Letter written by Mary Queen of Scots' six hours before execution to go on display

Mary Queen of Scots Letter last letter before she died, it has been on show as part of the National Library of Scotland Centenary Launch

Transcript

00:00I'm Alison Campsey, I'm the Heritage Writer for the Scotsman and I'm here with Chris

00:04Castles who's the Head of Archives and Manuscripts at National Library of

00:07Scotland. We've been given a very special letter so Chris I

00:12just wanted to ask what have we got here? So what we have here is Mary Queen of

00:15Scots last letter that she wrote on the eve of her execution. So this is the 8th

00:20of February 1587. She writes this letter at 2 a.m. and she's executed at 8 a.m.

00:25Gosh, so this is written in the last six hours of her life basically. So what

00:29does it say? So it's a very practical document. She's writing to her

00:33brother-in-law, Henri III, basically ensuring that provisions are made for

00:38her household after her death and she reaffirms her faith. And yes, six hours later

00:43she goes off to meet her faith. Gosh, that's an incredible insight into what was

00:47going through her mind. She wanted to make sure that her affairs were in order

00:51and you can see from the handwriting it's very deliberate, it's very neat. So it's a

00:55real incredible sort of reflection of her state of mind at that point. So how

01:01do you feel looking at that letter? Well this letter came to the Library in 1925

01:06and so it's been here for a hundred years. It's a great privilege to be part

01:10of the wider Library team that cares for this and all of our other

01:14collections. Yeah and how important, in terms of your overall collection which

01:18is vast, how important is this treasure in the collection? We like to think we

01:23have lots of treasures in our collection. This is a particularly iconic item and

01:28it obviously has a resonance kind of internationally. Mary Queen of Scots is a

01:32renowned figure, it's a very compelling story and I think the fact that this is

01:36as far as we know the last letter that she wrote before she died makes it just

01:41especially significant. Thank you very much Chris.