Into the lion's den
On 16 May 1568, Mary Queen of Scots crossed the Solway Firth in a fishing boat and landed at Workington in Cumberland. She had fled Scotland after her defeat at the Battle of Langside three days earlier, riding sixty miles south through Galloway with a small band of followers. She was twenty-five years old, had been queen of Scotland since she was six days old, and she would never see her homeland again.
Mary's decision to seek refuge in England was born of desperation and a fatal misreading of her cousin Elizabeth I's character. Mary believed that Elizabeth, as a fellow queen and kinswoman, would help her regain her Scottish throne. She wrote to Elizabeth from Carlisle, pleading for an audience and military support. The letter was eloquent, desperate, and ultimately futile. Elizabeth had no intention of helping a Catholic rival who had a strong claim to the English throne.
Elizabeth faced an impossible dilemma. She could not support Mary's restoration — that would mean backing a Catholic queen against a Protestant regent, alienating her own Protestant allies. She could not send Mary back to Scotland — the Scots would likely execute her. She could not let Mary leave for France — the French would use her as a weapon against England. And she could not allow Mary to come to court — her mere presence would become a magnet for Catholic plotters. Elizabeth's solution was to keep Mary confined, moving her between a succession of remote English houses and castles: Bolton, Tutbury, Wingfield, Chatsworth, Sheffield, Chartley, and finally Fotheringhay.
The imprisonment lasted nineteen years. Mary aged, her health deteriorated, and her legendary beauty faded. But she never lost her ability to attract devotion and conspiracy. Plot after plot swirled around her — the Ridolfi Plot, the Throckmorton Plot, and finally the Babington Plot of 1586, which gave Elizabeth the pretext she needed. Mary was tried, convicted of treason, and executed at Fotheringhay on 8 February 1587. The woman who had crossed the Solway expecting sanctuary found instead the longest and most famous imprisonment in British royal history.