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00:00The Tower of London, a world-famous historic monument.
00:05There will be stories about murders!
00:09Over its thousand years of history,
00:11everyone who's anyone has passed through its gates.
00:14King Richard III!
00:16Catherine Howard!
00:17King Henry VIII declared!
00:18My darling Anne, I will love you for the rest of your life!
00:24Cheeky!
00:26And this year, it's non-stop.
00:30With grand commemorations...
00:32Jumping, Jiminy!
00:34...at the ancient fortress, including a royal visit.
00:38I truly think that Her Majesty will be moved.
00:40We've got a ringside seat to see it all unfold.
00:43Oh, my gosh.
00:44While its dedicated staff...
00:46High five!
00:47Yeah!
00:48...work to keep everything on track.
00:50You know this is the queue for the toilet, don't you?
00:52No, I'm not feeding you any more, no.
00:54In this episode, some new arrivals are causing quite a stir.
01:00Hello, mate.
01:02I've got the two new ravens at the Tower of London
01:04and they're sharing my kitchen.
01:06Oh!
01:07The ancient fortress prepares
01:09for one of its most complex events in years.
01:13It's a good test for us to see
01:15how we're going to get all these pieces into site
01:18safely and securely over our medieval drawbridges.
01:21Lock it down here, mate. You're all out of here!
01:23And there's a brand-new discovery
01:26that changes everything we know about Queen Elizabeth I.
01:30This complete rewriting of history, from one page to the next,
01:35that is spine-tingling.
01:37Welcome to the secret world of the Tower of London.
01:47It's 7am, two hours before the historic Royal Palace
01:51will open to today's visitors.
01:54But curious tourists won't be the only business of the day.
01:58This morning, the Tower begins the installation
02:01of an ambitious project
02:02to commemorate the end of the Second World War.
02:05It involves a staggering 30,000 ceramic poppies,
02:10creating an incredible spectacle,
02:12down the walls of the White Tower,
02:14through the inner fortress,
02:16and out to the wharf.
02:18It will be one of the largest installations
02:21ever attempted within the palace walls.
02:23And this morning, the first structure is being delivered.
02:27The things are already going off track
02:29for project manager Ali Richardson.
02:32This has been quite a challenge this morning.
02:34The lorry is a little bit late.
02:36We don't have very long to get all the bits unloaded
02:39before we can open to the public.
02:41We have to be gone and out of sight before 8.45.
02:45There's quite a lot for the crew to do this morning
02:48in quite a short period of time.
02:50With such a tight window, the pressure is on.
02:55They're on a massive great big truck
02:57that's got to reverse onto the wharf,
02:58which is quite a challenge.
03:00Four heavy steel structures,
03:03six metres long and weighing over 350 kilos each,
03:07need to be manoeuvred safely
03:09through the nearly 800-year-old archways
03:11of the outer ward, inner ward,
03:13and along the cobbled roots of this World Heritage Site.
03:17It's a good test for us to see
03:19how we're going to get all these pieces into site
03:21safely and securely over our medieval drawbridges.
03:24Nothing's down here, mate. You all right here?
03:27Oh, my gosh.
03:29Whilst Ali and the team race against the clock on the wharf,
03:33it's a slower pace inside,
03:35as the Beefeaters begin their day.
03:38Raven Master Barney Chandler is on breakfast duty.
03:42Morning, fellas. All good.
03:45He's been in charge of the fortress's flock for over a year now.
03:50Ready for scran?
03:51Come on in. A bit of breakfast.
03:53The birds are an important part of the tower's folklore.
03:57There's probably no secret.
03:58There's a legend here at the tower that says
04:00if the ravens ever leave the palace,
04:02a great disaster will befall the kingdom.
04:04The legend dictates that we have a minimum of six ravens at the tower,
04:08which is what we've got at the minute.
04:10But like every strong monarchy,
04:12it doesn't hurt to have a few spares.
