Vulgar History - Mary, Queen of Scots： Part Eight： Cat(te) And Mouse

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00:00:30.000 Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. This is the 0.96

00:00:48.440 Mary Queen of Scots series part I've lost track. I want to say eight, perhaps. But anyway,

00:00:56.680 my name is Anne Foster. I'm joined by Alison Epstein. Alison, welcome.

00:01:01.240 Thank you. I also don't know what part we're on, but we'll figure that out before it posts.

00:01:05.480 Yeah, absolutely. We will. There's a part in all my notes where I'm like previously on. And at this

00:01:09.700 point, I think I wrote just kind of like listen to all the episodes. Previously, a lot.

00:01:17.180 A lot. A lot. A Douglas. And also a lot. This is in fact part eight. We are American Scots part

00:01:25.280 eight. And yes, what I wanted to mention, I've said this before, but it becomes increasingly

00:01:29.580 unhinged to me that I ever thought I was going to tell this story in four hour long episodes.

00:01:34.520 That's hilarious. That is wild. That is adorable and hilarious. I think my plan had been to do in

00:01:40.260 one episode, like the murder of Rizzio, the murder of Darnley, and also running away with

00:01:44.720 Bothwell. I thought that's a cool 45 minutes, 60 minutes. And you spent an hour and 15 minutes on

00:01:50.720 who is rizzio what's his deal yeah absolutely absolutely i did three episodes before she even

00:01:56.140 married darling and then what we're talking about today like spoiler for how many episodes there's

00:02:01.040 going to be i thought this was gonna like the contents of the next this and the next two

00:02:05.340 episodes i thought it was gonna be another cool 45 minutes and you were the one who was like okay

00:02:10.720 and like, I admire your, your ambition here, but I would book five hours.

00:02:19.360 Yeah. And that is how long it will take is my guess. So I wanted to say, first of all,

00:02:25.080 before I forget my references for this. So it's been interesting. I read so much Mary

00:02:29.640 Green Scott's stuff. So many biographies of this person who the other thing, the other

00:02:34.760 irony. Well, okay. I'm going to say two things. First of all, um, sometimes people, when I post

00:02:40.220 an episode, people send me messages. And I'm like, I guess that like quoting something and

00:02:44.720 like a laughing emoji. And I'm like, perhaps that is something I said. I don't remember what I've

00:02:52.040 said before, especially in these extremely long episodes, these Mary Queen of Scots episodes.

00:02:57.040 So I might be repeating myself, but whatever. Also, I was like Mary Queen of Scots season.

00:03:02.080 I've been holding off and doing it for a while. And I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to do

00:03:04.820 it. And this will be kind of straightforward because this is a story I know pretty well.

00:03:08.900 And that's the thing. If I had just done this without any new research, it would have been for 45 minute episodes. But as I started reading actual books, I was just like, oh, shit, there's like so much stuff I did not know. Like I knew more than some people about Mary Queen of Scots. And now I know more than many people.

00:03:27.340 Yeah, there's so many things I truly did not know. And this part that we're talking about,

00:03:33.600 this post-Loc Levin era is the part I think I knew the least about. And that is because I think

00:03:40.200 in a lot of books and also in movies and TV shows, although this was not Rain's fault,

00:03:45.700 they were canceled. This part of her whole life often gets glossed over. Like a lot of things

00:03:50.640 kind of go from like her being arrested in the first place. And then it's like time passes and

00:03:55.300 then it's her death like spoiler she does die not in this episode not next episode this part

00:04:00.980 just gets skipped over a lot because whenever people are telling her story it's always like

00:04:04.020 darnley rizzio like that's like bothwell like that's the story that people often retell

00:04:09.080 but this is i would say no less interesting it's just a different kind of interesting

00:04:13.660 because we're getting into some spy shit allison what are your feelings about mary queen of spy 0.99

00:04:20.280 shit this is how i know mary best as mary queen of spy shit she is love of my life schemer of 0.98

00:04:27.320 schemes i'm very very excited to talk about this part and it's my favorite part of the story not 0.98

00:04:33.660 because mary is winning a lot but because she's up against some absolutely incredible odds that

00:04:39.680 no like human being has the wherewithal to win against she's in a very hard spot at this time

00:04:46.480 in the story every day of her life she wakes up and goes how can I scheme my way out of this one

00:04:52.260 never gives up never surrenders she's a legend very excited to get into it it's really it's

00:04:59.540 very exciting it's just it's a different vibe she's in England now and like the vibe in Scotland

00:05:05.680 was just like groups of men getting together signing paperwork doing chaotic mass murders

00:05:11.920 and then not thinking about the consequences.

00:05:15.520 England is like, let's write some letters

00:05:18.480 and be very like passive aggressive with each other

00:05:21.940 and like just secretly be scheming,

00:05:24.100 but outwardly be polite.

00:05:25.500 Like it's a very different vibe.

00:05:27.080 Because here's the thing, and we're gonna get into it,

00:05:29.260 but when Mary was in Scotland,

00:05:32.080 Mary was the smartest person in the room 0.62

00:05:34.440 by like a not insignificant amount. 0.99

00:05:38.780 we we witnessed how good the asshole lords are not at scheming so mary was like okay guys let me 0.99

00:05:46.580 just keep my way around this one more time this is the worst planned murder i've ever heard of 0.99

00:05:50.620 why are you signing your names on everything england's a different story and so she's gonna

00:05:54.320 have to adapt yeah that's the thing it's kind of like i don't i do not know what your experience

00:06:01.320 was going to school so i can only speak for myself but it was like i have always been like

00:06:07.000 good at writing. Like I was always, I wrote a better essay than most people, even if like there

00:06:12.080 was no thesis to it, even if it was like not everyone, the teachers are just like, Oh, this

00:06:16.040 is fine. So I never really had to learn how to be good because my natural ability was like, okay.

00:06:21.540 And then I got to do a master's program and suddenly they were like, this isn't a good

00:06:25.260 paper. You don't have a thesis. And I was like, but I have never needed a thesis. I I've always

00:06:30.100 been my professor enough like the fact that i wrote complete sentences got me through an entire 0.94

00:06:37.380 undergraduate degree a high school like so suddenly i had to step my shit up right yes

00:06:42.960 because it's like oh i like i can do it it's just suddenly it's more work and i feel like that's 0.64

00:06:48.080 what mary experienced it's like she could get out of all how many times did she climb out of a

00:06:52.480 window how many times did she manipulate somebody like she got out of these shitty situations

00:06:57.360 basically every time.

00:06:59.560 But in England, it's just like the people she's up against, 0.99

00:07:02.560 it's not the asshole lords. 0.97

00:07:03.780 It is people who we will talk about in detail soon. 0.97

00:07:07.760 People who Alison knows a lot about a lot more than I do.

00:07:11.120 But we know like William Cecil, right?

00:07:12.620 We've seen his looming puppet mastery previously.

00:07:15.980 Like he is frighteningly competent.

00:07:19.700 There's William Cecil on one hand

00:07:21.160 and Hollywood icon Jimmy Stewart on the other hand.

00:07:23.440 And you're like, okay,

00:07:24.320 you're going to have to scheme in different ways

00:07:25.720 to get around these things.

00:07:26.940 Yes.

00:07:27.360 Exactly, exactly. So the books that I read, I think the point that I started making several

00:07:32.020 minutes ago was, it's been changing. Like each episode, like there's some core titles that I've

00:07:37.240 been using for everything, but I've really sort of, for this era, I've got some new sources. So

00:07:41.540 I was looking at a book called The Betrayal of Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I and Her Greatest

00:07:45.620 Rival by Kate Williams, as per Ever Embroidering Her Truth by Claire Hunter, the book about

00:07:51.360 embroidery and textiles and Mary Queen of Scots, because we're going to get into some-

00:07:55.280 Which we're going to get into this time.

00:07:57.360 we i've been like this claire hunter book honestly game changer it's so good um i am

00:08:03.560 gonna actually be having a special episode with claire hunter coming up later where we're gonna

00:08:07.020 deep dive into these textiles and these embroideries that's a real gasp for me listeners

00:08:11.160 i'm very excited about that one and i didn't know oh my gosh oh my gosh no i'm so excited to share

00:08:15.620 that episode with her but um yeah that book was because it really gets into for her she was seeing

00:08:21.040 like mary cream scott's did not leave diaries right but what she did do is claire hunter was

00:08:26.460 looking at the lists of like, here's the fabric she ordered and when, and what did the fabrics

00:08:30.200 look like? And that's where you can see what she was thinking. That's where like, oh, she

00:08:33.220 makes Darnley and suddenly all four fabrics are in color. Like you see what she's doing. 0.98

00:08:37.800 But then also the embroideries are as close as we have to Mary's diaries. Cause you're like,

00:08:42.280 what was she making? What were the subjects she was choosing? And then Claire is like a really,

00:08:45.900 really, really expert person about this sort of topic. She is a stitcher herself. So she could

00:08:52.000 look at the stitcher and see like, oh, these stitches here are even in these ones are more

00:08:55.360 spaced out. It's like, you can tell she was upset. So like what you can learn from her from this is

00:08:59.900 like huge. So we're going to touch on that a bit today, but like listeners, please know in I think

00:09:05.020 two weeks, you're going to get like me talking to Claire Hunter for an hour, just being like,

00:09:09.100 Claire, tell us about this, please tell us about this. So another book that I turned to for the

00:09:14.160 first time and thank God. Okay. This is a book called Imprisoning Mary Queen of Scots, the men

00:09:17.780 who kept the Stuart Queen by Mickey Mayhew. So this is a book I want to shout out Pen and Sword

00:09:23.540 press because every time I was looking for a book about like a weird strangely tangential person

00:09:30.460 I was like oh my god there's a book about it it's like pen and sword press like pen and sword press

00:09:35.260 is just filling in all the gaps about the like the Tudor era with books about like the most obscure

00:09:40.320 of people I think I'm pretty sure they're the ones who published the book about Scottish

00:09:44.780 Machiavelli his biography like pen and sword press bless you I know you follow me on TikTok

00:09:51.200 I don't know if you listen to this podcast, but like what you do with these books about these

00:09:58.720 like incredibly obscure people is so helpful because looking at this part, Mary's England

00:10:04.140 era, like other books. So Claire Hunter, a lot of good information from that. The Kate Williams

00:10:08.480 book, lots of good information, but I really wanted to have like a chronological thing of

00:10:13.240 like what happened when, and a larger book of like, by, I understand they sort of like wrap

00:10:19.480 things up to be like, and over the next seven years, these things happened. And I was like,

00:10:24.000 no, but what order did they happen in? But I wanted to know. And that's where this book came

00:10:28.840 in. Anyway, there's also an article from History Today by Cyril Hemshear about the Ridolfi plot,

00:10:37.760 which we'll be talking about, and which I really needed to get someone like Cyril Hemshear. This

00:10:43.320 is an article from like the 1970s, but it's online. Bless you, History Today. Cyril Hemshear

00:10:48.840 really lays it out and then an article from bbc which is also about the various plots now i do

00:10:56.740 want to mention and we're going to get into this more next time recently some guys found some

00:11:01.840 letters that mary creative scots wrote in code and they decoded them but the stuff that those

00:11:06.920 is in those letters is like next week's episode is when those letters are from but that's what i

00:11:13.040 said before like mary creative scots she didn't have diaries what did she think these ciphered

00:11:17.080 letters like pretty close we're gonna know yeah next time we're gonna get into that those letters

00:11:22.000 are not from this era so and also i have to say i did look at alison's book a tip for the hangman

00:11:27.640 but that's again more next week's episode where i i learned some things from you from your book

00:11:32.300 various plots i was like alison explain it to me through fiction thank you okay so i have a couple

00:11:42.500 notes that i just wanted to say it's been a couple weeks since we recorded and i just had some some

00:11:46.420 thoughts. I wanted to share things that have been occurring to me. So I just wanted to go through

00:11:50.460 the numbers. So Mary Queen of Scots, she became Queen of Scots when she was six days old. When

00:11:55.800 she was 15, she became Queen of France. She was widowed for the first time age 18. Then she ruled

00:12:01.420 in Scotland from ages 18 until 24 when she was forced to abdicate. Remember before her 25th

00:12:07.680 birthday when like all these things would have happened. So she ruled in Scotland for six years, 0.97

00:12:12.660 which is like when you look at other people who've ruled other places it's like six years is

00:12:18.280 actually kind of standard like it's an outlier to have somebody like elizabeth the first who

00:12:22.920 rules for decades and decades like six years and six years the six years she ruled like god bless

00:12:28.840 like what the six years they were honestly yeah but i mean think of other people in similar 1.00

00:12:34.240 positions like for instance her cousin lady jane gray who also had assholes manipulating her all 1.00

00:12:39.500 the time and she only managed to reign for nine days like it's like cat years mary reigned in 0.78

00:12:46.180 scotland for six years but that's like 25 non-scotland years really in terms of what an

00:12:52.900 impressive feat that was i'm gonna toss a jesus christ superstar reference to your listeners

00:12:57.320 which is she died for three years and it felt like 30 yes a lot of work it was it was um and

00:13:05.200 she has like chronic medical conditions like there's a lot going on so like she did she's

00:13:10.100 jumping out of windows like when she was growing up in france being raised by catherine de medici 0.96

00:13:15.380 and the digge's uncles like they were teaching her spy shit they're teaching her ciphered letters 0.96

00:13:19.440 they're teaching her how to manipulate an emissary they weren't teaching her how to like tie a bed 0.99

00:13:24.220 sheet into a rope jump out a window and land on a horse she just figured that out herself like

00:13:29.180 the stuff she's doing in scotland was not what she was raised to do that was not what she was

00:13:33.160 taught to do that was just her figuring it out honestly incredibly well is are my thoughts I mean

00:13:39.760 it just bothers me so like I'm not going to call it any specific books I got great information from

00:13:45.480 all the books I read but some of the books I read are like oh this tragic life of this person who

00:13:51.140 made so many bad mistakes blah blah blah and it's like whomst among us has not made bad mistakes

00:13:57.980 like i'm not here to be like she was perfect and everything she did was great but i am trying to

00:14:03.300 sort of like course correct the general record which is like she was a sad woman who lived a

00:14:08.460 sad life and she just sat around being sad all the time she was like like you explain allison

00:14:13.840 like she was woke up every day to be like how can i scheme my way out of this now like of course she

00:14:18.500 was sad sometimes we're all sad sometimes of course she cried sometimes some of us cry a lot

00:14:23.640 it's not our fault history yeah it doesn't mean that i really don't like when people like she was

00:14:29.480 a tragic figure her life was tragic it's like everyone's dies at the end of our story and it

00:14:36.840 depends what part of the story you tell and if you're doing like a birth to death then inherently

00:14:42.040 oh it's sad at the end because that person's gonna die but if you told and i love this concept no

00:14:46.440 one's done it someone should if someone out there is listening i'm not you allison any of other

00:14:50.520 projects on the go someone also is a historical fiction novel writer you could take the story

00:14:55.140 of mary queen of scots and end it in some sort of happy point you know like you could write the

00:15:00.300 story of mary queen of scots and end it after she triumphantly reenters edinburgh after rizzio's

00:15:05.800 murder like you could end it you don't need to end it at one of the sad points but everyone always

00:15:12.560 does which just kind of drives home the fact that like it's a sad story it's like she won so many

00:15:18.240 times against every time Hollywood icon Jimmy Stewart raised an army against her she beat him

00:15:23.180 except for the final time like right she did really great so many times and it just really 1.00

00:15:29.300 bothers me when people like she was a dumb woman she led from her heart she like oh my god the 1.00

00:15:35.420 whole story about like people are like oh she just like had a terrible choice in husbands it's like 1.00

00:15:40.360 first of all as I laid out and who else had a terrible choice in husbands and wives every

00:15:45.180 single tutor monarch since the beginning of ever and also all of the stewards yeah no exactly and

00:15:50.960 the fact that people like oh she chose she was swept away with lust by by darnley it's like no 1.00

00:15:55.500 as i laid out in like an hour and 45 minutes like politically that was her best move at the time

00:15:59.920 he was a horrible person yeah and that was not guys it's not it's not her fault but he just

00:16:06.860 sucks and then in my opinion i don't think she ever chose bothwell i think bothwell forced that 0.99

00:16:16.120 situation upon her so the fact that it's like oh she just like was swept away she chose these bad 0.94

00:16:21.360 husbands and it was because of her choices in her love life it's like really no and i mean we're

00:16:26.800 going to talk about this later i keep saying stuff we're going to talk about later i've been i've had

00:16:30.460 several weeks to think about this and i'm just like i have things i want to tell allison but

00:16:34.340 like everything people say the haters about mary her son was that yes we had this conversation last 0.94

00:16:41.000 night james man oh my gosh like he was he was a whore he was the one who like fell in love with 0.97

