586. Mary, Queen of Scots: The Battle for Scotland (Part 3)

Thank you for listening to The Rest is History.

For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club.

That is therestishistory.com.

This podcast is supported by Progressive, a leader in RV Insurance.

RVs are for sharing adventures with family, friends, and even your pets.

So if you bring your cats and dogs along for the ride, you'll want Progressive RV Insurance.

They protect your cats and dogs like family by offering up to $1,000 in optional coverage for vet bills in case of an RV accident, making it a great companion for the responsible pet owner who loves to travel.

See Progressive's other benefits and more when you quote RV Insurance at progressive.com today.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates, pet injuries, and additional coverage and subject to policy terms.

If princes exceed their bounds, madam, no doubt they should be resisted even by power.

For there is neither greater honour nor greater obedience to be given to kings or princes than God has commanded to be given to father and mother.

But madam, the father may be stricken with a frenzy in which he would slay his own children.

Now madam, if the children arise, join themselves together, apprehend the father, take the sword or other weapons from him, and finally bind his hands and keep him in prison until his frenzy be overpassed.

Think ye, madam, that the children do any wrong?

That's even so, madam, with princes that would murder the children of God that are subject unto them.

To take the sword from them, to bind their hands, and to cast them into prison until they be brought to a more sober mind is no disobedience against princes, but just obedience, because it agreeth with the will of God.

At these words, the queen stood as if it were amazed for more than a quarter of an hour.

Her countenance altered, so the Lord James began to entreat her and to demand, What has offended you, madam?

At length she said, Well, then, I perceive that my subjects shall obey you, and not me, and shall do what they list, and not what I command, and so must I be subject to them, and they not to me.

So that was a real variety of accents.

Yeah, extraordinary smorgasbord of accents.

Not all of them accurate, I think.

Because it was John Knox.

This is John Knox, who's the great Protestant reformer we talked about last week.

This is his history of the Reformation.

Now, this is, if you think that's a daunting book, you're quite wrong.

A top historian, Alec Ryrie, who disagrees with Tom about the date of the world's first revolution, he describes this book as gossipy, cantankerous and enthralling.

And what he's describing there is his first meeting with the Catholic Queen of Scotland, Mary Stuart, Mary Queen of Scots, on the 4th of September 1561.

And Tom, I know you regard this as, and I quote, one of the most extraordinary encounters in Scottish history.

So, what's going on?

Well, just to say first of all, that, of course, Mary, Queen of Scots, spoke in Scots, even though she had come from France.

She wouldn't necessarily have had a French accent.

She's been in France a long time.

I admire the subtlety of your vocalisation there.

So what's going on is that John Knox is articulating a radically Protestant perspective that enables him to justify essentially him telling off an anointed queen and essentially kind of threatening her with imprisonment and deposition if she doesn't do God's will.

And God's will obviously equates to what John Knox thinks Mary Queen of Scots should be doing.

And you mentioned Alec Ryrie and you mentioned his views on revolutions.

And we quoted him in the previous episode as saying that the Reformation in Scotland, in his opinion, is arguably the first modern revolution.

In other words, the first revolution in modern European history.

And I guess that listening to him harangue his anointed monarch, you can kind of see why, because that diatribe against her, comparing her to a parent who's gone mad and who has to be locked up by her own children, and he then goes on to actually compare her to Nero, notoriously the worst of the Roman emperors.

I mean, it feels like a signpost pointing to Europe's future.

So to the execution of Mary's own grandson, Charles I,

to the execution of Louis XVI, to the execution of Nicholas II.

And I think it really vividly illustrates the degree to which Mary, Mary, who is still at this point only 18 years old, she's been absent from Scotland for 13 years, she's been back in Edinburgh for less than a month.

And here she is staring down the barrel of something that none of her predecessors on the Scottish throne, none of her Stuart forebears had ever had to handle.

And

what she is staring down is a kind of a form of Christianity that not only sanctions, but positively encourages the overthrow of monarchs who fail to measure up to its very, very exacting moral standards.

And Mary will come to see this as a form of republicanism.

And of course, it's so interesting, isn't it?

Because we know where this is going to end up.

It's going to end up on the scaffold in Whitehall with the execution of her grandson.

But Tom, the obvious question here.

Why does she put up with this?

Why does she just stand there and take this?

Because if you imagine Elizabeth I or, I mean, imagine Henry VIII.

Imagine someone, you know, going into Henry VIII and him listening to all this.

Why is she so passive?

Well, I think there are two possible answers, or maybe a mix of two answers.

So one of them is that, as we said, she's a very young woman.

She's not familiar with Scotland.

You know, she's just arrived in this strange place and she's being shouted at by angry, angry men with beards.

Right.

And you can argue that she is, in that sense, the victim of forces beyond her control.

And that's very much a sense of Mary Queen of Scots that's been popular, you know, for centuries and centuries.

Another answer is to say, as Jenny Wormold in her very

negative book about Mary Queen of Scots, is to say that she's a ruler whose life was marked by irresponsibility and failure on a scale unparalleled in her own day.

Both those things can be true, though.

I mean, people, people, you know, what did Karl Marx say?

They make history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing.

So the circumstances can be terrible, but you can also make a series of very, very bad choices, which I think Mary Queen of Scots does.

So,

well, let's put this into some context.

So she's been in France, hence the French accent.

Her husband, the King of France, died in December 1560.

So she's no longer the Queen of France.

She is still, however, the Queen of Scots, even though she hasn't been in Scotland for a long time.

We talked about this last time.

She doesn't rush back to Scotland, which she might have done.

She hangs around in France saying goodbye to people and going on a little tour.

And then only in August 1561 does she set sail from Calais.

And it's a great sort of enterprise, this, isn't it?

Because she's got all her dresses and she's got all her hangers on her squad, all these kinds of people.

So set the scene for us a little bit.

Yeah, so she sets off from Calais.

As you say, she's got her transport ships, horses, shoes, clothes, whatever.

