Monarchy - S2 Ep3 - The Shadow of the King

It is 1544. King Henry VIII, now in the third decade of his reign, bestries England like an aging colossus

By making himself supreme head of the Church of England, he'd taken the monarchy to the peak of its power, but at a huge personal cost

for his headship of the church known as the royal supremacy had been born out of Henry's desperate search for an heir and love

the resulting turmoil of six marriages, two divorces, two executions and a tragic bereavement

had produced three children now the king felt it was time for reconciliation

Henry's reunion with his family is commemorated in this famous painting known as the family of Henry VIII

The painting shows Henry enthroned between his son and heir, the seven-year-old Prince Edward

and, to emphasize the line of dynastic succession, Edward's long-dead mother, Jane Seymour

Standing further off to Henry's right is Mary, his elder daughter, whom he'd ised when he'd divorced her mother

And to Henry's left, his younger daughter, Elizabeth, whom he'd also ised when he'd had her mother beheaded

But the painting is more than a family portrait. It's also a symbol of the political settlement by which Henry hoped to preserve and to prolong his legacy

He decided that all three of his children would be named as his heirs

His son Edward would, of course, succeed him. But if Edward died childless, the throne would pass to Henry's elder daughter, Mary

And if she had no heir, then her half-sister Elizabeth would become queen

The arrangement was embodied both in the king's own will and in a parliamentary act of succession

Henry's provisions for the succession held, and through the rule of a minor and two women, gave England a sort of stability

But they also ushered in profound political turmoil as well, since, it turned out, each of Henry's three children was determined to use the royal supremacy to impose a radically different form of religion on the English

the resulting conflicts would send hundreds to a terrible death at the stake or on the scaffold

they would even force Queen Elizabeth the first to execute a fellow anointed sovereign

On Christmas Eve, 1545, Henry VIII made his last speech to Parliament on the great issue dividing the nation, religion

It was an emotional appeal for reconciliation between conservatives who hankered after a return to Rome

and radical Protestants who wished to press on for a complete reformation of the Church

Henry sought a middle way which would both preserve the royal supremacy

and prevent the quarrel of Protestant and Catholic from tearing England apart

but a year later on the 28th of January 1547 Henry was dead aged 55

and with him died any prospect that the royal supremacy would be used to save England from religious conflict

three weeks later Henry's nine-year-old son was crowned King Edward VI at Westminster Abbey

The ceremony was conducted by Thomas Cranmer, England's first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury

the man who, 16 years earlier, had helped Henry VIII to achieve supreme authority over church and state

Now, Cranmer used Edward's coronation to spell out the royal supremacist awe-inspiring claims

During the ceremony, no fewer than three crowns were placed successively on the boy king's head

The second was the imperial crown itself, the supreme symbol of the imperial monarchy to which Edward's grandfather, Henry VII, had aspired, and which his father, King Henry VIII, had achieved

And it wasn't only the crown. Instead, Cranmer turned the whole ceremony into a parable of the limitless powers of the new imperial monarchy

First, he'd administered the coronation oath to the king. But then, in a moment that was unique in the thousand-odd-year-old history of the coronation

Cranmer had turned directly to the king and people to explain, or rather, to explain away what he'd done

He'd just given the oath to the king, he said. But he continued, neither he nor any other earthly man had the right to hold him to account

count. Instead, the chosen of God, the king was answerable only to God. The nakedness

of the absolutism established by Henry VIII now stood revealed. And both those who ruled

in Edward's name and, in the fullness of time, Edward himself were determined to use its

powers to the uttermost. Edward was being tutored by thorough-going Protestants

He learned his lessons well, writing at the age of only 12 that the Pope was

the true son of the devil, a bad man, an anti-Christ. Edward and his counsellors now determined to use the royal supremacy

to force religious reform, and to make England a fully Protestant nation

He would have a brilliant court, and above all, he would follow in the footsteps of the once and future king and conquer France

To this end, one of Henry's first acts as king was to marry his brother's widow

the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, who was six years his senior

