696. Elizabeth I vs The Catholics: Killing the Queen of Scots (Part 6)

Hello everyone, and before today's show, I have incredibly exciting news for you about a live show. On Friday the 4th of September, Dominic and I will be at the South Bank to do something that we have not done before, so you will be the first people to hear it. We are telling the story of what is the ultimate Victorian adventure. The date is 1868, the location is Abyssinia, and the Emperor of Abyssinia has been writing letters to Queen Victoria who rather rudely has not replied to them. So the Emperor of Abyssinia annoyed about this, has kidnapped a number of British subjects. Having response, Britain sends an expedition to rescue the captives, and it is no exaggeration to say it is massive. On this expedition, 13,000 soldiers, 40,000 animals, including 44 elephants, and the British even put down a railway line to transport everything. It's an incredible story full of jaw-dropping events, ludicrous characters, lots of moustaches, lots of general Victorian shenanigans, and as I say, it is the first time that we have ever done it on the Restless History. I don't want to blow our trumpet, but I think it's going to be an absolute Restless History classic. So if you want to get a ticket for the ultimate Victorian adventure at the South Bank in London on Friday the 4th of September, you know where to go. Theresteshistory.com Hello, now before we go to today's episode, I have some insanely exciting news for you. On Friday the 4th of September, Dominic and I will be forming live at the South Bank Centre in London, and better yet, we will be doing something completely new, something that no one has ever heard before on The Restless History. The ultimate Victorian adventure. So to give you just a little taste, we will be in Africa in 1868. The Emperor of Abyssinia, Theodore II, has kidnapped 59 Europeans and is holding them hostage after descending into this demented rage because, one of his fellow monarchs, Queen Victoria, has declined to answer his letters. I'm not making this up. In the British, after months and months of fruitless waiting, have lost patience and they have sent a military expedition under General Napier, halfway around the world to save them in expedition that includes thousands of mules, loads of elephants and they've even had to build their own railway across the Highlands of Abyssinia or Ethiopia to try to get to his mountain citadel. It is a bonkers story. Yeah, it's absolutely extraordinary, full-blown, British imperial, epic, full of ludicrous behavior, mad characters, colossal moustaches, everything that we love on The Restless History. It is, though I say to myself, a guaranteed classic in the making. So you're probably thinking how can I get a ticket for this extraordinary Victorian adventure? Here is the answer. If you want to get a ticket for this event on Friday, the 4th of September, all you have to do is go to TheRestlessHistory.com, it is as simple as that, you maybe have to part with some money, but it will be money very, very, very, very well spent. See you there. The affairs being thus prepared and forces in readiness both without and within the realm, then shall it be time to set the six gentlemen to work. Taking order, that on the accomplishing or their design, ah, maybe suddenly transported out of this place, and that only of forces in the same time beyond the field to meet me. As we await the arrival of the Forranade, which then must be hastened with all diligence. So that is an extract from one of the most consequential letters in all British history. It was written on behalf of Mary Queen of Scots, brought up, educated in France, hence the accent. And it was written actually by one of her secretaries, and it was written on the evening of the 17th of July 1586. It was then transcribed into a secret code, and then early the following morning, it was sent to a young Catholic gentleman whose name was Antony Babington. And at the end of the letter, there was a PS, which read as follows, "Fail not to burn this present quickly." You can understand why somebody put that PS in there, because what is in this letter could not be more sensitive, more incendiary, because what Mary is doing there, Tom, she's giving the green light, isn't she, to something that has been mooted for so many years, the operation to overthrow her cousin Queen Elizabeth of England and take the throne herself. Yes, and it is projected that this will be combined with an armed uprising in England itself, and that this uprising will release Mary from her captivity. It will be coordinated with an invasion from France, and Elizabeth's fate, Mary does not explicitly say what this is to be, but her meaning is clear, because 17 days earlier this young Catholic gentleman, Antony Babington, had written a letter to Mary, and had proposed in this letter the assassination of the woman he described as the usurper, in other words, Elizabeth. So he'd written, "There be six noble gentlemen, all my private friends, who for the zeal they bear to the Catholic cause and your majesty's service will undertake that tragical execution, in other words, the assassination." So Mary, 17 days to write her reply, "She has been mulling over what she should say, mulling it over and over in her mind, but now at last she has made up her mind, and that's the significance of that otherwise enigmatic phrase, then shall it be time to set the six gentlemen to work." In other words, get the assassination scored out there, let them kill Elizabeth. So this is the sixth episode that we've done in this series on the golden age of Elizabeth I, the rival of Spain, the kind of the war in the shadows, but also the war at sea with the Francis Drake and all of this. A Mary Queen of Scots has been this presence throughout the whole series. She's been in captivity, but she hasn't really been center stage. Now we did a previous series about Mary Queen of Scots, whose list this could look up. We did that in 2025 if they're interested. Just pull back the camera and talk about exactly who she is. She is Elizabeth's cousin. She is her obvious heir, if anything happens to Elizabeth, but the issue is that she's not merely French and Scottish, but she's a Catholic and that is the main problem as far as Elizabeth sees it. Yeah, and this has obvious consequences for the kind of the general climate of suspicion and paranoia that has prevailed throughout this series because Catholics in England, in Scotland and on the continent, all dream of seeing Mary on the throne of England. And Protestants, by contrast, see Mary as the great enemy of everything that they hold dear. So if you're an English Protestant, the enemy of Queen Elizabeth, of England and of the Protestant religion, and two of Elizabeth's councillors in particular who have featured throughout this series are absolutely set on bringing her to execution, to seeing Mary Queen of Scots head chopped off as a traitor to Elizabeth. And these two councillors are William Cecil Lorde Burley, who is Elizabeth's chief minister, and Sir Francis Walsingham, who is her head of intelligence, her spy chief. And for two decades, effectively, they have seen Mary as this kind of malignant spider sat at the heart of a great web of international conspiracy and by 1586, as the storm clouds of war gather over the channel, Mary is coming to see more of a menace even than she had done before. And we've been tracing the reasons for this in our previous episodes. Though three years earlier, listeners may remember in 1583, there had been another plot to overthrow Elizabeth, to place Elizabeth on the throne, to launch a foreign invasion. And this was the Throck Morton plot named after the guy who gets captured and is the full guy for it. And that had been exposed and foiled by Walsingham's counter espionage service. And it's this sense of a domestic conspiracy combining with horror and backing that gives Walsingham and everyone on Elizabeth's privy council the kind of the Hebe Gebes. And now in 1586, that's it. threat of foreign intervention seems to them even greater than ever because England by now is at war with Spain in all but name. So English and Spanish forces are openly fighting in the low countries. In our previous episode we described how Sir Philip Sidney went to war with the Spanish forces in the northern low countries. Privatiers are raiding Spain's holdings in the new world led by the greatest privateer of the Maul, Sir Francis Drake, and there are reports that in Spain as a response to these insults, Drake's raids and the English intervention in the low countries, the