And she's got her squad, so her beloved ladies in waiting, the four Marys, so posh, pretty, fashion and sporty.

she's also taking French chefs because obviously she's not going to rely on Scottish cooking she's got valets tailors chaplains doctors apothecaries kind of the works and she's even brought a French poet a guy called Pierre de Chatelard

and he is exactly the kind of guy that any young queen would want to have so as they're sailing to Edinburgh he declares to Mary Queen of Scots that there is no need for lanterns to light their way for and I quote the eyes of this queen suffice to light up the whole sea with their lovely fire.

Oh, that's very nice.

And they make tremendously good speed.

They arrive at Leith, the harbour of Edinburgh, five days later.

And people who heard the last episode may remember it's cloaked by very thick sea mist.

So Mary can't actually even see, you know, Scotland, this new land that she's arrived at.

And it takes time for the mist to clear, the sun to burn it away, and for them to set foot on Scottish soil and when they do land they find that no one is expecting them because they've come so fast and also we mentioned in the previous episode how an English kind of naval patrol had confiscated the ship that was taking Mary's horses so not only is there no one to greet her but she doesn't have anything to ride into Edinburgh and so this isn't at all the kind of grand entry into her kingdom that she'd been hoping for and she must have thought you know this is a terrible omen But she gets from Leith up into Edinburgh and there things start to improve because the residence they are led to, Holyrood House, which is a palace in Edinburgh at the opposite end of the royal mile from Edinburgh Castle, is actually

more than acceptable.

You know, it's even by the standards of a French chateau, it's absolutely fine.

And it had been built for Mary's grandmother, who was English, Margaret Tudor.

And this is how Mary has Tudor as well as Stuart blood in her veins.

It's very important for the developments of the rest of her reign.

And on one level, Holyrood House is a proper castle.

So it's got a moat, it's got a drawbridge, and it's got this massive tower built by her dad, James V.

But

the tower

is...

very, very comfortable.

It's been furnished in the most up-to-date and stylish French manner.

And also there are kind of exquisite gardens that ultimately date back to the 12th century.

So as the name of the palace implies, there'd been an abbey on the site.

But again, it's been redesigned by French gardeners in the style of the kind of gardens that you would, you know, you'd stroll around on the loire, chatting to Leonardo da Vinci and all of that.

And there's a French chronicler who, together with the poet, so she's taken loads of writers, has come with her.

from France to Scotland.

And he's, I mean, he's quite impressed.

He says that the palace is much grander than was to be expected in so poor a country as Scotland.

So, I think, coming from a Frenchman, that's very high praise.

That's high praise.

So, and she's brought loads of stuff from France, hasn't she?

She's got a hundred tapestries, she's got tablecloths, she's got a throne that she's brought with her.

And so, she, once she's unpacked, I mean, she could think she's still in France, which is nice.

So, I guess, is there a sense that she's recreating a little bit of France in the centre of Edinburgh, or at least at the end of the Royal Mile?

She's like a very, very posh English student arriving at St Andrews.

Or Edinburgh, oh, yeah, or Edinburgh, looking at Tabby, our producer.

Yeah, like Tabby.

This is exactly what Tabby did.

A little corner of the home counties.

Do you know what?

The parallels are uncanny.

I think that's exactly what she's doing.

And I think the architecture of the palace helps her to do that because, in a sense, the ground floor is the place where the business of state is done.

So this is where the privy council is meeting.

But Mary, if she wants to, can just go up the spiral staircase to her private quarters and just remove herself back into a kind of French wonderland.

And that sense of a division between the sphere of the state, which is where she should be as a queen, and the fact that she is able to withdraw from it and from the nobles who feel that she should be kind of communing with them.

I mean, this is a very, very important dynamic throughout the events that will follow.

But here's a big contrast with Tabby.

Mary's a massive fashion Easter.

I mean, Mary loves an extravagant golden gown.

Tabby never wears a golden gown, but Mary does.

And she's got all this sort of velvet shoes and silk garters and all this kind of thing.

And this is basically stuff she's brought from France, French fashion, a little bit like when Anne Boleyn turned up at the court in England from, you know, where she'd been in France.

And she brought new fashions.

There's an element of that, right?

Yeah, I mean, I think Mary is like Tabby to the degree that Tabby is very glamorous.

And this is undoubtedly what Mary, Queen of Scots, is bringing to Edinburgh.

She's a kind of like a film star, alighting at a...

I suppose a kind of a film festival in an out-of-the-way European corner.

She's gone to the Hartlepool Film Festival.

She's gone to the Hartlepool Film Festival.

Yes, exactly.

And as you say, she's brought all this, all these clothes, her, you know, as you said, the velvet shoes and the silk darters and everything.

And so she makes sure to show it off.

And she's been disappointed in her original entry.

So on the 2nd of September, she decides, well, I'll do it again.

I'll pretend that I've just arrived.

And so she stages this magnificent formal entry into the city.

And then a few weeks later, she stages a royal progress which takes in Linlithgow, where she'd been born, Stirling, Perth, Dundee, St Andrews.

So kind of key places in the kingdom to show herself off, to introduce herself.

And it's an absolutely massive success because she's very beautiful, she's very charming, she's very vivacious.

And the crowds think she's tremendous.

And they've been, you know, she's a kind of figure of myth almost.

People have been talking about her.

She's been the queen over the water.

And now she's arrived, kind of bestowing the stardust of French glamour on Scotland.

And she's a tremendous success.

And I think that what people like about her is what people in the French court had liked about her, which is that she is fun.

She clearly enjoys life.

She has a capacity for enjoyment.

And the vast majority of her subjects, I mean, they don't object to her gregariousness, to her kind of devotion to dancing and to masks and to all this kind of stuff.

And the fact that she has these four best friends, her squad, the four Marys, in attendance, this also, people find this kind of charming.

So they roam Edinburgh disguised as men in St Andrews.

They disguise themselves as housewives and do the shopping.

And they even have a French jester called Nicola.

And there's a lot of banter with this French jester.

So I think if you like young women having fun, Mary's great.

However, if you don't like the spectacle of young women having fun, then it's about as offensive as it can be.

Right, because this is an issue.

I mean, this is an issue in all history that there are always people who don't like young women having fun.

Now, John Guy, his biography, says not everybody wanted joyosity.

And John Knox, for example, he complains bitterly, doesn't he?

