and released her subjects from allegiance to her, even those who had “sworn oaths to her”, and excommunicated any who obeyed her orders: “We charge and command all and singular the nobles, subjects, peoples and others afore said that they do not dare obey her orders, mandates and laws. Those who shall act to the contrary we include in the like sentence of excommunication.” Among the queen’s alleged offences, “She has removed the royal Council, composed of the nobility of England, and has filled it with obscure men, being heretics.

The Bull, written in Latin, is named from its incipit, the first three words of its text.

Background

The Papacy had previously reconciled with Mary I, who returned the Church of England and Church of Ireland to Catholicism. After Mary I of England’s death in November 1558, Elizabeth’s Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy of 1559, which re-established the Church of England and Church of Ireland’s independence from papal authority. This bull can be seen as an act of retaliation for the religious settlement, but as it was delayed by eleven years, caused in part by a number of royal Catholic suitors who hoped to marry Elizabeth, and because she had tolerated Catholic worship in private.

Content

Pius V issued the bull in support of, but following, the failed Rising of the North of 1569, by which Catholic nobles attempted to depose Elizabeth and replace her with Mary I of Scotland, and the first Desmond Rebellion in Ireland, which broke out in June 1569. Although the Desmond Rebellion’s main goal was to preserve the independence of feudal lords from the English throne, it developed religious overtones as James FitzMaurice FitzGerald sought support from Catholic Europe.

The bull declared Queen Elizabeth excommunicated and absolved her subjects from any allegiance to her. It also excommunicated any that obeyed her orders. Its argument drew on the hierocratic theory of the papacy established by medieval canonists.

Pius did not consult any Catholic rulers. Both Felipe II of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II disagreed with his approach. Felipe thought, correctly, that it would only harden the Crown’s treatment of English Catholics. According to Evelyn Waugh, It provided a convenient pretext for those in Elizabeth’s court, looking for an excuse to do so, to persecute Roman Catholics, and they took full advantage of it. To take effect in church law the bull had to be promulgated. This logistical effort relied on individuals such as John Felton.

Aftermath

The Bull provoked the English government into taking more repressive actions against the Jesuits, whom they feared to be acting in the interests of Spain and the papacy. This reaction soon seemed justified: it was the publication in England of Pius’s exhortation that gave the impetus in 1571 to the Ridolfi Plot, in which the Duke of Norfolk was to kidnap or murder Queen Elizabeth, install Mary I of Scotland, on the English throne, and then become de facto king by marrying her. Heinrich Bullinger of Zurich published a critique of the bull in 1571.

Suspension from 1580–84

At the request of the Jesuits and to relieve the pressures on Catholics in England, Pope Gregory XIII issued a clarification or suspension in 1580, explaining that Catholics should obey the queen outwardly in all civil matters, until such time as a suitable opportunity presented itself for her overthrow. How widely this was communicated to, and understood by, Catholics in England and Ireland is unknown. Later that year Pope Gregory XIII sponsored an abortive expedition to Ireland in support of the Second Desmond Rebellion that ended in the Siege of Smerwick, so the suggestion that the Bull was suspended earlier in 1580 cannot be taken seriously. Soon after the start of the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604), an English Act “against Jesuits, seminary priests and other such like disobedient persons” was passed into law.

Renewal in 1588

In 1588, Pope Sixtus V, in support of the Spanish Armada, renewed the solemn bull of excommunication against Queen Elizabeth I, for the regicide of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587 as well as the previously catalogued offences against the Catholic Church. During the threat of invasion by the Spanish Armada, it transpired that most of the Catholic residents in England remained loyal, and that those who were a real threat to the throne, like William, Cardinal Allen and Robert Persons, were already exiles.

While the bull had little impact in England, it caused a rift in Elizabeth’s Kingdom of Ireland where most of the population remained Roman Catholic; Gerald FitzGerald, 14th Earl of Desmond, had used the bull as justification for the Second Desmond Rebellion. While divisions had existed before 1570, after the bull the official world based in Dublin conformed to Anglicanism while the majority of the Parliament of Ireland were Catholics until 1613.

September 7, 1533: Birth of Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Ireland.