The marriage would sow the seeds of upheaval and revolutionary change in the English monarchy

At the time, however, it was much simpler. Henry loved Catherine but the marriage was also cementing England alliance with Spain against France

Henry was rearming England, and in 1511 he got the Council's Agreement for War

On the 28th of June, 1513, the English army crossed the channel to France

For the first time in almost a century, Parliament had proved willing to vote serious war taxation

The result was the largest and best organised English army since Hagenkau

Henry, like his great hero, Henry V, led the English army in person

He even came under fire, occasionally. He defeated the French in the Battle of the Spurs, so called because the French knights ran away so quickly

Captured important prisoners and took two French cities after set-piece sieges. Henry hadn't conquered all of France, of course

but otherwise he'd done everything that he'd set out to do. And it was the abolition of these time-honoured, well-loved rituals

which had so outraged the common man and common woman and driven them to rebel

The rebellion was eventually defeated, but Edward soon found a more dangerous opponent

in his own half-sister and heir, Mary. It was to divorce her mother, Catherine of Aragon

and to marry Anne Boleyn that Henry had broken with Rome, and so for Mary, the supremacy had always been a personal as well as a religious affront

Now she discovered her true vocation, to be the beacon of the old, true Catholic faith in England

She openly continued to hear Mass in the traditional Latin liturgy. The clash between Mary and Edward, who was as stridently Protestant as Mary was Catholic

began at Christmas 1550. It was a family reunion, with Mary, Edward and Elizabeth all gathered together under one roof for the festivities

But, as so often, Christmas turned into a time for family quarrels, as the 13-year-old Edward upbraided his 34-year-old sister for daring to break his laws and to hear Mass. Humiliated, Mary burst into tears, but she would submit herself neither to her brother's laws nor to his religion

When she was next summoned to court a few weeks later, Mary came with a large retinue

all of them conspicuously carrying rosaries as a badge of their Catholicism

Mary had arrived in force for what she knew would be a confrontation with the full weight of Edward's government

But when she was summoned before the King and council and taxed with disobedience

She played her trump card. Her cousin on her mother's side was the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, the most powerful ruler in Europe

Mary now invoked his mighty protection, and the imperial ambassador hurried to court to threaten war if Mary were not given freedom of religion

Faced with the combination of foreign war and Catholic insurrection at home, the council backed off

It was Edward's turn to weep tears of frustration. And there was worse to come

In the winter of 1552, Edward started to cough blood, and by the following spring, it was obvious to everyone that the young king was dying

Mary's Catholicism now became more than an obstacle to the progress of reform

It threatened the very survival of Protestantism itself. For Mary was Edward's legal heir

She would succeed as Queen and Supreme Head, and, like her father and brother before her

she would be able to remake the religion of England according to her own Catholic lights

The thought of Mary as his Catholic successor was intolerable to the hotly Protestant Edward

So, with a confidence that's breathtaking in a 15-year-old boy, he decided unilaterally to change the rules

And this is the document in which he did it. He's headed in his bold schoolboy handwriting

my device for the succession. First, he excluded Elizabeth as well as Mary

on the grounds that both his half-sisters were s. Second, he transferred the throne to the family of his cousins, the greys

And third, he decided that women were unfit to rule in their own right

though they could transfer their claim to their sons, or, in legal jargon, their heirs male

The problem was that all his grey cousins were women, and, though they'd been married off at breakneck speed, none of them had yet had children

Now, in the course of time, no doubt, this problem would have corrected itself

But, in view of Edward's rapidly declining health, there wasn't time. Instead, Edward had to swallow his misogyny and, with two or three death strokes of the pen

change the rules one last time. Originally, he left the crown to the sons of the eldest grey sister, the Lady Jane

the Lady Jane's heirs male. A crossing out and two words inserted over a carrot

changed this to the Lady Jane and her heirs male. If Edward could make his device stick

the impeccably Protestant and deeply learned Lady Jane Grey would be his successor as Queen