King of Spain Philip II is mustering a great fleet to attack England in Spanish and our martyr. So it's no surprise that Lord Burgling or Cecilus used to be and Sir Francis Walsim are very keen to basically get Mary out of the picture to eliminate her from this story. They've been wrestling with this issue for a long time haven't they? Since 1572 which was the first time that Mary was pretty clearly implicated in a plot against her cousin Elizabeth. But the big problem is that Elizabeth does not want to put Mary to death I mean partly because she knows it will inflame opinion across Europe but also there is a sort of personal issue isn't there that Elizabeth doesn't want to set a precedent of killing a queen. Yes so there are all kinds of reasons why she doesn't want Mary publicly put to death because she knows that it will cause outrage across Europe and it will provide Philip with a kind of clinching justification for sending that armada against England. And as we've been saying throughout the series Elizabeth hates war and she hates kind of any sense that she's locked into foreign policy courses so to quote Garrett Mattingley this wonderful book on the Spanish armada that he wrote back in the 1940s but it's still great. He said of Elizabeth her foreign policy was to have no foreign policy not alterable by the lightest touch on the helm and obviously if Elizabeth is locked into war with Spain then you know that's no longer a course that she can follow but as you implied Elizabeth's opposition to having Mary executed goes beyond mere foreign policy concerns. She sees it as a threat to her own authority because Mary like Elizabeth is an anointed queen and Elizabeth doesn't want to license anything that might impair the sense her subjects have of the divinity that hedges a king as Shakespeare will put it. And obviously if you're anxious to maintain the sense of dignity that surrounds an anointed monarch then chopping off her head is not the way to maintain it. And for Burley and Wolfsinger as you said this is a complete nightmare. Can I just ask a quick question? You've said a couple of times she doesn't want to have her publicly executed. Is this not a flaw in Elizabeth the first armory? Why does she not consider killing her privately? I mean why not you know have poison her? She does consider it and we will be coming to that later in this episode. Yeah I mean I've killed her already frankly I don't understand why she's been dithering. I absolutely know that you would and it's just a shame that you weren't at the back and call of the Virgin Queen as we will see in due course but for now I mean conversely for Burley and Wolfsinger having her publicly executed ticks all kinds of boxes you know it very publicly removes her it brands her as as a traitor it locks them into the war with Spain that they probably feel is coming and it serves to establish a kind of solidarity among the Protestants of England and beyond. So they want that. They also want Mary gone because throughout this period Elizabeth has no children she has no husband she's going to die a virgin and so if she dies now then civil war will be the best that they can hope for. The worst is the complete triumph of popery over everything that they have lived for throughout their careers and of course it will also result in their own personal ruin. So Burley who is a very consumable political operator understands the functioning of the state understands how Parliament perhaps can interact with Elizabeth's royal power. He's been trying to box Elizabeth in by getting Parliament to pass a very momentous piece of legislation. So this had gone through Parliament in March 1585 and it was called an act for the Queen's safety and by its terms any claimant to the throne of England who is implicated in a rebellion or an invasion or an assassination plot against Elizabeth is to be put on trial for treason and if convicted of treason to be killed. No one is named in the act but Mary doesn't need to be named it's obvious that she is the target and with this piece of legislation on the statute book the pressure now is on forcing them as the head of intelligence to find sufficient evidence against Mary evidence that is watertight enough to satisfy a court of law that she is indeed guilty of treason because if he can do that the legislation is now at last in place to have her tried and then executed. Okay so let's turn now to away from Wolfinger Burley to Mary herself. So you know when people think about Mary Queen of Scots they think about social Ronan playing here in the film right they think about this Elfin help plus victim very beautiful pale all of this. In reality her vibe is very different now I mean it's very ungranted for us to say say Tom and maybe some this just may say we're not in a position to say this but we'll say it anyway because that's kind of people we are certainly I am. She's slightly let herself go is that fair? Well yes so she is 43 in July 1586 when she's writing that letter or at least getting her secretary to write that letter but she looks a lot older so as you said she's she's very beautiful as a young woman famously so but by now she is overweight and she's very stoop shouldered and she also has very serious health issues so Burley is receiving updates on the state of her health and he's being told that Mary's legs are swollen and indeed to quote a wrapped in gross matter which is not very nice. I mean I don't want to you know give myself away but I don't think anyone likes gross matter wrapped around a woman's legs do they? No and also people get like constipation which Mary is also suffering from so here's another report off times by reason of great pains through windy matter ascending under her head and other parts she is ready to swoon. I'm going to cancel that date with Mary Queen of Scots but you know it's it's not these ailments the weight gain the stoop shoulders and they're not her fault and she has them for kind of two apparently contradictory reasons both which relate to the ambivalences of her situation in England so the first is she is a captive she is under a form of house arrest and so she can no longer as she had done when she was a queen kind of exercise every day as a queen you said search her own and search her own and galloping around on the halls firing pistols that was what Mary did as a queen she was very active woman but now she's not she's allowed to go riding at most once or twice a month and even when she rides in a coach she's escorted by a squad of musketeers because Walsonum is petrified that a you know a rescue attempt may be made but at the same time as she's not getting any exercise she is being treated with the honour that is due to a queen Elizabeth insists on that and in practical terms that means that wherever she is there is a groaning table laden down with foods that have been cooked in her own kitchen and served to her by her own staff and she demands the full royal protocol and to quote John guy from his wonderful biography of Mary like Elizabeth Mary enjoyed two courses at both dinner and supper and each course included 16 separate dishes individually presented and accompanied by bread, wine, salads and fruit this meant 32 dishes for each meal and 64 for each day so that is a lot of food if you're not having any exercise so 1586 however so this is in the wake of the throttamort and plot a condition is a little bit harsher than the high living of previous years right so she's so so how many meals a day is she down to now surely no longer 64 a day it's omega 20 20 and she has to rub by with with 48 servants which is you know massively slumming it she's been moved into the kind of timbered mansion that had it survived into the present day and it hasn't would probably be a boutique hotel and this is a place in Staffordshire called Chartley Manor and it's a very pleasant place to be but it is surrounded by two moats so again she is you know she she knows that she's effectively in a prison and she has the suffer all kinds of of indignity so her request for Turkish carpets is turned down she's not allowed to have fish from the sea you know we'll have to be caught in the river and every time she has her canopy decorated with her royal regalia put up the guy who is acting as her jayla comes in and hears it down and the name of this jayla is Sir Amir's palette and he is a very kind of hard-nosed granite-faced Puritan and he's been the given the job of serving as Mary's jayla because unlike everyone else who has been appointed to that job palette can be absolutely relied upon not to succumb to Mary's charm which remains