The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Epochs #284 ｜ Elizabeth I - Part 1

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome back to Epochs, where I shall be continuing my long series, years

00:00:26.160 long series all about the English monarchy. If you remember last time we got up to and concluded

00:00:31.500 the age of bloody Mary, Mary Tudor, Mary the First, and how she had died of natural causes

00:00:38.460 basically, not 100% sure, it was almost certainly some sort of cancer. It's very, very difficult to

00:00:44.320 diagnose what people died from in the pre-modern period. But she died of natural causes and so she

00:00:52.920 didn't have any children famously and so the next in line was her little sister Elizabeth, the

00:00:59.820 Princess Elizabeth. And so this is one of the great stories of English history isn't it? A golden age.

00:01:07.160 Most historians look back on the Elizabethan period as a golden age. Probably wouldn't have

00:01:11.420 been all that great if he was very poor but nonetheless a type of golden age in the 16th

00:01:15.960 century. Good Queen Bess she's sometimes called. In fact Churchill's chapter is just called Good

00:01:21.880 Queen Bess. As always, I shall be reading from both Churchill, Sir Winston Churchill's History

00:01:27.040 of the English-Speaking Peoples, as well as Professor Sir Charles Oman's late 19th century,

00:01:32.360 early 20th century history. He was a professor of history at Oxford University, one of the very best

00:01:38.000 to ever do it. And because both these histories are relatively old, we don't need to worry about

00:01:42.440 much revisionism or any sort of wokeism creeping in. It's the classic story. So, okay, let's just

00:01:49.540 jump straight in. I'll start quoting from Oman, if you don't mind, and we'll talk all about Queen

00:01:55.060 Elizabeth. Oman wrote this, quote, when Mary Tudor had passed away, unwept and unregretted,

00:02:02.040 all England heaved a sigh of relief. That's one thing to say straight off the bat, that obviously

00:02:07.140 the subsequent histories were written by pro-Elizabeth people, and so, nearly all of them,

00:02:13.840 And so she's cast in a yet greater light and her older sister is cast into yet more shadow.

00:02:23.180 So Omar, as I said, sort of an old school historian, it just goes with that narrative that England heaved a sigh of relief and turned to do homage to her sister Elizabeth.

00:02:35.060 the daughter of Anne Boleyn was now a young woman of 25 and spoiler alert although I'm sure it's no

00:02:41.600 real spoiler alert Elizabeth went on to live to a fair old age I mean her reign is from 1558 to 1603

00:02:49.280 so a big chunk of time there and she starts her reign at 25 she had been living for the last five

00:02:56.860 years in almost continual peril for her life remember she'd even been in the tower she'd been

00:03:02.380 taken through traitor's gate and been obliged to stay at the tower under threat any moment of

00:03:08.260 being charged with treason. She'd lived her life in almost continual peril and had required all

00:03:14.660 her caution to keep herself from the two snares which lay about her, the dangers of being accused

00:03:20.600 of treason on the one hand and of heresy on the other. And this will come up more than once of

00:03:26.280 course, but Elizabeth was a Protestant, an evangelical sometimes they called it. And we'll

00:03:32.500 get into it in all sorts of detail, but she wasn't a super, super hardline, sort of what would later

00:03:36.780 become known as a Puritan. She wasn't sort of an arch Lutheran or Calvinist, but she certainly was

00:03:43.920 Protestant. So, but we'll get into all of that in due course. Oman continues saying, fortunately for

00:03:49.160 herself, Elizabeth was politic and cautious, even to excess. All through her reign, her most trusted

00:03:55.800 ministers were often unable to discern her real thoughts and wishes so that she came unharmed

00:04:02.620 through her sister's reign of terror, end quote. That is one of the things that characterises

00:04:07.500 Elizabeth, just as Oman says there, he's not wrong, she kept her cards very close to her chest,

00:04:13.200 let's say that, the idea that if her hat or perhaps her wig knew her own thoughts she'd throw it in

00:04:18.760 the bin or burn it, that sort of thing. She's a wily operator, I mean it's a prudent thing to do 1.00

00:04:24.100 in this age, Oman continues saying, but when the lords of the council came flocking to Hatfield,

