Who really killed Mary, Queen of Scots?

History has pitched them as bitter rivals, but a thrilling new letter written by Elizabeth I in 1584 for the cousin she later executed changes everything we think we know about these two powerful queens.

- JULIET RIEDEN

It was 2010 when Aussieborn Cambridge University historian John Guy took the phone call that would rock his world. On the line was Sotheby’s in London. The famed auction house had just been given a cache of newly discovered Queen Elizabeth I documents that they thought the Tudor expert might like to peruse before they went under the hammer. “Intrigued, I hurried down to New Bond Street. Breathtakingly, 43 documents in pristine condition, more than half signed by Elizabeth or her leading courtiers, were laid out on the desk,” John tells me with renewed excitement. He had no expectations but what he found was explosive.

“The rules were the usual ones in these circumstances: no notes, no photos, as these were properties up for sale. All shed fresh light on the penultimate phase of Mary’s 19-year imprisonment in England, many illustrating a mounting obsession over the possibility of her escape, as the threat of foreign invasion grew. But one thrilling letter changes our view of history.”

John is talking about royal cousins Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland before her forced abdication in 1567, and Queen Elizabeth I, daughter of King Henry VIII and the later-beheaded Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth ruled England from 1558 to her death in 1603 and Mary’s challenge for the throne made her a threat to her cousin, a rivalry that ultimately led to her execution.

The mystery of what really happened between these two powerful female leaders, resulting in Mary’s horrific end (according to an eyewitness account Mary’s lips continued to quiver for “a quarter of an hour” on her decapitated head after a rather botched beheading), has fuelled histories, biographies, plays, films and literature.