considerable palette low. s'mary as a kind of, as Jezebel, as a papist, and as a Scott with no pity at all of English purses. I think a tremendous phrase. Yeah, he sounds like a great man, but actually she doesn't like him at all, does she? What do you call them? One of the most whimsical and austere persons who've ever known in a word fitter for a jail of criminals. So I'd have somebody who's both whimsical and austere. But anyway, there he is. And he, I mean, one of the things that he does is he stops her having contacts with the outside world, doesn't he? I mean, you can understand what they've done this. That he won her plotting with Jesuits and with bad people of various kinds against England. And you can understand why they want to kind of exert him a much greater control over her in the wake of all these kind of various plots. And as you say, the hardest restrictions concern her contacts with the outside world. You know, she's not allowed to know what is going on beyond the modes of her this man-house that is her prison. And so she is completely desperate to reestablish contact with sympathisers, to know what prospects there are for her being released from prison, and perhaps what prospects there are for her to win the throne of England, which she is now starting to, you know, to recognise is the only way she's ever going to escape this form of imprisonment. But, you know, how is she to do this? Because Paula is a very, very effective jailer. You know, he's not allowing her any letters. He conducts random searches of her quarters to check that, you know, she's not hiding notes there. And should anyone from her personal household kind of go out into the outside world, visit the local villages or whatever, then when they come back, they will be subjected to strip searches. So the situation looks really bad for Mary, but over the course of her very lengthy imprisonment in England, she has learnt the value of patience. And fortunately for her, Mary's partisans are patient as well, and they're determined and they are very, very ingenious. And in April, so four months after Mary had been moved to Chartley Manor, an agent from the French Embassy in London manages to get a letter through to her. And this is a guy called Gilbert Gifford. And he is English, he's from Staffordshire, he's Catholic, and he's actually a kinsman of Francis Throckmorton, who had been implicated in the previous plot to marry free. He'd studied at one of the seminaries set up by William Allen, who is the kind of the great Catholic leader of the exiles on the continent. And he'd been ordained a decon there. And in Paris, where he'd moved to after his ordination, he'd been recruited by Mary's agents in the city and employed as a courier, taking letters from Paris to the French Embassy in London. But obviously, his real ambition is to get letters from the French Embassy to marry in Chartley Manor. And he has come up with what he thinks is a brilliant weas that will enable him to do it. And this is like a kind of children's book on spycraft. The kind of thing you could imagine, I don't know, Ianie Blighten or someone coming up with. So Gifford has gone to the local brewer who supplies Chartley Manor with its beer. And Gifford's plan is to put letters for Mary into a kind of a waterproof receptacle or a beer proof receptacle, perhaps you might say. And then to insert this receptacle through the bunghole of the beer barrel. And then the beer barrel will be taken by the brewer to Chartley Manor. And when it arrives there, the message can be retrieved through the bunghole by Mary's butler, who can then take the correspondence to Mary's secretaries, and they can then pass it on to Mary herself. And then should Mary want to reply to anything, the whole procedure can operate in reverse. And it sounds mad. I think it sounds good. I think it's a great scheme. Amazingly. Well, it works, Dominic. And this is how Babbington with his kind of plot for assassinating Elizabeth with those, you know, those six gentlemen. And springing Mary from Chartley Manor, this is how he had been able to get his letter through to her. And it's also why Mary spends so much time kind of mulling over what she's going to, how she's going to reply, because she knows that this is really the one realistic chance she has to escape from her prison and perhaps to become the queen of England. Now her secretaries say, don't reply. It's too dangerous. There are spies everywhere. And Mary is clearly anxious herself. And so as she is mulling over what she should reply, she's keen to get out into the open to escape the claustrophobia of her quarters. She can't go writing, but she can go out in her carriage, and so this is what she does. She goes for rides around the area. And as she does so, three days before she ends up composing her letter. She looks out of the window, and she sees a youngish man, and she describes him later as being of low stature, slender every way, dark yellow head on the head, and clear yellow bearded. And she smiles at him, and then the coach rumbles on. And four days later, after she's seen him, so she's had her secretaries write the letter, and then the following day, this letter with its illusion to the six gentlemen who were plotting to kill Elizabeth is placed in the beer barrel in the watertight receptacle. And the barrel is taken away. The brewer is taking it. And Mary is hoping that the brewer will be taking this barrel with its secret message inside to Babington, and Babington can then take the letter to the French embassy, and beyond that to Paris, and the wheels of conspiracy can be set in motion. Unfortunately, however, Babington is not the first recipient of Mary's letter. Instead, the letter is delivered to the youngish man with yellow hair that she had seen through her coach window. And this is the man who is about to deliver her up to the people who in the long run will have her killed. And the name of this young man with his yellow hair is Thomas Phillips, and he is a linguist, he's a mathematician, and he is the single most gifted cryptanalyst in the employ of Elizabeth's spy chief, Sir Francis Walsingham. So what do we know about this guy, this yellow-haired man? He's Stephen Alford in his great book The Watchers, says he's secret and secretive, a man who had traveled to the uttermost in the cipher. Do we know anything more about him or is he just a sort of shadowy presence? Well, Stephen Alford says that Phillips is the most kind of secretive, the most mysterious of all the spies in Walsingham's employ, and also the ableist. So in addition to being the greatest codebreaker, the greatest cipherbreaker in Walsingham's employ, he is also the best handler of double agents. And this is why Walsingham has sent Phillips to Staffordshire to supervise this entire very complex operation, because Gilbert Gifford, so that's the young seminarian who'd been recruited by Mary's agents in Paris to serve as a courier, he too has been recruited by Walsingham, Walsingham has turned him. And Gifford's approach to Mary had been a setup supervised by Phillips, and it's Phillips as well who had recruited the brewers, and basically, you know, he's holding all the strings. And he has been opening all the correspondence between Babington and Mary, he's been decrypting what Babington may have written, or what Mary may have written, reading it through, and then he is another of his many talents is that he's able to reseal letters that he's opened, and make it look as though they have never been opened. And so because of this, he can then forward these letters that he's read to the intended recipients, and they have no idea that the contents have already been read by Walsingham's spy agency. These people are brilliant, Tom, and she has walked right into it. I admire them for this. I mean, she has, but, you know, she has no choice. I think she sees it. She's aware that there's a risk. She's very smart. I mean, she knows what she's up against, but I think she's desperate. As you see, she has walked into it because Phillips has had read Babington's letter to Mary with its mention of the six noble gentlemen ready to kill Elizabeth. And so he has been waiting on tentahooks to find out how Mary's going to reply, because he knows that if she replies favorably, if she says, oh, yeah, let's get the six gentlemen operating, then that's it. They've got her. And so he, you know, he gets this letter that's been sent back by Mary supposedly to Babington, but in fact, it's been brought to Phillips. He opens the letter. I'm probably not with trembling hands, because he seems to be a very cool