On the 6th of July, 1553, Edward died. On the 10th, the 16-year-old Lady Jane Grey was brought to the Tower to be proclaimed Queen

The Tower was the traditional place for such a proclamation. The difference, in this case, was that Jane Grey would never leave its precincts again

By leaving the throne to Lady Jane Grey, Edward had flouted both his father King Henry VIII's will and the act of succession

This flagrant disregard for the law was unacceptable even to many Protestants Moreover Lady Jane Grey supporters had made a fatal mistake

They'd failed to arrest Edward's Catholic sister, Mary, who was, according to Henry's will, the legitimate heir to the throne

Instead, forewarned by friends at court, Mary fled out of reach to the depths of East Anglia

where she'd vast estates and a loyal following. On the 10th of July, she proclaimed herself rightful Queen of England

and two days later, she took up residence in the great castle of Framlingham here

which she made her headquarters for an armed assault on the throne of England

Troops flooded in, and Mary inspected her army in front of the castle

in true royal style. But no blow needed to be struck. Faced with Mary's overwhelming power, the grey faction threw in the towel

and Queen Jane was deposed after reigning for less than a fortnight

It was legality, legitimacy, and the sense that she was Henry VIII's daughter that had won the day for Mary

But Mary herself didn't see it like that. Instead, she was convinced that her accession, against all the odds, was a miracle

brought about by God for his own purposes. It was a sign, and she was now a woman with a mission

to restore England to the Catholic faith. But to prevent England ever returning to Protestantism

Mary must marry and produce an heir, for otherwise her father's will left the throne to her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth

Long ago, Mary had been briefly betrothed to the Emperor Charles V

Now, Charles offered her his own son and heir, Philip, who'd been brought up in Spain and was imbued with that country's Catholicism

But the idea of a Spanish king ruling in England was wildly unpopular

An uprising in Kent, led by Sir Thomas Wyatt, fought its way to London

and for a while Mary's throne was in real jeopardy. But the rebellion was finally crushed

and Mary exacted a terrible revenge, executing all the leaders of the conspiracy

and the 17-year-old Lady Jane Grey herself, whom hitherto she'd spared. with the rebellion defeated and with

parliament's reluctant acquiescence there was now no barrier to Mary's marriage to Philip Philip landed at

Southampton on the 20th of July and five Five days later, he and Mary were married here at Winchester Cathedral

The couple processed from the west doors along an elevated walkway to a high platform at the

centre of the nave, where the ceremony itself took place. The ceremony deliberately evoked an older, better world

Mary used an old-fashioned wedding ring made of a band of plain gold, and she swore the

The woman's old oath to be bonnie and buxom in bed and at board

Of course, if the couple had children, that older, better, Catholic world would live again

A few months later, Mary, like her namesake, the Blessed Virgin, declared that the babe had stirred in her womb

The prospect of a Catholic heir greatly strengthened Mary's hand. and Parliament voted to return the Church of England to the obedience of the Pope

The royal supremacy which Henry VIII had forced on the English people seemed to be over

In early April, Mary moved to Hampton Court for the birth of the child

that would crown her life and reign and guarantee the future of Catholic England

Mary's confinement, as was customary, began with the ceremony of the Queen's taking to her chamber

in which she bade farewell to the male-dominated world of the court

and withdrew instead into the purely female realm of her birthing chamber

Their etiquette required she should have remained secluded and invisible until the moment of birth

but Mary couldn't keep her joy to herself. Instead, on St. George's Day, she appeared at a window to watch her husband, Philip, lead the celebrations below

She even turned herself sideways on so that her big belly was shown off to the crowds below

Good Catholics rejoiced with the Queen as they did when the serious business of enforcing Catholicism began

Part of the return to Rome was the restoration of the heresy laws

which punished those who denied the Catholic faith with the horrible death of burning alive

The burnings began in February 1555. Over the following three years, more than 300 men and women died in agony at the stake

Faced with such persecution, many other leading Protestants fled into exile abroad

One of the exiles was the Protestant cleric, John Fox, who decided to write a history of the persecutions