00:16:51.860 men and then who were like grift literal grifters one after another like gave them titles and jobs 0.99

00:16:58.740 and like someone who led with the heart and the dick as king james the first it's not mary

00:17:05.520 no like everything which is like which i find increasingly interesting and increasingly why

00:17:11.980 i'm just like i think i might need to do like a little follow-up season about james because

00:17:15.740 everything that people are like oh mary's gonna do this she's like this it's like she wasn't she

00:17:19.580 was like an extremely catholic woman who was like very conservative in a lot of ways and they're all 0.96

00:17:27.500 like oh she's so slutty and so trampy and it's like she wasn't her son was 0.76

00:17:31.300 she was not anyway i just wanted to like get my feelings a bit about how she's actually great 0.95

00:17:39.180 i'm looking at my notes it's like people say she's passionate i'm like yep no i said that

00:17:42.980 inherently okay yeah this is why i just want to point out um part of what rain got correct so

00:17:51.440 which is like the overall vibes is what i want to say so for instance in season one of rain

00:17:57.160 there's an episode like based not in fact which that's not the show's deal and whatever so there

00:18:03.040 was an episode it was one of those episodes you know on a tv show where it's just like oh everyone's

00:18:06.680 all in the same room it's like a bottle episode where it's like let's just all film in one set

00:18:10.920 for a day so something happens i forget what but all the men have to leave because there's like

00:18:14.800 they have to fight a battle so it's just the women left in the castle it's like mary her ladies in

00:18:18.540 waiting catherine de medici and then the castle is attacked by men from naples who i never stopped

00:18:24.940 finding funny are called neapolitans that makes me laugh every time thank you for saying that

00:18:29.120 it's florentines too makes me laugh and i know that's silly i'm sorry to the country of italy

00:18:35.280 but every time i'm like that's food that's not people i was recapping rain when this episode

00:18:41.300 came out and the amount of times i said the evil neapolitans it was gratuitous anyway so the

00:18:49.540 neapolitans come in and mary and katherine like scheme their way out of this situation and so

00:18:54.460 earlier in the episode um in a way like it obviously pays off but at the time i was just

00:19:00.040 like oh they're like this is airing at the same time as downton abbey and you know on downton

00:19:03.800 abbey they'd always be like this is a toaster oh i don't know which is a weekend yeah so they're

00:19:11.680 like introducing things to be like telephone to make us feel superior and to make us think people

00:19:16.960 in the past were dummies so when rain and being the episode they were like this is a fork

00:19:21.380 and they're like i don't know about this i prefer eating with not a fork but at the end like does 0.62

00:19:28.280 this episode end with mary stabbing a neapolitan in the eye with a fork it does bless so legend

00:19:34.340 this is where i love the show but like mary did not stab a neapolitan in the eye with a fork but

00:19:41.460 she had a real fork stab to the eye energy is what i want to say like like rain got that right

00:19:50.220 and i love that for that show i love that people who watch that show who didn't know who she was 1.00

00:19:54.480 were just like who is this badass woman who like whenever she's back in a corner like pulls out

00:19:58.580 some amazing scheme and does great because that's what she actually was like like it's it's for so

00:20:05.360 long it's just been like oh especially in the 19th century and all those paintings came out of

00:20:08.980 her just like swooning and being tragic like it really built up this thing about she was just this

00:20:14.200 sad saddo who's just like dragged around and manipulated by people but it's like no she was 0.69

00:20:18.920 like someone who like metaphorically would stab a neapolitan in the eye with a fork and that is 1.00

00:20:24.780 what she was like like she um like she did what she needed to be done she put in a disguise she 0.98

00:20:31.300 would pretend like she was in love with darnley she would ride a horse while pregnant for five

00:20:34.920 hours rally an army like climb out a window like these are things she did it's got what i have to 0.98

00:20:41.780 say is a real fredigand style energy yes it does if she could disguise an entire army's trees she

00:20:49.440 would have done that yeah exactly there's a part in the fredigand story where she like listener

00:20:54.780 new listeners i did three hours of episodes about fredigand which at the time seemed like a lot of

00:21:00.040 hours for a single person it was um well how long-winded i've become like i'm sure if i did

00:21:07.460 it again it would be longer but so fredigan was a queen of a part in what is now france and like

00:21:12.860 centuries and centuries before mary queen was gospel anyway she was great there's a part in

00:21:17.440 the story where fredigan had they were under siege she had like just given birth and her 0.67

00:21:22.980 husband was like i don't know what to do and fredigan was like bitch like listen up she like 0.98

00:21:28.060 just having given birth covered in birth juices like got her little newborn baby with her and 0.99

00:21:33.580 she's like, here's what we're going to do. And then she like invents how to have shelf-stable

00:21:37.740 poisons on knives, like manipulates two young servants into going on a suicide mission 0.99

00:21:42.860 to like kill the enemy king. Like, and that's what Mary's energy is to me. It's like, she's 0.79

00:21:48.160 like when she's backed in it, she's never more powerful than when she's in what seems like an

00:21:51.440 impossible situation. Interestingly, Fredegund is also always talked about in contrast with

00:21:56.160 Fredegund and Brunhild, like two queens. So I don't know, Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth,

00:22:01.840 with similar, similar vibes. Anyway, here we are. What just happened was she had just lost a battle

00:22:08.000 to Hollywood icon, Jimmy Stewart. And she was just like, I don't know what to do. And then

00:22:12.080 controversially to some people who think she's an idiot, decides to go to England. And it's also 1.00

00:22:18.440 really easy to be like, that was a bad decision when you know what the repercussions are. But

00:22:22.600 she didn't know what the repercussions would be. She was making a judgment call. And if she went

00:22:27.380 of france things maybe would have gone badly in a different way who knows so it's mary she's got

00:22:32.440 like 16 or so loyal people with her bear in mind at this point she has shaved her head like i i'm 0.99

00:22:39.220 pretty sure i mentioned that last time but like to put on her pants disguise and to really she had 0.74

00:22:43.920 this very signature like crimped red hair so she's just like shaved head they never put that in any 1.00

00:22:51.000 of the movies which is a shame because like how badass is that oh my gosh yeah so anyway so they

00:22:57.080 arrive in england mary was apparently in high spirits and very talkative so famously again i

00:23:03.880 don't know what's famous to not me she stumbled when getting out of the boat that happens in a

00:23:08.940 lot of the movies also happens every time i get out of a boat so like yeah especially yeah exactly

00:23:15.840 so it's like oh is this a bad omen but i feel like in terms of her and boat-based omens the

00:23:21.100 worst one so far was when she was going from france to scotland and the boat of other people

00:23:25.480 all drowned in front of her we've had worse boat omens in our days this seems like by contrast 0.97

00:23:32.080 maybe a good omen no one's dead yeah so this is where mary queen of like the tourism industry of

00:23:39.060 the british isles um the amount of castles she slept at least one night in i think is every

00:23:45.640 yeah yeah there's anyway so this is where like if you're i don't know i feel like in my retirement

00:23:54.200 years i was talking with um one of the listeners laura lee she was saying like it would be great

00:23:59.040 to do a trip just to like follow mary's footsteps but we both agreed like that would be multi-months

00:24:04.060 long the amount of places she went if we all had to sleep in one night in every castle she slept

00:24:08.840 one night in like let's take a year and we would all have to sleep on trunks in the hallway because

00:24:13.460 there wouldn't be enough beds yes yes oh rip rizio so the castle that she arrives in if you're

00:24:21.320 planning this trip for yourself is called Workington Hall. And so they arrived. And so

00:24:26.640 one of her guys, they didn't want to be like, it's American Scots. So they sent a message to

00:24:30.440 the owner of Workington Hall, Sir Henry Kerwin. And they were like, hey, so we're just here with

00:24:36.000 this young Scottish heiress. We thought that we're just visiting. We thought maybe she could

00:24:41.300 be a potential bride for your son. Can we just like hang out in your castle for a while?

00:24:45.040 Her head is shaved. Don't mind that. It's normal.

00:24:47.340 Yeah, don't worry about it. That's just what the Scottish ladies are doing these days. Yes, 1.00

00:24:51.080 She's wearing pants also. 1.00

00:24:52.840 Yeah, she's six feet tall. 0.99

00:24:54.020 Don't worry about them.

00:24:56.240 So he was not there, but they were, they were like allowed to hang out in the house based on this story. 0.96

00:25:00.840 But pretty, for all the reasons you just said, the people in Workington were pretty much right away like, this is fucking Mary Queen of Scots. 0.93

00:25:07.340 Like this, this is clearly Mary Queen of Scots. 0.97

00:25:11.940 So the deputy governor of Cumberland arrived with 400 men to be like, hey, Mary Queen of Scots.

00:25:18.320 Like, welcome to England, et cetera.

00:25:20.640 And so they were going to escort her to Carlisle Castle,

00:25:23.820 which I guess is like a more appropriate place for Queen to be.

00:25:26.840 En route, they passed through Cockermouth.

00:25:29.560 Which cannot be a real place, England.

00:25:31.800 What are you doing?

00:25:33.740 Oh my gosh.

00:25:34.680 Oh yeah.

00:25:35.080 So I do want to say,

00:25:36.420 I think at least three people who are from England

00:25:39.140 let me know that last time I pronounced the name of a place as Skilly

00:25:43.000 because that is how it is spelled.

00:25:44.900 It is in fact pronounced Silly. 0.88

00:25:47.060 which is a silly way of saying that place if there's a k in it somewhere 0.77

00:25:51.540 it's england i'm gonna do my best but you know like the people who corrected me i responded to

00:25:59.020 each of them being like why is it spelled that way then and they're all like i know it's wild

00:26:02.800 and i'm like so i'm gonna do my best but some of these words like tell us after we're doing our

00:26:07.620 best it's the english language so i'm gonna interpret them as i understand the way that

00:26:13.960 english letters anyway so cockermouth a local merchant presented her with a length of black

00:26:19.880 velvet and instructed that a black gown be made for her so thank you to this man he i feel like

00:26:25.820 this is like the ghost of rizzio get this lady costume she loves an outfit she needs an outfit

00:26:32.480 so then she arrived at carlisle castle she wrote a letter to elizabeth so previously she had written

00:26:38.700 one to elizabeth being like hey can i come to england but she came to england before she heard

00:26:42.220 back so she arrived there so she wrote elizabeth another letter being i guess like guess what i'm

00:26:46.180 in england assuming you said yes that it was delayed in the mail yeah so she explained just

00:26:52.600 so there could be no confusion like she yes she abdicated but she hadn't wanted to in case that's

00:26:58.460 why elizabeth didn't help her out mary was like in case you're like oh this this lady abdicated

00:27:02.800 so i don't like her it's like i didn't want to abdicate i was forced into it and she's like

00:27:06.900 let's meet let's like let's meet each other because after every time they tried to meet

00:27:12.600 i think the diggy's uncles kept doing massacres and it kept not happening happens so she hoped

00:27:18.500 like she could see elizabeth in person and she hoped that her own personal charisma which is

00:27:23.940 like at a super natural level from everything that she's done elizabeth would be so moved that she 0.99

00:27:29.420 could provide mary with money and soldiers so mary could swoop back into scotland and take over as 0.99

00:27:33.720 queen again. So she figured, and this is the vibe of this is very much like when COVID first started

00:27:38.860 and we're all like, oh, I guess we'll work from home for like one or two weeks, maybe a month

00:27:43.060 max. So Mary is like, okay, like it'll probably, to get this together, this force, I'll be in

00:27:48.600 probably one to two months and then I'll go back to Scotland and take over again. She signed off

00:27:53.660 this letter as your loyal and affectionate good sister and cousin, comma, an escaped prisoner.

00:27:59.600 She's so dramatic.

00:28:01.400 I love her so much.

00:28:02.560 She's great.

00:28:03.820 Her letters, like which we're going to get into more later, but like there's so much

00:28:07.780 personality in them.

00:28:08.720 Her writing style is really, you really see what she's like.

00:28:11.680 And to my delight, she is just like what I thought she was like.

00:28:14.840 A hundred percent.

00:28:15.400 Which is, yeah, exactly.

00:28:18.220 So Carla Castle, not, it's more of a fortress than a cozy home.

00:28:22.900 she stayed in a place that is now called queen mary's tower because that that's i get the

00:28:29.020 tourists there actually so it was called queen it was called queen mary's tower it's now demolished

00:28:34.260 but you can go there and stand where it was um which you know to me is fine i'd be like oh my

00:28:41.020 god this is where the tower was where mary's like i am the tourist who would go there and pay money

00:28:44.480 to see that so at this point she's being treated as a guest not as a prisoner so okay there's gonna

00:28:50.500 to be I didn't count because I have other things to do in my life but I feel like at this point

00:28:55.660 in this series we've had like 85 named characters mostly mostly James mostly James we're in England

00:29:03.120 so we're gonna have several Williams now and Roberts but some of those people are gonna recur

00:29:07.920 and I have to say when they came up in my research when I was reading I'm like oh my god that guy

00:29:12.280 again I'm like I have to include that so everyone can know what happened to him but there's gonna

00:29:15.460 to be some new people. And I'm going to give them some nicknames because whimsy is required. And

00:29:20.780 also, otherwise, I'm not going to remember the difference between like the Earl of this and the

00:29:25.680 Earl of such and such. So here we have parallel castle. The governor of the castle is Henry Lord

00:29:31.300 Scrope. So he was in London, actually, when Mary arrived, but they're like, hey, Mary Queen of

00:29:36.640 Scots, is that your castle, Henry Lord Scrope? And he's like, oh, shit. So then he like came to his 1.00

00:29:40.260 castle with he came with his friend Sir Francis Knowles of the Latice Knowles the dad of Latice

00:29:49.580 Knowles Sir Francis Knowles yes so we're going to call him for the rest of the story Mr. Latice or

00:29:55.880 Latice's dad which he would hate being a Tudor man but I'm sure yeah so they it took them 10

00:30:04.080 days to get there I feel like that's not 10 days away but it they got there 10 days after because

00:30:08.000 I guess maybe they were instructed by Cecil and other people of like, here's what you do.

00:30:11.700 Here's the play. So when Elizabeth found out that Mary was in England, she was just like,

00:30:16.060 wait, what? It's like when you see a friend and you're like, hey, yeah, let's have lunch. And if

00:30:19.380 your friend shows up at your workplace to be like, we're having lunch, right? Like, oh no,

00:30:23.600 I was just, that was just polite. I was just saying that that wasn't an actual invitation.

00:30:29.700 So yeah, she's like, I wrote her some nice letters and she helped out in lock leave-in,

00:30:33.920 If you'll recall, like she really helped Mary not be assassinated there.

00:30:38.280 But she's like, we were sending secret dagger letters. 0.52

00:30:40.760 It was a good time. 1.00

00:30:41.500 Yeah.