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Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I of England and Ireland, Henry VIII of England and Ireland, James VI of Scotland, Mary I of England, Mary I of Scotland, Papal Bull, Pope Pius V, Virgin Queen

Elizabeth I (September 7, 1533 – March 24, 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from November 17, 1558 until her death in 1603. Sometimes called the Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the last of the five monarchs of the House of Tudor.

Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife, who was executed when Elizabeth was 2 1/2 years old. Anne’s marriage to Henry VIII was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Her half-brother Edward VI ruled until his death in 1553, bequeathing the crown to Lady Jane Grey and ignoring the claims of his two half-sisters, the Roman Catholic Mary and the younger Elizabeth, in spite of statute law to the contrary.

Edward’s will was set aside which did not have the consent of Parliament. Mary became queen, thwarting the attempted usurping of the crown by John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland KG (1504 – 1553) who unsuccessfully tried to install Lady Jane Grey on the throne.

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Elizabeth I of England and Ireland

During Mary’s reign, Elizabeth was imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels.

Upon her half-sister’s death in 1558, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne and set out to rule by good counsel. She depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers, led by William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley. One of her first actions as queen was the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the supreme governor. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement was to evolve into the Church of England.

It was expected that Elizabeth would marry and produce an heir; however, despite numerous courtships, she never did. She was eventually succeeded by her first-cousin twice-removed, King James VI of Scotland, laying the foundation for the future Kingdom of Great Britain. She had earlier been responsible for the imprisonment and execution of James’s mother, Queen Mary I of Scotland.

In government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father and half-siblings had been. One of her mottoes was “video et taceo” (“I see and keep silent”). In religion, she was relatively tolerant and avoided systematic persecution. After Pope Pius V declared her excommunicated  in 1570 and released her subjects from obedience to her, several conspiracies threatened her life, all of which were defeated with the help of her ministers’ secret service.

Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs, manoeuvring between the major powers of France and Spain. She only half-heartedly supported a number of ineffective, poorly resourced military campaigns in the Netherlands, France, and Ireland. By the mid-1580s, England could no longer avoid war with Spain.

As she grew older, Elizabeth became celebrated for her virginity. A cult of personality grew around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day. Elizabeth’s reign became known as the Elizabethan era.

The period is famous for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, and for the seafaring prowess of English adventurers such as Francis Drake. Some historians depict Elizabeth as a short-tempered, sometimes indecisive ruler, who enjoyed more than her share of luck.

Towards the end of her reign, a series of economic and military problems weakened her popularity. Elizabeth is acknowledged as a charismatic performer and a dogged survivor in an era when government was ramshackle and limited, and when monarchs in neighbouring countries faced internal problems that jeopardised their thrones. After the short reigns of her half-siblings, her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped forge a sense of national identity.

September 7, 1571: Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk is arested for his role in the Ridolfi Plot.

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4th Duke of Norfolk, Elizabeth Tudor, Mary I of Scotland, Mary Stuart, Pope Pius V, Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland, Ridolfi Plot, Thomas Howard

The Ridolfi plot was a plot in 1571 to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I of England and replace her with Mary I, Queen of Scots. The plot was hatched and planned by Roberto Ridolfi, an international banker who was able to travel between Brussels, Rome and Madrid to gather support without attracting too much suspicion.

Background

Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth’s and the wealthiest landowner in the country, had been proposed as a possible husband for Mary I, Queen of Scots since her imprisonment in 1568. This suited Norfolk, who had ambitions and felt Elizabeth persistently undervalued him. In pursuit of his goals, he agreed to support the Northern Rebellion, though he quickly lost his nerve. Norfolk was imprisoned in the Tower of London for nine months and only freed under house arrest when he confessed all and begged for mercy. Pope Pius V, in his 1570 papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, excommunicated the Protestant Elizabeth and permitted all faithful Catholics to do all they could to depose her. The majority of English Catholics ignored the bull, but in response to it, Elizabeth became much harsher towards Catholics and their sympathisers.

Plot

Roberto Ridolfi, a Florentine banker and ardent Catholic, had been involved in the planning of the Northern rebellion and had been plotting to overthrow Elizabeth as early as 1569. With the failure of the rebellion, he concluded that foreign intervention was needed to restore Catholicism and bring Mary to the English throne, and so he began to contact potential conspirators. Mary’s advisor, John Lesley, the Bishop of Ross, gave his assent to the plot as the way to free Mary.