Using the trial records, eyewitness accounts and the writings of the martyrs themselves

He compiled his acts and monuments here. Soon known as Fox's Book of Martyrs, it became, after the Bible, the second most read book in English

And it damned Mary's reputation forever as Bloody Mary, especially the gruesome woodcuts

But Fox's propaganda would have amounted to very little

if it hadn't quickly become obvious that Mary's condition was a phantom pregnancy

By the early summer she was a public laughing stock with stories circulating that she was pregnant with a lap dog or a monkey By August even Mary herself had abandoned hope Moreover at age 39 it seemed unlikely she would ever conceive again

With her pregnancy exposed as a delusion, power started to ebb away from the Queen

Philip, now with no long-term interest in England, abandoned his wife to return to his continental possessions

Still worse, a failure to produce an heir, and with it the guarantee of a Catholic future

broke Mary's hold on Parliament. Crucial to the government's plans for the final suppression of Protestantism

was a bill to confiscate the landed estates of the Protestant exiles

If the bill passed, the economic foundations of resistance would be destroyed. The government strained every nerve, but so too did the opposition

led by Sir Anthony Kingston. With the connivance of the sergeants-at-arms, the doors of the

house were locked from the inside, and as the members milled around, Kingston thundered

his protests, and the bill was defeated. Scenes like these wouldn't be seen again in

the House of Commons until the 17th century. Despite the loss of the political initiative, Mary grimly persisted with the persecution of Protestants

Her most illustrious victim was Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. But Cranmer was caught on the horns of a dilemma

In creating the royal supremacy, he'd argued that monarchs were God's agents on earth

and that obedience to them was an absolute religious duty. But what to do when the monarch was of the wrong religion

Obey the Queen or Christ. At his heresy trial, Cranmer, old, worn out and terrified of the fire

recanted his Protestantism. It was a huge propaganda coup for Mary, but Mary wasn't satisfied

She bore Cranmer a deep grudge for divorcing her mother and, even though church law said that a repentant heretic should be pardoned

was determined that he would burn. Cranmer's execution was to take place in Oxford preceded by a public repetition

of his recantation. Early on a rainy morning he was brought to the University Church here

You can still see where sections of the piers have been cut away to build a high platform to give maximum publicity

to what the authorities were confident would be a repetition of his recantation and confession

Instead, in an astonishing theatrical coup, Cranmer repudiated his recantation and, as the hubbub rose from the church

managed to shout out a final denunciation of the Pope as Antichrist

He was pulled down from the scaffold and hurried to the stake

But Cranmer hadn't finished. As the flames rose, he stuck out his right hand

which had signed his recantation into the heart of the fire. It had sinned, so it should first be punished, he said

It was a magnificent gesture which vindicated Cranmer's integrity and saved the good faith of Protestantism

Mary's vengefulness had turned the propaganda coup of Cranmer's recantation into a public relations disaster

which fired her opponents with a new zeal to resist Bloody Mary

Among them was John Purnett, a Protestant bishop who'd fled into exile in Strasbourg when the burnings began

He was an old friend of Cranmer's, but unlike Cranmer, Purnett's experience of Mary's tyranny led him to question the intellectual foundations of the supremacy

and to reject outright the idea that the king was ordained by God to rule his church on earth

And this is the revolutionary book in which Ponet did it. Published in 1556, it's called A Short Treatise on Politic Power

And its title page, with the motto taken from Psalm 118, says it all

It is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in princes

This meant that kings, far from being the godlike creatures of Henry VIII's and Cranmer's imagination

were human at best and subhuman at their all too frequent worst

And this meant in turn that kings were human creations and had to be subject to human control

If, therefore, Ponet went on to argue, a king or queen broke human or divine law, they should be reproved or even deposed

And if, like Mary, they were a cruel and persecuting idolater, then it was a virtuous act to assassinate them as a tyrant

by ignoring Henry VIII's call for moderation and resorting instead to religious extremes

