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Arguments for an Execution: Queen Elizabeth's “White Paper” and Lord Burghley's “Blue Pencil”

1992; Appalachian State University; Volume: 24; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/4050668

2326-1242

Allison Heisch,

American Constitutional Law and Politics

On the morning of 8 February 1587 (n.s.) Mary Stuart was executed at Fotheringay Castle in Northampton for her complicity in the Babington Plot—the last of the great conspiracies to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I and to place her distant cousin Mary on the English throne in order to re-establish England as a Catholic state. Particularly because of remarks Queen Elizabeth allegedly made to William Davison, to whom the execution warrant was entrusted, nearly every modern historian who has written about the trial and death of Mary Stuart has speculated about the possibility that Queen Elizabeth, particularly in the days immediately preceding Mary's beheading, considered assassination of her cousin as a politic alternative to the axe. Although Elizabeth's chief councillor, Lord Burghley, wished to proceed with what (at least publicly) he regarded as a legal activity, it has not been at all points clear how he was able to persuade the queen to take the steps necessary to accomplish the execution; because Mary was her relative, because she was female, because the doctrine of Divine Right of Kings (to which Elizabeth frequently resorted as proof of her own authority) specified that monarchs were subject to God's judgment alone (and not civil law), and finally, because of the foreign policy implications of executing a woman who was French, Queen of Scotland, near heir to the English throne, and a devout Catholic, Elizabeth hesitated to proceed.