Her Dog Was Hiding Under Her Skirts… What REALLY Happened at the Execution of Mary Queen of Scots

The great hall at Fotheringhay has been hung in black, and a great fire is roaring in the fireplace. A lame 44-year-old queen takes off her black gown to show crimson underneath, and down in the folds of her skirts, something is moving. This is what really happened at the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, on 8 February 1587. From the beer-barrel trap at Chartley, where Walsingham and his code breaker Thomas Phelippes read every letter she wrote, to the trial before an empty chair, the warrant Elizabeth I signed and then disowned, and the last night when Mary wrote to Henri III of France at 2 in the morning. Then the morning itself: the Dean's sermon, the 2 blows by the English count and 3 by her physician's, the wig, the grey hair, and the little dog that would not leave her. And the part almost nobody tells: the embalmed body sealed in lead and left for nearly 6 months, the coffin that split in the summer heat, the night funeral at Peterborough Cathedral, the ruin of William Davison, and her son James VI and I moving her to Westminster Abbey in 1612. Traitor or trapped queen? Tell us your verdict, and where you're watching from. Subscribe for the next royal deathbed story, the secrets and betrayals behind how kings and queens really died. For 19 years she begged to stand in the same room as Elizabeth, and Elizabeth never once let her. Now they lie in the same chapel, a few steps apart, and they will never be parted. #MaryQueenOfScots #Tudors #RoyalHistory