Edward and Mary had provoked conspiracy, rebellion and finally Pornet's head-on challenge

to the authority and legitimacy of kingship itself but Mary was soon beyond the reach

of Pernet's seditious theorising. In 1558, she became seriously ill, though she fondly imagined she was pregnant again

She even wrote her will, leaving the throne to her unborn Catholic child

But six months later, with her health rapidly fading, even Mary had to face reality

and she added this codicil to her will. In it, she finally acknowledged that it was likely that she would have no issue or heir of her body

and that she would be succeeded instead by her heir and successor by the laws and statutes of this realm

That, of course, was her half-sister Elizabeth, though Mary couldn't even bring herself to write her name

Mary, seeing visions to the last of heavenly children, died on the night of the 16th of November, 1558

She was 42. Two of Henry's three children had imperiled by their contrasting religious extremism, both supremacy and the crown

Would his last surviving heir, Elizabeth, do any better? This is a portrait of Elizabeth, aged 14

and painted in the last weeks of her father's life. It shows her as the very model of a religious, learned princess

But the reality of Elizabeth's life under the reins of her brother and sister

was to be very different from the studious calm suggested by this picture

especially under her sister Mary. During Mary's reign, Elizabeth occupied the impossible position

which she'd later call second person. By their father's will, she was Mary's heir presumptive

She was also, as a covert Protestant, guaranteed to undo everything that Mary held dear

This made her both the focus of every conspiracy against Mary and the target of her sister's fear and rage

Mary had even sent her to the Tower on charges of treason

Such experiences left Elizabeth with a set of indelible memories, which meant that she took a very different view of policy

from either her brother or her sister. News of Mary's death was brought to Elizabeth here at Hatfield

The story goes that she fell upon her knees, exclaiming with the psalmist

This is the Lord's doing. It is marvellous in our eyes. Actually, Elizabeth had been preparing herself for this moment for weeks, and her right-hand

man in her preparations for power was Sir William Sissel. It was to be the beginning of a lifelong partnership

Sissel, born the son of a Tudor courtier some thirteen years before Elizabeth, had shared

many of her experiences and, as a Protestant, suffered the same fears under Mary when he

He too had saved his skin by conforming to Catholicism. But there was a difference

Cecil, unlike Elizabeth, drew the harsh lesson of never again. Never again must there be a Catholic monarch or heir

and if by mischance one appeared, then people, council and parliament together could and should remove them

These were Pernet's arguments, though Cecil was a moderate in comparison. Nevertheless, it would make for an interesting relationship between Sicil and his imperious, headstrong young queen, with her high views of royal power and her moderate line in religion

And indeed, establishing a new religious settlement was Elizabeth's first task as queen

Mary's Parliament had made Catholicism once more the religion of England, and only another Parliament could change it

But to what? Elizabeth's first parliament met in January 1559. It was opened with a speech by the acting Lord Chancellor

He spoke in Elizabeth's name, but his phraseology deliberately invoked her father's great speech on religion to the parliament of 1545

Like her father, Elizabeth wanted a middle way in religion, partly because she believed in it

and partly because she too saw it as the best defence for the royal supremacy

which she was determined to revive as her God-given right. But Elizabeth's plans for a moderate religious settlement

came under fire from both extremes, from Catholics in the Lords and Protestants in the Commons and Council

Finally, to overcome her Catholic peers and bishops, Elizabeth had to join forces with her Protestant commons and councillors

She duly got the settlement and the supremacy, though with the narrowest of majorities in the Lords of only three votes

The price, however, was her acceptance of Cranmer's second, much more radically Protestant prayer book of 1552

In the infighting between the religious extremes, it seemed that Elizabeth's hoped-for moderate

settlement had been lost. The outcome of the Parliament had been a triumph for Sissel He outmaneuvered and strong the Catholics to restore the royal supremacy And he had so it seemed outmaneuvered Elizabeth as well to bring back the extreme