04:14And Barney's just received some good news
04:16from raven breeders in Wales.
04:19Been told reliably that we have got
04:22two chicks that are ready for us from Wales.
04:27So, yeah, our population here is going from six to eight.
04:31And I'm chuffed to bits. Can't wait to get me.
04:33Whether the other ravens will be quite as enthusiastic
04:36about the new chicks is anyone's guess.
04:39They don't all get on with each other now,
04:41the ones we have here.
04:42And they all have their own different areas.
04:44And they all have different personalities.
04:46It's like normal life.
04:48Not everybody gets on with everybody.
04:51At just a few weeks old,
04:54the babies will be too young to go straight into the enclosure.
04:57So Barney's having to take on a whole new set
05:00of raven care responsibilities.
05:02In the wild, they're going to be in the nest
05:04until they're six weeks old, give or take.
05:06So they're going to be living with me
05:08in the kitchen of my house for at least two weeks
05:11until they're ready to leave the nest.
05:14I'm really excited.
05:15These are the first two that have come in
05:17during my tenure as a raven master.
05:19So I'm going to be there from the start
05:21and I'm going to witness them growing up.
05:23Well, let's get you out.
05:24Until then, his top priority
05:26is keeping the other ravens happy and on side.
05:29Come on there, big girl.
05:30There you go.
05:33Back on the wharf, things are finally moving.
05:37We are a bit up against it
05:39because we open in 45 minutes.
05:42So that's a bit of a challenge.
05:44You have to go that way, big Sam.
05:49Each piece of metal structure
05:51has to be carefully manoeuvred to a smaller truck.
05:54Watch it.
05:55Can you move back, please?
05:56To be driven up to the white tower.
05:58It's a painstaking process
06:00and with less than an hour until opening,
06:03the team are now running very behind.
06:05I'm quite anxious watching them
06:08swinging the big structures off the back of the truck.
06:11Back, come down.
06:13You doing good?
06:17I'm a hanging bag.
06:18Great.
06:19That was nice.
06:20At last, the first piece moves through Edward I's arch,
06:25built in the 1280s.
06:27But there are still three more to go.
06:34And on the other side of the tower's gates,
06:37long queues are starting to form,
06:39waiting for the opening ceremony,
06:41a centuries-old protocol to open the tower gates.
06:44This is a military ceremony that runs like clockwork every single day.
06:48This involves an armed escort,
06:51an ancient set of keys,
06:53and very precise punctuality.
06:56The soldiers are waiting. The crowds are waiting.
06:58I've got to be there on time.
07:00Only one piece is in, but time's up for the crew on the wharf.
07:05Stop all traffic crossing the drawbridges.
07:07The opening ceremony's about to start.
07:12Ali and the team will have to think fast.
07:14We're taking the structures off the back of the truck
07:17and putting them down here on the wharf
07:19so that the truck can leave.
07:23We're going to end up with three moving up into the tower
07:26a little bit later than we would have liked.
07:29It's a race against the clock.
07:31We didn't quite manage it this morning.
07:44Come on, folks.
07:46Welcome to the tower.
07:49Coming up,
07:50the tower's poppy-filled commemoration
07:52hits an unexpected setback.
07:54Got to work out how to make sure the ravens don't destroy it.
07:57And Tracey discovers the most incredible evidence
07:59about the end of Elizabeth I's reign.
08:02You can see history literally being rewritten
08:05on the orders of those in power.
08:15Come on in, guys. In you come. In you come.
08:17Come in close.
08:18The Beefeater-led tours of the royal fortress
08:20take visitors through some of the darker periods
08:23There will be stories about murders!
08:28And unusual chapters.
08:29This was also a royal menagerie and zoo.
08:32In the tower's thousand-year history.
08:35And as a royal palace,
08:37you can expect plenty of kings and queens.
08:39King Richard III.
08:41King Richard III.