customer, but definitely, I mean, he's part must have been pounding. And he reads it through, and he is not disappointed by what he finds. He deciphered Mary's letter. There is the reference to the six gentlemen. He writes it up, makes a copy in English, which he then sends to Walsingham. And on the copy of the letter that he sends to Walsingham, he inscribes it with a drawing of a gallows, but he might as well have drawn a chopping block and an axe. And he describes it as the bloody letter, because this Phillips feels is the letter that is going to doom Mary Queen of Scots, who of course has no idea what has happened. And all the while, Mary is hoping that the letter has got through and that perhaps a plot has been set in motion to set her free from her prison. half weeks later. It's the 11th of August. Mary, of course, knows nothing of this. And her Jailer, the whimsical and austere, her Mr. Paulett, who's usually very unfriendly to her, says to her, "Would you like to go on a deer hunt, doesn't he?" And she doesn't think, "Oh, this is a bit suspicious." She thinks, "Oh, deer hunt, brilliant." Especially as her legs, the issue of the gross matter seems to have cleared up. Yeah, the oozing has ceased. So she gets on on on a horse for what is going to prove the last horse ride that she will ever take. And she gallops out with Paulett into the woods that surround the manor. And they haven't gone far when they see a troop of horsemen approaching. And Mary's heart, of course, I mean, it leaps. You know, she's thinking, "Are these the men who've been sent by Babington to set me free? Has his plot come to fruition? Perhaps Elizabeth is dead? Perhaps they're coming to take me to London and set me on the throne of England?" I'm sure enough, the captain of horse rides up to her, and he addresses her not very politely, and he tells Mary that a plot against the life of Elizabeth has been uncovered, and he then informs Mary that she is under arrest. And by this point, unbeknownst to Mary, a number of the conspirators in Babington's plot have already been apprehended. And Babington himself was arrested three days later on the 14th of August, and he was subjected to repeated interrogation, and it became very clear to his interrogators that he had been completely hoodwinked by Phillips, and that he'd even swallowed a kind of outrageous forttery that Walsingham and Phillips had concocted between them, which was designed to extract an even more direct confession out of him. And in the event Babington and the other conspirators in the plot, did confess to plotting Mary's release, to sponsoring a foreign invasion, and to working for the restoration of Catholicism. I mean, they couldn't really not, they were banged to rights. They did, however, interestingly, deny plotting to murder Elizabeth, and I think the reason for this was that they knew that that is what would do Mary. If they said yes, Mary was in on the plot to assassinate Elizabeth, and that would do Mary, and they didn't want to do that. Obviously, they are put horribly to death, so Babington himself was publicly executed on the 20th of September. His fellow conspirators were executed the following day, and the site of this was in Hoban. It's where Totten Court Road tube station is, so it's that kind of great traffic intersection now, and their deaths are very, very horrible. Elizabeth had insisted that they be as salientry as they possibly could. And once they're kind of maimed and bleeding corpses lay spread eagled on the scaffold, they had then been chopped up into quarters and distributed to the various gates of the city of London to serve as warnings to the fate of traitors. Meanwhile, what of Mary? Well, she has been ordered to prepare for her departure from Charlie Manor, and she leaves on the 21st of September, even as the second batch of plotters who had conspired to free her were meeting their terrible ends in Hoban, and she was accompanied by an absolutely enormous wagon train loaded down with clothes, with furnishings, with assorted luxuries, because even in these diastrates, Mary remains what she has always been a complete diva. And it takes her days to travel the 80 miles from Charlie Manor to the place that Elizabeth had personally chosen as her new place of imprisonment. But finally, on the 25th of September, so they've been on the road for four days, Mary's journey comes to an end. And she has arrived in Fatheringay Castle. We all know what's coming next. Well, at least a lot of us do, and even if you don't, it's it's going to be good. All right, so join us after the break for the end of the story of Mary Queen of Scots. This episode is brought to you by Amazon. Tom Throughout history, change has often been driven by businesses and institutions that end up having a massive impact on society as a whole. And there's probably no better example than the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford and his managers revolutionise production through their pioneering assembly lines, and they influenced factories and working practices in countries all over the world. Another example of a business driving technological and social change is Amazon, which is increasing the number of its electric vehicles used for deliveries in Europe to over 10,000 by the end of this year, 2026. Now on top of that, over 50% of Amazon deliveries now come with less packaging, or sometimes no added packaging at all. It helps to avoid unnecessary waste, and it makes recycling at home that much easier. Find out more at amazon.co.uk/sustainability. Hola Cameradas, it's Dominic here. Sorry to interrupt the episode, but I just thought you'd like to know that we've been thinking about something that you've been writing to us a lot. One of the most requested subjects ever since we started the rest of this history, which is the Spanish Civil War. Now, I can tell you exclusively that plans are a foot for us to do the Spanish Civil War at some point, hopefully next year in 2027. But as a little taster or teaser, on our sister show, the Book Club, my co-presenter, Tabby and I have just released an episode on perhaps the emblematic novel of the Spanish Civil War, which is Ernest Hemingway's book for whom the bell tolls. So in this episode, we do dig into the history. We talk about the clash between fascism and idealism. We talk about the roots of the conflict, and of course the way in which it drew in so many foreign intellectuals and artists and writers, Hemingway of course, among them. Many of you will know that Hemingway was in Spain during the war. He was a correspondent in Madrid, which was under siege by Franco's forces, and he draws on that experience in for whom the bell tolls, to tell a story of an American volunteer who's part of a guerrilla unit who are fighting Franco's troops. So if you keep listening at the end of this episode, we will have an exclusive short clip which discusses the history of the Spanish Civil War. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Mary Queen of Scots has just arrived at Fatheringay Castle. Now this is the one thing that Fatheringay Castle is really known for, and it's a sort of detail that everybody always remembers. Oh yeah, the last chapter of her life is at Fatheringay, but actually I've got no sense of what Fatheringay looks like, or I don't really have that much of a sense of where it is. It's Northampton, isn't it? So it's a sort of slightly non-descript middle of England. Yeah, why don't we know what it looks like? Because it doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, the castle has pretty much vanished. I mean, Fatheringay is a great place to visit, because it has a wonderful church that was a kind of a monument to the Yorkist regime. So if you're interested in the Wars of the Roses and Rich of the Third, it's great, but there are very few memorials to the place where Mary, you know, it's her final place of imprisonment. But so just to describe what was there when she arrives in September 1587. As you said, Dominic, it's in Northamptonshire, which is the middle of England. So as far away from Scotland and the sea as possible, they've got to make sure that she's not rescued. The ground around the castle is kind of very boggy and treacherous, so that helps as well. The castle itself is on a kind of raised hill. Like Charlie Manor, it has a double moat. Unlike Charlie Manor, it has very thick walls, a very imposing gateway, a colossal kind of norm and keep. So it is effectively as a prison impregnable, and there is no real prospect of Mary escaping it. But that's not the only reason that Elizabeth has fixed on. Fatheringay, as