Protestantism of her brother Edward. Elizabeth was equal to the challenge. She insisted against

fierce opposition on inserting the so-called ornaments rubric into the legislation. This

empowered her on her sole authority as supreme governor of the church to retain traditional

ceremonies like making the sign of the cross in baptism and to require the clergy to wear

traditional vestments like the surplus and the cope. The result was a church that was

Protestant in doctrine, Catholic in appearance and would Elizabeth hoped satisfy all but

a handful of extremists on both sides. And Elizabeth's hopes would almost certainly have been fulfilled, but for the issue of

the succession. It was the succession which had driven the giddy switchback from Catholicism to Protestantism

and it had the potential to do it again. It was clear to Sissel that the best way to secure the succession was for the Queen to

marry and produce an heir, but Elizabeth was less sure. she'd seen how her sister's choice of her husband had sparked dissent and rebellion

So Elizabeth determined that England would have one mistress and no master

But if Elizabeth could not or would not marry, who would succeed her

Her father's will here had an answer for that too. For if Elizabeth died childless, this clause here prescribed

that she should be succeeded by the descendants of her aunt Mary

Henry's younger sister. But they were the Greys. Elizabeth hated the Grey family

because they'd helped put Jane Grey on the throne. Then Elizabeth had been publicly branded as a

and barred from the succession. In revenge, Elizabeth would never allow the throne to pass to a Grey

But what to do about her father's will here? Her brother and her sister, to whom its terms were equally unacceptable, had challenged it head-on and failed

Elizabeth was subtler. The will was given one last public outing in the second Parliament of the reign

and then it was returned to the safe deposit of the Treasury and put, as this marginal note records, in an iron chest

And the key of the chest, in effect, was thrown away. It was a case of out of sight, out of mind

With the lightest of touches, Elizabeth had nudged her father's will into oblivion

This left as her most obvious heir, her cousin Mary, the granddaughter of Henry's elder sister, Margaret

Mary was Queen Consort of France and Queen of Scots in her own right

She was also a Catholic. In August 1561, after the death of her husband, the French King, Mary returned to Scotland

as Queen. Mary, however, was far more interested in her claim to the English throne, and in September

she sent her personal emissary, Sir William Maitland, to negotiate directly with Elizabeth

Elizabeth was all graciousness in her private, face-to-face interviews with Maitland. She acknowledged that Mary was of the blood royal of England

was her cousin and her nearest living kinswoman, and that as such she loved her dearly

She also, under Maitland's subtle prodding, went further. She knew, she said, no one with a better claim to be her successor than Mary

nor any that she preferred to her. she even swore she would do nothing to impede Mary's claim but the final step of declaring

Mary her heir that she told a crestfallen Maitland she would never ever take But Elizabeth had already gone far too far for Cecil

He'd already lived through the reign of one Mary and her attempt to re-Catholicise England

And he was determined never to suffer. and... Matters came to a head in the Parliament of 1566

which attempted to force Elizabeth to name a successor, and by implication, to exclude the claim of Mary, Queen of Scots

Furious, Elizabeth summoned 30 members of each house to her palace at Whitehall

where she delivered an extraordinary speech. Elizabeth was at her fiery, brilliant best

She would never name an heir, she said, because they would immediately become second person

And she, better than anyone else she continued, knew the danger of that position

since, as Mary's legally appointed heir, she'd been second person herself. As such, her own life had been in constant danger, and she'd been the focus of plots and treason

and only her own honour prevented her from naming names. Similarly, turning now to the Lords

many of the bishops under Jane Grey had preached treasonably that she, Elizabeth, was a

Well, I wish not for the death of any man, she said, not altogether convincingly

No head can have felt too secure on its shoulders by the time that the Queen had finished

But the issue of the succession wouldn't go away, and it was brought into sharp focus when a rebellion brought about by disgust at her scandalous personal life forced Mary to flee Scotland and seek Elizabeth's protection

The presence of Mary Queen of Scots in England would force Elizabeth into the very actions she tried so hard to avoid

In Scotland, Mary, despite her Catholicism, had been lukewarm about religion

She'd lived with the Protestant government and even taken a Protestant as her third husband