08:44The red-haired Duda Queen
08:46has long been a figure of fascination
08:48for historic royal palace's chief historian,
08:51Tracey Bormann.
08:53Elizabeth I is undoubtedly my favourite monarch of all time
08:57and I've spent most of my career studying her.
09:00She's famous today
09:01for being one of the longest reigning sovereigns in history
09:04and also one of the most beloved.
09:06And she did it all alone,
09:08refusing to marry and becoming the self-styled Virgin Queen.
09:13But within just 50 years of Elizabeth's death,
09:16the crown was violently overthrown
09:19and England was plunged into civil war.
09:22And I think it all started with Elizabeth.
09:25Tracey has a lead on what could be a remarkable new piece of evidence,
09:30rewriting Elizabeth's role in the downfall of the English monarchy.
09:34And she's beginning her investigation
09:36by re-examining the crisis around who would succeed Elizabeth.
09:41As well as declining to marry,
09:43Elizabeth refused to name her heir.
09:45She believed they would threaten her reign
09:47or maybe even try and seize her throne.
09:50But that left the future of the English crown hanging dangerously in the balance
09:55and meant that anyone with a drop of royal blood
09:58could try and claim Elizabeth's throne.
10:00When it comes to the English succession, blood really does count.
10:04For hundreds of years, it's been a hereditary succession.
10:08In other words, it's the person most closely related to the monarch
10:13who tends to be king or queen next.
10:15The Tudor family tree had no shortage of contenders.
10:20Like Catherine Grey, she was the granddaughter
10:22of Henry VIII's younger sister, Mary.
10:25And Arbella Stewart, a descendant of Henry VIII's older sister, Margaret,
10:29and an up-and-coming darling of the court.
10:33But the biggest threat came from Elizabeth's own cousin,
10:37Mary, Queen of Scots, who had a son, James.
10:41So the portrait here of Mary, also of her son, James.
10:47So the Scottish claimants, if you will,
10:50they are descended as well from Henry VIII's elder sister, Margaret.
10:55But Mary is a Catholic,
10:58and that's a problem for many of Elizabeth's subjects.
11:02With each contender a potential threat to her crown,
11:06Elizabeth kept a careful eye on their every move.
11:09A single misstep, and she was only too ready to move against them.
11:13Catherine ended up at the tower and died just a few years later.
11:17Arbella was kicked out of court and put under house arrest.
11:21And then there was Mary, Queen of Scots.
11:28As the main Catholic contender,
11:31Elizabeth needed to keep her cousin where she could see her.
11:34When Mary lost control of the Scottish throne and fled to England,
11:38Elizabeth held her under house arrest for nearly 20 years,
11:42until Mary got caught red-handed conspiring to kill the Queen.
11:48Tracey has come to the Beecham Tower,
11:51where the walls still show the marks of the traitorous prisoners it once held.
11:56Well, the piece of graffiti I'm particularly interested in today
11:59is this one, attributed to John Ballard.
12:02He was a Catholic priest during Elizabeth's reign,
12:05and he was involved in one of the most notorious plots against her life.
12:11In 1586, Elizabeth's spies intercepted coded letters,
12:18which detailed a plan to kill her
12:20and replace her with the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots.
12:23Fourteen plotters, including Ballard, were rounded up, interrogated,
12:28then hanged, drawn and quartered as traitors.
12:32But John and his fellow conspirators
12:35weren't the only ones involved in this plot.
12:38Their letters reveal something altogether more explosive.
12:48I have here one of the intercepted letters,
12:51and it's really rather an important one, and a shocking one,
12:55because it's written by none other than Mary, Queen of Scots herself.
13:00And in it, she orders one of the conspirators to set the six gentlemen to work.
13:09It's quite a short phrase, but a very important one,
13:12because what Mary's saying here is that the six gentlemen
13:16who've been given the task of assassinating Elizabeth
13:19should go and get to work.
13:21Those words will seal Mary's doom.