00:30:42.180 But the whole thing, like the whole thing with Mary is that she's a Catholic queen. 0.67

00:30:47.220 Elizabeth is the Protestant queen. 0.85

00:30:49.420 Anyone who wants Catholics to be in charge of England, Mary is their obvious like figurehead. 0.96

00:30:53.980 So she knows that like if Mary's here, like that's going to get people maybe doing rebellions 0.94

00:30:57.900 like to try and make Mary be the queen. 0.99

00:31:00.500 Spoiler. 0.71

00:31:01.900 Elizabeth is not wrong. 0.99

00:31:03.920 no no so like her very presence somebody whatever tripled the threat of invasion from another place

00:31:11.520 overnight just by being there and tripled means because it's like spain france like so many other

00:31:16.000 catholic like rome like places yeah mary being there suddenly meant there's suddenly like actively

00:31:22.040 three catholic countries who might now like invade at any moment not to mention all the catholics who

00:31:27.840 are already in england have been really pissed off for like 40 years they're all like okay yeah

00:31:32.600 now it's time to go exactly exactly like her existence is really really she's not just like

00:31:37.860 sometimes i forget it's not just like hey here's this cool person it's like oh no she represents

00:31:42.600 so much to so many people mary so elizabeth had an emergency meeting and she was like i want to

00:31:47.860 meet mary and like hash this out if you're playing along with american scott's bingo card which you

00:31:53.700 can find on my instagram page mary and elizabeth almost meet is one of the squares anyway so

00:31:58.980 elizabeth is like i want to just meet her like can i finally just like talk to her and like let's

00:32:02.160 Cecil is like, oh no, because Cecil knows that Mary is really, really, really persuasive and

00:32:09.880 charming and sympathetic. And she, and Elizabeth has been kind of sympathetic to her this whole

00:32:15.020 time. Like it wouldn't take much to tip Elizabeth over to like actually wanting to help her if she

00:32:20.140 met her because Mary has this superpower of persuasion. Elizabeth is kind of easy to 0.95

00:32:25.380 manipulate so Cecil is like these women can never meet basically and like I don't know that Elizabeth

00:32:33.080 is easy to manipulate generally but queen to queen like there's not that many other people

00:32:39.200 in the world who are in her situation so she's naturally going to be super sympathetic to Mary 0.98

00:32:44.140 who is extremely persuasive like if some asshole from Spain came over and was like hey do you want 0.97

00:32:48.600 to let my catholic son in I don't think she'd be persuaded in that way but Mary is like there's a 0.94

00:32:54.420 spot in her heart for someone like mary exactly thank you for that clarification elizabeth not

00:32:59.140 easy to manipulate easy to manipulate by mary or she would be because she has in the past been 0.93

00:33:05.520 like very simple and because of the whole thing about like whatever happens to mary it's like 0.95

00:33:10.140 well a queen has to be treated like this and this and this and if we suddenly stop treating queens 0.99

00:33:14.360 like this then elizabeth is at risk yeah exactly so that's like also a political manipulation she's

00:33:20.120 like i don't want anything that happened to mary and cecil's like i do though please yeah so here's

00:33:26.780 what my notes say cecil's like oh fuck elizabeth and he's like let's send him back to scotland and 0.98

00:33:31.040 elizabeth was like how about fuck you cecil no and cecil was like okay how about we fully 0.99

00:33:35.680 investigate the darnley murder in order to clear her name and then we can maybe return her to 1.00

00:33:40.660 scotland but just as like a figurehead she won't be in charge but like the assholes will still be 0.97

00:33:46.300 in charge i don't know it wasn't like a real plan but that's what cecil said he wanted to do 0.94

00:33:51.600 and did i tell you already that hollywood icon jimmy stewart is in charge of scotland i think i

00:33:56.380 did i think yes good because yeah after she abdicated hollywood icon jimmy stewart got his

00:34:01.380 lifelong dream to be the regent of scotland so what cecil kind of wanted was like okay hollywood

00:34:06.740 icon jimmy stewart who's who is easy to manipulate yes by anybody yeah keep him in charge and mary

00:34:14.220 would be there but just as kind of like you know your face would be on the coins but you wouldn't

00:34:18.160 like be in charge which mary would not for one single freaking second have been okay with no 0.99

00:34:24.340 no and that would never have worked no like anyway so mary was put under the protection of

00:34:30.320 latisse's dad so fun fact so sir francis knolls um his mother's name was also latisse

00:34:38.740 surname Peniston.

00:34:41.920 I'm sorry, I'm four.

00:34:44.240 I'm four years old. 1.00

00:34:46.720 So Latice's grandmother

00:34:48.400 was Latice Peniston,

00:34:50.800 which is a great name,

00:34:52.380 which in a sea of like

00:34:53.960 Roberts and Williams and Marys,

00:34:56.260 it's like, oh, Latice Peniston.

00:34:58.420 Great.

00:34:59.300 Yeah.

00:34:59.800 I'm holding it together.

00:35:01.520 We can continue.

00:35:02.640 Do you need to go to Cockermouth

00:35:03.960 to think about this more?

00:35:05.000 Stop this.

00:35:06.160 I am an adult human being.

00:35:08.740 okay so our latisse latisse knows who we know about new listeners because i did an episode

00:35:14.500 about her a couple years ago um so this one latisse knows is the same age as mary queen of

00:35:18.700 scots they're both 25 years old she was not not yet married latisse but we're going to keep up

00:35:24.120 to date with what she does later on so anyway so latisse's dad i think he treats mary in an okay

00:35:30.960 way and i think it might be partially because she is the same age as his daughter and so he's just

00:35:35.960 kind of like sees her in a dad way kind of she's also like has red hair and anyway so latisse's

00:35:43.500 dad um found mary very nice and charming even though she was a catholic and a protestant and

00:35:48.340 he was supposed to be her prison guard he was kind of like she's cool this is fun but he was

00:35:52.720 one who had to deliver all the bad news so elizabeth told him to tell mary like we can't

00:35:57.460 meet queen to queen mary burst into tears because she is a person who cries a lot and that doesn't

00:36:02.800 make her a weak person makes her a person who cries a lot yeah so she burst into tears i feel

00:36:08.220 like obviously situationally she reminded latisa's dad that like oh yeah because she's also told like

00:36:15.320 they're going to investigate the darnley murder and her involvement in it and she was like okay

00:36:19.200 but like you know i wasn't involved in it you know i viewed the paperwork with the signatures

00:36:24.080 of all the people who were involved in it which included scottish machiavelli jeremy jem from

00:36:29.480 practicing recreation like all these people who are now kind of like in charge of scotland those

00:36:33.260 guys did it they signed paperwork about it pretty sure cecil has a copy it was like elizabeth was

00:36:38.560 like i can't meet you face to face if you're like an on the run murderess we need to like clear your 0.99

00:36:44.220 name and maybe then we can see each other face to face but i the queen can't see be seen hang out

00:36:49.220 with a person who killed a king which is cecil's stalling tactic yes okay you can meet her but not

00:36:55.120 until we've cleared her name from this murder even though i have the list in my pocket of the 0.51

00:36:59.940 people who did the murder just yeah this murder that i cecil arranged yes anyway so mary began

00:37:07.600 writing to france so she had an uncle her uncle was the diggy's cardinal cardinal france and also

00:37:13.940 charles was the king in france he was the younger brother of her first husband francis and so they

00:37:18.900 kind of grew up together charles had kind of a crush on her so he had maybe some feelings to

00:37:23.180 want to help she was like send money or support or like i only have this one velvet dress from

00:37:28.940 this guy in cockermouse can you send me some fabric and eventually actually letiz's dad

00:37:34.440 petitioned liz and got liz to send along sorry my notes say liz not elizabeth so

00:37:39.140 liz liz i'm not going to talk about elizabeth 10 000 times liz so elizabeth sent along some

00:37:45.680 things for mary to have more outfits but unfortunately there was either on purpose

00:37:50.080 or not the parcel that arrived contained some pieces of black velvet some ripped shirts and

00:37:56.100 random velvet shoes so it's like was that the bag you're taking to goodwill or was that the bag

00:38:03.960 of things for mary claims got like oh no so either this was a yeah either this was an intentional

00:38:10.180 insult or like they just sent the wrong parcel and at this point i think it was the wrong parcel

00:38:13.900 because elizabeth was being kind to mary at this point hollywood icon jimmy stewart even sent along

00:38:19.780 some outfits from scotland but again he didn't he doesn't know fashion he doesn't know what she

00:38:25.680 wants he took all her stuff and gave it to his wife remember so he sent like cloaks coverings

00:38:31.020 for saddles it's like like what did you send me like napkins like this isn't clothes my man why

00:38:36.800 did you send 45 saddle blankets and zero dresses what is wrong with you so one month passed um at

00:38:44.180 carla castle with latisse's dad so she was there with her entourage which includes mary seaton

00:38:49.400 from the Four Marys,

00:38:50.960 Young Willie from Mogleman.

00:38:55.020 Young Willie style.

00:38:56.520 And so they would just kind of pass the time.

00:38:58.180 At one point, her entourage

00:38:59.800 played a football game against each other

00:39:02.060 and she was allowed to watch them.

00:39:03.740 She was allowed to go out horseback riding,

00:39:05.840 to go hunting hares.

00:39:08.200 Oh, and this is where Mr. Latisse was like,

00:39:09.840 oh no, she's like really good at horseback riding

00:39:11.660 and she could probably run away on a horse. 1.00

00:39:13.820 So let's like let Elizabeth know that 1.00

00:39:16.620 and maybe keep that in mind. 0.99

00:39:19.400 So meanwhile, so Mary Seaton is there, and she's doing amazing work with wigs. So if you'll recall, Mary shaved her head. So Mary Seaton, I love that she like, she fled Scotland. No outfits, but all of the wigs. Like the first episode of Schitt's Creek when Moira is packing up all of her wigs. So Mary arrived with wigs and like no outfit. 0.99

00:39:41.140 Anyway, so Mary Seaton was just like styling the wigs. The wigs are all different hair colors. Letizia's dad wrote in one letter, like, I don't even know what color hair she has naturally every day. It's a new thing. Some great wig action happening. Mary Seaton is just at this level of personal dresser that I find really delightful. 1.00

00:40:01.800 anyway mary kept you know defending herself and letizia's dad was like went to elizabeth and was

00:40:09.500 like maybe we should let her return to scott like mary's persuasiveness is considerable but

00:40:15.300 letizia's dad seems like he was like kind of a pushover so he went to elizabeth and was like

00:40:20.020 hey let's just let her go back to scott and elizabeth is like uh no like what are you no

00:40:24.900 it was not that yeah yeah so all right so elizabeth wrote to mary being like you can't go

00:40:32.700 back to scotland like stop asking to go back to scotland anyway mary wrote back to like these

00:40:36.920 letters exist this is how we know so she wrote back to elizabeth being like like come on and

00:40:40.840 elizabeth did not change her mind so anyway but elizabeth did agree to one thing mary wanted which

00:40:45.960 was that she summoned hollywood icon jimmy stewart to london to testify about the whole

00:40:50.560 Darnley murder situation as like a witness slash accuser. At the same time, Mary was moved further,

00:40:56.780 like where Carlow Castle was, was like close-ish to the Scottish border. And so her supporters

00:41:02.280 could come get her. She was good at riding a horse. So she was moved to somewhere a bit more 0.97

00:41:06.720 into England, further away from Scotland. She's moved to Bolton Castle in Wensleydale in Yorkshire,

00:41:12.080 the home of Lord Scrope. But Mr. Latisse is still like her babysitter.

00:41:17.240 So this place was also more fortress than cozy home.

00:41:21.700 Mr. Latisse said it had the highest walls of any house he had ever seen.

00:41:26.220 So welcome to prison castle.

00:41:29.480 Yeah, but again, she was allowed to go hunting and hawking.

00:41:32.040 And while there, and presumably earlier, Latisse's dad started tutoring Mary in the English language.

00:41:37.640 And you're thinking like, she speaks the English language.

00:41:39.860 She does not.

00:41:41.000 She speaks French, Latin, and Scots.

00:41:45.300 and Scots and English have similarities, but are not the same language.

00:41:51.500 So when she was writing to Elizabeth in these letters, was she writing French?

00:41:55.320 Probably. Yeah. Yeah. French was kind of like, so she was in Scotland for five years,

00:42:00.440 but being raised by her mother, who's French, surrounded by French servants. Then she went

00:42:04.020 to France for like 15 years. So I think French is kind of her first language.

00:42:08.260 Yeah. I was wondering like in England, how many people spoke French, like good enough to

00:42:14.960 do the international business in French. I don't know. I don't know. But I think Elizabeth was

00:42:19.660 famously spoke every language. So all of them, like I think Elizabeth, I think she did. I think

00:42:25.280 she was like very well educated, but this is interesting about the Scots. So again, like

00:42:29.460 she went to, I think when she first went to Scotland, I think I said in the podcast, like

00:42:32.700 she started like practicing her Scots, like a language that she knew when she was a little girl.

00:42:38.600 So this is why people in England. So when she spoke English, she spoke English with a Scots

00:42:44.820 scottish accent so people in england described her as having a purring scottish accent so i always

00:42:51.420 thought she would have a french accent when speaking english but i think because she grew up

00:42:56.200 in scotland speaking scots and french her english anyway she had a scottish accent this was like so

00:43:03.460 i need to like cross off my list of things that bother me the fact that in the saoirse ronan movie

00:43:08.500 she uses a scottish accent in elizabeth the golden age samantha morton uses a scottish accent

00:43:13.520 And in both cases, I was like, oh, that's so giving her a Scottish accent, she would have

00:43:17.580 a French accent. In fact, no, people who met her, English people called her, she had this delightful

00:43:22.160 Scottish accent. So exactly. It's the same as like in rain when she got married in France,

00:43:27.960 she's wearing a white dress. And I was like, oh, white wedding dresses. People don't wear white

00:43:31.160 wedding dresses. Oh no, but she actually did though. She actually did wear a white wedding 1.00

00:43:34.000 dress. So I'm just like, okay, you know what? I have to, this is why it's good to learn things.

00:43:38.420 But yeah, anyway, so she has this purring Scottish accent, which apparently added to 1.00

00:43:42.780 her allure and made her seem exotic or something. Leticia's dad also began teaching her about 0.98

00:43:47.460 Protestantism, maybe hoping that she would convert because if she stopped being the Catholic queen,

00:43:52.640 then maybe that would be safer for her. She wouldn't be a figurehead anymore. Mary was like, 0.97

00:43:59.520 oh, you know, in her cute Scottish accent, which I will not try to, if I do a Scottish accent,

00:44:04.000 I'm going to sound like Scrooge McDuck, so I'm going to not try. But anyway, so in a secret

00:44:09.340 letter mary wrote to the spanish ambassador mary wrote that she would sooner die than change her

00:44:14.100 catholic faith which is like been a consistent thing about her her whole life right anyway but

00:44:20.080 she's being nice to latisse's dad and be like oh protestantism that's interesting

00:44:23.920 and i love seeing her back to herself in this way because like when she capitulated to bothwell to 0.98

00:44:31.300 have the protestant ceremony and i'm like no this is my scheming catholic bitch she's back 0.51

00:44:35.920 and that's yeah no exactly yes very much like that was something that in that episode which was 0.98

00:44:42.420 as we're recording it that episode just came out the tits of brigade are all still relaying from

00:44:46.680 the bothwell episode but one of the things it was i think especially devastating in a series of

00:44:52.840 devastating events was that it was a protestant marriage and she was not allowed to go to catholic

00:44:56.440 mass like her catholic faith is so important to her in this really genuine way that that's just

00:45:03.160 anyway so it's i agree i agree i'm glad to see love yes yes our catholic queen is back

00:45:08.480 she also befriended latisse's mom catherine carey so catherine carey was the daughter of mary

00:45:16.360 boleyn anne boleyn's sister and there are some people who think that anne boleyn mary boleyn

00:45:23.780 had been the mistress of henry the eighth before anne boleyn was the mistress of henry the eighth

00:45:28.960 and so there's some people who think that the children of mary boleyn are maybe henry the

00:45:32.600 Eighth's illegitimate children. So there's a theory that Catherine Carey might be actually

00:45:37.660 Elizabeth's half-sister. Yeah, if Henry VIII is both of their dads. So like the Latisse family

00:45:44.180 is all, even if they're not, like Catherine Carey is the daughter of Elizabeth's aunt. So they're

00:45:49.320 all really, really related, closely connected. I'm also obsessed with the Latisse family named

00:45:54.240 after the coolest person in it latisse peniston so yeah so the latisse family so her mom katherine

00:46:04.600 carrie mary befriends her um because mary is really really really really good at befriending

00:46:10.920 people as we're gonna see as we have seen and as we will see over and over again she's

00:46:14.860 her personal charisma and charm is really good so this all led to latisse's dad suggested his

00:46:21.740 wife's nephew George Carey could maybe be a new potential husband for Mary and this is something

00:46:26.360 I hadn't thought about but one of the other threats that Mary represents is like who's she

00:46:30.360 gonna marry next like Boswell is still everyone's just kind of like don't worry about him he's gone

00:46:38.180 we will never speak his name again he's in Denmark he's in Denmark in a dungeon we assume he's dead

00:46:43.620 so anyway so potentially she could marry George Carey another potential husband for Mary Queen

00:46:50.440 of scots was thomas howard the fourth duke of norfolk have you heard of him i mean those are

00:46:56.660 just six names the howards are back yeah the howards are on the scene so thomas howard i'm

00:47:03.960 not going to get into how he's related to other howards just know there are a lot of them and

00:47:08.440 he is the most powerful wealthy guy in england right now thomas howard um and we're going to

00:47:15.380 call him T-Dog. And T-Dog's sister was married to Lord Scrope. So the sister was maybe telling

00:47:26.060 Mary like, hey, I have this brother. His name is T-Dog. He's the wealthiest man in England.

00:47:31.600 And he might be sympathetic to you and be a good new husband. So these connections are all

00:47:35.380 happening. But technically, Mary was still married to Bothwell, although it was a Protestant ceremony.