The plan was to have the Duke of Alba invade from the Netherlands with 10,000 men, foment a rebellion of the northern English nobility, murder Elizabeth, and marry Mary to Thomas Howard. Ridolfi optimistically estimated half of all English peers were Catholic and could muster in excess of 39,000 men. Norfolk gave verbal assurances to Ridolfi that he was Catholic, though as a pupil of John Foxe, he remained a Protestant all his life. Both Mary and Norfolk, desperate to remedy their respective situations, agreed to the plot. With their blessing, Ridolfi set off to the Continent to gain Alba, Pius V, and King Felipe II of Spain’s support.

List of co-conspirators

Ridolfi’s co-conspirators, some of them mentioned above, played an important role in the plot to overthrow Elizabeth:

Don Guerau de Espés: Spain’s ambassador to England, who was expelled after the discovery of his involvement. Elizabeth had raised her concerns about de Espés’ behaviour with Anna of Austria.

John Lesley: the Bishop of Ross, who was Mary Stuart’s chief agent; he arranged meetings and delivered letters for Mary during her house arrest.

Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, who was Queen Elizabeth I’s second cousin. He was to marry Mary Queen of Scots and together with her restore Catholic rule to the English and Scottish thrones. After the plot was discovered he was given a day-long trial that ended with his execution.

Mary, Queen of Scots: after it became clear that Elizabeth I was not going to restore her to the Scottish throne or return her to France, Mary plotted for her freedom. She wrote to Ridolfi denouncing the French and soliciting Spanish aid, while simultaneously professing friendship and loyalty to Elizabeth I and England. Giving her consent to the plot in March 1571, her role was to marry the Duke of Norfolk, with the plan that when the troops arrived in London she would be returned to the Scottish throne. However, when the plot was uncovered, her deep involvement in it altered Elizabeth’s opinion of Mary; Elizabeth never spoke of restoring her to the throne again.

King Felipe II of Spain, who welcomed Ridolfi to court and, with the council, discussed the plot’s pros and cons. He supported overthrowing Elizabeth and later came to support the assassination. Felipe, however, disapproved of the papal bull against Elizabeth because, according to Cyril Hamshere, he feared it would “prompt Elizabeth to take reprisals against Catholics.”

Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba, who was the leader of the Spanish army stationed in the Netherlands and was to lead more than 10,000 men to Harwich or Portsmouth. His army was to invade England and make its way to London to establish Mary on the throne, while either detaining or assassinating Elizabeth I.

Pope Pius V, who made Ridolfi his papal agent in England in 1567. Pius was not only aware of the plot but gave his written approval in a letter for Ridolfi to take to Felipe II.

Discovery

In 1571, Elizabeth’s intelligence network was sending her information about a plot against her life. By gaining the confidence of Spain’s ambassador to England, John Hawkins learned the details of the conspiracy and notified the government so as to arrest the plotters. Elizabeth was also sent a private warning by Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who had learned of the plot against her. Charles Baillie, Ridolfi’s messenger, was arrested on about April 12, 1571 at Dover for carrying compromising letters, and by the use of torture and prison informers such as William Herle, he was forced to reveal the cipher of the messages he carried.

On August 29, 1571, Norfolk’s secretaries William Barker and Robert Higford entrusted to Thomas Browne, a Shrewsbury draper, what was purported to be a bag of silver coin for delivery to Laurence Bannister, one of Norfolk’s officials in the north of England. Browne grew suspicious of the bag’s weight, opened it, and discovered 600 pounds in gold from the French ambassador, destined for Scotland on Mary’s behalf, and ciphered letters.

Because he knew Norfolk was under suspicion, Browne reported his find to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, the Secretary of State. Higford and Barker were interrogated, the letters were partly deciphered, and a search for the cipher key at Howard House uncovered a ciphered letter from Mary Stuart hidden under a doormat.

Norfolk’s servants were arrested and interrogated, and confessions were extracted from them by threats or application of torture. Sir Thomas Smith and Thomas Wilson were sent to confront Norfolk, who claimed the money was for his own private purposes. The deciphered letter, however, proved that he was lying. Unaware of his servants’ confessions or the survival of letters which, contrary to his instructions, had not been burnt, he denied the charges against him.