But in England it was different. Here Mary played up her Catholicism and Catholics in turn identified with her

The issue for both Mary and the English Catholics was the succession

Mary was Elizabeth's obvious heir, but Elizabeth steadfastly refused to recognize her as such

By bidding for Catholic support, Mary was hoping to force Elizabeth's hand

And, in turn, the prospect of an heir of their own faith gave English Catholics

who'd almost lost hope, stomach for the fight once more. The spectre which Elizabeth had striven so hard to lay of a second person who differed in religion from the monarch was about to rise once more

As Elizabeth had foreseen, the plot soon began. Catholics saw Mary as a means back to power and used as a focus for rebellion

Despite her precarious position, Mary was naive enough to allow herself to be implicated in several of these plots

But Elizabeth refused to take action against Mary Her instinct was to try to defuse the conflict

Above all, she didn't want Mary to become a martyr But Elizabeth's hopes of avoiding conflict were dashed

when her middle way came under attack from both extremes. The first to move against her was Rome

This is the papal edict, or bull, issued by the Pope in 1570

Known from its opening words as Regnans in excelsis, reigning on high

it sets out the most extreme version of the papal claim to rule all people and all kingdoms Then for her defiance of this claim it condemns Elizabeth deposes and excommunicates her and absolves all her subjects from their oath of allegiance

The bull was the Catholic version of the arguments of the Protestant Ponet, and, as with Ponet

Pornet, its logical outcome was tyrannicide, the assassination or murder of the errant ruler

The Pope had, in effect, declared war on Elizabeth by calling for her murder. But two could play at

that game, and Elizabeth's counsel responded in kind. Violent times breed violent measures

and few have been more violent than this bond of association here

Drawn up by the Privy Council, it's a kind of licensed lynch law

If Elizabeth were to be assassinated in favour of any possible claimant to the throne

then those who joined the bond undertook to band together to prosecute such personal persons to the death

and to take the uttermost revenge on them by any possible means

The Protestant nobility and gentry flocked to subscribe to the bond in their hundreds

as these masses of signed and sealed copies show. Mary wasn't mentioned by name in the bond, but everybody knew that she was the target

The bond was subsequently legalized by an act of parliament, which also set up a tribunal to determine her guilt or innocence

But Cecil had wanted to go much, much further and establish a great council to rule England in the interregnum that would follow Elizabeth's murder

The great council would exercise all the royal powers and, together with a recalled parliament, would choose the next monarch

This was Ponet, translated into a parliamentary statute, and Elizabeth was having none of it

for Elizabeth saw the bond as being as offensive as the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis

since it too set religion above the crown and permitted subjects to judge a sovereign

but not even Elizabeth could protect Mary from her own folly or Sissel's vendetta

in 1586 Mary was lured into giving her explicit endorsement to a plot to assassinate Elizabeth

Faced with incontrovertible evidence of her guilt, Elizabeth was forced to agree to her trial and condemnation

She even signed the death warrant, but gave instructions that the execution wasn't to be carried out without her further command

But for once, Cecil didn't obey his queen. Instead, a secret meeting of the council was convened in his rooms at court and, acting

on their own authority and in defiance of the Queen's express commands, the councillors

dispatched the death warrant to Mary's prison at Fotheringhay Castle. And there, in the Great Hall, Mary was publicly beheaded

She died magnificently, clutching the crucifix and wearing a scarlet petticoat as a martyr

to her Catholic faith. But she also, Queen Regnant though she was, had been publicly executed like any other common criminal

The divinity that doth hedge a king, which Elizabeth had fought so hard to preserve and

evaporated, never fully to return. The execution of Mary was a watershed

Henry VIII and his three children had each sought to reshape the religion of the nation

according to their own personal preferences. But, as a fierce nationalistic Protestantism took hold in England, it was becoming clear

that a monarch or an heir who stepped too far out of line with the religious prejudices

of the nation would do so at their peril. The dangerous liaison between monarchy and religion had claimed its first victim in Mary

Queen of Scots. She would not ever last