00:04:29.980 the place of her honourable confinement, to salute her as queen, Elizabeth knew that her feet were

00:04:36.300 still set in slippery places. The ultra-Catholic party was still in power, and the large majority

00:04:42.580 of the nation were professing Romanists. On the other hand, she knew that her sister had made the

00:04:49.260 name of Rome hateful and there was a powerful and active band of Protestants, some in exile and some

00:04:55.440 at home, who were ready to rush in and violently reverse all that Mary had done if the new sovereign

00:05:01.500 would give them any encouragement. I have to say here, or reiterate really, if you've watched the

00:05:06.860 last episodes you'll know I've already said this, but it needs to be made clear again. There's not

00:05:11.820 really two massively distinct camps between Romanists and Catholics and Protestants, like

00:05:19.020 there is now, say, in modern day 19th, 20th century Ireland and Northern Ireland, for example, two very,

00:05:26.380 very clearly defined camps of the Protestants and the Catholics. It wasn't like that still.

00:05:33.740 There were people that had broken with Rome and therefore weren't truly orthodox, weren't papists,

00:05:40.860 but into all other intents and purposes largely you know like 99% were Catholic and then there's

00:05:48.880 just a whole spectrum everything from the hardest line Catholic you can imagine all the way through

00:05:54.640 to the most hard line Protestant you can imagine and the vast majority of people nearly everyone

00:06:00.680 really was somewhere in between and in fact as Oman says there the majority of people in England

00:06:06.400 would have considered themselves on the Catholic end of that spectrum still so England did well

00:06:12.380 really to avoid a true sort of war of religion like the ones that broke out in France and Germany

00:06:18.220 and well all over Europe and perhaps it was Elizabeth that steered the country through

00:06:24.060 those treacherous waters so let's let the story continue they're told that there was a an active 0.75

00:06:29.300 band of Protestants that were ready to violently if necessary reverse everything Mary had done

00:06:33.840 if only they'd had a sovereign to encourage them moreover there was grave danger abroad 0.54

00:06:38.960 England was in the midst of war with France yet Philip of Spain the late queen's husband

00:06:44.160 was likely to be more dangerous than even the king of France for it was obvious that he would

00:06:49.600 be loath to let England out of his grasp after he had profited by her allegiance for four years

00:06:55.740 so as we've talked about as well before the three-way power struggle between England France

00:07:01.700 and Spain. Neither of them particularly liked each other, certainly didn't trust each other

00:07:06.620 and the dynamic had been for a few generations now. If one of those three became overly powerful

00:07:12.520 the other two would make an alliance against them. Spain on paper or just is in reality

00:07:18.300 the most powerful of those three. Arguably you could say France had the better army but Spain

00:07:24.100 was the most powerful with the biggest lands, the biggest incomes, the biggest foreign in the new

00:07:29.100 world empire all those sorts of things and then of course you throw on top of that the layer of

00:07:35.040 religion Spain is of course completely completely and utterly Catholic France is Catholic but

00:07:41.960 England now at least under Elizabeth was not Catholic so there's there's that spanner in the

00:07:47.780 works as well complicated things even further and Philip King Philip of Spain the emperor of

00:07:54.100 the Emperor of Spain was, he thought of himself in some ways as the King of England. Remember,

00:07:59.260 it wasn't long ago, well, just before Mary died, he was her husband. Not exactly the full-blown

00:08:06.840 King of England, but sort of de facto, he considered himself the King of England. He

00:08:11.460 considered England as part of his realm, the greater Spanish realms, at least in some sense.

00:08:17.020 And of course, he felt himself robbed in some way by the fact Mary had been childless and then had died on him and that his power, whatever it was worth, in England was no more.

00:08:31.300 That his dead wife's little sister had no love for him

00:08:36.880 There was no talk, well there was no question in her mind

00:08:41.880 There was talk, there was no question in her mind that she would marry him

00:08:45.180 The way Henry VIII had married Arthur's widow Catherine of Aragon

00:08:49.420 Nothing like that was realistically on the cards from Elizabeth's point of view

00:08:52.940 So he feels like he's just lost England

00:08:56.360 They've gone from nominally part of his realms to just completely his enemy again. 0.85

00:09:02.880 Needless, that's without even throwing on top the Protestant angle of it all. 0.82

00:09:07.560 So yeah, England had fallen from his grasp. 0.99

00:09:10.720 Oman continues.

