Spreading News of the Execution: Mary Queen of Scots and the Parisian Catholic League

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Alexander S Wilkinson

Published:

2004

Publisher:

Palgrave Macmillan UK

Two days after Mary Queen of Scots had been beheaded at Fotheringhay on the orders of Elizabeth I, Lord Burghley noted zealously ‘the tree of treasons has been cut off’.1 By 1 March, two weeks later, news of the execution had reached Paris. Henri III was outraged by this decision and responded immediately by severing diplomatic ties with England. The spiritless public interest in Mary that had characterised the period 1561–86 was at once transformed into an energetic and passionate defence of the dead Queen. Nevertheless, the convergence of royal policy and public opinion on this issue was at best transitory and at worst an illusion. News of the death of Mary erupted on to an already fragile political context in which many French Catholics already exhibited signs of hostility towards the King. Successfully exploiting news of the execution and other current affairs, militant Catholic opinion embodied by the Catholic League quickly gained substantial popular support in the capital. When, in May 1587, Henri III healed fractured relations with England, open demonstrations erupted in Paris in defiance of his foreign policy of appeasement towards England and his domestic policy of pragmatic toleration towards the Huguenots.

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