13:27For plotting the death of Elizabeth, Mary lost her head.
13:30The former Queen of Scots was off the board.
13:34Now in her 50s, Elizabeth had successfully neutralized nearly all of the strongest claimants to her throne.
13:46But clearing the field would create a dangerous power vacuum.
13:50Tracy discovers an ambitious contender who makes a dramatic power grab
13:55that Elizabeth could never have seen coming.
14:02Tell me about Anne Boleyn.
14:04Where were the executions?
14:06Just here.
14:07Just here.
14:08As the royal palace fills up with visitors,
14:12there's a rather large bit of tower business that still needs to be finished.
14:18After running seriously behind schedule,
14:21three six-metre-long metal structures have been driven carefully up through the now open fortress.
14:29And they will form part of the tower's special poppy-filled commemoration
14:34of the end of the Second World War.
14:39The dramatic installation will be one of the largest ever attempted within tower walls.
14:44And today is the only chance to figure out how to get the structures
14:48that will support the poppies inside the tower and safely anchored into place.
14:54We can start to see the scale of the installation
14:57and how it will look against the side of the building,
14:59and that's really exciting.
15:01The structure being tested today is called The Splash.
15:06Project manager Ali is keeping a close watch as things start to take shape.
15:14So what we've got here is the four quadrants of this structure
15:17which are being bolted together and made all nice and safe and secure,
15:21and then all of their metal spokes will eventually have a poppy on the end of it.
15:27We need the structure to be very secure and solid
15:30so that it can withstand standing out here safely for six months,
15:34come rain or shine on windy days.
15:37The Splash will form one of the main elements of the installation
15:41and will be covered in 2,000 handmade ceramic poppies.
15:47So these are the prototype poppies that we're using for the test today.
15:50So they're the same size and shape as the ones that we'll be using in the main display,
15:55but as you can see they're not the right colour.
15:58The real ones will be beautiful bright red.
16:00Putting the installation right up against the ancient white tower,
16:04built by William the Conqueror in the 1070s,
16:07requires an incredible level of care.
16:10So Tower Governor Andrew Jackson has just come to see how the team are getting on.
16:16Hey Ali, how's it going?
16:18Did it work smoothly this morning getting them in?
16:20It was a little bit nervy to be honest,
16:22things took a little bit longer than we thought,
16:24but that's part of the reason why we're doing this test
16:26is to iron out those things.
16:28Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted, as we used to say.
16:31Absolutely.
16:32We're just lining them all up and then once we've done that
16:34we'll have a go at attaching some of our prototype poppies
16:37to see what they look like up against the side of the building,
16:41what the scale will be and that sort of thing.
16:43Because this is where we're going to have the cascade coming down
16:46from the top of the white tower.
16:47Yeah.
16:48And then this is the drop that falls and hits the ground.
16:51And then there'll be a stream of poppies that comes across the lawn
16:53just down here by Cold Harbour Gate.
16:56I think it's going to look really spectacular.
16:58Well, it's looking really promising and poppies are going on now.
17:01As the team continues the test build,
17:06Chief Historian Tracy Bortman is on the trail of Queen Elizabeth I,
17:10whose refusal to name a successor had sparked a royal crisis
17:14that threatened to destabilise the crown itself.
17:17Now three decades into her reign,
17:19the paranoid Queen had dispatched many would-be contenders.
17:23But one man with a strong royal pedigree had his eyes set on Elizabeth's throne,
17:29James Stuart, the King of Scotland.
17:32Tracy has come to meet historian Gareth Russell to find out more.
17:36Hi, Gareth.
17:37Hi, Tracy. Nice to see you.
17:38Nice to see you.
17:39Can you tell me a little bit about who James was?
17:42What was his background?
17:44Well, James is King of Scots for as long as he can remember.
17:48He becomes king when he's 13 months old after a coup that overthrows his mother.
17:53And from quite early on in his reign, he has his eyes south of the border.
17:57Very much so.