00:09:11.860 Elizabeth's personal predilections, like those of her father,

00:09:16.100 were in favour of neither Romanism nor Protestantism.

00:09:20.120 She did not wish to be the slave of the Pope,

00:09:22.180 nor did she intend to be the tool of the zealous who had picked up in their continental exile the

00:09:29.240 newest doctrines of the Swiss and German reformers, that is Lutheranism and Calvinism. At the same

00:09:36.220 time she wished to offend neither the Catholic nor the Protestant but to lead them both into the

00:09:42.620 via media or an English national church which should be both orthodox and independent. So again

00:09:50.120 like Henry VIII, largely Catholic, on the Catholic end of the spectrum, but not Catholic, but not

00:09:56.680 accepting the Pope as the head of all things spiritual, as Christ's vicar on earth. So for any

00:10:03.700 real Catholic, proper Orthodox Catholic, well that's just heresy, that's just Protestantism, 0.64

00:10:09.060 don't really care that you largely are Catholic. They wouldn't care about that, they wouldn't see 0.82

00:10:14.280 it that way. You know, the Roman Inquisition, the Spanish Inquisition wouldn't see it that way,

00:10:18.580 you're just simply a heretic. Okay you're not as far down the road as an Anabaptist or a hardline 0.76

00:10:24.760 Lutheran but you're not Catholic and that's all that really matters. So okay Elizabeth much like

00:10:30.320 Henry VIII although she balances things far better than he ever did or ever could really

00:10:36.760 but she tries to take some sort of middle path. So the English church should be both orthodox

00:10:43.380 and independent. She was not a woman of much spiritual piety or fervent zeal, unlike her

00:10:49.620 little brother Edward VI, and judging from her own feelings, argued that it would be possible to make

00:10:56.640 others conform without much difficulty to the church which offered the happy mean, the in-between.

00:11:03.520 She'd hoped that she could please most people that way. Her position, however, was settled for her

00:11:09.320 by the obstinacy of the extreme Romanists. The bishops whom Mary had appointed behaved in the

00:11:15.760 most arrogant and insulting manner to her. Well, that's the nature of religious doctrine, isn't it?

00:11:20.540 If you've got a doctrine which cannot bend or break, then you seem, you appear extreme to anyone

00:11:29.080 who doesn't exactly agree with you. They were arrogant and had an insulting manner towards her.

00:11:35.360 when she had been duly saluted as queen by the nation and the parliament they denied her right

00:11:41.280 to the throne there's a word for that isn't it it's called treason for this one accord they refused

00:11:46.980 to be present at her coronation much more to place the crown upon her head in the view of the strict 1.00

00:11:53.200 papist she was a bastard and a usurper remember her mother for a strict catholic her mother Anne 0.99

00:12:00.280 Boleyn had never been married to Henry VIII. That was an illegal thing. Henry VIII had never been 1.00

00:12:06.000 divorced or had his marriage annulled from Catherine of Aragon. All of that was illegal and

00:12:11.240 wrong. The whole Anne Boleyn episode was completely illegal and wrong. So Elizabeth is illegal and

00:12:18.860 wrong as far as they're concerned. It was with great difficulty that a single bishop, Oglethorpe

00:12:24.000 of Carlisle, was at last persuaded to officiate at the ceremony. This senseless obstinacy on the

00:12:29.980 part of the prelates drove Elizabeth further in the direction of Protestantism than she had

00:12:35.480 intended to go. She was constrained to send for the exiled Protestant bishops of King Edward's

00:12:42.300 making and to replace them in their sees, their religious estates and orders. The disloyal 0.69

00:12:48.740 Romanist prelates were deposed and in their place new men were consecrated by the restored

00:12:54.340 Protestant bishops. Elizabeth took care that they should be moderate personages who might be trusted

