Our Scotland - www.our-scotland.org

Jimbo · This is Ma' Life! Joined: 18 Feb 2007 Posts: 623

Blackleaf wrote...

She wasn't murdered. She was executed by the Queen of England, Elizabeth I, for treason because she plotted against her. She also may have murdered her husband..... <quote.

She seemed like a nasty piece of work. <quote.

This is the kind of non-history type history that I would expect to be taught to primary 5 pupils by a propagandist working on behalf of a government trying to assimilate children into their system from an early age (Your history is not worth reading. Let me tell you about Agincourt, type of thing). Not the kind of thing you would expect from someone who pretends to a serious historical bent.

Forty five years of history wrapped up in 3 or 4 paragraphs. Wonderful. Antonia Fraser could have saved herself 712 pages and just left it to you to pass on to us the full story summarised by the comment 'She seemed like a nasty piece of work.' You made this assumption after a few paragraphs? Great work. Try reading the full story

That Mary was naive and lacked statecraft there is probably no doubt. She was brought up in the French court wrapped in cotton wool and brought out from time to time to be used like a puppet from an early age by unscrupulous courtiers and politicians of the time to further their own agendas then sent back to her frivolities until she was needed again. She came home to Scotland for more of the same from men inured in statecraft and intrigue.

That she was set up by Elizabeth, Walsingham and Co there is no doubt.
Like Wallace, she was killed out of convenience to save further embarrassment and/or problems for the English crown. Like Wallace, the charge (always a favourite of the English in medieval times) was treason.

The Oxford Dictionary defines treason as 'Violation by subject of allegiance to sovereign.' Mary was not Elizabeth's subject. Elizabeth was not Mary's sovereign. She naively went to Elizabeth for safety and was treated in the same manner as by the French and the Scots, a political pawn, to be used until no longer useful then discarded.

Scotland has a long and fascinating history and this kind of crap belittles it.

So, thanks for the history lesson but I prefer the real thing.