17:58He does believe that England, Wales and Ireland are his rightful inheritance.
18:03James's great-grandmother, Margaret, was the sister of Henry VIII,
18:08giving him a royal bloodline in both kingdoms.
18:11But for many, his Scottish heritage was a problem.
18:15And it's easy today to underestimate just how much of a foreign country
18:21Scotland seemed to the English at this time.
18:23Because, of course, we're now part of Britain.
18:25Not so then in James's time.
18:27It might as well have been the other side of the world.
18:29Absolutely.
18:30There are centuries of hostility between England and Scotland.
18:33And some present James VI becoming James I in England
18:37as essentially a Scottish conquest of England.
18:40To make things worse, James also happened to be the son
18:44of a recently executed Catholic traitor, Mary Queen of Scots.
18:49There is really intense anti-Mary sentiment in London.
18:53There's always a risk that that will transfer itself over to her son.
18:56But he is also under a huge amount of pressure in Scotland.
18:59After Mary's execution, there are riots in Edinburgh telling James
19:03he should be sending a nurse south to Elizabeth.
19:06But James didn't listen.
19:08Keeping the peace with Elizabeth and England was to his advantage.
19:12So James was really swimming against the tide.
19:16But he was so determined to be king of England
19:19that he was even willing to overlook the fact that Elizabeth had executed his own mother.
19:24It's James the politician who wins over James the son.
19:29But did James really stand a chance of becoming king of England?
19:34Or would his background be just too big an issue to overcome?
19:38Traces at the National Archives to look at the evidence that threatened to derail
19:42the Scottish king's ambitions completely.
19:45I have here an incredible document.
19:48It's the last will and testament of King Henry VIII himself.
19:53And in terms of the race for Elizabeth's crown, this is absolute dynamite.
19:58It's quite a long, complex legal document.
20:02But the bit I want to show you concerns Henry's wishes for the succession.
20:07It's actually highly unusual for a monarch to specify those wishes so precisely in his will.
20:14But here Henry does.
20:16So first up, of course, his precious son, Edward, and his heirs.
20:21Then next in line, we have Henry's elder daughter, Mary.
20:26And then we have Henry's last child, Elizabeth.
20:30And this is where it gets really interesting.
20:32Because if Elizabeth should fail,
20:34Henry specifies that the crown should then pass to the descendants of his younger sister, Mary,
20:42former Queen of France.
20:44And what's so fascinating about this is that Henry also had an elder sister, Margaret.
20:51And in the succession, it's the elder one who always goes first.
20:55But Henry's excluded Margaret.
20:58And it's her descendants who are the Scottish line,
21:01including Mary, Queen of Scots, and James.
21:05But Henry's deliberately cut them out of any hope of inheriting the crown.
21:10With Henry VIII's will casting doubt over his legitimacy,
21:14it looked like James's shot at the English throne was slipping out of his grasp.
21:23Coming up, two new raven chicks land at the fortress.
21:27There you go.
21:28Oh, that's good.
21:29Look like they're hungry.
21:30Our table manners are atrocious.
21:32And we reveal brand new evidence about Elizabeth I's succession.
21:36That's what historians for 400 years have thought.
21:39This changes everything.
21:49Curving round the outer perimeter of the tower are the casemates.
21:53Home to the beef eaters and their families.
21:56Raven master Barney Chandler has some visitors.
22:00Hello, mate.
22:01It's like looking after babies.
22:04Get up in the morning, you can hear him squawking straight away.
22:07And as soon as I walk in the door, you get two heads poke up at the side.
22:10You know, when's breakfast, Dad?
22:12They currently have their lodgings on his kitchen table.
22:16At the minute, they're living in our equivalent of a nest environment.
22:20So they're relying on what Dad brings back.
22:23Okay, so at the moment, that's what I am doing.
22:26They got mice this morning.
22:28They're not yet four weeks old, but the baby chicks already have big appetites.