00:47:40.660 So I think she could probably be like, that didn't count. Anyway, she needed to get the

00:47:44.720 hope to say she was single. Like she couldn't just be like, I declare that marriage doesn't 1.00

00:47:51.660 count. Like she had to get somebody officially saying that didn't happen. So she's, she's just 0.63

00:47:56.160 writing letters. Here's what she's doing. Writing letters to everyone she can think of. So she's

00:48:04.300 spread, she's also spreading rumors. She's having her people, like she couldn't leave the castle, 0.98

00:48:07.980 but her entourage could. So they were just like spreading rumors around town, like telling other

00:48:11.500 people so she spread a rumor slash lie that uh discussions were open with philip of spain who

00:48:19.540 was single again this is still the same philip who had been married to mary the first and then

00:48:24.300 he married catherine de medici's daughter elizabeth he's like it's still the same guy i'm

00:48:28.580 like this surely is his son also called philip no same guy same philip anyway so another potential

00:48:35.200 marriage that she always has as an option is his insane son don carlos and then also the archduke

00:48:40.860 charles of austria these are all kind of like the main catholic royals in like continental europe so

00:48:47.340 she was spreading these fake rumors perhaps to make elizabeth and cecil release her back to

00:48:53.260 scotland i'm not sure why she thought that would happen but i anyway this plan misfired i was gonna

00:48:58.900 say that doesn't sound like that's gonna work no no she doesn't have advisors yeah um she's just

00:49:06.360 like thinking what she can this just made them more determined to keep her trapped away so they

00:49:11.400 couldn't put her on trial because she was not elizabeth's subject she was a scottish like she

00:49:16.960 was the queen so instead of having a trial like you know she couldn't there's not like a jury of

00:49:21.580 your peers it's like okay we'll get like who catherine de medici like elizabeth it's like

00:49:25.940 other queens will be your jury like no so they decided to have an inquiry so to have the inquiry

00:49:32.400 somebody had to accuse her of being involved in the Darnley murder and that is part of where

00:49:37.060 Hollywood icon Jimmy Stewart comes in and he didn't want to be the one to like accuse her

00:49:41.520 in public in an English court of killing Darnley because if Mary ended up back in Scotland like if

00:49:46.900 she was declared innocent then that would fuck him over as being the one who accused her and he also 0.87

00:49:51.620 never wants to be in the place where a thing is happening he always wants to be exactly 25 feet 0.77

00:49:56.220 away making someone else do it for him exactly he's always just like oh well that murder that

00:50:00.540 i arranged happened i was off to the north with my wife because yeah exactly he doesn't sign the

00:50:06.060 paperwork like his whole thing has been like stay out of these messy bits just like he's over there

00:50:10.560 on the bench while the messy stuff is happening but he's the regent of scotland now so like you

00:50:15.220 wanted this job like you need to step up my man you can't like you can't just keep slip sliding

00:50:20.020 away from like everything but also secretly cecil was like don't worry hollywood echo jimmy stewart

00:50:24.760 like we're working together this is great so i posted some pictures on instagram because i was

00:50:29.140 like who's played Cecil in various films so on Rain it was a handsome hot man it was Tom Everett

00:50:35.740 Scott actually because everyone on Rain is the sexiest person I've ever seen well and also I

00:50:40.440 like on Rain they're like okay here's a historical character who had a beard what if we get a man

00:50:44.700 with stubble and that's what we're gonna have why I always think of Cecil as from the Elizabeth

00:50:50.060 movie with Cate Blanchett or it's Richard Attenborough from Jurassic Park slash Miracle

00:50:54.500 on 34th street like literal santa claus looking person but also this is where so if i'm thinking

00:51:02.180 of him as like the jurassic park guy but it's also a bit of like the wizard of oz vibes where

00:51:06.600 he's just like running everything but pretending like oh i'm just this nice santa claus man

00:51:10.720 like he knew that mary was the biggest threat facing england at this time if she was restored

00:51:15.640 to power in scotland she could get more catholics on her side like she could overthrow elizabeth

00:51:19.980 So he had to make sure that she was found guilty of murdering Darnley. 0.80

00:51:23.760 So I mentioned the actors just so you can picture this, like this diabolical Santa Claus.

00:51:29.920 And when you see him in portraits, that is kind of what he looks like.

00:51:32.640 Kind of what he looks like, yeah.

00:51:34.440 Yeah.

00:51:35.400 And now we're just going to take a break for a word from our sponsors.

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00:54:16.420 Something You Should Know.

00:54:20.460 And we're back.

00:54:22.420 Okay, so remember, I'll remind you who these people are.

00:54:27.880 Thank you.

00:54:28.660 I know there's some people that you're going to remember, and there's some people because of their nicknames being memorable, and one of those people is coming.

00:54:35.120 but george buchanan he was in like part two of this series he was an old man friend of hollywood

00:54:42.080 icon jimmy stewart who hollywood jimmy stewart hired him when mary first came to scotland to

00:54:46.760 be like her tutor and he co-wrote some masks with david rizzio okay anyway so he's just kind of this

00:54:53.840 old guy who appeared briefly so he's always been loyal to hollywood icon jimmy stewart he was also

00:55:00.360 pals with Cecil because I guess just if you're an old man with a beard you just all are friends

00:55:06.780 how many people of your generation are even still alive I don't know so he said to work writing a

00:55:11.800 document one might call it a pamphlet claiming that Mary was this femme fatale she was 100%

00:55:18.860 behind the Darnley murder she'd been having an affair with Bothwell since her son was born 1.00

00:55:23.400 everyone was always really careful about that to be to be like James was legitimate but Mary was a 0.92

00:55:27.880 whore but but in that one month the son was conceived she wasn't so this pamphlet got into 0.92

00:55:34.380 weird detail like weird detail about her sexual habits with bothwell like literally saying that 0.93

00:55:40.420 he was her backdoor lover like literally he wrote she allowed bothwell to abuse her body at the back

00:55:47.500 door pro is a phrase he wrote in this pamphlet and so he also recast darnley from being this 0.90

00:55:55.520 darnly ineffectual but being darnly to being this saintly victim who is ill-treated by his 1.00

00:56:02.180 cheating slut of a wife oh for fuck's sake yeah it's just like fan fiction it's like erotic fan 1.00

00:56:08.300 fiction at least with fan fiction you have like some loyalty to the original character this is 1.00

00:56:13.520 just like no it's just fake and so what he was this is an oc named darnly come on guys yeah so

00:56:19.440 he wrote this document i think just to be kind of like hey i'm i was in scotland and here's what i

00:56:24.000 saw almost like can you use this in this inquiry but there was no witness statements in it there's

00:56:29.100 no reports of like who how he knew any of this stuff so Kate Williams wrote in her book there

00:56:33.760 was no way Cecil would persuade Elizabeth let alone a panel of judges with this ludicrous piece

00:56:38.400 of creative writing so this is like Hollywood egg on Jimmy Stewart he's like I got you here's how

00:56:44.920 like first of all he's like hey guess what the casket letters and it's like bro those this isn't

00:56:49.640 anything he's like what about this erotic fan fiction can this be evidence like what are you

00:56:55.280 what do you think evidence means well how are they supposed to know evidence sometimes means

00:57:00.380 draw an elaborate picture with a naked man no one knows what evidence is well and i want to say i

00:57:07.000 don't know if cecil appreciated that as much as we did either anyway so speaking of the casket

00:57:13.300 letters so this erotic fan fiction not going to work so cecil asked hollywood og and jimmy stewart

00:57:17.800 Like, do you have anything else to offer as evidence?

00:57:20.900 And he was like, well, I do have these forged casket letters we made up a couple of years ago.

00:57:26.600 Do you want those?

00:57:27.380 And Cecil was like, great.

00:57:28.840 Like, let's use it.

00:57:30.120 So he had copies made of the forged letters.

00:57:33.300 Nobody ever checked the originals.

00:57:35.120 It's like, it's bananas.

00:57:37.340 Like, they're so obviously not actually proof.

00:57:40.080 And so many historians have like looked at the letters, the minutia of them, the handwriting of them.

00:57:44.900 It's like, what do these letters mean?

00:57:45.900 And I'm like, bro, they're all lies.

00:57:47.520 nothing they mean nothing no it's like it's like when mary queen of scots was trying to 1.00

00:57:53.320 find sense in what the asshole lords were doing and it's like it's just dumb it's just dumb like 0.98

00:57:59.080 just acceptance stuff but the casket letters have been like so many people have written so much about 0.99

00:58:03.840 the casket letters like it's just lies anyway so um the court of inquiry was being held at this

00:58:11.040 point. So Bothwell was in Denmark being avenged by Scotta Fruin, Anna Tronson, a heroine for the

00:58:17.940 ages. But so Hollywood Ock and Jimmy Stewart sent a message to Denmark demanding that Bothwell be

00:58:23.460 sent back to Scotland, dead or alive, to maybe come and testify in the inquiry or something.

00:58:30.180 Everyone's just like lying all the time. So Hollywood Ock and Jimmy Stewart sent a message

00:58:34.080 to Denmark being like, we demand you send back Bothwell. But secretly, he got in the way of

00:58:38.940 Bothwell coming back because he didn't want Bothwell to come back because Bothwell would be

00:58:42.120 like, no, I wasn't having an affair with Mary. I'm not her backdoor lover. What are you talking

00:58:47.420 about? Anyway, so Mary found out that the goddamn casket letters are back. She's just like, these 0.99

00:58:51.660 fucking letters again? Are you fucking kidding me? She collapsed. She physically collapsed. 1.00

00:58:57.780 She wrote to Elizabeth begging for a face-to-face meeting. The letter included a poem that compared

00:59:03.860 herself to a lost ship. But Elizabeth was like, can't stop this like runaway train of a kangaroo

00:59:10.880 court. So like, let's go. Anyway, like she was still not allowed to see the letters. She would 1.00

00:59:16.780 not agree to the trial, like this inquiry or this inquiry. She was just like, I reject this

00:59:22.180 wholeheartedly. This whole concept is dumb. Like I didn't kill Darnley. Your only evidence is these 1.00

00:59:26.900 letters. And also I'm a queen. Queens can't be put on trial like regular humans. And Elizabeth was

00:59:32.480 like oh no you thought that we were going to make you go to the trial no you can't go to the trial

00:59:36.920 because she's so persuasive and charismatic and sympathetic yeah she herself can't go so so someone

00:59:43.620 is just going to go there to represent her like everyone knew it was a fake trial like i have to

00:59:48.320 assume even mary knew this was a fake trial because the whole thing what elizabeth and 0.86

00:59:52.120 cecil wanted was just to keep hollywood out and jimmy stewart or some other man who was easy to

00:59:57.140 manipulate in Scotland as the regent for her baby son. Mary was never going to be allowed back to

01:00:02.480 Scotland to be queen again because that was too threatening. So just kind of wanted to keep Mary

01:00:06.100 tucked away. She was not still, she's still not allowed to see the casket letters. Her lawyers

01:00:10.820 were not allowed to see the casket letters. She wasn't allowed to attend, as I said, so she

01:00:15.160 couldn't hear the letters read out to contest them. And this is again, Cecil, to his great

01:00:21.740 credit like here's the thing like Cecil is an adversary worthy of Mary like he's working

01:00:27.680 against her so I hate that but I respect that he's so good it's like in any story or movie

01:00:35.060 it's like when the villain is at this level it forces the hero to to really challenge themselves

01:00:40.860 and it's satisfying this is Batman and Joker levels yeah like they deserve each other and

01:00:47.440 that's and and Cecil respects Mary in a way he's like yeah I know how good this person is let me

01:00:54.440 give her my a-game and I'm like yes okay thank you exactly exactly he's he's the only person who

01:01:02.400 is like he knows how good she is at scheming he knows she could switch outfits with someone else

01:01:07.420 and climb out a window he knows like she's capable of riding a horse for five hours like

01:01:11.840 he knows how persuasive she is that's why they keep trying to let her not go so he's like she

01:01:17.140 is 100 not showing up at this trial because she is so persuasive and sympathetic like no like he

01:01:23.640 respects how good she is which makes me respect him he's not just like oh she's done it's not

01:01:29.520 like a john knox thing where it's just like i hate her on principle because she's a woman 0.87

01:01:32.560 no i hate her because she's way too good at this and he's gonna fuck up all my plans 0.97

01:01:37.220 and mary's just like god damn it it's like me in university she's like but i got away with this 0.97

01:01:43.140 for so long someone actually noticed i'm smart damn it i have to like become even better now 0.97

01:01:47.740 which she does so she had been there when the letters were read out she could have disproved

01:01:50.940 the letters by like pointing out factual errors in them because they were such obvious lies so

01:01:55.720 she wrote a little thing in her own defense part of which said like her handwriting was easy to

01:01:59.820 copy which is we will learn later is very true but that's we'll talk about that soon that's when

01:02:07.400 we get into some more letter stuff that allison's going to talk about okay so can you guess it's a

01:02:12.800 person i've already mentioned in this episode who is the head who could you imagine is the head of

01:02:17.600 the inquiry the person we've already talked about yes with a nickname is it going to be my favorite

01:02:23.800 nickname of the show wg-40 no it's not wg-40 allison it's t-dog t-dog what a terrible person

01:02:31.980 to put in charge of this inquiry t-dog the man who like wants to marry mary is in charge of the

01:02:37.280 inquiry yes so i think he's in charge of the inquiry because he's like the most wealthy

01:02:41.800 influential like nobleman isn't he the only duke left in england at this point like yes yes he's

01:02:47.900 the only duke in england it's like we need a duke yeah this guy t-dog so he's a widower he's a

01:02:53.000 protestant he's the most important aristocrat in england he's also elizabeth's second cousin

01:02:57.360 on the boleyn side he was so like elevated he considered william sesal to be low born 0.91

01:03:04.280 like for fuck's sake i hate the howards so much i'm sorry just all of them except for 0.97

01:03:10.540 catherine howard i hate them all so much they're all pretty terrible so he's been all up in this 0.98

01:03:15.420 drama for years now so anyway mary knew who t-dog was because remember she'd gotten close to his

01:03:20.600 sister and the sister was communicating with scottish machiavelli who all of a sudden is

01:03:25.340 100 of mary's side in this meanwhile back in scotland scottish machiavelli passed on the

01:03:30.320 message to mary that if mary married a great english aristocrat elizabeth might be won over

01:03:34.780 to her side why not true no the opposite of true i think yeah so and then also if she married a 0.95

01:03:42.560 protestant then maybe the scottish assholes would accept her back too no unlikely but so the other 0.94

01:03:48.380 thing is that if mary and t-dog got married that would directly threaten elizabeth because if they 0.96

01:03:52.980 had a kid that could be the next king of england due to mary being a queen and t-dog's own impressive

01:03:58.320 lineage. So T-Dog is in charge of the trial to find her guilty or innocent slash also secretly

01:04:05.180 trying to secretly treasonously marry her is what's happening because nothing in the story

01:04:10.340 is ever straightforward. So Mary told her lawyers to begin divorce paperwork between her and Bothwell

01:04:15.920 so she would be free to become T-Dog's wife. Elizabeth realized like, wait a minute, T-Dog is

01:04:21.700 the last person we should have in charge of this as she appointed more judges to be in charge of

01:04:25.880 inquiry, including Cecil. Love. We love a court packing situation. She's like, no, no, no, no, no,

01:04:31.440 no, no. Yeah. Yeah. Wait a minute. T-Dog, what are you? Wait a minute. Okay. So T-Dog and Mary

01:04:36.540 sending letters courting each other. So he sent her a diamond and she replied, promising to wear

01:04:42.060 it in secret until they could be together. She's never met this man, right? No, no. So she did add

01:04:47.540 a caveat to the letter. She's like, but we can't marry unless Elizabeth gives us consent. But I 1.00

01:04:52.880 don't know everyone in england was marrying without elizabeth's consent at this time is my

01:04:56.340 understanding anyway so elizabeth obviously found out about this because not because of mary i feel

01:05:00.900 like t-dog is just sloppy so she demanded t-dog confess like had he been trying to marry mary and

01:05:06.840 he lied he's like what no i would never anyway hollywood icon jimmy stewart was permitted to

01:05:13.200 visit elizabeth and that hurt mary a lot because all she's wanted for like 12 years has been a

01:05:19.600 face-to-face, with this woman who she thought is her, like, person, is her soulmate. And then

01:05:24.080 Elizabeth meets Hollywood Act and Jimmy Stewart, of all people. Anyway, Kate Williams writes,

01:05:29.280 what was happening was a naked power grab by men of a woman's crown by her former friends and

01:05:33.660 half-brother. Of course, plenty of bad male monarchs had lost their crowns, but Richard III,

01:05:38.280 for example, had lost in battle a fair fight. Such was the structure of society that even a

01:05:43.060 baby male was above her in terms of his right to rule, and she was easily pushed out. Which is all

01:05:48.940 true just well said kate williams another reason why mary like her lawyers were pushing to have her 1.00

01:05:54.200 be allowed to go there to defend herself but also like another risk is that she might throw the 0.98

01:05:58.840 scottish assholes under the bus she might be like they killed darnley i can prove it so it's just 0.96

01:06:07.580 like she's just too much of a wild card they can't anyway here's an update of a character who we've 0.96

01:06:11.720 mentioned twice both times ended with his death but i have more information and it's your old

01:06:17.640 friend french paris french paris i forget if i told you this but i was looking at i was trying

01:06:23.460 to get like just quantify some details about french paris and i went into a search engine

01:06:27.020 and typed in french paris forgetting that's not a name guess what didn't come up stuff about this

01:06:33.720 guy guess what did come up tourism information about french paris so previously i had mentioned

01:06:41.020 french paris was one of the people executed for darnley's murder which he was but it wasn't until

01:06:46.540 now that that actually happened so here's what french paris did after mary's taken to lock

01:06:51.300 levin french paris fled to denmark which again it's just like everyone is it's like that's the

01:06:56.960 i don't know is this the las vegas of its era it's just like that's the place i don't know 0.92

01:07:01.980 anyway everyone's just always going to denmark anyway the asshole lords tracked him down and 0.76

01:07:06.620 brought him back so the thing about french paris is he had been the messenger who brought some of 0.74

01:07:11.120 the cast who brought letters between mary and bothwell so he could say this is what they said

01:07:16.280 this is what they didn't say. French Paris had that information. So like, did you send love

01:07:20.380 letters between them? And he was like, no, because they did not exchange love letters.