Mary's place of imprisonment. Because Fatheringay is well as fortifications also has a great sprawling complex of state rooms. And these include a great hall, so capable of containing large numbers of people. And on the first floor of these state rooms, there is what was called a presence chamber, which is a room where the monarch, if she arrives, the throne can be placed there, and she can keep state, and all the people around can come and pay their respects to her. And it's in this presence chamber on the 14th of October, 1586, that the trial of Mary Queen of Scots opens. And Elizabeth herself is not there, but it feels like she is because her empty throne presides over the whole trial. It's positioned beneath a great cloth of state emblazoned with her royal arms. And so it dominates the proceedings. Mary's judges, they are sitting around a table that's placed in the center of the room. And then around that table, there are three benches. And one of them is facing the empty throne at the opposite end of the room. And the other two are set at right angles to it, so framing the space in which the table had been set. Essentially, there's the throne and then there are benches at right angles to the throne and a bench at the far end of the room. And on these three benches are sat the commissioners who've been appointed by Elizabeth to the trial. So these are the privy councillors and assorted kind of supplementary peers, so barrens and vies counts and urls. The leading figures in the state, Walsingham is there, obviously. So two is Sir Christopher Hatton, Elizabeth's great favourite, the sponsor of Drake on his circumnavigation of the Globe. But there's no question who is the guy in ultimate charge of the proceedings and this is William Cecil Lord Burley because this is the moment he has been waiting for. This is the moment that he has been working towards for many decades long before even Mary Queen of Scots had sought refuge in England. His great aim has been to bring Mary Queen of Scots down right from the very beginning. To bring her to justice you might say, but of course, does she have a place at this trial at all? Because she's a queen, she's not a subject, and she's not a subject of Elizabeth the first. You know, she's not even English. So is this, is it actually legal? I guess that's the question. Well, that's the point she makes. I should betray the dignity and majesty of kings, and it would be tantamount to a confession that I am bound to submit to the laws of England. Well, she's got a Scottish accent now. Well, she had a very pretty Scottish accent. It's the report. So she's pretty objured. I'm not, you know, it's a bit like her grandson, Charles I, when he gets put on trial at the end of the English Civil War. You know, he refuses to recognise the court, and this is basically Mary's strategy, and this is infuriating for Burley. And so he leads a succession of delegations to try and sway to otherwise, but she just seems completely objured, and she tells Burley very memorable terms. Look to your consciences and remember that the theatre of the whole world is wider than the kingdom of England, but the guy who ultimately is able to persuade her is the very fluent and plausible secrist for hattern. And he says to her, "If you be innocent, you wrong your reputation in avoiding a trial." And the subtext there, I think, is very clear. He's saying that the trial is going to go ahead whether you are there or not, and if you are not there, then your absence will be interpreted as an admission of guilt. What if you got to fear if you are innocent? Yeah, and so Mary feels the force of this, and she spends a very restless night wondering what she should do. And finally, on the day that is scheduled for the start of the trial, she says, "Yes, okay, I will attend." And so she arrives in the courtroom shortly after nine o'clock in the morning. She's wearing a long black dress of made of velvet, a white cap, and a long white veil that covers her hair. And as she enters, everyone stands and takes off their hats. So it's a mark of respect to her as a queen, and she acknowledges these marks with a kind of slight decline of her head. But having said that, she is completely indignant that her chair is below Elizabeth's throne because it implies that she is subject to Elizabeth. So she has a kind of a bit of a stop about that. She does have three ladies in waiting attending her. These are the only women obviously in the courtroom, and these ladies in waiting are the only people who are sympathetic to Mary. Mary does not have a lawyer with her. She doesn't have a kind of barrister who is speaking on her behalf. And instead, she is completely surrounded by enemies and by two in particular, because just across from where she is sitting, so right in her eye line, next to the Lord Chancellor is Lord Burley, and at a further remove on the bench reserved for night. So this is the bench that is facing the throne of the empty throne of Elizabeth. It's a man that she had only met for the first time that very morning, and this is Sir Francis Walsinger. So she's looking at the two men who basically done more than anybody else to bring her to this point. And do you think she thinks that at that point, you know, that she's been told, if you're innocent, you've got nothing to fear. But do you think she thinks at this point when she sees them looking at her, when she sees that her chair is lower than Elizabeth's throne, all that stuff? Do you think she thinks, okay, this is a done deal? Like, this is a show trial I'm never going to get off? Or is she thinking I can still turn this around? It's hard to know. I imagine that probably in her heart, she knows that she would not have been brought to trial had the determination of her enemies not being to see her executed. But against that, she doesn't know what evidence she's going to be presented against her. And the whole way through, she has been insistent that, you know, she's put nothing to paper in her own handwriting. She's been very careful about that. And, you know, she must assume that people haven't seen the letters that she wrote to Babington. She doesn't know about this. No one's told her. So, you know, she probably has a kind of scintilla of hope. But I think the moment that the preceding start, she must have felt this kind of sickening cold hand of dread clamping at her heart because Thomas Phillips, you know, the the fair head young man that she's seen from her coach, he has prepared the evidence against her very diligently and very, very remorselously. And it is all laid out there for the commissioners to study. So, Babington's correspondence with Mary, Mary's correspondence with Babington and her various friends and allies abroad. And most faithfully of all that letter, which Phillips had termed the bloody letter and illustrated with the gallows. I mean, that is the letter that is going to destroy her. And when Mary realizes that all her correspondence had been penetrated by warcing them, I mean, she is stunned. At that point, surely she knows the game is up. And she sobs, you know, she is good at weeping on demand. And other times when she's not weeping, she goes very spiritedly on the attack. And she plays all her favourite cards. She says, you know, I'm not answerable for what people like Babington wrote to me. I had no influence on him whatsoever. She says that the letters attributed to her were not in her own handwriting. And she declares, can I be responsible for the criminal projects of a few desperate men, which they planned without my knowledge or participation? And she also makes sure to respond directly to the two men that she now appreciates are her two greatest foes. So, on the opening day of the trial, she accuses warcing them, I mean, correctly, of having tampered with her letters. That's exactly what warcing him and philips had done. And his response is a magnificent display of ambivalence. He says, I call God and all the world to witness that as a private person, I have done nothing unworthy of an honest man and a secretary of state, nothing unbefitting my duty. And as Stephen often puts it, this is a masterpiece of subtle word play that said everything and nothing at the same time. I mean, warcing them is such a terrifying man to have as your enemy, I think. What about Burley? He's also a great man. And she can front him directly, doesn't she? People may remember who listened to our first series on Mary Queen of Scots that when she arrived in England, she wrote to Burley and said, I hope that you will speak to me to the queen on my behalf. And it's evident from