Queen's Last Letter Before Execution Draws Crowds

Mary, Queen of Scots has been dead for more than four centuries, but her final words are drawing fresh crowds in a small Scottish city. The last letter she wrote before her 1587 execution is now on rare public display at the new Perth Museum, about an hour from Edinburgh, and it's become the star attraction, the Washington Post reports.

• In the early hours before she was beheaded at 44 on February 8, 1587, Mary wrote a four-page farewell to her brother-in-law, France's King Henry III. Denied a priest and legal counsel, she used the letter to settle debts, ask that her servants be paid, request burial in France—and, crucially, to stress that she was being killed because of her Catholic faith and her claim to the English throne, not for plotting against her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I

• The letter helped turn her from a disgraced monarch into a potent symbol: Catholic martyr, romantic heroine, and, for many Scots, an emblem of national identity.
• "I scorn death and vow that I meet it innocent of any crime, even if I were their subject," wrote Mary, who was imprisoned for almost 20 years before her execution. "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."
• "Mary, Queen of Scots is an iconic figure in Scottish history and the final letter reminds us that she deliberately and strategically directed her own memorialization," says Jade Scott, professor of Scottish history at the University of Glasgow. "She was determined to be recognized as someone who died for her faith and her faith gave her agency even as her execution drew near."
• The museum says the letter, which will be on display until April 26, has "left the National Library of Scotland's secure storage facilities for the first time in a generation." The museum says this is the longest it has been on public display for more than 20 years.

• The document itself has had a journey nearly as dramatic as its author's life. Sent by horseback to the English coast and then by ship to France, it survived the French Revolution, vanished into private collections, and resurfaced as a coveted relic, the Post reports. In the early 1900s, fearing it might be snapped up by a foreign buyer, 26 wealthy Scots pooled funds to buy it from an English collector's estate and place it in the National Library of Scotland, where it became a foundational piece of the archives.
• Conservators say the 13-week show is essentially using up its "light budget," meaning it may not be displayed again for decades. Chris Cassells, head of archives and manuscript collections at the National Library of Scotland, tells the BBC that the letter has a "relic-like quality." "It's in her own hand. It has her signature. She touched it. She folded it up to be sent off to France in the hours right before her death," he says. "So it's undeniably a really special document."

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