I mean, he's the great Protestant reformer, and he says, when her French fillocks, fiddlers, and others of that band got the house alone they might be seen skipping not very comely for honest women so basically there's french phyllix and there's there's uncomly skipping which is very disturbing and i guess he sees that um if i can get into john knox's head which is actually quite a duh place to be uh he almost certainly would see that as a symptom of a bigger issue which is her catholicism right her her popery which involves too much fun too much dressing up superstitions and

obedience to the bishop of Rome and all of these things are terrible.

All of these things.

And from the moment she's arrived in Scotland, there have been hostile demonstrations, which Knox himself almost certainly has organised.

So back on the 24th of August, so that's only five days after she'd landed,

a group of Protestants had tried to burst into her chapel at Holyrood and disrupt the mass that...

people may remember it had been legally agreed that she could celebrate mass in her private quarters.

And I think, again, this encourages a sense among those hostile to her that her private quarters, you know, up the spiral staircase in the tower, that this is where her phyllix and fiddlers are, but also where all kinds of papist nonsense is being practiced.

And it means that Mary,

right from the beginning, is in opposition.

to

the most kind of vibrant and revolutionary trends in Scottish public life.

The sense of momentum is all with the Protestants.

And again and again, they try to publicly humiliate her.

So when she does her formal entry into Edinburgh, Knox again uses it to stage anti-Catholic pageantry.

So there's a slight kind of Ian Paisley quality, you know, yelling at the Pope, that kind of thing.

So she's processing and the description is a child appears out of a cloud.

So I don't quite know how that worked.

I mean how they would have simulated a cloud.

Anyway, a child emerges from a cloud, whatever, and gives her a Bible and a psalter that is written in Scots.

So in the vernacular.

And this is obviously a very Protestant statement.

And Mary is very sniffy about it.

And she's given these two books and she very ostentatiously hands them to a particularly notorious Catholic who is standing nearby to show.

um to the crowds what she thinks of this and here's a really good example early on she's in a difficult situation but she makes what I would say is a bad choice.

You know, there are better politicians who would have handled that in a different way, and she doesn't.

And I think this is the theme that runs through her life.

But anyway, that's to jump ahead.

Well, no, this is the context for her summoning Knox

on the 4th of September.

So that's two days after that procession.

And having that interview that you read at the beginning of this episode.

And it's clear that she hasn't prepared for the possibility of what Knox is going to say.

And when, you know, she maintains maintains her dignity in talking to Knox.

But when Knox withdraws, she bursts into tears.

And it's clear that nothing

in her life has prepared her for the experience of talking to someone like Knox and being harangued in the way that Knox harangues her.

And she just hasn't briefed herself.

She hasn't prepared herself for what's going to happen.

And I think that clearly it's very, very bad luck.

that she, a young woman who has no real experience of Scotland, that she is the

steward who has to confront this for the first time.

But she's not entirely helpless.

She has a lot of aides, a lot of advisors who are there to be consulted, and she clearly hasn't, I think, consulted them.

This is the key to the whole story, I think, that you have somebody who's in an extremely difficult situation, as lots of inverted commas, great monarchs, politicians, statesmen, stateswomen, whatever are in history.

And the test of your caliber is the choices that you make.

And

there is, you've mentioned a few times the historian Jenny Wormold, a brilliant historian about 15th and 16th century Scotland.

And she definitely believes, doesn't she, that there is an instructive parallel across the border from which Mary does not learn and will never learn.

Of course, and that is Mary Tudor, so bloody Mary.

And it may seem odd that

a historian is criticising Mary, Queen of Scots, for not being like more like

Mary Tudor whose reign is a failure.

She fails to introduce Catholicism into England.

But I think that had, you know, we talked about this before, had Mary Tudor lived, almost certainly England would have been returned to Catholicism.

And the reason for that is that Mary Tudor goes in very hard in favour of her own religion, her own beliefs.

So when she enters London as queen, she similarly faces kind of Protestant displays and opposition, but she comes down very, very hard on it.

And she institutes all kinds of policies that are designed to reverse the pro-Protestant policies that her younger brother Edward VI had put in place.

And so there is no real reason why Mary couldn't have done that, Mary Queen of Scots.

And she has lots in her favour.

Because, as we've said, Mary is actually very, very popular with the broad mass of her subjects.

She could easily have taken them with her.

Most people in Edinburgh, let alone in the country beyond Edinburgh, remain Catholic.

And even if most of the nobility in Scotland now are Protestant, up in the Highlands, there are very potent aristocratic figures who are still Catholic.

So that's a real source of strength that Mary could draw on.

And in particular, there's the family of the Gordons, who are the Earls of Moray.

They're called the Lieutenants of the North or sometimes the Cocks of the North.

And these are not just a Catholic, but famously loyal to the Stuarts.

So she does have a reserve of popular and of aristocratic Catholic support that she could have drawn on.

Now, some listeners may say you're being very hard here, because of course a great problem for her is not just that she hasn't been to Scotland, but that she's a woman.

and that she's a woman in a man's world.

And that makes it her task all the more difficult.

I suppose the counter-argument, though, is that obviously her cousin Mary Tudor is also a woman, but actually the 16th century has a lot of very impressive female leaders or politicians who do make good choices.

So you mentioned in the last episodes her mother, Mary of Guise, or her mother-in-law, Catherine de' Medici, two people you've mentioned who are very formidable and are very smart and supple political operators.

Yeah, so and they are all Catholic, but of course another example of a female ruler who is able to bend the religious contours of her country to her will is

Mary Queen of Scots cousin Elizabeth I, who's Protestant.

I mean, the thing is that it is possible, if you are a female ruler in 16th century Europe, to shape the religious policies of your country.

In fact, I mean, I think it's completely expected.

To reiterate, Mary has the disadvantage of not being familiar with Scotland.

I mean, that is, I think, a bigger issue for her than her sex.

But Wormold, who is really, I mean, never misses an opportunity to be down on Mary, as we will see over the course of subsequent episodes.

I mean, she, I think, justifiably accuses Mary essentially of being lazy.

And to back this up, she cites a very damning statistic.

So she says, in the 16 months between Mary's return from France and the end of 1562, she attended her council 17 times out of 54 recorded meetings.

I mean, that's a very low attendance rate.

