History Spotlight, 2/8

Mary, Queen of Scots is beheaded today for (allegedly) taking part in the Babington Plot to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I.
Mary, Queen of Scots was, as you may expect, the queen of the Scots. She was also next in line for the English throne and, as Elizabeth I was clearly not making any heirs any time soon, the sure bet. Trouble was, she was Catholic and Elizabeth (and most of England was Protestant). After being thrown out of Scotland due to no fault of her own (some little thing about having her husband, Lord Darnley, murdered and then marrying the guy who did the hit) she sought shelter from her cousin, Elizabeth I.
Elizabeth, for her part, didn't know what to make of Mary. On one hand, Elizabeth was pretty annoyed at Mary's treatment at the hands of the Scots. Imprisoning the queen, painting mocking nude pictures of her as a mermaid (at the time, mermaid imagery was used to indicate a prostitute) and then forcing her to flee the country dressed in rags went against everything Elizabeth believed about the proper placement of monarchs in relationship to their subjects. She had half a mind to send the army up the and put Mary back on the throne, so long as Mary would agree to keep her hands off the English throne, just to make a point about who was in charge in Scotland or anyplace else. Hint: not the peasant, not the nobles, the monarch and nobody else.
But...on the other hand, Mary was a rival for the throne, a Catholic rival to the throne. A Catholic rival to the throne who made a habit of affecting a passive-aggressive phony humility that seemed designed specifically to get on Elizabeth's nerves. Elizabeth decided to punt.
Elizabeth had Mary locked up in a variety of luxurious prisons for 17 years, while she hemmed and hawed about what to do. All during that time, Elizabeth's spymaster, Sir Francis Walshingham, was assiduously reading Mary's mail and reporting on the contents to Elizabeth. Which was a good idea, because Mary was flirting with people trying to overthrow Elizabeth, but just not enough for him to do anything about.
Then came the Babington Plot, which is another post entirely. Suffice to say, a Catholic noble, Anthony Babington and a bunch of his pals had the idea of murdering Elizabeth and putting Mary on the throne. That's it. Babington and Mary exchanged coded letter smuggled to Mary in the stoppers of beer barrels. But Walsingham had already identified the six main conspirators, had the code broken and had been reading the smuggled letters almost all along. On August 18, 1586, the conspirators were arrested and tortured into confessing. That gave them enough cause to have Mary arrested, more than she already was. Then Elizabeth started dithering again. She didn't want to be the one to order the execution of the rightful queen of Scotland, but she also wanted to get rid of the Mary problem once and for all. She wound up signing the death warrent but saying, essentially, "Don't use it." Her privy council decide to use it before she changed her mind again. And so, on February 8, 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots was executed before 300 witnesses wearing the red cloak of a Catholic martyr.