00:13:00.580 not to give trouble. The most important of them was the new Archbishop of Canterbury,

00:13:06.080 Matthew Parker, a wise and pious man who guided the Church of England through the crisis with

00:13:12.120 singular discretion. He'll come up more, Matthew Parker, the Archbishop of Canterbury. As it was

00:13:17.840 impossible to conciliate the extreme Romanists, the Queen resolved to take up her father's position

00:13:23.600 with some modifications in the direction of Protestantism. Unlike Henry VIII, she did not

00:13:29.200 call herself supreme head of the church, but all her subjects were summoned to take the oath of

00:13:35.460 spiritual obedience to her. You know, something a true Catholic could not do, could not accept. 0.93

00:13:41.960 Nonetheless, she is sort of asking the bare minimum of them, as she would see it, as a 16th century 0.86

00:13:48.480 Protestant would see it. Oman tells us that, quote, only a few hundred persons refused it.

00:13:53.600 though among them were all the old bishops. But the moderate Catholics accepted her,

00:13:58.840 though they did not sacrifice their faith to their loyalty. Elizabeth then issued a new liturgy

00:14:04.780 to be the standard of the creed of the English church. It was a revision of the Scottish prayer

00:14:10.860 book of Edward VI, amended in such a way as to make it less oppressive of the views of the extreme

00:14:17.380 Protestants. The Latin mass was forbidden, again a Catholic couldn't accept that, and all the old 0.60

00:14:23.260 ceremonies which Mary had restored were again swept away. There was, however, no attempt at 0.99

00:14:29.680 enforcing obedience by persecution. Elizabeth had taken warning by the fate of her brothers

00:14:35.320 and her sister's measures and trusted to loyalty and national feeling not to send people to prison

00:14:41.920 or to the stake. She was wise in her generation for in 10 years well nigh all the moderate Catholics

00:14:48.160 had conformed to the Anglican formularities, rallying to the National Church when they saw

00:14:54.060 that it was not to become ultra-Protestant. Their adhesion was the more easily effected because the

00:14:59.620 Pope, on purely political grounds, did not excommunicate Elizabeth or declare her deposed,

00:15:06.120 so that to hold to the old faith was not yet inconsistent with loyalty to the crown."

00:15:11.480 So you can see it's really not straightforward. It's really not just straight up and down

00:15:18.140 two completely distinct camps, black and white, right? The Pope himself didn't excommunicate her

00:15:25.220 when she did away with the Latin mass, the Pope. In another time and place, not that long ago,

00:15:31.520 a Pope would absolutely excommunicate a monarch for doing such a thing. Oman continues, 0.73

00:15:36.800 ere Elizabeth's religious bent had been clearly ascertained, her widowed brother-in-law,

00:15:41.920 Philip of Spain, the emperor of Spain, had proposed that she should marry him,

00:15:46.840 for he was much set on maintaining his hold on England. Elizabeth detested him, and steadfastly

00:15:53.280 refused the offer, but with a show of politeness, lest she might bring war on herself. Fearing that

00:15:59.080 when foiled, Philip might become dangerous, she made grace and alliance with his enemy,

00:16:04.580 the King of France, and left Calais in his hands, receiving instead a sum of 500,000 crowns.

00:16:10.820 very handy. Thus Elizabeth had tidied over the first difficulties of her reign and felt her

00:16:17.080 throne growing firmer beneath her, though there were still dangers on every side. But her character

00:16:22.660 was well suited to cope with the situation, remarkably, though marred with many failings 0.74

00:16:27.560 that are oddly feminine. She had a man's brain and decision. She was vain of her handsome person 0.94

00:16:33.920 and loved to be flattered and worshipped, but her vanity was not great enough to induce her 0.97

00:16:39.400 to put herself under the hand of a husband. She listened to suitor after suitor, but said them

00:16:45.660 nay in the end. Only one of them ever seems to have touched her heart. That was Robert Dudley,

00:16:51.500 Earl of Leicester, the son of protector Northumberland. Though much taken with his comely

00:16:56.560 face, the Queen had strength of mind to deny him her hand, seeing that marriage was a subject that 0.96