On September 7, the queen’s warrant for conveying him to the Tower of London arrived. Thereupon, the duke admitted a degree of involvement in the transmission of money and correspondence to Mary’s Scottish supporters. In January 1572, Norfolk was tried and convicted on three counts of high treason, and on June 2, he was beheaded on Tower Hill.
Guerau de Spes, the Spanish ambassador, was expelled from the country in January 1571. Still abroad when the plot was discovered, Ridolfi never returned to England; he became a Florentine senator in 1600.

Ridolfi’s role

Despite his plot’s ultimate failure, Roberto Ridolfi’s story is surprising and memorable. He’d played the relatively minor role of banker but nevertheless found himself at the centre of a major plot to overthrow the English government. Ridolfi had been jailed in 1568 because of a rumour that he had distributed money to dissenting nobles associated with the Northern Rebellion.

The Pope did, in fact, give him 12,000 crowns for that purpose, but Ridolfi was released in 1570 because no evidence could be found to incriminate him. Even after his arrest and release, Ridolfi remained a spy for the Pope. Ridolfi’s banking connections helped him become acquainted with the Duke of Norfolk, and he became a supporter of a marriage between Norfolk and Mary, Queen of Scots, who would, if the plot succeeded, rule England and reinstate Catholicism there.

After Norfolk’s release from prison in August 1570, Ridolfi “picked up the broken threads of Catholic intrigue”. Ridolfi was in an advantageous position to orchestrate a Catholic rebellion in England, since he was employed by the Pope, France, and Spain, and had ties to the Catholic contingent in England. He could use banking as an excuse to travel among these groups for the purpose of conspiring. When he travelled to mainland Europe to King Felipe II and the Pope of the plot, it is believed that he was still working for Elizabeth.

The Duke of Alba, the Spanish Viceroy in the Netherlands who was to lead the attack on England, felt Ridolfi was too garrulous to be the leader of a conspiracy, but Spanish Ambassador Don Guerau de Spes described Ridolfi as “A person of great truth and virtue and an intimate friend of mine.” Ridolfi’s talkative nature did eventually cause him trouble, as he was not very discreet and trumpeted his plan all over Europe. His boasting was partially responsible for the plot’s failure, as he told it to Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany who immediately informed Elizabeth of the plot. Ridolfi escaped execution, unlike some of his co-conspirators, and lived until 1612.

Modern criticism

According to historian Cyril Hamshere, retrospective critics of the conspiracy cited a number of reasons why the Ridolfi Plot would have been doomed to fail even if it had not been discovered prematurely. For one, the small number of Spanish soldiers (between 6000–10,000) would have been absurdly inadequate to the task of overthrowing the English government. Additionally, the vagueness of the invasion point was a logistical shortcoming.

The plan was to land at either Harwich or Portsmouth, but Ridolfi apparently did not know exactly where Harwich was. Also dubious was Ridolfi’s reliance on the Duke of Norfolk, who was regarded as a bad leader and was not even a Catholic. This did not make him an ideal co-conspirator, but, according to Hamshere, “his main merit lay in his title: in 1571 he was the only Duke in England”.

Norfolk’s Protestantism was but one irony of the Ridolfi Plot: Norfolk and Mary I, Queen of Scots had each been married three times before their proposed marriage to each other. Pope Pius was, apparently, willing to grant Mary an annulment of her marriage to her imprisoned husband, but the notion of two thrice wed royals leading England back to Catholicism is somewhat problematic, nonetheless.

History of Male British Consorts Part VII

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4th Earl of Bothwell, Francis II of France, Henry Stuart, James Hepburn, Lord Darnley, Mary I of Scotland

Mary I of Scotland married a third time to James Hepburn (c. 1534 – 14 April 1578), 1st Duke of Orkney and 4th Earl of Bothwell (better known simply as Lord Bothwell), was a prominent Scottish nobleman.

He was the son of Patrick Hepburn, 3rd Earl of Bothwell, and Agnes Sinclair (d. 1572), daughter of Henry Sinclair, 3rd Lord Sinclair, and was styled The Master of Bothwell from birth. He succeeded his father as Earl of Bothwell and Lord Hailes in 1556.