01:07:24.120 But then he was tortured. And then he was like, yes, I did send love letters. So, but this proof

01:07:27.960 quote unquote was so weak that when Cecil read the confession, he was like,

01:07:31.680 like, don't even execute this guy. Like this is clearly, like clearly it's not true.

01:07:37.440 Elizabeth wanted French Paris brought to London to be questioned about the role of other lords

01:07:41.600 in the Darnley murder conspiracy and how much Hollywood icon Jimmy Stewart knew about it. 0.90

01:07:45.380 but the asshole lords in scotland were like like french paris could reveal everything and so that 0.86

01:07:50.400 is when and why french paris was hanged without trial almost immediately after his quote confession 0.98

01:07:54.960 on the scaffold he shouted that he had never delivered those letters so french paris poor guy

01:08:01.460 i know i know so he was with his death that was the last person who could have made like him and

01:08:08.700 bothwell were the only people who could have proven the casket letters were fake and neither

01:08:13.760 of them was available to show up anyway so eventually elizabeth was like this trial is

01:08:17.740 ridiculous these letters are ridiculous but also she didn't want to be blamed for what went wrong

01:08:22.820 and this is what we're really gonna we're gonna get into elizabeth in this episode and next 0.96

01:08:26.180 episode but her big thing and this is like to her credit this is how she is still alive in the queen

01:08:32.620 she never says yes or no to anything she's always just kind of like it's very hollywood icon jimmy

01:08:38.340 steward but smart like she's just never wants to commit to any side of anything because she's never

01:08:44.640 sure which side like she's just like skating above everything all the time it reminds me more of like

01:08:49.820 the modern monarchy than it does like kind of need to keep her hands it's like i'm not taking a

01:08:54.840 position no one can be mad at me y'all are in charge of this except she's really behind the 0.77

01:08:59.840 scenes pulling the springs and doing all she's having that kind of queen elizabeth ii facade

01:09:04.800 on the front yes it's very queen Elizabeth the second where it's just kind of like neutral and

01:09:10.300 I am merely a figurehead wildly not true no exactly she was always at risk and she knew

01:09:16.160 she was at the risk of being usurped because she was a woman maybe she's a queen because there's 0.99

01:09:20.160 these allegations that she was illegitimate like she had to always be playing everything so 1.00

01:09:25.060 carefully she could never really take a strong stance but also she was she didn't want to take 0.95

01:09:29.060 the blame for this like if some if Mary was executed or something she didn't that could

01:09:33.080 fall back on her somehow so basically what she did then she'd piss off the pope and she'd piss

01:09:37.660 off spain and she pissed off probably one third of england who would be like you know what we 0.65

01:09:41.800 should do maybe now was invasion rebellion so yeah exactly so like if she let mary back to

01:09:47.260 scotland mary would probably raise an army against her but if she you know had mary executed or put

01:09:52.940 in jail then that would make spain mad so she was just kind of like i'm just gonna suspend the 0.95

01:09:57.260 tribunal. And definitely, yeah. Anyway, so Hollywood icon Jimmy Stewart was permitted

01:10:03.520 to return to Scotland with a loan of 5,000 pounds from Elizabeth, which was basically a bribe to 0.60

01:10:10.420 make sure the Scotland's Protestants remained indebted to England. Mary encouraged her followers 0.95

01:10:14.920 to prevent him from returning home. She arranged for malicious rumors to be spread in Scotland

01:10:19.580 that Elizabeth was planning to set up her own garrison of English people. That got more Catholic 0.99

01:10:24.800 supporting mary but then elizabeth retaliated by threatening to publicly reveal the contents

01:10:29.400 of the erotic fan fiction which would ruin mary's reputation at some point while this is all going

01:10:36.580 on i just read this in one source and i want to believe it's true but whatever allegedly perhaps

01:10:43.600 mary made an escape attempt from bolton castle lowering herself from a window american on your

01:10:48.780 bingo card girl with the help of mary seaton who like how many times does mary seaton help mary

01:10:52.920 lower herself out a window so many times their seat must have like forearms of a god at this

01:10:58.560 point just all this lowering her out of a window i don't know it's just like my seat it's like

01:11:03.220 like do the thing like yeah okay like plan you know alpha alpha omega okay so legend legend has

01:11:09.060 it mary made her way in horseback as far as labor and several miles away before being recaptured

01:11:13.720 in the process she mislaid her shawl and so the cliff edge running westward from labor is called

01:11:19.240 the shawl so mary could like the country like the entire island the british isle should just

01:11:26.000 be renamed like mary cream scott's because every part of it is now named after her maybe she lost

01:11:32.100 her shawl here okay so she was found not guilty and also not innocent and so she's caught in this

01:11:39.580 holding pattern so she's moved to a new castle with a new babysitter this castle is tutbury castle

01:11:45.400 in Staffordshire, which was even more isolated and further from the England-Scotland border,

01:11:50.400 also more distant from England's northern Catholic regions and Mary's supporters. It was also

01:11:55.820 derelict, drafty, damp, situated on a marsh. So it was just straight up gross. It was moist.

01:12:02.380 No one wants to be here.

01:12:04.240 It's damp and gross. So her new supervisor was George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. He had recently

01:12:12.000 taken a wife whose name is Bess of Hardwick. Bess of Hardwick. Bess of Hardwick is going to get her

01:12:18.980 own episode later on. So we're going to talk about all this stuff, but just like, no, Bess of Hardwick

01:12:23.680 is a very interesting person herself. I just yell the names of fool people when they show up. I'm 0.98

01:12:28.280 like, I don't know enough about her to tell the story, but I'm just like, I know Bess of Hardwick 0.99

01:12:31.320 kicks ass. Oh, no, she's great. Yeah. She was maybe, I think she's the wealthiest woman in 0.99

01:12:36.460 england not named elizabeth the first said her name was best so she was named elizabeth she was

01:12:41.900 named elizabeth okay elizabeth the first was not her name her name was best of hardwick and so 0.93

01:12:46.440 she'd made her fortune through a series of good marriages and real estate like kind of flipping 0.95

01:12:51.980 houses sort of but which i know you're really into that stuff yeah so she's just like building 1.00

01:12:59.880 houses flipping houses so that's why they own this shitty castle because i think they were

01:13:04.100 gonna flip it yeah it's not like they live there because they were like extremely rich people with 0.91

01:13:10.040 lots of properties but it's just like this is their property that's the furthest away from 0.95

01:13:13.520 the catholic supporters it's on a marsh they're like that one like you want us to live there

01:13:18.140 with her this like castle in a swamp okay so anyway she and george talbot had recently just

01:13:25.460 gotten married later in life they were both in their 40s this was like they had been married

01:13:29.400 before they both had children from before they owned several properties as a couple tutbury was

01:13:34.100 the worst one. Obviously, I'm going to call her husband Mr. Bess of Hardwick because she's the

01:13:39.120 main person in this relationship as far as I'm concerned. So they had been chosen because they

01:13:43.920 were rich, because Mary had to be kept in her queenly style and Elizabeth wasn't going to pay

01:13:50.100 for that. Someone else had to. But also Elizabeth trusted them. So Bess of Hardwick, I believe I 1.00

01:13:55.820 mentioned several seasons ago in the Jane Grey season, she was caught up in the Lady Catherine 0.66

01:14:01.020 Grey secret sexy marriage situation in some capacity and so she was out of favor with Elizabeth

01:14:06.140 so I think at this point this was a way that it's like best you kind of owe me from like the Lady

01:14:10.740 Catherine Grey situation so do me a favor and you'll be back in my good books and she's like

01:14:14.600 at this shitty house in the swamp fine yeah so being trusted was also key they had to follow

01:14:20.080 Elizabeth's directions and report everything back to her and to Cecil also in terms of wealth so 0.90

01:14:26.460 Mr. Bess of Hardwick was the highest ranking peer in the realm after T-Dog. So he was wealthy and

01:14:33.260 also influential and important. So keeping Mary in the state in which she was accustomed was really

01:14:38.580 expensive. So it costs somewhere around 4,000 pounds a year, which I put into a currency

01:14:45.280 calculator, which is about $1.7 million in today, or 1.7 million pounds, which is like 2.1 million.

01:14:51.760 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Per year, just to like keep Mary living like she wanted to live. And this

01:14:56.460 These are details I did not know about how Mary was living, but I have these details now.

01:15:00.660 So this money went to pay for her 50 servants, her 10 horses, each with groom, 0.98

01:15:05.000 all the food required for her household, which was, she expected two courses at every meal,

01:15:10.340 both with a selection of 16 dishes from which she could choose.

01:15:14.060 She wanted her own wine along with bread, salad, and fruit.

01:15:16.720 So just every meal, it's like, okay, here's your 16 options.

01:15:20.860 And they had to, and she wouldn't eat them all.

01:15:22.900 Like she just, you couldn't be like, here's what you get today.

01:15:25.900 That was surprising when you said it out loud. And then it clicked one more click in my brain. And I was like, I bet you Elizabeth was doing like 58 choices and six courses. Like, that's just how royal he was. And she's like, no, I'm still queen. You still better serve me the way that you would have served anybody else's power.

01:15:44.760 yeah so she was getting like so this is this is why it's 2.1 million dollars her ladies were 1.00

01:15:51.380 allowed nine dishes per course um her secretaries got six or seven and eight for the gentlemen

01:15:56.420 she lived like her court was second only to elizabeth's like it was like you just said like

01:16:02.680 it's she's living like literally the queen that she is and best and mr best are paying for it

01:16:09.360 so mr best kept asking elizabeth to chip in more like the english treasury covered a bit but never

01:16:14.640 enough to cover everything. It's kind of like when people are like, oh, yeah, you send like

01:16:18.900 $500 in child support every month. And it's like, but the child costs $5,000 a month. It's like,

01:16:23.840 yeah, but get this $500. So Mary refused to pay for anything herself because she was being kept 0.99

01:16:29.700 against her will. Fair enough. Yeah. At Tutbury, the swamp mansion, she was allowed outside only

01:16:36.740 under strict supervision. She was not allowed too far from the house for security concerns.

01:16:41.420 But again, her entourage was allowed into town, and this is how she was secretly sending messages back and forth.

01:16:47.440 She was closely guarded, watched by armed guards under her window,

01:16:50.600 who followed her closely when she went out riding or hunting.

01:16:53.320 And I guess they all had to be paid as well.

01:16:55.060 She was not permitted to exercise outside of the gates or to talk to people Mr. Best had not approved.

01:17:00.420 Mr. Best had a son called Gilbert, who appears every now and then.

01:17:04.480 Just he wrote records of things.

01:17:06.320 And so Gilbert wrote, unless she could transform herself to a flea or a mouse,

01:17:09.980 it was impossible that she should escape.

01:17:12.260 And like, give her time.

01:17:13.760 She'll figure that out.

01:17:14.920 You know what?

01:17:15.640 She will.

01:17:16.240 So Mary and Bess struck up a friendship

01:17:18.240 because Mary is a, 1.00

01:17:20.940 I don't know if it's necessarily an extrovert thing,

01:17:22.980 but I think she just liked being around people.

01:17:25.120 She had always been around people 0.71

01:17:26.200 and she and Bess were just cool ladies who hung out.

01:17:28.620 So Bess was like 15-ish years older.

01:17:30.800 So like of an older generation, 0.97

01:17:32.780 but Bess knew Elizabeth really well

01:17:34.840 and they bonded over their shared love of embroidery.

01:17:38.160 And we'll talk about their embroidery in detail.

01:17:39.640 shortly mary who has various health concerns which we have discussed numerous times she 1.00

01:17:45.140 and like anyone would living in this swamp house she became sick from mold spores 0.96

01:17:51.340 no one lived in this house yeah so she had a pain in her side likely a recurrence of the gastric

01:17:57.760 ulcer situation from before mr bess also fell ill with gout like this house was like literally

01:18:04.540 like destroying everybody's immune systems so he asked permission to move mary and therefore

01:18:10.060 himself and best to one of the nicer homes and elizabeth agreed they could move up but just

01:18:14.400 briefly while the house was what they call sweetened which kind of means like renovated

01:18:20.160 and kind of improved a bit so they moved around and kind of they would keep for the next little

01:18:27.040 while moving from house to house as the one the previous one was like sweetened so but this this

01:18:32.800 constant moving made people it was harder to for someone to try and rescue mary because they never

01:18:37.960 knew quite which house she was in and when but every time they moved it was this huge production

01:18:41.920 to move her whole household which was like furniture tapestries like it's like i've heard 0.57

01:18:47.520 about taylor swift who has like when she goes on tour she she has various properties and after the

01:18:55.940 tour the concert and she flies back to the closest one so her things are always there she's never

01:19:00.060 staying in a hotel room. It's always like her things. So Mary wanted her things with her

01:19:04.900 always. So she's just like a concert tour bus, just traveling around with her with all these

01:19:10.080 things. This includes a chair she brought with her everywhere, which was her chair of state,

01:19:14.700 which had an embroidered Phoenix on it. And her motto, in my end is my beginning.

01:19:19.660 Which is so fucking badass. Are you kidding me? It's so badass. 0.96

01:19:25.540 Oh yeah. No, like, it's like, if you kill me, I will burst into flames, come back and be even 0.97

01:19:29.580 stronger. And then I will fuck you up because I'm Mary Queen of Scots. God, I love her so much. 1.00

01:19:34.660 Exactly. So by this point, which is like shortly after she's been staying with

01:19:39.400 Bess and Mr. Bess, she had around 240 staff members, all of whom Mr. Bess was paying to

01:19:44.840 feed six courses per meal. She's sent to Paris for the latest designs. She wanted to stay 0.64

01:19:50.640 fashionable. I'm sure Mary Seaton was on top of all that. She's reading their version of Vogue 1.00

01:19:54.340 magazine, you know, pamphlet version. She wanted the latest fashions, cloths and crowns, but also

01:20:00.080 she was smuggling letters in these packages of fabric and things. Okay. So schemes, we're getting

01:20:07.980 into some schemes. So scheme came up created by a guy called Leonard Dacre, who was a cousin of

01:20:12.760 Mr. Best as he lived nearby and he was a Catholic. He wanted to do a lock leave in patented switcheroo

01:20:18.080 with Mary Seaton and Mary Queen of Scots switching outfits. So Mary Seaton literally just did 0.99

01:20:24.240 that eight months ago do not make me do that again so but at this point mary queen of scots was like 0.99

01:20:29.400 no because her she didn't want to escape in that way she like that's not she's in a new era for 0.99

01:20:35.280 herself and she's like here's what i want to do things like officially her plan is like to wear 1.00

01:20:39.900 elizabeth down to be on her side is plan a plan b is to marry t-dog so she's like me running away 1.00

01:20:46.460 does not go with any of it where's she gonna go yeah exactly what's the end game here she'd have 0.67

01:20:51.760 to leave england if she escaped and she doesn't want to do that yet yeah she really wants to just

01:20:56.200 make things work here so she also by the way kept lots of little pets including little dogs

01:21:00.780 and she was writing lots of letters to philip in spain catherine dominici in france her diggies

01:21:06.200 uncles in france other diggieses elsewhere but basically no one was answering or was really in

01:21:11.040 the mood to help her which honestly like early on in this our friend friend of the podcast lenoa

01:21:16.800 johnson was talking about the diggieses and that was a side of this story i never really understood

01:21:20.540 but now i do it's like they put her in this mess they like when they got her to put make the like 0.99

01:21:27.340 heraldic arms called her queen of england like from that point on cecil was like this bitch 1.00

01:21:32.420 like fuck you you made this mess get her out of it yeah exactly but they were just like not 1.00

01:21:38.560 answering her letters her divorce from bothwell still not coming through so she couldn't marry 1.00

01:21:42.740 t-dog yet but t-dog was busy moving ahead with his plans getting other nobles to support this

01:21:47.660 marriage including bobby duds robert dudley supported this match you know i bet he did

01:21:54.840 so he didn't have to end up in a weird threesome at elizabeth's house

01:21:58.260 so yeah um he anyway t-dog is getting frustrated that mary's divorce is not coming through so he

01:22:06.400 even contacted hollywood icon jimmy stewart to ask him to help speed things along a wild card move 0.97

01:22:11.860 what's he gonna do anyway meanwhile back in scotland the assholes voted 40 to 9 against 0.90

01:22:18.760 mary returning not that it was up to them and they denied the disillusion of her marriage to 0.96

01:22:23.500 bothwell okay and again so i keep i keep getting ahead of myself this is when french paris was

01:22:29.500 killed r.i.p french paris for the fourth time yes in my defense the books that i've read are mostly

01:22:36.720 not written chronologically. Or from the point of view of French Paris.

