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

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Mary Queen of Scots letter

3:50more.

4:01The 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 of their design, I may be suddenly transported out of this place, and that all your forces in the same time beyond the field to meet me, as we await the arrival of the foreign aid, which then must be hastened with all diligence. So that is an extract from one of the most consequential letters in all

4:33British 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 Anthony Babington. And at

5:03the end of the letter, there was a PS which read as follows, fail not to burn this present quickly. And 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

5:33cousin, 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, Anthony Babington,

6:11had 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, you know, 17 days to write her reply, she has been mulling over what she should say, mulling it over and over in

6:46her mind. But now at last, she has made up her mind. And that's the significance of that otherwise kind of enigmatic phrase, then shall it be time to set the six gentlemen to work. In other words, get the assassination squad out there. Let them kill Elizabeth. So this is the sixth episode that we've done in this series on the sort of the golden age of Elizabeth I, the rivalry with Spain, the kind of the war in the shadows, but also the war at sea

7:17with Sir Francis Drake and all of this. And 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, which listeners can look up. We did that in 2025 if they're interested. Let's 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

7:54far 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, 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.

8:31And two of Elizabeth's counsellors 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 counsellors are William Cecil, Lord 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

9:04spider 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

9:37the Throckmorton plot named after the guy who gets captured and is the fall 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 foreign backing that gives Walsingham and everyone on Elizabeth's Privy Council the kind of the heebie-jeebies. And now in 1586, that 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

10:10are 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. Privateers are raiding Spain's holdings in the New World, led by the greatest priveteer of them all, 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

10:46and Armada. So it's no surprise that Lord Burgling, or Cecilus he used to be, and Sir Francis Walsingham, 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

11:20will 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

11:51courses. So to quote Garrett Mattingly, 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

12:23threat 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 Walsingham, as you said, this is a complete nightmare.

12:54Can 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 I's 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'd have 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 beck and call of the Virgin Queen, as we will see in due course. But for now, I mean, conversely, for Burley and

13:26Walsingham, having her publicly executed ticks all kinds of boxes. You know, it very publicly removes her, it brands her 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

13:57will be the best that they can hope for. The worst is the complete triumph of potpourri 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 consummate 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,

14:33any 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 Walsingham as the head of intelligence to find sufficient evidence against Mary, evidence that is watertight enough to satisfy

15:10a 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 Walsingham and Burley, to Mary herself. So, you know, when people think about Mary, Queen of Scots, they think about Saoirse Ronan playing her in the film, right? They think about this elfin, helpless, victim, very beautiful, pale, all of this. In reality, her vibe is very different

15:48now. I mean, it's very ungallant for us to say so, Tom, and maybe some listeners may say we're not in a position to say this, but we'll say it anyway, because that's the kind of people we are. Certainly I am. She slightly lets 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 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

16:22receiving updates on the state of her health. And he's being told that Mary's legs are swollen and indeed, to quote, are 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 don't like constipation, which Mary is also suffering from. So here's another report. Oft times by reason of great pains through windy matter ascending unto 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 not these ailments, the weight gain, the stoop shoulders,

16:57they'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 Saoirse Ronan, Saoirse Ronan galloping around on a horse firing pistols. That was what Mary did as a queen. She was a very active woman. But now she's not. She's allowed to go riding at most once or twice a month. And even when

17:29she rides in a coach, she's escorted by a squad of musketeers because Walsingham is petrified that, 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

18:00royal 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 Throckmorton plot. Our conditions are a little bit

18:33harsher than the high living of previous years, right? So she's, so how many meals a day is she down to now? Surely no longer 64 a day. It's a meager 20. 20. And she has to rub by 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,

19:05but 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 to 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, it will 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 jailer comes in and hares it down. And the name of this jailer is Sir Ammius

19:36Powlett. And he is a very kind of hard-nosed, granite-faced Puritan. And he's been given the job of serving as Mary's jailer because unlike everyone else who has been appointed to that job, Powlett can be absolutely relied upon not to succumb to Mary's charm, which remains considerable. Powlett loathes Mary as a kind of, as Jezebel, as a papist, and as a Scot with no pity at all of

20:08English purses. I think a tremendous phrase. Yeah. He sounds like a great man. Um, but actually she doesn't like him at all, does she? She, what'd she call him? One of the most whimsical and austere persons whom I've ever known. And in a word, fitter for a jail of criminals. It's odd to 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 why they've done this. They don't want her plotting with Jesuits and with bad people of various kinds