that letter that she had no idea how much Burley hated her and how hard he'd been working to destroy her. And it's as though now at her trial that she suddenly realized what Burley has been up to all these long years. And she kind of says to him, you are indeed my enemy, as though this is a blinding realization. And Burley's reply, yes, I am the enemy of the enemies of Queen Elizabeth. So she's clearly, you know, she, by day two, she really must know that she's, you know, she's staring at oblivion. And actually she has her sort of meltdown, doesn't she, at the end of day two? She just decides there's no reason for her to stay. I mean, there's nothing she can say or do that is going to change the verdict that is looming. And so she rises to her feet. She declares that she forgives the commissioners for what is clearly a charade, a show trial. And then amazingly, she crosses the room to where Walsingham is sitting and she has private words in his ear. And nobody hears what she says to him. But it is apparent to people watching that Walsingham is very angered by what Mary is telling him. And then once she's finished talking to Walsingham, she turns and addresses the entire commission again. And she insists one last time on her innocence, I place my cause in the hands of God. No speculation about what she said to Walsingham. How can we know? But why would it land to him? I mean, he's won. He's always about to win. I imagine she accused him of cheating, of fraudulent behaviour, cast aspersions on his honour. I would guess. Okay. So she's placed her cause in the hands of God. And what does God say? What does God decide? Well, God doesn't really, it isn't really very helpful because the verdict of guilty is duly brought in, actually not in fathering gay, but in the star chamber in Westminster. And it's delivered 10 days after the end of Mary's trial. And the reason for the delay is the inevitable one that Elizabeth doesn't know what to do. And delay and provocation is always Elizabeth's answer to insoluble puzzles, because she's still in agonies at the thought of Mary, who is an anointed queen, suffering execution. And if she suffers execution, then definitely this will bring war down on England. It will definitely mean that Philips Armada is sent against her kingdom. But also, there is the fact that Mary has been convicted under this act that had been brought in the year before, the act for the queen's safety. So if Mary is now executed, then Elizabeth's worry is that it will seem that Parliament has licensed it, and that therefore Parliament has the right to commit regicide. And this is something that Elizabeth doesn't want. And you know, in the long run, Mary's grandson, Charles I, is also going to be executed by Parliament. So her anxieties are not completely overwrought, but Dominic, you asked earlier. Elizabeth doesn't want Mary publicly executed, but does she want her kind of eliminated privately? And yes, that is absolutely what Elizabeth wants. And she does want Mary kind of removed in the way that unwanted royals throughout medieval history have traditionally been eliminated. So maybe, you know, she could be drowned in a butt of mumsy or suffocated with a pillow or, you know, a hot poker stuffed up her bum. I mean, whatever, all these kind of various methods that have been used to remove unwanted members of the royal family, but she needs someone to do it. And she is kind of expectant that someone will step up to the plate and answer her needs, because listeners may remember, back in 1584, large numbers of her loyal subjects, so the privy council members of Parliament, particularly loyal members of the general public had all signed something called a bond of association. And this bond had been deliberately targeted at Mary, and people who signed it had committed themselves should Mary ever be found guilty of plotting against Elizabeth to kill her. And essentially, it had formally committed them to a kind of lynch law. And this bond of association had been bundled into the Parliamentary Act. So, Elizabeth can say to people, well, this is now the law of the land. Why aren't people acting on it? And so this is why she is prevaricating even once the guilty verdict against Mary has been brought in. She's essentially hoping that one of the signatories to that bond of association will do what they have pledged to do, and quietly and silently kill Mary without Elizabeth having to sign her death warrant. What I don't understand is why, though, she, I mean, A. White's taken so long, I mean, why have we even got to this point? And B, you know, the sort of, oh, I hope that somebody because of the bond of association will privately kill Mary, you know, all this. Why didn't she two years ago say to Law Burley, can we not just get rid of please now? Like, you know, you must know poisonous crack on and do it, which the third style or getting rid of it with a second or getting rid of the Duke of Clarence or however, it's so easy to do. It's a great question and it's something that Mary Queen of Scots herself often pondered. So, back in the days when she was able to communicate with the French and Spanish ambassadors, she wrote to them and said, I think this is what's going to happen. I think I'm going to be poisoned. I'm going to be smothered by a pillow or whatever. This is what I suspect. But it doesn't, I think, you know, we've been casting the the privy council and the Protestant establishment in quite a dark light in this series. You know, they're practicing dirty tricks and operating under the radar. But they do, I think, have quite a principled sense that the operations of the law should proceed. They are, by definition, very devout Christians, and they don't want to just commit a murder below the radar. They think that justice should be seen to be done. And it's important for the reputation not just of the privy council, not just of English justice, but of their religion, that they are seen to be doing the right thing. And I think that that ultimately is the reason why. And so, this is why even as Elizabeth is digging her heels in still and saying, I'm not going to sign the death warrant, Berlion wascing him a busy scheming to try and force her hand. And so, first, they get Parliament to petition her for Mary's execution. And Elizabeth treats this with kind of icy contempt. And in the wake of this, Berlion then thinks, well, I'm going to have to unleash the dirty tricks here. And so, he reveals to Elizabeth the existence of yet another plot to assassinate her. And in fact, this plot is an old one. It had never gone anywhere. It had been foiled the year before, but Berlion had been kind of keeping it in reserve for just such an eventuality. And even as he presents Elizabeth with the news of this supposed plot against her, he also fabricates a rumor that Spanish troops have landed in Wales. And he goes to her and say, that it's terrible news, you know, they're marching on Cardiff or whatever. You should double your bodyguard because you are in mortal danger. And this does sufficiently alarm Elizabeth that at last, on the 1st of February, 1587, she takes the fateful step and she does sign the warrant for Mary's execution. But even now Elizabeth remains Elizabeth. She's signed, she signed this death warrant, but she doesn't want it used. She's still hoping that someone will get in there and kind of remove Mary, and it won't be in Elizabeth's name. And to this end, she has Walsingham, who is sick in bed at this time. Walsingham is often prostrated by on us. She has Walsingham right a letter to Paulett, who is still serving as Mary's jailer. He's moved with her to Father and Gay. Walsingham doesn't really want to do this, but he has no choice because Elizabeth has directly ordered him. So Walsingham writes to Paulett that Elizabeth is very disappointed that he is yet to live up to the vow that he had made when he signed the Bond of Association. And why is it Elizabeth demands to know that he has not yet, and I quote, found out some way to shorten the life of that queen. In other words, Mary, do it. And Paulett to do him credit, and I think this kind of shed lights on the question you were asking. Why don't they just bumper off? Paulett is appalled, and he replies to the queen, "God forbid that I should make so foul a shipwreck of my conscience, or leave so great a block to my poor posterity to shed blood without law or warrant." Yeah. Elizabeth is contemptuous. She dismisses Paulett as dainty, and she does not mean it's a compliment. I mean, Elizabeth is a very hard woman. But Paulett is a hard man, but he, his conscience, his