01:22:41.860 French, you know, I've got so many ideas for historical fiction writers. Again, I know you

01:22:46.040 have other projects, but other people, I think French Paris would be an interesting book to

01:22:50.900 write. And you could call it French Paris, although that wouldn't be good for Google searching.

01:22:54.820 That's terrible SEO, but agreeable.

01:22:59.400 Okay. So meanwhile, Elizabeth basically is pretending Mary doesn't exist and she's just 0.99

01:23:04.840 living her life she's Elizabeth whatever things in Scotland seem to simmer down for now with

01:23:09.840 Hollywood icon Jimmy Stewart in charge and a new man came on the scene who was named Sir Francis

01:23:17.200 Walsingham my man I've been waiting for him this whole time okay Allison can you please explain

01:23:24.880 who this is he Sir Francis Walsingham is Elizabeth's very first official spymaster

01:23:31.740 which was like his secret job title came in as I believe he started as royal secretary he might

01:23:38.380 have worked his way up into that role so like officially he was the guy who kind of replaced

01:23:43.180 Cecil in that like international relations management but Cecil's still on the scene

01:23:48.960 just Cecil just turns into a different job yeah yeah he is promoted into a different job I think

01:23:53.700 because he's now pushing like so I think he's tired and so Walsingham comes in and like he's 0.99

01:23:59.720 just the most head of the cia kind of guy world he's scheming out of every on every cylinder it's

01:24:09.760 delightful he and you know a lot about him because you're a fan in general but also because he is a

01:24:14.520 character in your novel a tip for the hangman he is so i am very emotionally attached to this man

01:24:19.920 and a couple of notable things about him um he has a daughter who he named after himself francis

01:24:24.960 which which legend that's not quite what the poker history bingo card says but the spirit

01:24:30.900 of it is their daughter named after the queen francis walsingham love it yeah so walsingham

01:24:39.060 enters the chat so he's again i don't i did not realize that the cape i've watched the cape

01:24:44.100 elizabeth's movie like once 20 years ago but somehow that's just my my understanding of

01:24:50.140 many of the characters is based on that movie and so in that jeffrey rush plays walsingham

01:24:54.960 So I just picture Geoffrey Rush.

01:24:56.980 I picture him as Mark Rylance from Wolf Hall as Thomas Cromwell.

01:25:01.700 They're very similar kinds of characters,

01:25:04.100 which you just come in here quietly in the shadows,

01:25:07.280 smarter than everybody else,

01:25:08.660 kind of manipulating things behind the scenes.

01:25:10.720 These are, to be clear, those are two different people,

01:25:12.520 but they have the same energy.

01:25:14.880 Absolutely.

01:25:15.540 So he was bringing in what I wrote as the Kingsman Tudor era vice,

01:25:19.840 which would be a good movie when this writer's strike ends.

01:25:24.220 someone should write that movie. So he was great at spy shit. And he trained and recruited amazing 0.99

01:25:31.020 spies. And his spies provided intel that T-Dog and Mary had talked about betrothal. So Mary and T-Dog.

01:25:40.680 Okay, Allison, I sent you some pictures. There's a picture. I don't know how much you can see.

01:25:45.440 It's the first one. It's like a very cluttered image. Can you see that in our chat?

01:25:49.620 Okay. Can you decipher anything in it? Can you describe any of what you're seeing?

01:25:56.160 It looks like I'm looking at two trees coming out of a magic beanstalk. And there's a little

01:26:02.400 palace in the middle going up into the clouds and there might be pears in the trees. And I

01:26:07.800 have no idea what I'm looking at. It's also, to be fair, very faded because it is an embroidery

01:26:13.660 made by Mary Queen of Scots like hundreds of years ago. I'm going to describe to you. This

01:26:18.600 is trees and embroidery okay i just see the trees show me the trees trees on i was gonna be like

01:26:25.900 where's waldos about the trees in but i'll explain it to you and this is again claire hunter's book

01:26:29.660 embroidering the truth explains this really she knows all the symbolism anyway so she sent this

01:26:34.960 cushion we love a trees and cushion trees and cushion so it depicts if you can see in the

01:26:43.700 middle that's a hand that's a hand reaching down from the sky okay holding like a sickle

01:26:50.160 but it's yes but it's got like a lace cuff on the hand so it's holding a pruning knife

01:26:57.080 so the pruning knife is cutting out the dead growth of an old vine

01:27:02.820 to allow a younger fertile vine to flourish and bear fruit i see the treason ann

01:27:09.920 treason embroidery just to make it even more treasoningly obvious she also included several

01:27:18.120 symbols including oh where is it on here somewhere there's a stag a stag which is the symbol of

01:27:23.120 catholic victory over non-believers there's also a butterfly the butterfly is over on the tree on

01:27:28.200 the right next to it the butterfly is a symbol of resurrection and in case this is still too subtle

01:27:33.720 for t-dog who like bless it probably was she also included latin text which says in translation 0.50

01:27:40.240 virtue flourishes by wounding oh shit this is this is mary's treason cushion jesus christ it's

01:27:48.000 so much worse than i thought do you see over and like listeners i'm going to share this image i'll

01:27:53.180 put a link to it in the show notes um this is at the v and a museum in london but um also put a

01:27:59.520 i'll post on instagram but allison on the left next to the left tree do you see there's sort of

01:28:03.320 like a circle with a little up and down sort of like an m two x's in it yeah that's like her

01:28:09.340 signature that she puts on her embroidery that's her signature thing so that's just like this was

01:28:13.760 done by me me this is my treason yeah so the more i look at this the more it's like that hand coming

01:28:20.540 down with the knife is just it's got the biggest monty python energy and i'm obsessed with that

01:28:25.300 yeah as i mentioned t-dog wrote to hollywood icon jemmy stewart um being like guess who's

01:28:33.220 gonna marry your half-sister it's me t-dog hollywood icon jimmy stewart obviously told

01:28:38.960 cecil who he was working for who told elizabeth elizabeth freaked out her lover her pal bobby

01:28:46.260 duds tried to calm her down with his own symbolic art-based gift yes did he embroider a pillow

01:28:54.080 no he presented i think he commissioned this so it's a jewel which depicted liz elizabeth on the

01:29:00.400 throne with mary chained to one of its legs and france and spain drowning under waves oh my god

01:29:06.460 man that's too much it's like do you understand what symbolism means bobby does that's that's not

01:29:11.760 a symbol no that's not subtext so anyway mary was caught um her room was searched by men with

01:29:18.720 pistols her armed guard was doubled and some of her like little fun things she could do were taken

01:29:24.400 away but not embroidery anyway elizabeth was shocked that bobby does had supported the t-dog

01:29:28.980 plan. T-Dog thrown into the Tower of London. Mary's entourage size was decreased. She was

01:29:34.600 forbid to write to anyone to the extent that when Mary Seaton fell ill and Mary Seaton's mom wrote

01:29:40.560 to Mary asking, could Mary Seaton come back to Scotland, please? Mary Seaton's mother was thrown 0.98

01:29:45.120 in prison for writing to a captive. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Mary Seaton remained with Mary. Anyway,

01:29:50.640 so she was like her status. Mary was not less like she's our guest in England. And we're just

01:29:55.200 kind of like she's a dangerous conspirator slash prisoner. So then late, we're in 1569. Mary has

01:30:02.240 been in England for like a year and a half. So maybe not even that. So a thing happened called

01:30:07.560 the Northern Rebellion slash the Rising of the North. So this is just Northern English earls

01:30:13.220 loyal to the Catholic cause slash to Mary went into like Catholic church or into Protestant

01:30:19.060 churches and started like ripping up prayer books sort of vibes. Mary knew that this was happening

01:30:24.040 because she, like, as much as Walsingham,

01:30:27.560 like, had a spy everywhere.

01:30:28.520 Mary, and you write this very well in your book, Alison,

01:30:31.840 she always knows what's happening.

01:30:33.520 Even though she can't leave this house,

01:30:34.860 like, she has people everywhere.

01:30:36.460 So she's, like, on the ball constantly.

01:30:39.040 She's at most half a step behind,

01:30:41.100 and then she's just waiting for the mail to get there,

01:30:42.900 and then she's going to know everything.

01:30:44.880 So Mary refused to, like, support this

01:30:47.840 or to be involved in it

01:30:48.760 because she's still hoping that Elizabeth 0.78

01:30:50.260 would come through for her

01:30:51.300 and she wouldn't need to be rescued by Catholics. 0.86

01:30:53.480 Anyway, so the goal of these earls was to have Mary and T-Dog usurp the crown from Elizabeth.

01:30:59.100 This, of course, did not work.

01:31:00.300 Elizabeth sent 15,000 men north.

01:31:03.020 Rebels were hunted down.

01:31:04.220 800 were executed.

01:31:06.660 Gruesomely, like very gruesomely, like dragged through the streets, vivisected to the point that people were like, Elizabeth, like maybe not.

01:31:14.700 The vibes are a bit like her older sister, Mary, Bloody Mary the First.

01:31:19.000 And it's kind of like this is a bit much.

01:31:21.440 We didn't love this the last time this happened.

01:31:23.920 No.

01:31:24.400 So the Pope heard about this.

01:31:25.900 He officially excommunicated Elizabeth and he declared that Mary should be Queen of England

01:31:29.920 in her place. 0.73

01:31:31.100 Which, yikes for Mary. 0.96

01:31:34.080 She's like, that is not what I requested. 0.62

01:31:36.120 You have just made my life so much worse right now. 0.99

01:31:39.040 But also yikes for Elizabeth because this basically meant any attempt to push Elizabeth

01:31:43.680 off the throne and put Mary in her place was like, I'm doing what the Pope said.

01:31:47.380 It's like the Pope signed off on assassination. 0.93

01:31:49.100 nations it's a it's a real reverse crusade like yeah this is your your pope ordered go kill this

01:31:56.360 person because god has told you to do it i mean not a reverse crusade that's just what a crusade

01:32:00.680 is it's like a one-person crusade it's like go kill not kill this like group of people it's like

01:32:05.960 kill this one person it's one individual yeah so anyone like any rebel from a noble leading an army

01:32:11.040 to a servant who poisoned her soup would be engaged in what the pope called glorious work 0.98

01:32:15.840 So he was kind of like calling for Catholics to kill Elizabeth.

01:32:19.320 So you can imagine, no one is thrilled by this, but my boy Walsingham is like, I have so much work to do.

01:32:26.940 Oh, my God.

01:32:28.560 Yeah. 0.55

01:32:29.780 Suddenly, the Pope has just ordered every random Catholic in the world to try to assassinate the person I am supposed to protect.

01:32:37.300 I do not have enough spies for this business.

01:32:40.560 Have you seen any of the John Wick movies?

01:32:43.200 No.

01:32:43.460 okay there's this happens in like two or three of the john wick movies there's a part where like

01:32:49.540 this call goes out it's just like hey there's a bounty in john wick's head seven billion dollars

01:32:53.820 and then suddenly every assassin in the world is going after him simultaneously it's like that

01:32:59.080 it's like wait so everyone in paris is an assassin and has like everyone in this everyone in this

01:33:03.860 cafe is an assassin they all just got this beeper on their pager okay exactly so it's like that

01:33:08.800 Yeah, exactly that. So except, again, Tudor era. So Elizabeth demanded Mary be relocated somewhere even more obscure. So she was sent to Coventry Castle. But this again, okay, so I don't know a lot about castles in England, but it seems like there's an awful lot of abandoned ones.

01:33:28.720 yeah because it's incredibly hard

01:33:31.240 to maintain like they

01:33:33.220 made a lot of sense when you were defending yourself

01:33:35.420 against

01:33:36.080 an army of

01:33:38.680 people from Wessex trying to come

01:33:41.140 and storm your battlements but now that

01:33:43.120 like you're not actively engaged

01:33:45.220 in a civil war with armies

01:33:47.000 when you're fighting with like people

01:33:49.300 not at home it's incredibly

01:33:51.360 expensive and they're not comfortable

01:33:53.120 they're drafties they're cold no one wants to be

01:33:55.360 there you want to be in your nice little manor

01:33:57.240 house where you can

01:33:58.720 hang your walls with tapestries and get cozy and go to court on the weekends like no one wants a

01:34:03.640 castle that's why you can still buy an old abandoned castle for like not that much money

01:34:07.340 because they are terrible to live in well it's interesting because when i look up the castles

01:34:11.620 that people go to in this story to be like oh is this a tourist destination now like some of them

01:34:14.940 are just ruins and some of them like are hotels now or whatever but even in mary's time like there

01:34:20.800 was abandoned castles there's just like abandoned castles so she was sent to so i think elizabeth

01:34:25.680 just has some map maybe it's like from 200 years ago she's like that castle so go to that castle

01:34:31.220 but it was abandoned no one can stay there so um so mary ended up staying at a nearby inn

01:34:39.160 which is like a room above a pub vibes which is like ideal place to escape from if you are

01:34:45.440 mary queen of scots yeah philipa gregory wrote a book that takes place during this weekend and

01:34:50.600 she imagines what if mr best of hardwick was in love with mary and what happened this weekend at

01:34:55.900 this pub is honestly philipa gregory like her story concepts are great the only problem with

01:35:03.360 that concept is if i was married to best of hardwick there's no way you would cheat on

01:35:07.120 best of hardwick like what that i cannot suspend my disbelief that far no exactly so they're staying

01:35:14.900 in this inn um yeah so the philip gregory book is called the other queen so while staying in

01:35:20.480 coventry so mary got a new babysitter who went to a guy called henry hastings the third earl of

01:35:25.180 huntington triple h is what i call him and he was a distant claimant to the throne of england so

01:35:34.080 he was jealous that mary had supporters and he did not have supporters you remember when elizabeth

01:35:39.400 got smallpox that time and it's like oh no is she gonna die he's gonna be the heir like triple h

01:35:43.300 was like this is my time i'm gonna be king spoiler it was not his time no anyway and this

01:35:49.580 made elizabeth mistrust him because he was like way too excited anyway so under his scare mary

01:35:55.420 was moved from the like room above the pub to saint mary's guild hall into a room that is now

01:35:59.740 called mary queen of scott's room so triple h was also brother-in-law to bobby duds being married to

01:36:07.180 his sister so he wrote to bobby does being like what if i triple h marry mary and help her escape

01:36:13.480 so everyone is just all up everyone is related to each other and everyone is just scheming 0.98

01:36:20.460 ineffectually walsingham has a lot to do really this is some asshole scottish lords level scheming 0.95

01:36:27.680 i have to say like this is not high quality scheming there is no bad in england as well 0.94

01:36:33.020 exactly you know what yes that's important to say it's not like people in scotland couldn't

01:36:38.220 scheme well and people in england could scheme well it's just there's good and bad in both

01:36:41.580 places there are a couple really really good english schemers and then mary is the really

01:36:45.140 good scottish schemer and then there's a bunch of dummies all over yeah yes yes oh my gosh and

01:36:51.520 we're gonna yes we will talk about many of them so anyway but mary was just like no i'm not gonna 0.62

01:36:56.340 run off with triple h like my she's like my plan is to marry t-dog and not upset elizabeth and

01:37:02.540 like not upset Elizabeth and just get on with it. Anyway, this is where I had to... These episodes 0.97

01:37:08.180 are so long, but you're going to want to know this. So one of the guys, when they did the

01:37:13.400 Northern Rebellion, was sent off to be a prisoner at Lockleaven Castle under the care of WD-40.

01:37:20.940 WD-40, my man, a Douglas.