She's the Nigel Farage of Scottish politics.

Well, but Nigel Farage can appeal over the heads of people.

Mary is not doing that either.

She's not leveraging her popularity with the vast mass of people, but her willingness to kind of pull on the levers of state also is not there.

So by 1564,

she's attending five out of 50 council meetings.

Okay, that's pretty poor.

I mean, that is quite lazy.

A counter-argument to this might be that

she's facing these hard Protestant nobles, kind of rough, tough men.

I mean, that's certainly the French stereotype of the Scottish nobility.

And maybe Mary shares in that.

And so perhaps she's intimidated by them.

And it's certainly the case that there are a fair number of quite alarming men.

on the Privy Council.

So Antonia Fraser in her very famous biography, she cites Patrick Lord Ruffin

and describes him as an alleged warlock.

Oh, no way.

Wow.

We love an alleged warlock.

We know from our series on a Vita that having a warlock knocking around is never good news for a country.

Oh my God, he doesn't end up, this boat doesn't end up like the Minister of Social Welfare as well, does he?

We will see what happens to Lord Ruffin.

And he joined the council in 1563.

So that's after Mary has returned to Scotland, despite the fact that Mary is describing him as a man i cannot love so he's on the scene and then there's an even more sinister figure who will play a huge part in this story and he's he's a guy called james douglas the fourth earl of moreton and he like lord ruffin gets appointed to the privy council in 1563 but more than that mary appoints him lord chancellor and again antonia fraser gives a brilliant character sketch of him and i'm going to read this and see whether it it reminds listeners of anyone the small grey eyes in his florid face covered a cruel mind.

His pudgy hands grasped avariciously all his life for what rewards and benefits were to be accrued.

His slow speech concealed an unpleasant ability to revenge himself swiftly on those who had offended him.

It's Captain Benteen, isn't it?

No, Captain Benteen was a silver-tongued.

Oh, was he?

This guy with his slow speech is in a different league altogether, no?

Not the kind of guy, perhaps, that a young woman wants staring at her, waving his pudgy fingers at her.

She's appointed these blokes, though, no?

These are her choices.

So this is the mad thing.

I mean, she's saying, I don't like him.

Oh, he's got pudgy fingers.

They're terrible men.

Yeah.

You're the queen.

Sack them.

And so, again, to quote Wormald, if it is hard to think of another adult ruler who showed such indifference to domestic political matters as she did over the nomination of the council as a whole, it becomes impossible to find a parallel where the officers of state were concerned.

So in other words, you know, if you don't want a sinister, pudgy-fingered guy with slow speech and a tendency to kill people who oppose him as Chancellor, don't appoint him.

And what explains this?

Just she's not thinking things through.

She's just, you know, what's the explanation?

Well, we'll come to that in a minute.

But just to emphasise how odd Mary's behaviour is.

First, it's not just that she's appointing warlocks

and sinister Protestants to her council.

It's also that that she seems to be going out of her way to kneecap her natural supporters.

So in 1562, she goes on a progress north.

And of course, it's expected that her great host on this progress will be George Gordon, the Earl of Moray, her great Catholic champion in the Highlands.

And Mary's treatment of him is really startling because, first of all, she strips him of the Earldom of Moray and gives it to her half-brother, Lord James Stuart.

So from this point on, we will be referring to Lord James Stuart as Moray.

Okay.

Then in August, she's reached Aberdeen and she gets into a massive spat with George Gordon.

And it ends up with Gordon being outlawed.

And then there's a battle, and Gordon dies of apoplexy in the battle, and his children get attained and stripped of their lands and their titles.

And it all seems really odd that a Catholic queen should be destroying the man and the family who are perhaps her most formidable Catholic supporters and doing it what is more in aid of a Protestant.

Because to be sure, the new Earl of Moray, the former Lord James Stuart, is her half-brother.

Mary values their relationship, but he is also a very subtle operator.

He's committed to the Protestant cause in Scotland.

in a way that is vastly more robust than any anything that

Mary does for the Catholic cause.

And as a result of this, to Catholics across Europe, Mary's behavior seems completely incomprehensible.

And to us, I think, of course, it seems quite liberal.

The idea of Mary as being very tolerant of allowing Protestants and Catholics to worship as they want.

Instinctively, we think this makes her an appealing character.

But I think to defend her as a kind of a liberal in the 21st century sense is wildly anachronistic, because everyone in 16th century Europe, whether you're Catholic or Protestant, completely takes for granted that monarchs have a duty to the souls of those who are their subjects.

And that's why to look at England, people are not surprised that Edward VI, who's been raised as a Protestant, should want England to be Protestant, that Mary, who's been raised as Catholic, should want England to be Catholic, and then that Elizabeth, when she comes to the throne, should take England back to Protestantism.

I mean, this is what's taken for granted.

And so for a Catholic monarch to side with Protestants, as Mary seems to be doing, and make absolutely no effort at all to restore her kingdom to what presumably, as a Catholic, she thinks, you know, will be to the benefit of the souls of her subjects,

from the perspective of pretty much everyone in Europe, it seems really, really weird.

In fact, as Wormwald puts it, it's extraordinary and profoundly irresponsible and to emphasize just how extraordinary and irresponsible wormold then makes this point and it i mean it seems to me incontrovertible mary was unique in reformation europe for it was she who ensured that the official religion of her country was not the religion of its ruler there is no other example of this happening in 16th century europe So Tom, do you know what?

This is a puzzle with massive implications, isn't it?

For Scotland, for Britain, and for Europe.

so maybe because it's such a thrilling riddle we should take a break and you can compose yourself and think of an answer and then return after the break and we'll find out the answer

this episode is brought to you by Indeed now speed can be very very important at times yeah speed's massively important Tom a great inspiration for me is the Battle of Cape St.

Vincent in 1797 when Horatio Nelson really made his name he went out of the line to attack the Spanish his ship got entangled with a Spanish ship.

He jumped onto the Spanish ship and captured it.

And then he realized they'd become entangled with a second Spanish ship.

And he leapt onto the next Spanish ship, captured that one as well.

A tremendous example of quick thinking, saving the day.

And if you're hiring, it's also important to act fast.

And thankfully, Indeed sponsored jobs can help get things done.

