Making a Martyr of Mary, Queen of Scots
Even when she was imprisoned, Mary, Queen of Scots carefully curated her Catholic image.
In the early hours of the morning on 8 February 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots picked up the pen for the last time. She was sentenced to be executed later that day for plotting against her cousin and captor of 19 years, Elizabeth I. Among her last acts before she journeyed to the scaffold was to write a letter to her brother-in-law, Henry III of France, in which she painted her death sentence as persecution for her Catholic faith, rather than the charge of treason the Protestant English government had levied against her. The letter became a crucial part of Mary’s posthumous legacy of Catholic martyrdom which endures to this day – and that is exactly what she would have wanted.
In the letter, Mary claimed:
The Catholic faith and the assertion of my God-given right to the English crown are the two issues on which I am condemned, and yet I am not allowed to say that it is for the Catholic religion that I die, but for fear of interference with theirs.
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