faith, doesn't permit him to just go around bumping people off without the due course of law. And I think that that's the explanation for why Puritans and Protestants, they think it has to be done. It has to be done with God's approval, basically. But Burley now has the death warrant, and this is the weapon he needs. And even though Elizabeth has said don't yet use it, he just thinks, "Come on, let's crack on." And so he has a little sort of cabal, doesn't he? He gets some of the privy councillors to his house and they agree, "Yep, we're going to do this," and they send the warrant to Fatheringay. Yeah, so only the privy councillors who Burley is confident will back him in this, because they all know that they are going behind Elizabeth's back, and there is the risk of considerable trouble for them once the news reaches Elizabeth. But they all think the stakes are so high, we've got to take this step. And so the warrant is given to the clerk of the privy council, who is Walsyam's brother-in-law, Robert Beale, the guy who had been his secretary in the Saint-Batholomew's Day massacre in Paris. And Beale goes galloping northwards at top speed for Northamptonshire, and he's accompanied by two of the greatest peers in the realm. And this is the Earl of Kent, and the Earl of Schroesbury, and the Earl of Schroesbury is the Earl Marshall, so he's going to be the guy officially in charge of the execution, and Schroesbury hates it, because he had been Mary's jailer for 15 years, and he got on very well with Mary. He'd like Mary, and in fact he got on so well with her that Schroesbury's wife, the very formidable Bess of Hardwick, had suspected him of having an affair with Mary. And so the fact that he now has the supervisor execution of the Queen of Scots is a miserable thing for him. But he knows his duty, and so he's heading off to Fatheringay as well, and also traveling from London to Fatheringay is one last key participant, and this is a man who goes by the name, or perhaps the pseudonym, of Bull. And Walsingham, who had sourced this guy Bull, alerts Beale to his arrival, and Walsingham writes to Beale, his instrument is put in a trunk, and he passeth as a serving man, and the instrument is an axe, and Bull is the executioner. So by the evening of the 7th of February, everything is in place, isn't it? And this guy, Beale, Robert Beale, the clerk of the Privy Council, he leads a delegation, which has Schroesbury, it has the Earl of Kent, and it has the jailer Paulett, and he leads the delegation to Mary's Causes for this spectacular last confrontation. Yeah, and this time they do not remove their hats, and for the last time personally pulls down Mary's cloth of state, and Beale then reads out the warrant to Mary, and informs her that the following morning she will meet her death on the trapping block, and Mary greets the news with great courage that in no tears she maintains her composure, and she swears on the Bible that she is innocent, and she then requests the company of a Catholic priest for her last night, so that she can give her confession and be administered the last sacrament. But this request is refused, and the Earl of Kent does not hesitate to explain why. He says to Mary, "Your life would be the death of our religion, your death will be its life, and this I think is a foolish thing for him to have said," because it confirms Mary in her determination to die a martyr, so people who listen to the series we did last year on Mary will remember that although she's a Catholic she wasn't a particularly militant Catholic, but now she is preparing to step onto the great stage of her own death, and she decides that when she steps onto that stage, stage, she is going to be playing the role of a Catholic persecuted to death by Heretics for her faith. And so she sits up late into the night writing to her brother-in-law, Henry III of France, and this is the last letter that she will ever write. And she composes it very, very deliberately, very cleverly, with the aim of doing as much damage to Elizabeth and England on the international stage as she possibly can, so she writes to Henry. The Catholic faith and the assertion of my god-given right to the English crown are the two issues on which I am condemned, and yet I am not allowed to say that it is for the Catholic religion that I die, but for fear of interference with theirs. So that's one depth charge that she is laying, which will survive her death. And all night she has been plotting other gestures of defiance, and these other gestures of defiance will be unveiled the following morning, the 8th of February, the day of her death. She keeps her execution as waiting. Of course she does. She's a diva, she's the star of the show. She was never going to turn up on time. And it's only at nine, so an hour after she was meant to have appeared in the great hall that she turns up. And all night, Carpenters had been preparing the scene of execution, building the scaffold, draping the walls of the hall in black, draping the scaffold in the black. By the time Mary arrives, the hall is lined by Halpedeers. A crowd of people have been allowed into to watch the proceedings, and of course up on the scaffolder, the executioner, Bull is waiting with his assistant. And both men they wear black masks. They have long black gowns, and they have white aprons over those gowns, and Bull of course is holding his giant ax. Mary has dressed with great care and consideration for her final hour. As at her trial, she appears in the great hall dressed in a flowing gown of black velvet. She has a white veil, and she has a frill, a very delicate white lace at her throat. She's helped on to the scaffold by Paulette, her steer and formidable jala. And as he helps her up, Mary says to him, "This will be the last trouble I shall give you." And the most agreeable service you have ever done me. She walks across the stage, and she takes a seat where she is flanked by the elves of Kent and Shrewsbury, and Beale stepping forward once again reads out the warrant of execution. And then it's the turn of the preacher who has been chosen personally by Elizabeth for the occasion. This is a man called Robert Fletcher, who is the Dean of Peterborough, and in fact, is the father of John Fletcher, the dramatist, occasional collaborator with Shakespeare, and goodness, I mean, this is such a Shakespearean scene that the kind of the sense of tragedy about it is so strong. So Fletcher is giving his sermon, but Mary is having none of it. And first of all, she intimidates Fletcher into abandoning the sermon, and then as he begins to read his prayers, his Anglican prayers in English, Mary and the six women who are in attendance on her, they start answering these English prayers with prayers of their own, and these prayers are in the Latin of their own Catholic faith, and the voices of these seven women's drown the sound of Fletcher, and it's completely mortifying for him. And again, he is intimidated into silence, but Mary carries on. You know, I said she's a diva, she slips to her knees, and she pulls out a silver cross from her skirts, and she raises it, and then she begins to pray in English so that everyone present will understand what she's saying, and her prayers are for her enemies, for Elizabeth, and for England. And it's incredible theatre. Very embarrassing for her executioners, of course, but there's worse to come, isn't there? And this is about what she's wearing. Yes, so we said she dressed with great care. The time has come for her execution, and so her attendance prepare her for this chopping block by removing first her veil, and then her black outer garments, and I will read from Mattingley's account. We actually began our series on Mary Queen of Scots with exactly this reading, but it always bears re-quoting. So to quote Mattingley, "The black velvet gown fell below her knees revealing underbody's and petticoat of crimson silk, and she stepped forward suddenly, shockingly, in the colour of martyrdom, blood red from top to toe against the somber background, and all the assembled Protestants there go into complete meltdown, and they're so appalled by this stunt, this sartorial kind of kuda te art, that none of the official reports on Mary's death mention it, and it was left to Mary's attendance, the six Catholic women who were there with her on the scaffold, to publicise what Mary had done." So she's there in her, her scarlet underrobes, and she kisses her ladies farewell, and then she kneels down on the cushion that has been laid before the chopping block, and she allows her eyes to be covered by one of her attendants