It moves your post to the top of the page so it can stand out to candidates.

So speed up your hiring with Indeed.

Get your jobs more visibility with a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash rest history.

That's indeed.com slash rest history.

Terms and conditions apply.

Hiring indeed is all you need.

I'm David Orleshoger.

And I'm Sarah Churchwell.

Together, we're the hosts of Journey Through Time, where we explore the darkest depths of history through the eyes of the people who live through it.

Today, we're going to tell you about our new series on the Great Fire of London, one of the great pivotal events of the 17th century, one of the most important events in all of English and British history.

It began at a bakery on Pudding Lane and quickly turned into a catastrophe.

It consumed 13,000 houses, it decimated London and caused £10 billion worth of damage in today's money.

It even burned down the iconic St.

Paul's Cathedral.

The city was already devastated by the Great Plague, but rumours of foreign invasion led mobs to attack innocent foreigners on the streets.

In this episode, we'll explore the chilling consequences of rumors, of fake news, of xenophobia, problems that clearly are not unique to today.

From desperate attempts to save their homes and belongings to the struggle to assign blame, which turned deadly, this is the story of the fire as it was lived through by the people on the ground and the lasting impacts it left on the city.

We've got a short clip at the end of this episode.

Hello, and welcome back to The Rest is History.

Absolutely tumultuous scenes in the break there while you were listening to the adverts.

If you're not a member of the Rest is History Club, Tabby, our producer, has revealed that she does actually, when she's not recording episodes, she does have a golden gown and velvet shoes.

So I stand ashamed and corrected.

Yeah, I've let myself down, I've let Tabby down, I've let the Rest is History down, which is sad.

But we left you more importantly with a riddle, which is about a Catholic queen who seems to be very pious, who turns up to her country and then basically punishes a lot of Catholics, promotes a lot of Protestants, and doesn't do what seems like the obvious thing, which is basically to stamp out this heresy of Protestantism and to return her people to the one true Catholic faith, which is, of course, what Mary Tudor had done in England.

So, why does Mary, Queen of Scots, not do it in Scotland, Tom?

Well, it can be explained perhaps by her deep, deep sense of homesickness.

She, I think, is profoundly nostalgic for a country that is not her own.

And ironically, we touched on this in the previous episode in that she is quite like John Knox, her great adversary.

So we talked in the previous episode about how Knox had been given shelter in England after he'd been freed from working as a galley slave, you know, for the French.

And he'd been highly trusted by Edward VI in England and Edward's ministers to join them in this great mission to reform the English church.

And so he'd always longed to return to England.

And given the choice, he would have gone there in 1559 when Mary Tudor dies.

But unfortunately, he'd been very rude about female rulers.

And so Elizabeth I, when she comes to the throne, won't have him.

And so he goes to Scotland instead.

Mary isn't homesick for England, of course, she's never been to England, but she is homesick, I think, for France.

And you can tell that from the amount of the number of attendants from France that she's bought, her French furnishings, her fittings, you know, the way that her interior decoration is all French,

and the way in which, you know, she's got her privy council meeting downstairs at Holyrood, you know, the warlock and the guy with the pudgy fingers and all of that, but she can always retreat from it up the spiral staircase to her little bit of France that she's recreated in her apartments up there.

And of course, beyond her palace at Holyrood, there's the filth, the stench of Edinburgh, and beyond Edinburgh, there's the wilds of a country that boasts scarcely a single other city across all its vast extent.

Tom, Scottish listeners will not be pleased to hear that.

I'm not describing Scotland as it is now, and I'm describing Scotland as it's seen by Mary.

Well, also, here's the thing, at the time in Scotland, in the 16th century, the Scots themselves, perhaps foolishly, some outsiders might say, they think they're a tremendously sophisticated, urbane, and civilised people, don't don't they?

They absolutely do.

This is again a crucial aspect of Mary's tragedy is that Mary takes for granted that France is the sinaceer of kingdoms and that everyone should want to be French.

The Scots don't think that at all.

The Scots think they're brilliant and with some justification because actually they, you know, we've talked, they have a very sophisticated, actually quite well-functioning kingdom.

And the most famous intellectual of Scottish life in the late 15th, early 16th century, who brilliantly is called John Major, the name of the very English prime minister in the 1990s.

He noted how the French had a proverb, he's proud like a Scotsman.

The Scots are associated with pride by the French who find this ridiculous.

But I mean, I guess a Scot could say the same perhaps about the French.

But certainly, this sense of pride that the Scots have in their own country is definitely enhanced if you're a Scottish Protestant, because I think by this point, you're starting to see Scotland as an equivalent of Noah's Ark.

It's a vessel of salvation born upon the great rolling oceans of sin.

And Mary definitely knows better than to ignore the implications of this for her own standing and reputation, as is illustrated by a very scandalous incident that happens in late 1562.

So 1562 is when she kneecaps the Gordons and she returns from the Highlands to Edinburgh And there she is visited by Chatelard, the gushing poet who had compared her eyes to lanterns on their voyage from France to Scotland.

And Mary receives Chatelard with her customary generosity.

She gives him a horse, gives him some money to go and buy some new clothes, tremendous benignity.

And Chatelard completely misreads the runes and does something mad.

And he...

I love this.

I love this.

He climbs the spiral staircase up to Mary's private quarters and hides under her bed.

I was about to say, what is he thinking?

I think we all know what he's thinking.

Well, before Mary can come to bed, he's found there by two grooms and thrown out.

And Mary is furious when she's told about this, a tremendous laisse majeste.

And so she orders him to leave court.

But he's playing the part, I think, of, you know, he's like the hero of a chivalric romance.

He thinks that Mary is playing hard to get.

And so he follows her to St Andrew's.

And again, she's in her private quarters.

She only has a couple of servants with her.

And he bursts in and starts professing his love.

Mary screams.

Her brother, the Earl of Moray, comes hurrying to the rescue.

Chatelat is arrested.

He's tried.

And he's sentenced to death.

And his last words, again, are very, very flowery and poetic.

Adieu, the most beautiful and cruel princess in the world.

And then, lah, as he dies.