Marriages

As Lord High Admiral of Scotland, Lord Bothwell visited Copenhagen around 1559. He fell in love with Anna Tronds, known in English as Anna Throndsen or Anna Rustung. She was a Norwegian noblewoman whose father, Kristoffer Trondson, a famous Norwegian admiral, was serving as Danish Royal Consul. After their engagement, or more likely marriage under Norwegian law, Anna left with Bothwell. In Flanders, he said he was out of money and asked Anna to sell all her possessions. She complied and visited her family in Denmark to ask for more money. Anna was unhappy and apparently given to complaining about Bothwell. His treatment of Anna played a part in his eventual downfall.

In February 1566, Bothwell married Lady Jean Gordon, daughter of the 4th Earl of Huntly and sister of Sir John Gordon and the 5th Earl of Huntly. They were divorced on May 7, 1567, citing his adultery with her servant Bessie Crawford. as cause. He married Mary, Queen of Scots, eight days later.

Meeting Queen Mary in France

Lord Bothwell appears to have met Queen Mary when he visited the French Court in the autumn of 1560, after he left Anna Rustung in Flanders. He was kindly received by the Queen and her husband, King François II, and, as he himself put it: “The Queen recompensed me more liberally and honourably than I had deserved” — receiving 600 Crowns and the post and salary of gentleman of the French King’s Chamber. He visited France again in the spring of 1561, and by 5 July was back in Paris for the third time — this time accompanied by the Bishop of Orkney and the Earl of Eglinton. By August, the widowed Queen was on her way back to Scotland in a French galley, some of the organisation having been dealt with by Bothwell in his naval capacity.

Under Mary of Guise’s regency

Bothwell supported Mary of Guise, queen dowager and regent of Scotland, against the Protestant Lords of the Congregation. Bothwell and 24 followers took 6000 crowns of English money destined to be used against Guise from the Laird of Ormiston on Halloween 1559 at an ambush near Haddington. In retaliation the Protestant leader, the Duke of Châtelherault, sent his son the Earl of Arran and the Master of Maxwell to seize Bothwell’s home Crichton Castle and force the Earl, who was at Borthwick, to join them. Bothwell remained true to the Regent, though it was said in January he was “weary of his part”. The English agent Thomas Randolph also hinted at this time of a scandal involving his sister Jean Hepburn.

At Queen Mary’s court

After Protestant Lords gained power following Mary of Guise’s death and the return to Scotland of Mary I, Queen of Scots, Bothwell appears to have been not much more than a troublesome noble at court. His open quarrel with the Earl of Arran and the Hamiltons, who accused him of intriguing against the Crown, caused some degree of anguish to the Queen, and although the Earl of Arran was eventually declared mad, Bothwell was nevertheless imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle without trial in 1562.Later that year, while the Queen was in the Highlands, he escaped and went to Hermitage Castle.

The Queen and Bothwell were by now very close. When Bothwell married Lady Jean Gordon, daughter of The 4th Earl of Huntly, in February 1566, the Queen attended the wedding (the marriage lasted just over a year). In the following summer, upon hearing that he had been seriously wounded and was likely to die, she rode all the way through the hills and forests of the Borders to be with him at Hermitage Castle only a few weeks after giving birth to her son.

However, historian Lady Antonia Fraser asserts that Queen Mary was already on her way to visit Bothwell on matters of state before she heard about his illness, and that therefore this visit is not evidence they were already lovers at the time of his accident. Author Alison Weir agrees, and in fact the records show that Mary waited a full six days after learning of his injuries before going to visit Bothwell. The story of her mad flight to his side was put about later by her enemies to discredit her.

Darnley’s murder

In February 1567, Bothwell was one of those accused of having murdered the Queen’s consort, Lord Darnley. Darnley’s father, the Earl of Lennox, and other relatives agitated for vengeance and the Privy Council began proceedings against Bothwell on 12 April 1567. Sir William Drury reported to Sir William Cecil, Secretary of State to Elizabeth I of England, that the Queen was in continuous ill-health “for the most part either melancholy or sickly”. On the appointed day Bothwell rode magnificently down the Canongate, with the Earl of Morton and William Maitland of Lethington flanking him, and his Hepburns trotting behind. The trial lasted from noon till seven in the evening. Bothwell was acquitted and it was widely rumoured that he would marry Mary.

