Fotheringhay Castle

[laughs] Yeah

When Mary, Queen of Scots, was executed at Fotheringhay Castle on the 8th of February 1587, the executioners began removing her clothing after her death, sorting out her body.

Um, and her ladies, the executioner and her ladies.

What was discovered?

But what is the answer, asked a voice at which Wogan started.

The answer, replied the Countess, is Mary, Queen of Scots, who was most unjustly imprisoned in Fotheringay.

And she tore the paper into tiny pieces.

Wogan turned towards the voice which had so startled him and saw the gossamer lady whom he had befriended on the road from Florence.

The building is ancient.

Parts of it are associated with the old Fotheringhay Castle.

And this is where the story of Mary Queen of Scots enters the picture.

Mary was imprisoned at Fotheringhay and on the 8th February 1587 she was executed there.

At last, her resolve hardened.

"If it must be," she said, "then let it be done not by my hand, but by the law." On the 8th of February 1587, Mary was led to the scaffold at Fotheringhay Castle.

Witnesses described her as serene, robed in crimson, the color of martyrdom.

She spoke of faith and forgiveness, then knelt, her lips murmuring a prayer.

In the end, she signed.

The warrant went forth.

On the morning of the 8th of February, 1587, Mary Stuart was led into the Great Hall of Fotheringhay Castle.

Dressed in scarlet, the color of martyrdom, she walked with steady dignity to the block.

She can save her life if, and this is the great condition, if she will confess her guilt, and in so doing, throw that mantle of guilt over the whole of the apostolic faith.

Here in the Great Hall of Fotheringhay Castle, assembled on all sides of the scaffold that is like a small stage whose principal property is a plain wooden block shrouded in black velvet, there are about 200 of the nobility of this realm.

February 8th, 1587, Fotheringhay Castle, England.

You are there.

In the face of death, will Mary, Queen of Scots, sacrifice her head to save the face of her church? The woman held in her hand the immediate destiny of two great forces met in a life-and-death struggle for world power.

You Are There is based on authentic historical fact and quotations.

And now-

In plain view of a scaffold in Fotheringhay Castle and John Daly

Read for LibriVox.org. Dear to the loves and to the graces vowed, The Queen drew back the wimple that she wore; And to the throng that on the Cumbrian shore Her landing hailed, how touchingly she bowed! And like a star that from a heavy cloud Of pine-tree foliage poised in air forth darts, When a soft summer gale at evening parts The gloom that did its loveliness enshroud, She smiled.

But Time, the old Saturnian Seer, Sighed on the wing as her foot pressed the strand, With step prelusive to a long array Of woes and degradations hand in hand: Weeping Captivity, and shuddering Fear, Still by the ensanguined block of Fotheringay.

End of poem.

This recording is in the public domain.

This imprudent and desperate attempt delighted Elizabeth, for, according to the letter of the law, it finally gave her rival's life into her hand.

Orders were immediately given to Sir Amyas Paulet to seize the prisoner's paper and to move her to Fotheringay Castle.

The jailer then, hypocritically relaxing his usual severity, suggested to Mary Stuart that she should go riding, under the pretext that she had need of an airing.

The poor prisoner, who for three years had only seen the country through her prison bars, joyfully accepted, and left Tutbury between two guards, mounted for greater security on a horse whose feet were hobbled.

These two guards took her to Fotheringay Castle, her new habitation, where she found the apartment she was to lodge in already hung in black.

Mary Stuart had entered alive into her tomb.

As to Babington and his accomplices, they had already been beheaded.

Not till 1863 was the inventory of 1566 discovered in 1854 published for the Bannatyne Club by Dr. Joseph Robertson.

Turning to the inventory, we read of a valuable present made by David Rizzio to Mary, a tortoise of rubies, which she kept till her death, for it appears in a list made after her execution at Fotheringay.

The murdered David Rizzio left a brother Joseph.

Him the queen made her secretary and in her will of 1566 mentions him thus.