In my mind, he looks like Theo youngster

yeah i think

yeah very possibly very possibly and we laugh but obviously for mary it had been a devastating oh yeah poor mary she's the real victim in all this not this bloke who's just been executed yeah but he's he's he's been her he's basically been stalking her so it is alarming and frightening stalking this like twice i don't think that counts as stalking does it he's just come on he's bursting into her private quarters i i think that counts as stalking i think it's unacceptable behaviour.

I think that killing him for it, perhaps, is a little severe.

But certainly you can imagine how Knox and Protestants of a similar hue interpret it.

It confirms all their darker suspicions of Mary's kind of Frenchified habits.

Right, this is French Catholicism run riot.

And again, it confirms this sense that Mary's private quarters, that they're a place where this kind of behavior is taken for granted, that there's scope for all kinds of illicit behaviour.

Right.

And because of that, Mary knows, therefore, she has to be on her strictest guard.

I think she is naturally, I mean, she's not sexually promiscuous in any way.

I think she has a kind of very strict sexual morality, but she knows what people like Knox are now saying about her.

And so she's absolutely on her guard.

But I guess that the obvious question is, well, why does she need to worry about what people like Knox are saying about her?

Why doesn't she come down harder on them?

Why doesn't she round them up, imprison them or whatever?

And again, I think to explain this, we return to her sense of regret for everything that she had experienced as a child and as a teenager.

Because she's not just homesick for France.

She's nostalgic for the experience of being an actor on a stage that is broader and more glamorous than she has in Scotland.

And since there is obviously no prospect whatsoever of her returning to France as its queen, that is never going to happen.

She starts to look at the possibility of becoming the queen of a second kingdom, which is richer than Scotland, more populous than Scotland, and on which she does have a claim.

And that kingdom, of course, is England.

Oh, my God.

I mean, that is mad.

If that really is her motivation,

I've lost all sympathy for her because that is demented i think tom i mean i'm not saying she i'm not doubting what you're saying or what jenny wormold is because that's what jenny wormold argues isn't it i'm not doubting her argument but if that really is mary's rationale for not sorting out the religious affairs of her own kingdom then i think she deserves i mean this sounds harsh but i think she deserves everything because this is a bad choice from her anyway continue well you you mentioned uh jenny wormold so to quote her mary queen of scots attitude to the religion which she was expected to restore to her kingdom can only be explained in the light of her main priority, her hope, however unlikely to be realised, of the English succession.

Right, now how can she get the English succession?

Because Elizabeth I is now Queen of England.

She's

and everyone expects that Elizabeth I will get married and will have children and continue the Tudor succession, don't they?

But Mary is gambling that that won't happen?

Actually, no, because in 1559 before Mary had even left France for Scotland, Elizabeth had told Parliament that basically that she wasn't going to get married.

And so she told Parliament, that shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, died a virgin.

And so if Elizabeth dies a virgin, she's obviously not going to have children.

And if she doesn't have children, then the obvious heir is Mary.

But no, but surely not the obvious heir for

a glaring reason.

Precisely at this point that Mary is Catholic and the English surely by now will never, you know, Elizabeth has turned the pendulum back away from Catholicism after Mary.

The English are never going to turn the pendulum back again and go back to Catholicism, are they?

Is that likely?

Well, I think this is precisely why, in Wormold's opinion, and I think she's absolutely right about this, this is why Mary is treading so carefully in her own kingdom.

Because what she wants is firstly to win the backing of her own Protestant nobility for her claim to the English throne.

And so she doesn't want to alienate them.

But also, of course, she wants to demonstrate to Protestants in England that her Catholicism needn't be an insuperable problem to her succeeding Elizabeth as Queen of England.

So I think that is basically what is governing.

her policy.

So basically, she's so ambitious for the English throne that she's down, you know, she's still a Catholic deep down, but she's downplaying it publicly as much as possible as a PR move to impress the English.

Is that basically the story?

Essentially.

And of course, this reflects pretty badly on her loyalty, not just to Catholicism, but also to Scotland.

Yeah, right.

If you're Scottish, listen to this, you're not happy, right?

I mean, I really do think it's the only explanation for what otherwise seems inexplicable.

And I think it's a kind of, it's a mad policy to stake your entire future as a queen of one country on your hope that you might succeed to the throne of another country.

And even more so, because essentially what Mary's doing is tethering all her future hopes and ambitions to a woman who is notoriously unpredictable.

And in fact, makes unpredictability the entire basis of her policy.

And that, of course, is Elizabeth I

herself.

And Elizabeth consistently refuses to name Mary or indeed anyone as her heir.

And in 1561, Mary sends her Secretary of State, who is a very able,

competent guy,

a man who is very committed to the idea of the union of the English and Scottish thrones, a man called William Maitland from a place called Leetington.

So he's often known as Secretary Leffington.

And he goes down to London and he meets with Elizabeth I.

And Elizabeth tells Maitland quite bluntly that she will never, you know, I will never name my successor, despite the fact that actually i think in secret she is quite sympathetic to mary's claim she explains why to to maitland in a kind of very memorable way she says princes cannot like their own children think you that i could love my own winding sheet

she knows that that to name mary would it of course will create trouble for her of course it would it would it would mean her political capital evaporates because people switch to the what they see as the successor i mean it's always the way mary however thinks doesn't she that if you know, the great thing about Mary and Elizabeth is they never meet.

And Mary thinks, well, I'm so fun.

Yeah, I charm people.

I'm such a charming person that all I have to do is meet her and Elizabeth will be charmed by me.

And perhaps because Elizabeth knows that she will try this, she refuses ever to meet her, doesn't she?

She does.

There are times where she wavers and something always intrudes, which I think reflects the fact that Elizabeth simply doesn't want to risk being charmed.

And the other reason is that even though Elizabeth is very much the mistress of her own policy,

she does have a chief minister who she trusts very deeply.

And this is William Cecil, who we've already met,

and he is a very hot Protestant who detests Mary, who thinks that Mary is plotting as a Catholic to become Queen of England, not just out of personal ambition, but to roll back Protestantism in England and therefore his great ambition is not just to block Mary's accession to the English throne but if he possibly can to topple Mary from the Scottish throne so he is a very menacing enemy for Mary and because Cecil operates in the shadows he's one that she's kind of not as fully aware of as perhaps she should have been.

