Convicted of conspiring in the Babington Plot to assassinate Elizabeth I, Mary was executed before a small crowd of witnesses. Her death removed the immediate Catholic threat to Elizabeth's throne but inflamed Catholic Europe, and it directly contributed to Spain's decision to launch the Armada against England the following year.
Mary's end was almost as dramatic as her turbulent life. She dressed in a deep red gown—the liturgical color of Catholic martyrdom—beneath her black outer garments, and when the executioner removed her outer clothing at the block, the red dress was revealed to the gathered witnesses, a final, calculated statement that she died a Catholic martyr rather than a convicted traitor.
The execution itself was gruesome even by Tudor standards: the first axe blow missed her neck and struck the back of her head, and it took a second blow, then some sawing with the blade, to complete the job. Legend holds that when the executioner lifted her severed head to show the crowd, her wig came away in his hand, revealing that Mary, only 44, had close-cropped, gray hair underneath.
Elizabeth I reportedly signed the death warrant reluctantly and claimed to be horrified when the execution was actually carried out, though historians have long debated how genuine her reluctance was. Mary's son, James VI of Scotland, would go on to inherit the English throne himself in 1603, uniting the two crowns that had destroyed his mother.
Key people: Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I