20:40against England. And you can understand why they want to, um, kind of exert a much greater control over her in the wake of, um, all these kind of various plots. And as you say, the harshest restrictions concern her contacts with the outside world. You know, she's not allowed to know what is going on beyond the moats of her, this manor house that is her prison. And so she is completely desperate to reestablish contact with sympathizers, to know what prospects there are for her being released from prison and perhaps what prospects there are for, um, her to, to win the throne of

21:16England, which she is now starting to, you know, to recognize is the only way she's ever going to escape this form of imprisonment. But, you know, how is she to do this? Because Paulette 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, they will be subjected to strip searches. So the situation

21:49looks 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

22:24Staffordshire. He's Catholic. And he's actually a kinsman of Francis Throckmorton, who had been implicated in the previous plot to set Mary 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 deacon 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

22:57embassy in London. But obviously his real ambition is to get letters from the French embassy to Mary in Chartley Manor. And he has come up with what he thinks is a brilliant wheeze that will enable him to do it. And this is like a kind of children's book on spy craft. The kind of thing you could imagine, I don't know, Ian in Blyton or someone coming up with. So Gifford has gone to the local brewer who

23:29supplies 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

24:05to 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 Babington, with his kind of plot for assassinating Elizabeth with 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

24:36going 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 riding, but she can go out in her carriage. And so this is

25:10what 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 haired 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 allusion to the six gentlemen who are plotting to kill Elizabeth

25:42is 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

26:13youngish 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

26:44Walsingham. 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 ablest. So in addition to being the greatest code breaker, the greatest cipher breaker in Walsingham's employ, he is also the best handler

27:17of 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 brewer. So basically, you know, he's holding

27:48all 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 spy agency. These people are brilliant, Tom, and she has

28:22walked right into it. I admire them for this. I mean, she has, but you know, she has no choices. I think as 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 say, 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 tenterhooks 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

28:53that'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, his heart must have been pounding and he reads it through and he is not disappointed by what he finds. He deciphers 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

29:27Walsingham, 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, 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

Mary's arrest at Chartley

29:55set in motion to set her free from her prison. So three and a half weeks later, it's the 11th of August. Mary, of course, knows nothing of this and her jailer, the whimsical and austere, Mr. Paulette, 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 to a degree. So she gets on, on, on a horse for what is going to prove

30:29the last horse ride that she will ever take. And she, she gallops out with Paulette into the, 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. And 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

31:05then 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 forgery that Wilsingham and Phillips had concocted

31:37between 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'd been, you know, bang 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,

32:08and 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 Tottenham 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 salutary as they possibly could. And once their kind of maimed and bleeding corpses lay spread-eagled on the scaffold,

32:41they 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 Chartley 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

33:13with clothes, with furnishings, with assorted luxuries. Because even in these dire straits, Mary remains what she has always been, a complete diva. And it takes her days to travel the 80 miles from Chartley 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 Fotheringay Castle.

33:45We all know what's coming next. Well, at least a lot of us do. And even if you don't, 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.

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36:20This episode is brought to you by WISE. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate, an easy transfer and no surprises along the way. WISE keeps things simple. WISE is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than 160 countries and with over 40 currencies.

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37:24One of them was having to write the notes for a series about the First World War in 1915. It would have been so easy to be overwhelmed by that, like an Italian soldier trudging up a limestone hill towards Austrian guns. But whereas the Italians often felt alone, I knew that I always had you. And that was very special. You did, Dominic. And if I'd had to do it on my own, I'd have probably been daunted. And the good news is that when you need help, there's Claude. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you.

37:58So whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at claude.ai slash restishistory. That's claude.ai slash restishistory.

38:24Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Mary, Queen of Scots, has just arrived at Fotheringay Castle. Now, this is the one thing that Fotheringay Castle is really known for. And it's the sort of detail that everybody always remembers. Oh, yeah, she, you know, the last chapter of her life is at Fotheringay. But actually, I've got no sense of, like, what Fotheringay looks like. I don't really have that much of a sense of where it is. It's Northamptonshire, isn't it? So it's in the sort of slightly nondescript 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.

38:55I mean, Fotheringay 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 Richard III, 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 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.

39:27So that helps as well. The castle itself is on a kind of raised hill. Like Chartley Manor, it has a double moat. Unlike Chartley Manor, it has very thick walls, a very imposing gateway, a colossal kind of Norman 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 Fotheringay as Mary's place of imprisonment. Because Fotheringay, as well as fortifications, also has a great sprawling complex of staterooms.

40:00And these include a great hall, so capable of containing large numbers of people. And on the first floor of these staterooms, 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.

