When Mary Stuart was forced off the Scottish throne she fled to England, a move that made her cousin Queen Elizabeth very uneasy. Elizabeth had continued the religious changes made by her father and England was a Protestant country, yet ardent Catholics plotted to depose Elizabeth and put Mary Stuart on the English throne.
So what was Queen Elizabeth going to do with a kingdomless queen likely to take hers?
She had her placed under house arrest with her old friend Bess of Hardwick, who also knew the doomed Jane Grey and Mary Tudor, Queen of France. Four Queens and a Countess delves deep into the relationships of these women with their insurmountable differences, the way they tried to accommodate them and the lasting legacy this has left. The clash of personalities and its deadly political background have never been examined in detail before. |