22:33So I'm giving them the same food as their counterparts, but in smaller pieces.
22:38So I break it up for them.
22:40And when they're ready to digest a mouse, a chick, or the equivalent on their own,
22:45that's when they'll go in the enclosures.
22:47There you go.
22:48Oh, that's good.
22:49Look like they're hungry.
22:50It's always a sigh of relief when they're eating well.
22:53Well, our table manners are atrocious, I've got to say.
22:56I feel like a bottomless pit.
22:59Keeping these future guardians of the tower in good health
23:02is completely down to Barney for the next few weeks.
23:06Living with them, it sounds corny, it's an honour.
23:09I've got the two new ravers at the Tower of London,
23:11and they're sharing my kitchen.
23:13Of course, the fate of the nation is resting on our shoulders.
23:16If they're not fighting fit, that's down to me.
23:19You ready? More? You want more? No.
23:22The real test will come when they meet their new roommates in a few days.
23:26I'll be sorry to see them go, but I won't miss the smell.
23:33Thank you so much. You're very welcome.
23:35Yeah.
23:36That's our old uniform.
23:37That's got E2R, and this has got C3R.
23:40So that's the Queen's.
23:41Oh, yeah.
23:42Elizabeth, now we've got Charles.
23:43Charles.
23:44As members of the monarch's ceremonial bodyguard,
23:48the Beefeaters' iconic uniforms change with the coronation
23:51of each new king or queen.
23:53C3R, Charles, books of tertius.
23:57So King Charles III in Latin.
23:59It feels very special to be wearing the king's cipher,
24:02when most of us here today also wore the queen's cipher before that.
24:06King Charles had been the heir apparent for the entire 70-year reign
24:10of the late Queen Elizabeth II.
24:15But the business of royal accession hasn't always run so smoothly.
24:20Chief historian Tracey is investigating the royal crisis
24:24caused by Elizabeth I's refusal to appoint an heir,
24:28one that would have huge consequences.
24:31With Catherine Grey, Arbella Stuart and Mary Queen of Scots
24:35now out of the running,
24:37King James VI of Scotland fancied himself
24:40as the strongest remaining claimant.
24:43But the small matter of Henry VIII's will,
24:45which excluded James, stood in his way.
24:49Tracey's back with historian Gareth Russell
24:52to learn about the Scottish king's next move.
24:55So, Gareth, Henry VIII's will,
24:58surely that's a bit of a spanner in the works for James
25:01because he has very specifically barred all stewards
25:05from ever inheriting the English throne.
25:08Yes, so the will is a spanner in the works,
25:11but only in the hands of someone
25:13who wants to throw that spanner into the works.
25:15And Elizabeth, particularly, clearly thinks
25:18the stewards have more of a blood claim.
25:21Unlike the previous contenders for her throne,
25:24James had yet to fall foul of Elizabeth
25:26or make an open play for the crown.
25:29And importantly, he shared with her one unique bond.
25:33They were both ruling monarchs.
25:36So James and Elizabeth have this extraordinarily long correspondence.
25:41For 20 years they're exchanging letters back and forth,
25:44and they make for quite fascinating reading, don't they?
25:47It's a goldmine of information about the relationship
25:49and how it changes.
25:50This is from July, 1585.
25:52James has just turned 19.
25:54And he writes to Queen Elizabeth and says,
25:58praying you should continue me in your good grace,
26:01and notwithstanding of whatsoever brutes or reports,
26:04to keep still one ear for me.
26:06So he's saying whatever gossip or negative comments you hear about me,
26:11keep one ear open to hear the truth from me.
26:14So he's feeling quite vulnerable, really.
26:16But also what I like, how he signs off here,
26:18your loving and affectionate brother and son.
26:21And then she signs off your most assured loving sister and cousin.
26:26Constantly they're stressing the kinship, aren't they, in this?
26:30Yes.
26:31There's this sense that Elizabeth acknowledges
26:34he's her closest blood relative.