00:17:03.000 would bring too many feuds and jealousies in its train. She consoled herself with pageants and 0.97

00:17:08.660 pleasures for which she retained a curious zest even far into her old age. Everyone has heard of

00:17:15.380 her elaborate toilet getting dressed in the morning and her thousand gowns and of how she

00:17:21.620 danced before foreign ambassadors after she had passed the age of 60. But the vanity and love of

00:17:27.360 pleasure which she inherited from her mother Anne Boleyn were of comparatively little moment in the 0.94

00:17:32.920 ordering of the Queen's life because her clear and cold brain dominated her desires. Elizabeth 1.00

00:17:38.240 was as cautious, as suspicious and as secretive as her grandfather Henry VII, old Henry Tudor,

00:17:46.420 who was very, very cautious and suspicious and secretive. She was very unscrupulous in her

00:17:51.580 diplomacy and did not stick at a liar when an evasion would no longer serve. Though she had 0.96

00:17:57.580 plenty of courage for moments of danger, yet she always put off the struggle for as long as possible

00:18:02.740 holding that every day of respite that she gained might chance to give some unexpected end to the

00:18:08.860 crisis. Well that's one of the things many historians have said including Churchill talks

00:18:13.000 about it a fair bit that she prevaricated that was that was her main political tool it seems

00:18:19.480 throughout the decades that when there was some sort of crisis some sort of decision that had to

00:18:24.520 be made. Only some people can ever get away with this she just didn't make the decision. Often

00:18:30.320 and that's an ultra, ultra weak way to rule. 1.00

00:18:34.140 But she did it in such a way, in such a clever way,

00:18:36.920 that it didn't seem like that she was merely playing for time,

00:18:40.860 merely hoping that circumstances would change.

00:18:44.060 She would do it in a way as though she was just about to give a decision,

00:18:47.840 or that she had already made the decision when she hadn't actually.

00:18:51.800 She did it in a clever, skillful way, but ultimately that's what it was.

00:18:55.400 A great number of men, suitors, that wanted her hand,

00:18:58.960 she would just string them along, sometimes for years. Perhaps she'd have to make a very important

00:19:03.200 decision in terms of foreign policy, but she would just vacillate and play for time and make it appear

00:19:08.700 as though she's made a decision, but she really hasn't committed herself in any way, given herself

00:19:12.640 wiggle room, head room, to get out of it, should it prove to be the wrong decision. Quite clever,

00:19:17.700 well very clever, very wily, and that was her main tool. Oman continues saying this, it is undoubted 1.00

00:19:23.920 that she missed many opportunities owing to this cautious slowness, but she also saved herself

00:19:29.920 from many traps into which a more hasty politician would have fallen. We shall have to notice again

00:19:35.520 and again her reluctance to interfere in the wars of the continent, that's a good policy in my

00:19:40.940 opinion, even when it had become inevitable that she must ultimately choose her side. This same

00:19:47.100 caution made her a very economical ruler. She grudged every penny that was spent except indeed

00:19:53.740 the outgoings of her own privy purse, i.e. parties and her own gowns and things, and often pushed

00:20:00.640 parsimony to the most unwires extreme. Parsimony being, you know, penny-pinching. The very fleet 0.97

00:20:06.740 that defeated the Spanish Armada ran short both of powder and provisions before the fighting was

00:20:12.220 quite over because of her penny-pinching. Well, it's not like England was absolutely drowning in

00:20:17.520 money at this point, right? It's not the 18th century, it's the 16th century. We haven't got

00:20:22.840 endless wealth. The English much admired their politic, unscrupulous, and parsimonious queen. 1.00

00:20:29.300 They saw only that she gave them good and cheap governance, kept the kingdom out of unnecessary

00:20:34.200 wars, and was, on the whole, both tolerant and merciful. Good Queen Bess. As they watched her 1.00

00:20:40.060 pick her way successfully through so many snares and perils, they came to look upon her as a sort

00:20:45.580 of second providence, and credited her with an almost superhuman sagacity and omniscience,

00:20:51.600 which she was far from possessing i.e she appeared to them as though she knew exactly what she was

00:20:58.320 doing that she was playing 4d chess all the time or two steps three steps ahead of everyone else