And there's no question that Elizabeth herself is perfectly happy to engage in mischief-making in Scotland to occasionally you know just keep the Scots on their toes make sure that Mary remains dependent on her there's a good example of this in there in 1563 when Elizabeth is basically trying to stir up trouble and she writes to ask Mary for a favour that she knows Mary will have to grant her is that right yes so this is um relations between the two cousins have been very bad and this is a kind of power play by Elizabeth to show that she has the upper hand because what she wants from Mary is she wants Mary to give a passport to Matthew Stuart, the Earl of Lennox, who listeners may remember back in episode one had backed Henry VIII during the rough wooing.

So

he'd had hopes of marrying Mary of Guise and had then been rejected and he'd stormed off in a strop.

And Henry VIII had given Lennox lands in Yorkshire.

and he is a natural troublemaker.

He's sufficiently heavyweight that he can create all kinds of trouble in Scotland.

And so Mary really havers

and she has to weigh up,

you know, is his presence in Scotland going to give me more grief than annoying Elizabeth?

And rather than annoy Elizabeth, Mary will always take the other path.

And so finally she says, I will allow Lennox to come back.

But I think also one of the reasons why Mary allows Lennox back is that as she ponders the situation, she starts to realize that perhaps Elizabeth is making a mistake by wanting Lennox to go back.

Because effectively, what Elizabeth has done by sending Lennox back is to serve up to Mary something that Mary had been desperate to find, namely a husband capable of consolidating her dynastic right to England.

Now, this to explain to the listeners, now we're going to do a little bit of exciting Tudor genealogy, aren't we?

We certainly are, yes.

Because people may remember.

So, Lennox is a distant cousin of Mary, and he is the great-grandson of James II of Scotland.

So, he's got Scottish royal blood, but also

he, Lennox, had married the niece of King Henry VIII of England, which means that he's got four sons by this woman, and they have between them both Stuart blood and Tudor blood.

So very exciting.

And one of these young men in particular will play a very prominent role in this story.

So tell us about him, Tom.

Yes.

So he is a 17-year-old lad by the name of Henry, Lord Darnley.

He is stunningly good looking, but more to the point,

has the best claim to the English throne, perhaps, after Mary herself.

And so it seems incredible, really, that Elizabeth had failed to think through the implications of this.

But Mary, certainly, by the time that Lennox returns to Scotland, I mean, she has kind of thought, well, there's a real opportunity here.

Because in England, the objections to Mary succeeding Elizabeth had focused not just on her Catholicism, but on the fact that she's a woman and a foreigner, so not English.

But Darnley, who has been born in England and is a subject of Elizabeth, Elizabeth, I mean, seems to promise Mary a way of countering these objections.

Now, it is true that Darnley, like Mary, is a Catholic, but he's not a passionately committed one.

I mean, actually, rather like Mary.

He does also have other drawbacks.

So, to quote John Guy, his character was tainted by recklessness, sexual excess, pride, and stupidity.

Oh, no, what a combination.

Yeah, so those are drawbacks.

And even his good looks, you know, they are capable of being given a negative spin so when Elizabeth challenges a Scottish emissary

she wants to know you know what what are Mary's intentions towards Darnley the emissary basically replies oh you've got nothing to worry about no woman of spirit would make choice of such a man that was more like a woman than a man for he was very lusty beardless and lady-faced however I mean if he's lady-faced he is also in the words of another contemporary critic a great cock chick yeah i saw that i was like who that's that's from the that's 16th century that's from the time right he's a great cock chick it is so he he likes to sleep around he's yeah

apparently very well endowed but also i i mean i think the only word to describe darnley is that he is a massive cock oh my gosh i would say the biggest cock in british history

And we will discover why over the course of the next couple of episodes.

He's a terrible man.

Just a terrible man.

And Mary, again, if she had had any sense, would have run a million miles from him.

But Mary, as we've seen, isn't always given to the best judgment.

And when she meets him for the first time, I think she is immediately very taken with him.

So this happens on the 17th of February, 1565, in Fife and a small fishing village.

And there's an eyewitness to the meeting.

And this eyewitness reports that Mary took well with Darnley and found him the lustiest and the best proportioned lang man that she had seen.

So I mean they had we had a bloke in the other episode who was their best proportioned members in Scotland, but he's now been eclipsed by Darnell.

Yeah, he has by Jack Loudon who's turned up on the scene.

So Elizabeth at the news that Mary has taken a shine to Darnelly starts to panic because suddenly she realises, oh, this is a real problem.

So she orders Lennox and Darnelly back to England, which, you know, she can give that order because they're both her subjects.

But then she changes her mind, decides, no, that's bad.

Then she changes it again, then she changes it back.

This is classic Elizabeth.

She's always kind of prevaricating and changing her mind in such situations.

And so she then adopts another strategy, which is to drop hints to Mary that if Mary will drop Darnley, then she, Elizabeth, will recognise Mary as her heir.

But of course, by this point, Mary is not inclined to believe anything that Elizabeth says.

You know, she recognises this as a classic Elizabeth trick.

And also, I think now she's got a serious prospect of having a kind of good-looking young husband with royal connections.

She's starting to think, well, actually, I've been slightly embarrassing myself by hanging on the words of a foreign queen.

And so when Elizabeth then tries to strong-arm Mary by saying that she, you know, she's never going to confirm her as her heir, Mary, rather than kind of grovelling and kind of begging for forgiveness, decides, well, whatever.

I'm cutting myself loose from my dependence on Elizabeth.

Her patience snaps and she thinks, I'm just going to do what I want.

You know, let Elizabeth go hang.

And so when Darnelly then falls sick, and it will probably not surprise listeners to know that this is probably with syphilis, although Mary doesn't seem to have realised this.

Mary personally nurses him.

And over the course of her time with Darley in his sick bed, she makes her mind up.

So to quote Antonia Fraser, under the influence of the proximity of the sick room and the tenderness brought forth by the care of the weak, the suffering, and the handsome Darnley, Mary fell violently, recklessly and totally in love.

And does she not have counsellors, Tom, who can advise her that this is a very poor decision?

As Elizabeth would have done, for example.

She does, and she ignores them.