26:36Elizabeth clearly had a soft spot for James,
26:39and may even have been trying to train him to be heir.
26:42She's giving him a lot of advice that's very useful.
26:46Some of it, like show yourself to the people and perform as a king,
26:51is advice that James struggles with.
26:53It does feel like Elizabeth is doing her level best to coach James.
26:59He doesn't always welcome it.
27:01But she doesn't do that for any of the other claimants to her throne.
27:04James was only too aware he needed Elizabeth's open endorsement.
27:09So he began to push for it.
27:11He wants her to sign on the dotted line saying
27:14that he is heir designate to the throne.
27:17And he even draws up a document that he sends south with his secretary,
27:22asking Elizabeth to sign it, proclaiming to the world
27:25he is the next king of England and Ireland.
27:27But Elizabeth refuses, preferring to dangle the possibility
27:31to ensure James' loyalty, but promise him nothing.
27:35You definitely get a sense from this correspondence
27:38that Elizabeth is almost enjoying that game because she holds all the cards.
27:44Yes.
27:45But for James, the stakes are so much higher.
27:49Later, we discover the shocking move the Scottish king made next.
27:54It's a drizzly afternoon at the Fortas.
28:00Lovely weather we're having. Beautiful. Beautiful.
28:04But work on the tower's upcoming VE Day commemoration hasn't stopped.
28:08The man behind the design of the poppy-filled installation, Tom Piper,
28:15has come to see how things are going.
28:18Do we try and get a few that are maybe a metre higher?
28:21Do you think?
28:22OK.
28:23The biggest challenge has been the restrictions of working
28:26in a thousand-year-old World Heritage site.
28:29It's a mixture of the dramatic storytelling
28:32but then also the nuts-and-bolts practicality, literally,
28:35of how do we pull the structure together.
28:37You can't dig in more than, kind of, ten centimetres,
28:40or you can't touch the stonework.
28:42But Tom is no novice when it comes to working at the tower.
28:47He designed the 2014 installation,
28:50which saw the tower's moat flooded with over 800,000 poppies,
28:54marking the beginning of the First World War.
28:57So, coming back to the tower, for me, is fantastic,
29:00because I can do actually what I wanted to do in the first place,
29:03which was to create the installation beginning in the heart of the tower,
29:06as if the tower has been wounded.
29:08That's if a certain group of feathered friends
29:10don't put a stop to things.
29:12We've got to work out how to make sure the ravens don't destroy it,
29:15so that's another challenge.
29:20Just a few miles across London,
29:22Tracey is investigating Queen Elizabeth I's succession crisis
29:26with historian Gareth Russell.
29:31By 1601, now over four decades into her rule,
29:35it looks like the ageing queen may well die
29:38without ever naming an heir,
29:40leaving the Scottish King James,
29:42her closest living relative, in a tight spot.
29:45James is losing patience with this game,
29:47so he decides to make an alliance
29:49with another player on the chessboard,
29:51and it's this man, Elizabeth's chief minister,
29:55the most powerful man in England,
29:57Sir Robert Cecil,
29:59and they start writing to each other in code.
30:01So behind Elizabeth's back, that is a huge risk.
30:06Cecil, along with a growing number of Elizabeth's advisers,
30:10was seriously concerned about what might happen
30:12if she refused to name a successor.
30:15Wanting to secure his own future,
30:17as well as that of the realm,
30:19he decides to bet all his chips on James.
30:22They lay out plans together of how Cecil will announce James as king
30:27the second Elizabeth is dead,
30:29how he'll get down from Scotland,
30:31who will support him,
30:33and we have a quote in their 79th letter to each other.
30:37And when it shall please God that 30, James,
30:41shall succeed to his right,
30:42that he shall succeed in bestowing as great
30:45and greater favour upon 10, Cecil,
30:48as his predecessor doth bestow upon him.