00:21:03.520 and was just brilliant in fact that's not actually what was going on but it sort of looked like that

00:21:08.680 to many on the outside Oman says but they were not altogether wrong in their confidence she was

00:21:14.060 in spite of her faults and foibles a patriotic clear-headed hard-working sovereign who did her

00:21:20.820 best for her people as well as for herself. Above all, she had the invaluable gift of choosing her

00:21:27.000 servants well. Her two great ministers, Cecil and Walsingham, both of whom we'll talk about in depth

00:21:32.600 going forward, were the most capable men in England for their work and she seldom failed to appreciate

00:21:38.320 merit when once she cast her eye upon it. For the first 12 years of Elizabeth's rule, England was

00:21:44.260 occupied in slowly settling down after the storms of the last two reigns. The English church was

00:21:50.540 gradually absorbing the moderate men from both the protestant and the romanist ranks

00:21:54.760 quiet times were repairing the wealth of the land and the restoration of the purity of the coinage

00:22:01.040 which was the queen's earliest care had put trade once more on a healthy basis foreign war was

00:22:07.040 easily avoided in france henry ii that's king henry ii of france died air elizabeth had reigned

00:22:13.260 a year and his weak sons had occupation enough in their civil wars with the huguenots at religious

00:22:20.020 was in France. Philip of Spain was ere long to find a similar distraction from the stirring of

00:22:26.040 discontent among his much persecuted Protestant subjects in the Netherlands. So both Spain and

00:22:31.680 France distracted, luckily, as far as Elizabeth was concerned, when she really needed, desperately

00:22:36.580 needed, a period of quiet and consolidation. She got it, quite lucky in her time. Omar continues,

00:22:43.400 The chief troubles of the period, 1558 to 1568, came from another quarter, the turbulent kingdom

00:22:50.440 of Scotland. Elizabeth's natural heir was her cousin, Mary Stuart, the Queen of Scots, who

00:22:56.940 represented the lion of Henry VIII's eldest daughter. Unless Elizabeth should marry and have 0.91

00:23:03.040 issue children, Mary stood next in the lion of succession. The Queen of Scots, however, was a 0.73

00:23:08.840 most undesirable heiress. She had been brought up in France and married the eldest son of Henry II 0.98

00:23:14.760 and hated England. She was a zealous Romanist and ready to work hard for her faith. Moreover,

00:23:21.540 she was greatly desirous of being recognised as Elizabeth's next of kin and openly laid claim to

00:23:28.040 the position. Though very young, she was clever and active and possessed charms of person and manner

00:23:34.060 which bent many men to her will. Mary Queen of Scots returned from France in 1561 having lost 0.88

00:23:41.340 her husband the young French king after he had reigned but a single year. She found Scotland as

00:23:47.140 usual in a state of turmoil and violence. The parliament had in her absence followed the

00:23:52.760 example of England by casting off the Roman yoke and declaring Protestantism the religion of the

00:23:58.640 land, but a strong party of Romanist lords refused obedience, and with them the Queen allied herself

00:24:04.740 on her arrival. For the seven turbulent years of Mary's stay in Scotland, she was a grievous thorn 0.59

00:24:10.780 in the side of Elizabeth. She was always laying claim to be acknowledged as heiress to the English 0.84

00:24:15.960 crown, and her demand was secretly approved by the surviving Romanists to the south of the Tweed,

00:24:22.660 English Catholics. Elizabeth replied by intriguing with the Protestant nobles of Scotland and stirred 0.89

00:24:30.160 up as much trouble as she could for her cousin while outwardly professing the greatest love and

00:24:35.340 esteem for her. They never met each other incidentally. They sent many letters to each

00:24:41.380 other but they never actually met in person. Sometimes you might see a film or a dramatisation

00:24:45.600 where they meet in person. They never did. Oman goes on saying the results of their machinations

00:24:50.940 against each other, were still uncertain when Mary spoilt her own game by twice allowing her 0.76

00:24:57.060 passion to overrule her judgment. She was fascinated by the handsome person of her first