And she also ignores all protestations from the English court.

So

she summons the English ambassador and tells him the news very bluntly.

If your mistress would have used me as I trusted she would have done, she cannot have had a daughter of her own that would have been more obedient to her than I would have been.

But it's now too late.

So therefore, as Mary puts it, let her not be offended with my marriage.

So in other words, Elizabeth can complain all she likes, but you know, she made the bed that I am now lying in.

And here is your classic example, right, of A, a bad choice and B as Jenny Wormold would say just unbelievable irresponsibility I mean I think it would be hard for any listener to this show not to conclude that Mary is behaving here with reckless

dare I say immaturity and irresponsibility I mean impetuosity certainly think as I suppose would you say that about Henry VIII maybe there are different standards for a man because a man can I mean I'm not defending it I'm just saying the 16th century a man can get away with impetuous reckless behavior I think it is different because

Henry as a king, is expected by the social presumptions of the age to have the governing of his wife.

And those standards apply to Mary.

And so therefore, by marrying Darnley, she, as the wife,

will be expected to show a certain measure of respect and perhaps even subordination.

to her husband.

And so that will therefore be giving Darnelly a potential whip in his hands that all the evidence suggests he is not best qualified to wield.

However, Mary initially doesn't care and so

she goes ahead with the wedding.

Then gradually, I think, as the months slip by and she becomes better accustomed to Darnell's behaviour, perhaps she starts to get slight intimations.

that she might have made a mistake.

But by now it's too late because the bans of her wedding are starting to be read out and on the 22nd of july when the the bans for her marriage are read out in st Giles Kirk in Edinburgh on the same afternoon she elevates Danley to the dukedom of Albany so in other words he will now be of sufficient status that she can marry him but the lustre is already beginning to wear off right he's a he's he's drinking like a fish this is always a you know he's a party man but obviously that that has consequences now there's also another element to this this, which I

enjoy a lot, which is that, as well as being a ladies' man,

he's very metro-sexual, is he not?

Yes, he is.

Because he takes a shine to Mary's Italian secretary, a man called David Rizzio.

Yes.

So,

you know, he's a great cock chick.

Yeah.

And, and he's, you know, he swings both ways.

So they're caught in bed together?

Is that right?

Yes, they're caught in bed together.

And you'd really think, come on, Mary, this is

this, this is, this is not looking good.

And I think what makes it even worse is that actually, for you know, for several weeks, Darnelly had really been trying not to behave like a cock, and then it all gets too much for him, and he starts leaping into bed with Italian secretaries and getting massively drunk and also making terrible jokes.

So he's at a meeting of the Privy Council and he tells the Protestant councillors there that he,

I care much, you know, I

care much more for English Catholics than Scottish Protestants

and this doesn't go down well at all and remember I mean he has a very braying English accent and there's nothing a right nothing a Scottish privy councillor enjoys more than a braying English accent but I think the most damaging and ominous sign of how unsuited he is to be Mary's husband is that even before they got married, he is insisting to Mary that she proclaim him King of Scotland.

So this is the answer to your question of, well, Henry VIII did it.

Why shouldn't Mary?

He is able to insist on this because he says, I am your husband, therefore I should have the leading off you.

It is unfair that you are a regnant queen and I don't have the title of king.

The problem is that this is yet another kind of potential disaster for Mary because it's extremely unconstitutional.

Only Parliament can declare Darley king.

And so Darley goes into a massive sulk.

Mary cries.

Darley gets more and more uncooperative.

and finally Mary gives in and says, fine, you can be king.

And so on the 29th of July, Mary and Darnley are married.

And after the ceremony, there's a banquet, there's lots of dancing, then they have another banquet, more dancing.

Knox, of course, doesn't approve of this at all.

But there are also others who are looking on Mary's new husband with deep suspicion.

And basically, these are all the Protestant nobles at Mary's court.

And the key figure among these is the Earl of Moray, who is Mary's formidable half-brother.

And he has not come to the wedding and he is not at the festivities.

And then the day after the wedding, at midday, all the lords gather and a herald confirms the darkest fears of the assembled lords because it is announced that the official titles of the newlyweds are to be Henry and Mary, King and Queen of Scotland.

And so it is made public that Mary has surrendered to Darnley's importunities.

He has got his way and none of the the nobles cheer the proclamation.

None of them applaud it.

None of them even say amen.

There is a total silence.

And then one man does speak up, and this is Lennox Darnell's father.

And he breaks the silent and says, God save his grace.

But no one replies to that.

And again, everything is silence.

Oh, Mary.

Oh, dear, this isn't going to end well.

Well, in the next episode, we will find out how the happy and devoted couple fare.

We will be exploring the sweetness and light of their marriage, and nothing will possibly go wrong.

There will be no terrible scenes, violence, explosions, murders.

Yeah, there will definitely be no murders.

You'll be able to listen to that right now by joining our own kingdom seething with sectarian hatreds.

And that's the Restis History Club.

Now, you can go to that at the restishistory.com.

I don't think anybody has ever heard these words before, which is great.

If you don't want to do that, more fool you, but we'll be back either way with the next installment of this thrilling series about Mary, Queen of Scots.

Goodbye.

Bye-bye.

It's David Ulishoga from Journey Through Time.

Here's that clip that we mentioned earlier.

If you look at all of the accounts of the fire at this point, as we get to the end of Sunday the second, the first day, this fire is not behaving in any way the way fires traditionally did in London.

And there are some people who've argued that it was becoming a firestorm, that the heat and the wind and the movement of air caused by the fire was feeding it, was becoming self-sustaining, as it were.

John Eveling, who's a great writer and a diarist of this moment, he talks about the sound of the fire.

He said it was like thousands of chariots driving over cobblestones.

There are descriptions in Peeps and elsewhere of this great arc of fire in the sky.

I mean, imagine that everything around you is coloured by the flames, yellows and oranges, and above you is this thick black smoke.

This is a city you know, these are streets you walk, this is a place that's deeply familiar to you, and it looks completely otherworldly.

It looks like another, like a sort of landscape you've never seen before.

People describe the fire almost as if it's supernatural.

If you want to hear the full episode, listen to Journey Through Time, wherever you get your podcasts.