40:31But 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 centre of the room. And then around that table, there are three benches. And one of them is facing the kind of the empty throne at the opposite end of the room.

41:03And the other two are set at right angles to it. So kind of framing the space in which the table had been set. Essentially, there's the throne and then there are kind of 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 barons and viscounts and earls, the leading figures in the state. Walsingham is there, obviously. So, too, is Sir Christopher Hatton, Elizabeth's great favourite,

41:36the 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.

42:09To 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 I. 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, is the report.

42:43So, she's pretty objured. 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 persuade her otherwise. But she just seems completely obdurate. And she tells Burley, in very memorable terms, look to your consciences and remember that the theatre of the whole world is wider than the Kingdom of England.

43:14But the guy who ultimately is able to persuade her is the very fluent and plausible Sir Christopher Hatton. 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 have you got to fear if you're innocent? Yeah. And so, Mary feels the force of this and she spends a very restless night wondering what she should do.

43:46And 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 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 incline of her head.

44:17But 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 strop 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.

44:47Because just across from where she is sitting, so right in her eyeline, next to the Lord Chancellor is Lord Burley. And at a further remove on the bench reserve for night, so this is the bench that is facing the throne of, the empty throne of Elizabeth, is a man that she had only met for the first time that very morning. And this is Sir Francis Walsingham. So, she's looking at the two men who have basically done more than anybody else to bring her to this point. And do you think she thinks at that point, you know, that she's been told, if you're innocent, you've got nothing to fear.

45:21But 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 and 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 been to see her executed. But against that, she doesn't know what evidence is going to be presented against her.

45:52And 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 proceedings start, she must have felt this kind of sickening, cold hand of dread clamping at her heart. Because Thomas Phillips, you know, the fair-haired young man that she'd seen from her coach, he has prepared the evidence against her very diligently and very, very remorselessly.

46:34And 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 fatefully 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 realises that all her correspondence had been penetrated by Walsingham, I mean, she is stunned.

47:06At 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?

47:44And 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 Walsingham, I mean, correctly, of having tampered with her letters. That's exactly what Walsingham and Phillips 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.

48:18And as Stephen Orford puts it, this is a masterpiece of subtle wordplay that said everything and nothing at the same time. I mean, Walsingham is such a terrifying man to have as your enemy, I think. What about Burley? He's also a great man. And she confronts 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 be my, you know, 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.

48:50And it's as though now at her trial that she suddenly realised 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 realisation. 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.

49:22And actually, she has a 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, 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.

49:53But 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 anger him? I mean, he's won. He's always about to win. I imagine she, she accused him of cheating, of, of fraudulent behavior, cast aspersions on his honor, I would guess.

50:26Okay. 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, isn't really very helpful because the verdict of guilty is duly brought in, actually not in Fotheringay, 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 in prevarication 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.

51:08And if she suffers execution, then definitely this will bring war down on England. It will definitely mean that Philip's 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.

51:40And, 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.

52:13So maybe, you know, she could be drowned in a butt of Marmsy 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.

52:48And 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.

53:23She'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, why it'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 Lord Burley, can we not just get rid of police now?

53:57Like, you know, you must know poisoners. Crack on and do it. Richard III style, or getting rid of Edward II, or getting rid of the Duke of Clarence, or whoever. 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 Privy Council and the Protestant establishment in quite a dark light in this series.

54:31You 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.

55:06And 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, Burley and Walsingham are 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, Burley 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.

55:39And in fact, this plot is an old one. It had never gone anywhere. It had been foiled the year before. But Burley 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 rumour that Spanish troops have landed in Wales. And he goes to her and say, 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.

56:18But even now, Elizabeth remains Elizabeth. She's 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 illness. She has Walsingham write a letter to Paulette, who is still serving as Mary's jailer.

56:48He's moved with her to Fotheringay. Walsingham really doesn't want to do this, but he has no choice because Elizabeth has directly ordered him. So Walsingham writes to Paulette 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 Paulette, to do him credit, and I think this kind of shed lights on the question you were asking, why don't they just bump her off?

57:20Paulette 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 blot to my poor posterity, to shed blood without law or warrant. Elizabeth is contemptuous. She dismisses Paulette as dainty. And she does not mean it as a compliment. I mean, Elizabeth is a very hard woman. But, you know, Paulette is a hard man, but he, you know, his conscience, his faith doesn't permit him to just go around bumping people off without the due course of law.

57:53And I think that that's the explanation for why Puritans and Protestants, they think it has to be done, you know, 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 Fotheringhay. Yeah, so only the privy councillors whom 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.