The next Wednesday, the Queen rode to the Estates of Parliament, with Lord Bothwell carrying the Sceptre, where the proceedings of Bothwell’s trial were officially declared to be just according to the law of the land. On Saturday 19 April, eight bishops, nine earls, and seven Lords of Parliament put their signatures to what became known as the Ainslie Tavern Bond, a manifesto declaring that Mary should marry a native-born subject, and handed it to Bothwell.

On Wednesday April 24, while Mary was on the road from Linlithgow Palace to Edinburgh, Bothwell suddenly appeared with 800 men. He assured her that danger awaited her in Edinburgh, and told her that he proposed to take her to his castle at Dunbar, out of harm’s way. She agreed to accompany him and arrived at Dunbar at midnight.

There, Mary was taken prisoner by Bothwell and allegedly raped by him to secure marriage to her and the crown (though whether she was his accomplice or his unwilling victim remains a controversial issue). On 12 May the Queen created him Duke of Orkney and Marquess of Fife, and on 15 May they were married in the Great Hall at Holyrood, according to Protestant rites officiated by Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney. Mary gave her new husband a fur lined night-gown. Within three days, Sir William Drury wrote to London that although the manner of things appeared to be forcible, it was known to be otherwise.

The marriage divided the country into two camps, and on June 16, the Lords opposed to Mary and the Duke of Orkney (as Bothwell had newly become) signed a Bond denouncing them. A showdown between the two opposing sides followed at Carberry Hill on June 15, 1567, from which Bothwell fled, after one final embrace, never to be seen again by Mary. In December that year, Bothwell’s titles and estates were forfeited by Act of Parliament.

Escape to Scandinavia and imprisonment

After fleeing the confrontation at Carberry Hill, Bothwell went to Huntly Castle and Spynie Palace. He took ship from Aberdeen to Shetland. He was pursued by William Kirkcaldy of Grange and William Murray of Tullibardine, who sailed into Bressay Sound near Lerwick. Four of Bothwell’s ships in the Sound set sail north to Unst, where Bothwell was negotiating with German captains to hire more ships. Kirkcaldy’s flagship, the Lion, chased one of Bothwell’s ships, and both ships were damaged on a submerged rock. Bothwell sent his treasure ship to Scalloway, and fought a three-hour-long sea battle off the Port of Unst, where the mast of one of Bothwell’s ships was shot away. Subsequently, a storm forced him to sail towards Norway.

Bothwell may have hoped to reach Denmark and raise an army with the support of Frederick II of Denmark to put Mary back on the throne. He was caught off the coast of Norway (then in a union with Denmark) at Høyevarde lighthouse in Karmsundet without proper papers, and was escorted to the port of Bergen. This was the native home of Anna Throndsen. Anna raised a complaint against Bothwell, which was enforced by her powerful family; her cousin Erik Rosenkrantz, a high-level official in Norway, remanded Bothwell to the Bergenhus Fortress while Anna sued him for abandonment and return of her dowry.

Anna may have had a soft spot for Bothwell, as he persuaded her to take custody of his ship, as compensation. Bothwell would have been released, but King Frederick heard that the Scottish government was seeking Bothwell for the murder of Darnley, and decided to take him into custody in Denmark.

The Earl was sent to Copenhagen, where the Danish monarch, Frederik II, deliberated on his fate. The Earl was sent across Øresund to the fortress and prison Malmøhus Castle. but as news from both England and Scotland arrived, the King eventually understood that Mary never again would become Queen of the Scots. Without Mary, the King considered him insignificant.

Death

He was imprisoned at Dragsholm Castle, 75 kilometres west of Copenhagen. He was held in what were said to be appalling conditions. He died in April 1578. He was buried in a vault at Fårevejle church near the castle.

A pillar to which he was chained for the last ten years of his life can still be seen, with a circular groove in the floor around the pillar.

In 1858 the body was exhumed and declared to be that of Bothwell. It was in a dried condition and was thereafter referred to as “Bothwell’s mummy”. His extended family tried to get his body sent back to Scotland, but their request has not been granted. The identity of the body has never been conclusively proven.

A body referred to as “Bothwell’s mummy” materialised in 1976 in the Edinburgh Wax Museum on the Royal Mile, as the only non-wax exhibit. The guide book claimed it was brought to Scotland in 1858.