00:25:02.840 cousin, Henry Lord Darnley, and most unwisely married him and made him king consort. Darnley

00:25:10.220 was a vicious, ill-conditioned young man and soon made himself unbearable to his wife by striving 0.91

00:25:16.780 to get the royal power into his hands and at the same time treating her with gross cruelty and

00:25:23.200 neglect, end quote. So this Henry Lord Darnley, he, you know, got a great marriage to Mary Queen

00:25:31.040 of Scots, but she only wanted him and her entourage, her faction, wanted him to be a king

00:25:38.060 consort, you know, a bit like, we've talked about this before, haven't we, a bit like how the Duke

00:25:43.280 of Edinburgh was Queen Elizabeth II's husband. He wasn't king. He was just her husband. Important

00:25:49.300 and powerful, but not the king, not the monarch. Well, Henry Lord Darnley finds himself in that

00:25:55.620 situation with King Consul. That's a big difference between being king, but he wanted to be king. He

00:26:01.000 wanted all the power. He wanted Mary Queen of Scots just to be quiet and stay in her chambers

00:26:06.160 and just do needlework and just talk to her ladies-in-waiting and all the business of government, 0.94

00:26:12.000 all the power will be in his hands he will wield it as the king of Scotland well that wasn't given

00:26:19.720 to him and he didn't like it he badly resented it and apparently as soon as he was married

00:26:25.080 he changed that's the story about Lord Darnley is that before she married him when she was still

00:26:31.360 picking who she might marry he was all sweetness and light and you know the classic Tudor era

00:26:37.680 you know hey nonny nonny and writing poetry and being charming and nice and the second she married

00:26:45.260 him literally the day of the marriage the evening of the marriage he turned on a dime he showed

00:26:51.500 himself to be horrible and evil uh well it may maybe evil is a bit much but showed himself

00:26:56.760 immediately as soon as it was legally binding that he wanted to wear the trousers that she's

00:27:02.620 going to need to bend the knee to him and that he's going to be the new power in the realm of 0.81

00:27:08.340 Scotland. Well, no. So there's just a power struggle immediately. Mary Queen of Scots was

00:27:14.540 aghast and her whole party, her whole faction were aghast to see that this is how he was behaving.

00:27:19.800 Okay, Oman says that he treated her with gross cruelty and neglect. His crowning offence was

00:27:26.940 causing the assassination of mary's private secretary rizzio in her actual presence under

00:27:33.260 circumstances of the greatest brutality yeah she had this catholic uh man rizzio who was her

00:27:41.440 closest confidant and advisor and you know he's telling her advising her you know don't let lord

00:27:49.000 darnley do xyz don't let him get away with that you're the monarch it's your crown it's your throne

00:27:54.200 and on, on, on, on, on. Well, Henry Lord Darnley sees obviously that this is what's going on and

00:27:59.560 it's a problem and it'd be better if Rizzio was out of the way. You know, there's a number of

00:28:03.400 ways you could do that. You don't have to murder him, but he decides he is going to murder him. 0.96

00:28:07.100 And so he sends his men, a few of his armed men, into Mary Queen of Scots, Mary Stuart's chambers 0.59

00:28:14.000 whilst Rizzio is in there and has him cut to pieces, not cut to pieces, but has him murdered

00:28:19.200 right there in front of her. I mean it's not very subtle is it? That's one way of dealing with a

00:28:25.120 power struggle I suppose. And one goes on saying after this Mary completely lost her head. She lent 0.99

00:28:32.100 her sanction to a plot for her husband's murder framed by the Earl of Bothwell a great lord of

00:28:39.220 the border. Bothwell slew the young king and blew up his residence with gunpowder but disavowed the

00:28:46.060 deed and induced the Queen to have him declared guiltless after a mock trial. So something to

00:28:52.540 mention about this Bothwell. Bothwell, just one of the other Scottish magnates, a man of land and

00:28:58.520 money and power, he was by all accounts just a desperado, a badass. He was a bad man not to be

00:29:08.020 trifled with. If you thought Henry Lord Darnley was bad, well at least he was still a gentleman

00:29:14.480 and foppish. But Bothwell's like the real deal. Bothwell's like an actual fighter. Henry Lord

00:29:20.440 Darnley might send men round to do a murder on his behalf. Bothwell would do it himself.