with a white corpus Christy cloth, and the fateful moment is now at hand, Mary lowers her throat onto the chopping block, but she continues to pray in Latin, bullstep forwards, he raises his axe, and he brings it swinging down, and it crashes not onto Mary's neck, but onto the back of her head, and she cries out in agony, Lord Jesus, receive my soul, and then comes a second blow, and this time it is directly onto the neck, but even now the the blow isn't a clean one, and bull has to use the blade of the axe, rather like a cleaver to hack and saw the head clean off, and even now, even in death, Mary still has two surprises in wait for her killers, so when bull steps forward, picks up the severed head to exhibit it before the assemble crowd and proclaim the death of a traitor, this is what executioners are always obliged to do, he lifts up the head and he finds himself holding nothing but hair, and Mary's actual head shrunken and withered and gray has rolled to the edge of the scaffold, and it takes the spectators in the hall a few seconds to realize and work out what has happened, Mary had been wearing a wig, and that's embarrassing enough, but then there is one final embarrassment, because once Mary's sobbing ladies have been removed to their quarters, and the executioners bend down beside Mary's corpse to disrobe it, again complete mortification, because concealed in Mary's skirts all along has been her favourite dog, a Skyteria, and this dog once detected, and it lies there amid the gore of the dog's mistress, and it howls piteously, and again to quote mattingly, Mary Stewart had always known how to embarrass her enemies, and not just to embarrass them, but to do them the maximum harm, well this is the question isn't it, because now we've come to this climactic moment, the moment that the whole series has been building towards, Elizabeth had one of the reasons she didn't want to execute Mary Queen of Scots was she knew that it would set off a firestorm of protest in Catholic Europe, and it would make England even more of a rogue state as viewed from Madrid, for example, and this execution is going to have extraordinarily tumultuous and fearful consequences, isn't it, for England and this struggle with the Spanish? It absolutely is, because 1588, which is the year that follows Mary's execution, is going to be the year that Philip of Spain attempts to invade England, to overthrow Elizabeth the heretic queen, once and for all, to restore this protestant rogue state as you put it, to papal supremacy, to Catholicism, because 1588 is going to be the year of the Spanish Armada. So much to look forward to, but we will be coming to the Spanish Armada much later, because we will be changing the record a little bit next week, but only a little bit, because we'll still be, there'll still be some Catholic versus Protestants, and a depressive versus Catholic action, because we will be coming much further forward in time, we'll be coming to Belfast in the 1960s for the beginning of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. And of course, Restless History Club members will be able to get all that serious straight away on Monday. If you want to join the Restless History Club, the only way to get the full range of quite extraordinary benefits is to sign up at therestlesshistory.com. And of course, there will be, for those people who subscribe to the free newsletter, there'll be all kinds of interesting things in the newsletter. I tell you one thing, I'd love the newsletter to resolve, how did the dogs stay quiet for so long and undetected? You know, when she's kneeling down, someone's hacking her to her head, and the dog is still not moving, not barking, not whimpering, not making any indication of its presence, that is one of the great questions of history, Tom. I imagine that she had a little to fly biscuits in one of the pockets of her petty coats. That's my thesis. - Well, if the newsletter could address that, I personally would be very, very happy. Right, on that bombshell, we'll be back next week with Northern Ireland and Tom, thank you so much for that. Absolutely, Titanic series, a veritable tour de force. Goodbye, bye-bye. (upbeat music) Hi everybody, Dominic again. Now here is the clip that we promised you from our show, The Book Club, which talks about Ernest Hemingway's book for whom the bell tolls, and specifically the history of the Spanish Civil War. Spain has not been involved in the First World War at all. It's been a backwater, basically. It's been really politically turbulent. There is a king, it's normally a parliamentary system. Most of Spain is untouched by the modern world. So it feels like there's these huge estates called the Latifundia, which go back to the Roman periods. - I found this extraordinary. I had no idea until I saw the reading up for the subject. - Well, this is true of Spain and Portugal, actually. They would have absolutely gigantic rural estates. Run by landowners, almost kind of feudal system. The peasants are enthralled to the landowner and to the church and whatnot. There are parts of Spain that have industrialized the Basque Country, the North and Catalonia, but those are obviously places with separatist movements. So Spain feels very fractured. And there's lots of labor unrest. There's a big anarchist movement. There is a socialist movement. There's a communist party. In the 20s, there was a coup and a general talk power called General Miguel Primo de Rivera under the king. But that didn't really work out. They brought back democracy at the beginning of the 1930s, but it's incredibly polarised and unstable between right and left. There are terrible strikes. So, for example, in the North in 1935, there are assassinations. There are paramilitary movements and whatnot. The son of the previous dictator, Primo de Rivera, sets up a little fascist party called the Falanche, which actually sort of gives its name really too. - Yeah. - It's then co-opted by the rights, by the conservatives who win the Spanish Civil War. I mean, whether they're really fascists or whether they're just basically using the fascist label as an interesting question. Right, so it all comes to head in 1936. There's an election at the beginning of the year, which means that a popular front, which is a kind of left-wing alliance of liberals, socialists, you know, to the left-wing parties. Some of the separatists do more nationalist groups from the various like the Bass Control Catalonia. They come to power. And there's a lot of social unrest because they want to push through radical changes and the right don't like that. And in July 1936, the army launches right-wing elements within the army launch at coup. The reason the Spanish Civil War happens is the coup doesn't fully work. So basically, the trade unions, the big cities in Madrid, Barcelona, and so on, stay loyal to the elected government. So Spain is divided between the rebels, the coup people in the army, and their allies who are often like big land owners, the Catholic church and so on, who want to defend the status quo. They've got half the country, often kind of rural areas, more conservative and so on. But the big cities and Catalonia and so on, so in Madrid, Barcelona, places like that, they stay loyal to the elected government. So on the one hand, you have what are called the nationalists. And these are the forces of the right, the army, the coup lotters and so on. Effectively from day one, they have very, very strong international backing from Mussolini in Italy and then Hitler in Germany. And then on the left, you have the elected government who are the Republicans. And they get help eventually from the Soviet Union, which is something of a poison chalice. And they do appeal to Britain and France for help where they don't really get it. And they have help from foreign volunteers. And this war becomes incredibly bitter and incredibly bloody. I mean, this is always the way with civil wars because people feel it's an existential struggle. The future of their country is at stake. They come to believe their neighbors, the people in the next town, the landowners or the priests or the anarchists or whoever, are going to kill them in their families. So we've got to kill them first. People in some places, there are horrendous, horrendous, sadistic massacres and things. I think they found something like, at the end of, maybe start of the 21st century or something, that Spain had the highest number of mass graves off to Cambodia. So if you want to hear the full episode, just go to Apple, Loss, Spotify or YouTube and search for the book club. And there it is.