01:37:25.840 Which I didn't realize this. So after Mary had escaped from Lockleaven, WD-40, in fact,

01:37:30.540 tried to kill himself oh shit out of like shame disgrace did not was not successful which i i 0.98

01:37:37.220 mean whatever there's lots of details but he tried to stab himself with a dagger so i don't know if 0.99

01:37:40.680 it's just like oh i missed well that's my suicide attempt like yeah oh man poor guy i feel bad for

01:37:46.820 him he was in a bad spot he was i mean to be the guy who was watching mary queen of scots when she

01:37:52.400 escaped by walking out the front door that was left unlocked man she got in a boat and she rode

01:37:58.640 away yeah so i just wanted to let you know what wd-40 was up to i'm glad he's okay anyway so um

01:38:05.520 in response to this the northern rebellion and all this stuff so there is i don't know if it's

01:38:10.180 acts or laws or whatever but a rule was made in england by cecilin walsingham making it high

01:38:15.000 treason and thus punishable by death to imagine the death of elizabeth it's one of my favorite

01:38:21.960 pieces of legislation in history. You can't even think it. Thought crime. And we'll know

01:38:28.560 because we're Cecil in Walsingham and we're paying attention. They would. So it's high

01:38:33.500 treason to publish, write, or speak that she was not the lawful monarch. It was treason to guess

01:38:38.860 how long she might live to do her horoscope. This is when we get into her weird astrologist, 0.88

01:38:44.500 John Dee, which is a separate conversation, but like he was the only person who could do her

01:38:48.760 horoscopes because everything else was death you did a whole dirtbags newsletter about john d

01:38:53.220 he's such a weirdo he thought he could speak to angels and he like had a weird pre-love situation

01:38:58.800 with his wife who was not into it i want to mention something just to the listeners i know

01:39:03.460 that there's lots of listeners i know like some of them follow me on instagram but just this week

01:39:08.980 i discovered there is this spanish british mini series called reynas or in english queens the

01:39:16.740 Virgin and the Martyr. And it's from a couple of years ago. And it's a Spanish language miniseries

01:39:20.920 about Elizabeth and Mary. And it looks super sexy. And it includes more Spanish characters

01:39:27.560 than you would imagine. But you know what? Spain was not uninvolved in this. They have a very sexy

01:39:31.840 Philip II actor. Ooh, surprising. I haven't watched it. You can watch it on Tubi, which is

01:39:37.280 a streaming service. Anyway, this is the first thing I've seen. Like when just looking at the

01:39:42.120 character list john d is in this so i'm like oh my god john d he's never in things i know and he's

01:39:47.720 so weird i'm gonna have to watch this i'm excited i was excited about john d being in it but the

01:39:52.380 reason i found it was because it's the only on-screen version of scotta fru and anna

01:39:56.420 thronson which is insane because she's the best i know philipa gregory write a book about her

01:40:03.160 is my request so yeah no so there's this thought crime basically no one can talk or even think

01:40:10.600 that Elizabeth shouldn't be the queen

01:40:11.840 and who would be her heir. 0.97

01:40:13.420 And it's, think about that she might die ever 0.80

01:40:16.080 for any reason.

01:40:17.760 So the official legal statement is

01:40:19.920 Queen Elizabeth will live forever. 1.00

01:40:21.860 And if you disagree, we're going to kill you, 1.00

01:40:24.320 which is just wild. 1.00

01:40:27.060 Yeah.

01:40:27.940 Anyway, so Mary is brought back 0.83

01:40:29.360 to the swamp castle of Tutbury. 0.52

01:40:32.000 She has now been in effectively house arrest

01:40:34.560 for two years.

01:40:35.740 But then, good news,

01:40:37.560 hollywood icon jimmy stewart was assassinated i just think that's good news good news to her to

01:40:44.280 us to everybody here's what happened and this really illustrates something that i was thinking

01:40:49.660 about this week which is like mary was the scapegoat like when she went to scotland they're

01:40:57.080 just oh she's a woman and she's catholic so we hate her it's like if she'd been a woman

01:41:00.920 protestant they would have hated her if she'd been a man and protestant she wouldn't have

01:41:04.720 gone along because these guys are just chaotic like hollywood egg and jimmy stewart worked so

01:41:07.960 hard to become regent he served as regent for like two years and then was assassinated because

01:41:12.120 i was thinking of it as like a toxic family dynamic where you've got like the scapegoat if

01:41:17.720 that person leaves the family it's not like the people left now get along so hollywood egg and

01:41:23.440 jimmy stewart became the new mary like people just started hating him so it's just beautiful

01:41:28.340 lovely it's beautiful to me so anyway so what happened is he was walking through the streets

01:41:34.300 of Edinburgh when JFK vibes an assassin fired through a window and shot him to death those 0.99

01:41:41.140 people of Edinburgh don't fuck around so you remember how darnly that was the first time 0.98

01:41:46.040 gunpowder had ever been used in a non-war situation this is the first gunshot assassination 0.98

01:41:50.540 in the history of like everything wow it's the first time a political figure had been

01:41:57.500 assassinated with a gun like Elizabeth like Catherine Domenici everybody was just like wait

01:42:02.000 what like this could happen so yes they all started getting more guards they started being

01:42:06.900 like maybe not so close to the public like yeah so hollywood.com jimmy stewart the assassin was

01:42:13.100 never found but was assumed to be somebody from the hamilton family who i will remind you their

01:42:19.500 whole deal was like when there's a baby king of scotland we are the regents of that baby

01:42:24.360 a hamilton a hamilton so they i just love that they were just mad they couldn't be they're like

01:42:34.020 our whole deal is we're the regents to the baby kings of scotland how dare you hollywood i can

01:42:39.140 jimmy stewart dare to be regent to the baby kings like for five generations a hamilton has been

01:42:44.780 anyway so when i say the assassin was never found i mean the assassin was never officially

01:42:49.600 like caught but everyone knew who it was to the sense that mary knew who it was and provided a 0.98

01:42:54.920 pension to the assassin in appreciation for doing such a good thing oh my gosh she's so fucking petty 0.92

01:43:00.900 like thank you for your service so hollywood.com jimmy stewart is dead not r.i.p and i just like 0.99

01:43:09.660 the just the delicious stupidity of he worked so hard to get mary out of there and then he couldn't 0.79

01:43:15.940 even rain like she was there for what six seven years he was regent for like two-ish years and 0.99

01:43:20.840 then he was like she did so much better than him he worked so hard to get that job and then he was 0.99

01:43:24.960 assassinated because he couldn't handle his shit she did so much better than him while he was 0.99

01:43:29.720 actively working to like take the knees out from under her he couldn't even thwart her okay and 0.99

01:43:34.660 then he couldn't hold it for like a year yeah it's just anyway so elizabeth was like okay like

01:43:40.580 scotton was kind of like their little like sub kingdom that they sort of were in charge of

01:43:45.860 because BJ, baby James, is still a little kid

01:43:49.160 that needs to be a regent. 0.99

01:43:50.660 So she's like, okay, who can be the new puppet 1.00

01:43:52.200 who will do what I says?

01:43:53.140 And she chose Lennox, who's Darnley's dad,

01:43:56.180 to be the next regent.

01:43:57.460 He did not last long.

01:43:58.700 He was, in fact, also assassinated.

01:44:00.880 And then a guy called the Earl of Mar took over

01:44:03.900 who had been baby BJ's guardian for a while. 0.99

01:44:06.980 Like the assholes, I just wanted to make sure everyone knows. 0.99

01:44:09.380 It's not like Mary left and everything was cool in Scotland. 1.00

01:44:11.600 It's like everything is still chaos in Scotland.

01:44:13.740 It was like the least chaos when she was there.

01:44:15.860 actually it only got worse yeah so like all these guys we talked about last time who are all scheming

01:44:21.800 just one after another keep being the regent get assassinated be the regent get assassinated

01:44:25.360 anyway so mary had so many rules she couldn't go outside and exercise and stuff so it's like what

01:44:30.220 can she do embroidery as described by claire hunter in her excellent book many of her embroideries

01:44:36.440 this is describing mary's embroideries i've sent several to you allison to look at and we can

01:44:39.980 discuss them so many of mary's embroideries are unsettling containing images of destruction and

01:44:44.620 violence a sword with a curved blade slides through a knotted rope a vine is watered with

01:44:49.040 wine to make it die a snake falls into a fire of sticks a leopard holds a hedgehog in its mouth

01:44:54.880 accompanied with the motto it presses on it and it sticks yeah there is a tree being cut down by a

01:45:00.960 scythe vines being pruned a field growing spears and helmets instead of corn many of mary's

01:45:07.100 embroideries are filled with images of destruction splintered ship masts torn sails felled trees

01:45:12.680 broken ropes, heaps of feathers from a dead bird. So how's that girl doing, Anne?

01:45:18.400 It's like, I just know from movies and things, when children go to therapy, it's like,

01:45:23.920 draw a picture of your family. And you're like, oh, no. So Mary is letting out her feelings in

01:45:31.700 these quite graphic embroideries. One of her best known embroideries is from this period,

01:45:38.260 which is currently on display at holly rood house is called a cat allison can you please describe

01:45:44.340 can you please describe this it's a perfect embroidery it's quite it is a cat with mostly

01:45:51.740 chest really chest forward kind of a cat staring i think at a dead mouse on a parquet floor and

01:45:57.900 there's a little blue banner in the side that just says a cat c-a-t-t-e and i love it and mary's

01:46:05.620 little little motto is back there they're like the little m in the circle this is my cat mary

01:46:10.420 queen of scots it's very much like people i don't know when i was in junior high people would like

01:46:15.480 make a little thing of their initials and you'd like draw it with a marker on the bathroom stall

01:46:19.080 or whatever it's just kind of like mary so i do want to reveal to everybody that i have made merch

01:46:25.120 inspired by this embroidery allison you have seen the merch it is top 10 merch of any uh

01:46:31.980 cultural artifact of all time it was spectacular this is like i i preemptively got so jan you

01:46:37.880 pater who i've collaborated with several times on merch who is this amazing artist from the

01:46:42.240 netherlands who really gets the vibe i was like here's mary has got this embroidery could you

01:46:47.760 redo this but instead of this orange cat could you make it be my cat hepburn who has tortoiseshell

01:46:51.880 and we're going back and forth and so mary's embroidery it says a cat and then it's kind of

01:46:56.960 Hepburn, but drawn in this style. And then I was like, ugh, like, can you make the cat look happier?

01:47:03.980 Because Mary's cat. No. Mary's cat looks pretty upset. And then in Mary's, the mouse is just like

01:47:10.580 this lump. So if like, okay, so obviously the cat, the orange cat is Elizabeth, right? Like it's

01:47:15.940 Elizabeth having mastery. The mouse is Mary and the mouse is just this lump. Like it's not well

01:47:21.040 defined. It's just sort of like how she perhaps sees herself is just kind of this like helpless

01:47:26.460 blob so in my merch i was like can you make the mouse also be happy so the mouse is just like

01:47:32.240 laying back with like its hands behind its head legs crossed just being like this happy mouse

01:47:36.660 with half burn and instead of the mary sigil there's just cute little hearts drawn all over

01:47:40.640 anyway you can get this merch on a t-shirt on a sticker on a magnet on a pin what i've ordered for

01:47:45.640 myself on a pillow freezing pillow so i can have my own trees and pillow but because mary yeah she

01:47:52.040 she made this embroidery she put on her pillow anyway you can get that at uh vulgarhistor.com

01:47:57.980 slash store the cat when i first started doing this season like even before i started i asked

01:48:03.080 on my instagram stories i'm like what are you what do you know about mary what are you excited

01:48:05.840 to hear about and someone's like can you talk about her weird cat embroidery and i was like

01:48:10.020 oh we're gonna talk about her cat embroidery it's like she invented memes like it's so good

01:48:16.740 it it's so good but also just like psychologically in terms of like the devastation of so many of

01:48:24.000 her embroideries the cat is great they're all extremely upsetting but a lot of them are also

01:48:28.320 like really cute so yeah with sort of like the art of i don't know like frida kahlo or somebody

01:48:34.160 where it's like you're going through some shit you're you can see that in the art but also it's

01:48:37.780 charming like ann also sent me one that's two frogs and it says in the same kind of banner 0.96

01:48:43.980 lettering a frog f-r-o-g-g-e and it's just two little frogs one of them's got his mouth open

01:48:49.640 like he's doing something shocking and i i'm gonna get that printed on t-shirt because it's great

01:48:55.260 they're so cute i'm gonna put all these pictures i'm gonna put a link to it in the show notes

01:48:58.920 because a lot of these are at the v&a museum in london a lot of these she also did one of the

01:49:03.260 phoenix so you've got the phoenix um i'm just going through the ones i sent you allison like

01:49:08.100 on the pyre yeah and then if the next one there's like six all together there's an unicorn

01:49:13.960 horn. Classic Scottish sigil. We love it. The next one is a rhinocerote. Mary Queen of Scots has

01:49:21.560 never seen a rhinoceros. Let me clarify for the listeners at home. I'm not sure if this animal can

01:49:26.900 walk or swim or is a dragon. The rhinocerote kind of looks like a sideways seahorse mixed with a

01:49:35.280 crocodile. Yeah, the rhinocerote. She has a tiger, a dolphin, but this is she made a pun. She used the

01:49:42.880 word for that means dauphin like her first husband who was the dauphin of france she made the

01:49:46.980 dolphin and she did the little crown at the bottom there yeah and then the one do you do you like

01:49:53.700 this do you recognize this one a bird of america have you seen things like that where you live

01:49:58.040 no but i love it it's kind of like a toucan pelican falcon with one big old stare and eye

01:50:08.140 it's very weird to me to see Mary Queen of Scots write the word America like that doesn't overlap

01:50:15.240 in my brain as things that existed at the same time so yeah her embroidery is amazing I'm really

01:50:21.080 like I'm gonna do like I'm talking about this in depth with Claire Hunter in a later episode

01:50:25.480 can you please ask Claire about the rhinocerote because I need it it's lovely so the embroideries

01:50:33.300 are incredible you can see some of them at Holyrood house you can see some of them at

01:50:36.920 hardwick hall which is a house that best of hardwick built later on mary never stayed there

01:50:41.400 but some because best of hardwick was like a really really talented embroiderer mary's are like

01:50:46.820 have got a lot of vibe to them but her like stitchery is not like perfect best of hardwick

01:50:53.340 is like so good at anyway so just they're sitting around they're stitching this is what she's doing

01:50:57.520 anyway eventually she's moved out of the swamp house to chatsworth house um and t-dog was freed

01:51:02.940 from the Tower of London

01:51:03.660 after other nobles

01:51:04.880 pressured Elizabeth

01:51:05.640 to free him.

01:51:06.500 Hey,

01:51:06.980 yes.

01:51:07.900 Yes.

01:51:08.780 Yes.

01:51:09.360 So William Cecil

01:51:10.040 at one point

01:51:10.480 came to visit Mary

01:51:11.500 in person.

01:51:12.380 Can you imagine?

01:51:13.820 This is like,

01:51:14.840 there's some classic

01:51:16.040 like theater plays

01:51:17.400 that are just like

01:51:18.100 imagining a meeting

01:51:18.980 between two.

01:51:19.600 I want to play.

01:51:20.560 Maybe it exists.

01:51:21.780 Mary and William Cecil

01:51:22.840 just do that

01:51:23.680 as a two-hander play.

01:51:25.160 That'd be so good.

01:51:26.400 It'd be so good.

01:51:27.440 It'd be so good.

01:51:28.140 You get like

01:51:28.660 Jessica Chastain,

01:51:29.580 Oscar Isaac.

01:51:30.340 I just say their names

01:51:31.120 because they just did

01:51:31.640 a play,

01:51:32.020 a thing together.

01:51:32.580 I'm sorry. Oscar Isaac as William Cecil is inspired casting. I can't stop.

01:51:37.280 Thank you. Well, and I think I can see Jessica Tustain as Mary as well.

01:51:41.300 Yeah. Maybe just because she's red hair. 1.00

01:51:43.040 I would do Jodie Comer as Mary. I think that'd be fun. 0.99

01:51:46.080 Oh, Jodie Comer as Mary. Yes. So good.

01:51:50.480 So by the fall, Mary's health getting worse. Never good. She's living in a swamp.

01:51:55.920 She can't exercise. And that's been a thing that's always been helpful for her psychologically, but also physically, I think.