00:29:24.820 That's the type of man Bothwell is. If he thinks you've disrespected him, he might just punch you 0.78

00:29:29.260 in the face in real time or kill you himself in real time. The type of man not to be trifled with, 0.99

00:29:34.140 a dangerous, dangerous man, far more dangerous than Henry Lord Darnley. And that's who Mary

00:29:39.800 Queen of Scots turns to him you know after Darnley has Rizzio murdered just as just as Omana said

00:29:48.600 there she decides right that's it I've got to get rid of him he might have me murdered next who 1.00

00:29:53.500 knows so she needs to find another sponsor should we say another sugar daddy another strong man to

00:29:59.920 do that she's not going to personally do it and so she turns to yeah it's a it's a bad move but 0.98

00:30:05.840 she turns to a proper badass like Bothwell. Well, Bothwell doesn't do things by half, as I said.

00:30:11.960 He's a bad man. So he blows up darnily in his whole house. Yeah, crazy stuff. Crazy stuff.

00:30:18.360 But now you can see, though, Mary, Queen of Scots, has gone out of the frying pan into the fire.

00:30:22.680 Now she's attached to Bothwell, a yet more dangerous man and ruthless individual. Oman 0.77

00:30:29.340 says, quote, Mary was well rid of her husband and her complicity in the plot not having been proved.

00:30:35.940 She might have escaped the consequences of her crime, but for a second fit of infatuation,

00:30:41.840 she had become violently enamoured of the murderer Bothwell and suffered him to carry her off to the

00:30:48.600 castle of Dunbar and there to marry her. She didn't have to marry Bothwell, but she did. A bad move.

00:30:55.300 the opposite of what Elizabeth might have done. Omon continues, no one now doubted her complicity

00:31:01.340 in Darnley's murder and the whole kingdom rose against her, kingdom of Scotland, rose against her

00:31:06.740 in righteous indignation. The army which Bothwell raised in her defence refused to strike a blow

00:31:12.940 and melted away when faced by the levies of the protestant lords, again in Scotland. The queen

00:31:19.060 herself fell into their hands, was forced to abdicate and was condemned to lifelong prison

00:31:25.280 in Loch Leven Castle. In Mary's place her young son by Darnley, James VI of Scotland, was proclaimed

00:31:33.120 as king, the regency being given by the Parliament to James, Earl of Moray, an illegitimate son of

00:31:40.260 James V. And this all happened in July 1567. That James VI, her son, mentioned there, he goes on to

00:31:48.720 be important to our story. Very important. But that's for a later date. Oman says Queen Mary

00:31:55.400 being thus imprisoned and discredited, Elizabeth thought that her troubles on the side of Scotland 0.81

00:32:01.100 were over and closely allied herself with the Regent Murray. But the struggle was not yet ended.

00:32:06.960 The Romanist party in Scotland saw that the new Protestant rulers of the country would crush their 0.50

00:32:12.140 faith and determined on a desperate rising in favour of their old religion and their old

00:32:17.160 sovereign. Mary escaped by night from Loch Leven and joined the insurgents. The regent gave chase

00:32:23.860 and cooked her army up at Langside near Glasgow. The queen's friends were routed in the fight that

00:32:29.920 followed and she herself, riding hard out of the fray, fled to the English border. After a moment's

00:32:35.740 hesitation she resolved to throw herself on Elizabeth's mercy rather than to face the almost 0.88

00:32:41.040 certain death which awaited her at the hands of her son's adherents. There was no time to wait 0.79

00:32:46.380 for any promise of safe conduct or shelter and she arrived in Carlisle unprotected by any engagement

00:32:53.440 promise on the part of the Queen of England and that was in May 1568. So the ever deepening

00:33:00.220 travails of Mary Queen of Scots. We hope you enjoyed that video and if you did please head

00:33:05.820 over to lotusseaters.com for the full unabridged video.

00:33:16.380 Thank you.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - October 09, 2026

PREVIEW： Epochs #284 ｜ Elizabeth I - Part 1

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