The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots on February 8, 1587, in the Great Hall of Fotheringhay Castle was a seismic event that reverberated throughout Europe. It was not a sudden act of barbarism but the brutal, calculated culmination of a nineteen-year political and religious struggle that posed an existential threat to the English crown. Mary’s death was not simply about who she was, but about what she represented: a living, breathing claim to the English throne and the Catholic world’s best hope of restoring its faith to Protestant England.
To understand her execution, one must first understand the profound danger Mary Stuart posed to her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I of England. From the moment Mary was forced to flee Scotland in 1568 and throw herself on Elizabeth’s “protection,” she became the nucleus of every Catholic plot against the English queen. Her impeccable lineage was her greatest asset and her most deadly curse. As the granddaughter of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII’s sister, Mary had a strong blood claim to the English throne. In the eyes of Catholic Europe, which viewed Elizabeth as an illegitimate heretic (the product of Henry’s annulled marriage to Anne Boleyn), Mary was the rightful Queen of England.
For Elizabeth, this created an impossible dilemma. To let Mary go would be to unleash a rival to rally foreign Catholic armies. To execute an anointed queen would set a terrifying precedent that regicide was acceptable, potentially inviting the same fate upon herself. Elizabeth’s solution was to keep Mary in a comfortable but secure captivity for 19 years, a “guest” in a series of castles who was never allowed to leave. This, however, did not solve the problem; it merely contained it. Mary, from her prison rooms, became a potent symbol and a passive beacon for conspiracy.
The Death Warrant: The Babington Plot
The immediate catalyst for Mary’s execution was the Babington Plot of 1586. This was not the first plot to swirl around her name, but it was the most elaborate and, crucially, the one for which the government had irrefutable proof of her direct involvement.
Masterminded by young Catholic nobleman Anthony Babington, the plan was twofold: to assassinate Elizabeth and to orchestrate a Spanish invasion to place Mary on the throne. What Babington did not know was that his conspiracy had been infiltrated from the start by Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s brilliant and ruthless spymaster. Walsingham allowed the plot to develop, waiting for the one piece of evidence he needed: Mary’s explicit written approval of Elizabeth’s assassination.
The trap was set. Walsingham’s agents intercepted Mary’s secret correspondence, which was smuggled in and out of her confinement in beer barrels. In a fatal lapse of judgment, Mary wrote a letter to Babington that gave her full assent to the plan, stating, “The affairs being thus prepared and forces in readiness both without and within the realm, then shall it be time to set the six gentlemen to work.” She was outlining the conditions for her rescue but, in doing so, she endorsed the murder of her cousin, the reigning monarch.
For Walsingham, this was the “smoking gun.” He had his proof that Mary, Queen of Scots, was guilty of high treason—compassing and imagining the death of the Queen. Her status as a foreign anointed queen was now a legal moot point; by participating in a plot against Elizabeth’s life, she had placed herself under English law.
The Legal Theatre and Elizabeth’s Reluctance
With the evidence in hand, Mary was put on trial at Fotheringhay Castle in October 1586. She defended herself with dignity and intelligence, arguing that as a queen, she was subject to no earthly tribunal, least of all one in a country where she was not a subject. “I am no subject of Elizabeth’s,” she declared, “I am an independent queen.”
However, her legal arguments were powerless against the written evidence. The court, packed with nobles who feared her as a Catholic threat, found her guilty and sentenced her to death.
Now, the decision landed on Elizabeth’s desk. For months, the English queen vacillated, horrified at the prospect of signing a fellow queen’s death warrant. She was deeply concerned about the precedent and feared the international Catholic backlash. She tried to get her jailer, Sir Amyas Paulet, to quietly murder Mary, thus relieving her of the public responsibility, but Paulet refused, famously stating he would not commit “that shameful act.”
Parliament and her councillors, particularly Walsingham and William Cecil, pressed her relentlessly. They argued that while the execution would be painful, it was a necessary act of state security. As long as Mary lived, Elizabeth would never be safe, and Protestant England would remain perpetually in the crosshairs of Catholic Europe. The recent victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588, which occurred after Mary’s death but was planned during her lifetime, would later prove their fears were well-founded.
Finally, and with great apparent anguish, Elizabeth signed the death warrant. She then tried to create a buffer of plausible deniability, insisting her secretary should not dispatch it. Her councillors, seizing the moment, promptly sent it off without her further knowledge, executing the sentence before she could change her mind.
The Inevitable Outcome
Mary’s execution was a gruesome spectacle. It took two strokes of the axe to sever her head, and when the executioner held it aloft, he was left holding only her auburn wig, the real head tumbling to the floor. Her small dog was found hiding in her skirts, covered in her blood.
When news reached Elizabeth, she flew into a rage of legendary proportions, blaming her secretary for the “accidental” dispatch of the warrant and imprisoning him. This reaction has been debated by historians for centuries: was it genuine regret and fury, or a calculated political performance to distance herself from the act in the eyes of Catholic Europe?
In reality, Elizabeth’s fury was likely a mixture of both genuine shock and political theatre. She understood the consequences. Mary’s son, James VI of Scotland (the future James I of England), though Protestant, was outraged by the treatment of his mother. More importantly, King Philip II of Spain now had the perfect propaganda tool to justify his long-planned invasion of England, which culminated in the Spanish Armada the following year.
Conclusion: A Necessary Tragedy?
Why was Mary, Queen of Scots executed? She was killed because, after nineteen years, her very existence had become an untenable threat to the English state. She was not executed for her past sins in Scotland, but for her present and proven complicity in a plot to murder Queen Elizabeth I.
It was a tragic collision of personal ambition, religious war, and realpolitik. Mary was a victim of her birthright, her faith, and her own poor judgment. Elizabeth was a victim of the impossible choice between her own survival and the sanctity of monarchy. In the end, the cold logic of national security prevailed over mercy, kinship, and the divine right of kings. The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots was a brutal act, but in the eyes of Elizabeth’s government, it was the only way to ensure the survival of a Protestant England.