01:52:01.160 she was moved to a different like best and mr best own a lot of properties so they moved to

01:52:06.220 their other place sheffield castle so at this point she had lots of pain and inflammation on

01:52:10.700 her left side again the gastric ulcer thing she's basically bed bound she didn't sleep for 12 days

01:52:17.020 never good for anybody fresh air and exercise were suggested but mr best was under strict

01:52:22.080 instructions not to let her go outside but even so she's like struggling obviously health-wise

01:52:29.080 but she's writing letters writing letters writing letters to everybody elizabeth cecil she even wrote 0.98

01:52:34.260 to bobby duds she's just like let's get this figured out and then goddamn t-dog got involved 0.84

01:52:40.660 in a little thing called the ridolfi plot oh t-dog so ridolfi do you know i know you know the 0.93

01:52:48.520 babington plot that comes later do you know much about the ridolfi plot i know the basic shape of

01:52:55.220 it but i think you will tell a better story and i will pop in as we go please pop in as we go so

01:53:01.880 there was a florentine catholic banker i find this interesting because there's that whole thing about

01:53:07.180 like christians can't be bankers and that's why like only jewish people are bankers but this is

01:53:13.220 a catholic banker named roberto rodolphi a florentine a small delectable cookie of a person

01:53:21.200 so he'd been living in okay the other thing that's crucial to me to understand it's like

01:53:27.960 how in scotland everyone's like no they like now this person supports mary now they support jimmy

01:53:32.360 stewart like everyone's flipping and everyone in england also is and a lot of them are double

01:53:37.300 agents and i don't think they even know at times who they work for really so roberto rodolfi now

01:53:44.060 i'm just thinking of the guy from sweeney time the king of the barber the barber of kings

01:53:48.440 the banker of kings so he had been living in london for many years he was pals with william

01:53:54.360 cecil was he working with him was he a double agent both simultaneously no one knows yeah

01:54:00.660 because he's a he's a very odd figure because like italians almost universally catholics at

01:54:07.440 this period and catholics almost universally enemies of elizabeth but now he's hanging out

01:54:11.820 with, like, her right-hand man being friends, which is weird.

01:54:15.600 And then the whole business of it unfolds.

01:54:18.700 Like, he's a real wild card of a guy, and I'd love to know his whole deal.

01:54:23.320 I like the mysteriousness of him.

01:54:25.880 Like, if a later reveal was, like, in a Lola Montez way,

01:54:29.720 it's like, actually, he's from Ireland.

01:54:31.460 He's not even Italian.

01:54:33.420 He just put on an accent and learned to dance.

01:54:36.080 Wouldn't be surprised even in the slightest.

01:54:38.960 because roberto roberto is like that's such a spooky name i love him so he had been vaguely

01:54:47.360 he's in a hollywood account jimmy stewart slash like way he'd been vaguely involved with the

01:54:52.280 northern rebellion but no charges were brought against him perhaps because he was pals with

01:54:56.480 cecil and maybe he was double dealing or maybe he agreed to deal with cecil at that time there's a

01:55:02.080 part of this story where rodolfi was taken to walsingham's house for interrogation where it's

01:55:07.420 like, which side is he on? No one really knows. Yeah, because if he's friends with Cecil,

01:55:12.200 but Walsingham is like, I don't trust your friend. Like, 100 percent, there's something.

01:55:18.160 Yeah, he's never sent to jail, despite being involved in this rebellion for which numerous

01:55:23.300 people were publicly vivisected. So anyway, his job as a banker was the perfect cover story to

01:55:28.840 crisscross continental Europe in search of sponsors for a plan to unseat Elizabeth and

01:55:33.580 put mary on the throne as the queen of england um this lined up nicely with mary and t-dog's plan

01:55:38.180 but they needed some huge investors to make this happen because they needed an army they

01:55:42.580 need to fund an army of catholics right they needed to get a country like spain yeah that's

01:55:47.340 the thing that i feel like we don't ever talk about when we're talking about treason is how

01:55:50.520 expensive it is to do it like you can't just go like i'm gonna walk into london and kill elizabeth

01:55:57.460 and i'm queen now and no one will fight me on that like you need an army and to get an army

01:56:02.260 you need money to pay your soldiers and to get your mercenaries and you need money to feed them

01:56:07.420 and you need money to house them and it's like of course only queens and noblemen ever lead a

01:56:13.280 rebellion no one else can afford to do it and that's part of why this whole thing like it's

01:56:18.660 there's so many letters there's so much back and forth because it's it's not just like hey these

01:56:22.660 like six guys are gonna come rescue mary it's like and then what like you need but the whole

01:56:28.900 thing with spain and with rome is they're all like okay well if england's catholics successfully

01:56:33.240 mount a rebellion we will then bring our soldiers over but england's catholics have to do that first

01:56:38.240 but england's catholics just having seen a bunch of themselves be murdered now that's illegal to

01:56:43.140 talk about elizabeth they're like we're not gonna do that unless we know spain is coming when spain

01:56:47.260 is like we're not gonna come so it's like right because if spain or rome comes in that's a foreign

01:56:52.640 invasion provocation for a war like if you make the first move you don't want to move the first 0.54

01:56:56.880 move you on and be like oh these people i'm supporting them but this is a homegrown thing 0.99

01:57:01.460 i'm not coming in and staging a religious coup which is like gonna bite you in the butt with 0.97

01:57:07.620 probably every other protestant country in europe which is increasingly more of them 0.64

01:57:12.340 so rodolfi's job this is either what he's doing or what he's pretending to be doing to catch people

01:57:19.780 but basically he just needed to get at this point a bunch of english catholics to start another

01:57:24.040 rebellion so that the other countries could come in and not be the aggressors so the whole thing

01:57:29.880 was to get them to do it and then tell elizabeth that they were doing it so that they could get

01:57:35.280 caught because who knows this man is slippery exactly so the whole thing was discovered

01:57:41.840 in sort of parts so letters are being exchanged so uh there's a guy called john leslie a bishop 0.94

01:57:48.600 who had been mary's go-between i think he was god there's so much spy shit whatever um

01:57:55.540 i think he was going between london like where mary was in london like because she's in this

01:58:00.420 like out in the swamp or whatever anyway so a letter from rodolfi to john leslie mary's kind

01:58:05.880 of guy was intercepted by walsingham this is how they linked mary to rodolfi then a coded letter

01:58:12.300 from mary and we're going to talk about the codes in the next episode extensively but a coded letter

01:58:17.140 from mary was discovered in t-dog's house under his doormat where you hide your house key when 0.97

01:58:25.180 your plant water is coming come on i think t-dog like a basic thing about spy shit is like you read 0.98

01:58:31.520 the letter then you burn it you don't just like burn after reading that's what they named the 0.98

01:58:35.740 movie come on man yeah so this further linked her to the conspiracy t-dog was found to have funded

01:58:42.060 um scottish mary supporters mary like all that mary was known to have done was to have borrowed

01:58:47.800 money from rodolphi we don't know if she was involved like the only thing that links her to

01:58:53.320 rodolphi is like he was a banker and she got some money from him which she he might have contacted

01:58:57.700 her to do that just to make her look guilty like rodolphi is real shady yeah so anyway so t-dog

01:59:04.020 was arrested sent back to the tower of london leslie the bishop was apprehended tortured and

01:59:09.540 he under torture this like you know i feel like this is what i would do under torture as well

01:59:15.200 where it's like what do you want me to say do you want me to say more like he just said more than

01:59:19.300 was even true he was like mary was behind no he was like mary was behind the the rebellion where

01:59:25.380 they ripped up the bibles the pope is funding everything a foreign invasion was planned mary

01:59:30.040 killed darnley she also killed her first husband francis she tried to murder bothwell she's planning 0.98

01:59:34.680 to kill T-Dog. Do you want more? What else can I tell you? But crucially, he spilled the beans 0.97

01:59:41.920 about the trees and cushion. Trees and cushion. I love that he was so desperate to get at the

01:59:47.340 top. He's like, do you want to hear about the pillows? I don't know. Let's talk about that.

01:59:51.720 So the embroidery was cited in the trial. So this trees and cushion was literally entered,

01:59:57.740 like as evidence this pillow where it's like explain the symbolism to me is this a stag

02:00:06.080 uncertain and they're like well what does this part mean here like with it's like well that's

02:00:12.280 just a hand doing some gardening it's like treason like it's so funny to be like like can

02:00:18.520 you prove that this symbol represents this like imagine like having that in a court where it's

02:00:22.980 like to me it's just a pretty picture where it's like instead of lawyers you need two english

02:00:27.340 majors yelling at each other about the symbolism bring in claire hunter like she can explain so

02:00:33.100 um mary was not the first royal woman to have embroidery cited in a treason trial fun fact

02:00:38.360 the first person where that happened was margaret pole from a previous episode of this podcast i

02:00:43.500 think the women locked in towers what else do you have to do but embroider treason there's not a lot

02:00:47.840 of other activities yeah well in this anyway so mary didn't hear about this right away so this

02:00:53.420 is like walsingham is at points able to cut her off from some information although more and more

02:01:00.460 of her staff are secretly double agents working for walsingham to the point that later on i think

02:01:04.740 they all are a surprising percentage yeah yeah anyway her security detail was increased at one

02:01:12.480 point mr bess was told to switch her to a different room without windows so she couldn't climb out

02:01:17.740 which is again like cecil knows knows what she does just like don't give her a room with a window

02:01:22.700 So like she will climb out that one. 1.00

02:01:24.480 She will tie a sheet together and fall out onto a horse.

02:01:27.760 Do not do this. 1.00

02:01:29.100 Yeah.

02:01:29.800 So Mr. Best also decreased the amount of her staff.

02:01:32.960 I believe though young Willie was able to stay as was Mary Seaton.

02:01:36.980 And at around the same point, a young man came to the house whose name was Anthony Babington,

02:01:43.620 who was a young boy taken in by Mr. Best as his ward after the death of his dad.

02:01:49.600 so anthony babington aka tony babbs is a little boy on the scene not working for mary i think

02:01:57.720 he's like maybe he's like page boy do i feel like at this point everyone in the house is working for

02:02:02.300 mary because she needs 16 meals a day and it's just like right hey you're my ward but also guess

02:02:07.540 what you're also like gonna like can you carry one of the nine courses there are a lot anyway so

02:02:13.060 this is where tony babbs gets to meet mary in the first place he's just a little boy anyway so

02:02:18.240 t-dog sentenced to death at a trial where one of the judges was mr bess because it's just like

02:02:23.620 there's two nobles in england it's like the judges have to it's either going to be mr bess and it

02:02:27.860 can't be t-dog because he's the one on trial so mary was like i didn't plan this conspiracy i did 0.55

02:02:33.460 not prove this conspiracy all i want is freedom elizabeth in her way was just like should i sign 1.00

02:02:40.960 t-dogs death warrant should i not sign t-dogs like she just really pathologically she doesn't 1.00

02:02:48.220 want to commit to anything either way like yeah she just well like she would be courting civil 1.00

02:02:52.740 war with the nobles and she's like there's only one duke left in england and i killed him personally

02:02:58.520 like yeah right like both sides it's relatable in a way that she's just always frozen with

02:03:06.120 indecision like she just can't and she's kind of like let's just if i don't decide maybe eventually

02:03:10.280 this will sort itself out it's such a mood it's such a mood that's how i do my taxes elizabeth

02:03:17.260 what's the thing of shakespeare in love like i don't know it just always works out

02:03:22.940 yeah it's a mystery also jeffrey rush anyway so mary began fasting like she like her catholic

02:03:32.380 faith is really like legitimate like strong it's where she gets her strength from and she's like

02:03:39.200 fasting and praying hoping the tea dog won't be killed basically but you know when she doesn't

02:03:44.340 eat, then that triggers her various health conditions. So that is a choice that she made.

02:03:50.620 Anyway, and the prayers did not help T-Dog. He was executed. Mary's right to the English

02:03:55.120 succession was revoked. She was warned if there's even a hint she was ever involved in any future

02:04:00.420 plot, she would face trial. And this is like, even if she didn't, even if someone did a plot

02:04:04.600 on her behalf, she would be responsible for that. So she was left heartbroken, weeping,

02:04:10.720 and refused to leave her room.

02:04:13.100 Hashtag understandable.

02:04:14.620 Like, that's such an incredibly worded, like, royal proclamation

02:04:18.600 that even if she didn't know about it,

02:04:20.520 if someone else was doing it for her on her behalf without her knowledge,

02:04:25.120 she was going to be held responsible for it.

02:04:27.880 When, by the way, three countries and a third of the country's population here

02:04:32.060 are like, I'm going to do a scheme. 1.00

02:04:34.580 Like, there's no way out of that.

02:04:37.220 Well, where it's like treason to think Elizabeth might die

02:04:40.420 it's like so it's like it's a treason if someone thinks they might scheme on behalf of mary is that

02:04:44.700 now anyway so just to end things with like a nice thing um so mr best came back from being the judge

02:04:51.980 in the trial and killed her like fiance and he was like hey mary do you want to go outside and walk

02:04:58.080 you haven't been outside in months and months and you're really sad even though it's like snowy and 0.99

02:05:03.540 winter he might have thought she would say no but she was just like fuck yes and she went outside 0.97

02:05:09.060 and just like romped around and had a nice time. 0.99

02:05:11.460 And I like that for her.

02:05:12.860 And then just to wrap this up.

02:05:14.580 So Rodolfi himself went to Paris,

02:05:17.760 got a job working for the Pope

02:05:19.440 and later became a senator in Florence. 1.00

02:05:23.500 What the fuck was his deal? 0.99

02:05:25.020 I would love anyone to tell me. 1.00

02:05:26.880 It's wild.

02:05:28.440 So that is, and like, I knew this was going to be long

02:05:31.660 and this was long.

02:05:33.280 And this is the end of this episode.

02:05:35.720 So a couple of things I want to mention.

02:05:37.240 So first of all, so there are now transcripts of the most recent episodes of Vulgar History

02:05:42.160 are available if you go to vulgarhistory.com and you click on the episode where you want

02:05:46.940 to see the transcript.

02:05:47.740 It should just be there for you to see.

02:05:49.800 So thank you very much to Aveline Malek of The Wordery for transcribing a variety of

02:05:55.000 place names, people names, and ridiculous nicknames.

02:05:58.980 She does the Lord's work.

02:06:00.340 also if you want to get your a cat named hepburn um merch which could not be oh my gosh i'm really

02:06:09.720 excited by the time this episode comes out i don't know i ordered myself one of the pillow covers i

02:06:13.440 want to take a picture posing actual hepburn who is right here right now with the pillow like i

02:06:18.120 just that's my goal anyway so the merch is available at vulgarhistory.com store oh and

02:06:23.080 also the way it happens is when new merch is added it's on sale it's like 20 off for the first couple

02:06:28.620 days, which I will have just posted it the day this episode comes out so you can get your cat

02:06:33.640 merchandise on sale. Anyway, vulgarhistory.com slash store. And then also if you live not in

02:06:38.100 the US, anyone can order from vulgarhistory.com slash store. The shipping can be a bit high

02:06:43.600 depending where you live. If you're elsewhere, you can get also your Hepburn, a cat merch at

02:06:48.440 vulgarhistory.redbubble.com for better shipping. And I also have a Patreon page, which is

02:06:55.720 patreon.com slash and foster writer where yeah you can get early ad free access to all episodes

02:07:02.420 also vulgar peace theater episodes where allison and our friend lana we talk about costume dramas

02:07:07.580 i also do so this asshole and other special bonus episodes and i i will hold up to my promise of 0.93

02:07:14.900 if and when i have 500 people members of the patreon i will do so this asshole john knox 0.93

02:07:20.680 I think currently I'm at like 400 so we're getting there if you want to just like tip me over into

02:07:28.420 that you can get a seven-day free trial so if a hundred of you I'll get a seven-day free trial

02:07:32.440 simultaneously and then leave that's fine and I respect it anyway I'm also on Instagram all these

02:07:38.440 pictures that we talked about there'll be a link in the show notes but also on Instagram vulgar

02:07:42.360 history pod I'm on TikTok at vulgar history Allison tell everybody about your book which

02:07:46.720 includes Tony Babs it includes Walsingham yes um Hepburn's paw listener just came right into

02:07:55.060 the side of our chat and like tapped Anne on the cheek which was very sweet so she thinks you should

02:08:00.220 buy merch as well and while you're shopping you can go for my books um a tip for the hangman

02:08:05.720 featuring Tony Babs and Walsingham and Mary and all of her England's chemie glory um you can also

02:08:12.120 pre-order book number two which is let the dead marry the dead coming in october and you can find

02:08:17.360 me and my newsletter and all of my online nonsense at my website alisonepstein.com i so you do your

02:08:26.460 newsletter is dirtbags through the ages and i don't think there's enough known about rodolfi

02:08:31.720 to do one about him but no that's like mysterious weirdos through the ages which is a very hard

02:08:39.420 newsletter to research but we're i'm adding some to the list yeah yeah it would just be i don't

02:08:44.840 know he's it's such a fascinating person anyway thank you very much everyone for listening to

02:08:49.380 this extremely long episode we will be back again next week to begin to slowly wrap up this ongoing

02:08:56.620 saga that i ridiculously thought i could cover in four episodes not true anyway thank you so much 0.97

02:09:02.480 for joining me allison everyone keep your pants on tits out etc 0.97

02:09:05.960 Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Anne Foster 0.98

02:09:12.220 and edited by Christina Lumagi.

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Vulgar History - July 12, 2023

Mary, Queen of Scots： Part Eight： Cat(te) And Mouse

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