58:33But 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 Walsingham's brother-in-law, Robert Beale, the guy who had been his secretary in the St. Bartholomew'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 Shrewsbury, and the Earl of Shrewsbury is the Earl Marshal, so he's going to be the guy officially in charge of the execution.

59:05And Shrewsbury hates it, because he had been Mary's jailer for 15 years, and he got on very well with Mary. He liked Mary, and in fact he got on so well with her, that Shrewsbury'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 to supervise the execution of the Queen of Scots is a miserable thing for him. But he knows his duty, and so he's heading off to Fotheringay as well. And also travelling from London to Fotheringay is one last key participant, and this is a man who goes by the name or perhaps the pseudonym of Bull.

59:42And 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 Shrewsbury, it has the Earl of Kent, and it has the jailer, Portet,

1:00:16and he leads the delegation to Mary's quarters 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 chopping block. And Mary greets the news with great courage, there are no tears. She maintains her composure, and she swears on the Bible that she is innocent,

1:00:50and 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.

1:01:26So 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, 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,

1:02:00and 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, So that's one depth charge that she is laying, which will survive her death.

1:02:37And she, 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 executioners 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 9, 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,

1:03:12draping the walls of the hall in black, draping the scaffold in the black. By the time Mary arrives, the hall is lined by halberdiers. A crowd of people have been allowed in 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.

1:03:42And Bull, of course, is holding his giant axe. 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 of very delicate white lace at her throat. She's helped onto the scaffold by Paulette, her austere and formidable jailer.

1:04:13And as he helps her up, Mary says to him, And 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 earls 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.

1:04:49And goodness, I mean, this is such a Shakespearean scene. 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.

1:05:20And these prayers are in the Latin of their own Catholic faith. And the voices of these seven women's drowned 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.

1:05:50And 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. Yeah. So we said she dressed with great care. The time has come for her execution. And so her attendants prepare her for the chopping block by removing first her veil and then her black outer garments. And I will read from Mattingly's account.

1:06:22We actually began our series on Mary, Queen of Scots with exactly this reading, but it always bears re-quoting. So to quote Mattingly, the black velvet gown fell below her knees, revealing underbodies and petticoat of crimson silk. And she stepped forward suddenly, shockingly, in the colour of martyrdom, blood red from top to toe against the sombre background. And all the assembled Protestants there go into complete meltdown.

1:06:52And they're so appalled by this stunt, this sartorial kind of coup de théâtre, that none of the official reports on Mary's death mention it. And it was left to Mary's attendants, the six Catholic women who were there with her on the scaffold, to publicise what Mary had done. So she's there in her scarlet under robes and she kisses her lady's 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 Christi cloth.

1:07:25And the fateful moment is now at hand. Mary lowers her throat onto the chopping block, but she continues to pray in Latin. Bull stepped 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 blow isn't a clean one.

1:07:58And 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 assembled 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 grey, has rolled to the edge of the scaffold.

1:08:39And it takes the spectators in the hall a few seconds to realise and work out what has happened. Mary had been wearing a wig. And that's embarrassing enough. Yeah. 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 Sky Terrier.

1:09:12And 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.

1:09:54And this execution is going to have extraordinarily tumultuous and fearful consequences, isn't it, for England in 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.

1:10:25To 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 there'll still be some Catholic versus Protestant, and indeed, Catholic action, because we will be coming much further forward in time.

1:10:58We'll be coming to Belfast in the 1960s for the beginning of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. And, of course, Rest is History Club members will be able to get all that series straight away on Monday. If you want to join the Rest is History Club, the only way to get the full range of quite extraordinary benefits is to sign up at therestishistory.com. And, of course, there will be, for those people who subscribe to the free newsletter, there will be all kinds of interesting things in the newsletter. I'll tell you one thing I would love the newsletter to resolve. How did the dog stay quiet for so long and undetected?

1:11:32You know, when she's kneeling down, someone's hacking at 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 Holland. I imagine that she had a little supply of biscuits in one of the pockets of her petticoats. 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.

1:12:07Goodbye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

1:12:16The two-week pay period, invented in 1938, and still making us wait until daily pay, where everyone can access their money on demand. This is the future of pay. Learn more at dailypay.com. Transfer fee may apply. I see you. Avatar Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney+. It's the film critics are calling the best Avatar yet. Go, go, go, go! A true epic and completely jaw-dropping. This is the only purest thing in this world.

1:12:47Return to Pandora on Disney+. It will be an adventure for the whole family. And watch the Oscar-winning phenomenon at home. This is sick!

1:12:58Avatar Fire and Ash, now streaming on Disney+. Rated PG-13.