30:51And in the meantime, ye may rest assured
30:53of the constant love and secrecy
30:55of your most loving and assured friend, 30.
30:58So, this is very clear.
31:00They've made a deal.
31:01Absolutely.
31:02You help me to the throne,
31:04you'll benefit once I'm on that throne.
31:07It's essentially a quiet English coup
31:10that will have the succession smoothed over
31:12before Elizabeth is dead,
31:14but without her knowledge.
31:16But would all their secret scheming work?
31:19In early 1603, Elizabeth fell ill,
31:23and this time she wouldn't recover.
31:26What happened next is the stuff of movies.
31:30Cecil left the dying queen's bedside
31:33to send a coded message straight to James,
31:36who prepared for his journey down to London.
31:42On the 24th of March,
31:44after 44 years on the English throne,
31:47Elizabeth I died.
31:49She was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey.
31:54Wow, this is so beautiful and atmospheric.
31:59Westminster Abbey is where all the great and the good
32:04have been laid to rest.
32:06But for me, the most significant place in the whole abbey
32:10is right here, Elizabeth I's tomb.
32:13Often when a monarch dies, it's obvious who's going to succeed them.
32:22But that hadn't been the case with Elizabeth,
32:25and the issue had been uncertain throughout her long reign.
32:28And so it was only at the moment of her death
32:32when the question of who would be on the throne next
32:35would finally be answered.
32:40Elizabeth's biographer, William Camden,
32:43describes what happened.
32:45Clustered around her are her anxious ministers,
32:49all clinging to her every word.
32:51Will she finally name her successor after 44 years?
32:56Well, according to Camden, she does just that.
32:59She says,
33:00I will that a king shall succeed me,
33:03and who but my nearest kinsman, the king of Scots.
33:08I pray thee, trouble me no more.
33:11I will have none but him.
33:21And so the Tudor dynasty is at an end.
33:24And at the very last,
33:26Elizabeth has named as her successor
33:29the son of her most deadly rival.
33:32He's also the man who Henry VIII, her father,
33:35specifically barred from ever inheriting the English throne.
33:39That man is now King James I of England.
33:43Coming up, we discover what happened to James
33:57in the months after Elizabeth's death.
33:59He found himself surrounded by enemies on all sides.
34:03As newly discovered evidence turns the story of the succession on its head.
34:08This is a complete rewriting of history from one page to the other.
34:17A very, very beautiful black and white house.
34:20It's called the King's House.
34:22The house has also been used as a prison.
34:25Tracy Bormann is paying a visit to the private council chamber within the King's House.
34:30It holds clues that will reveal the disastrous unravelling of James' reign.
34:35One that will lead Tracy to a remarkable discovery.
34:39This is one of my favourite spaces in the whole tower
34:42because it's such a history where it happened moment.
34:45Just two years into his reign, King James I's hold on his long-coveted English throne took a powerful hit.
34:54And it involves one of the most well-known characters in British history.
34:59It's in this very room where Guy Fawkes was interrogated and imprisoned
35:05after the failed gunpowder plot of 1605.
35:08A group of 13 plotters protesting about the growing persecution of Catholics under James
35:19had tried to blow up Parliament with the King inside.
35:24At the very centre of this room is this man who was King James I himself.
35:30And he had this bust installed after the plot was discovered
35:34to really remind all those interrogated here that the King was watching.
35:39But the foiled, gumpowder plot was just the tip of the iceberg.
35:44James' popularity was nose-diving.
35:47At this point, James is pretty much clinging onto the throne by his fingertips.
35:52He's only been King for a couple of years,
35:54but already he's hated by almost the entire nation.
35:58The Catholics don't like him because he persecutes them.
36:01The Puritans or Protestants don't because he's not radical enough in their religion.
36:06And as well, James lacks the popular touch that Elizabeth had.
36:11She was always showing herself off to her people.
36:14But James hides himself away.
36:17For the next ten years, things for the King would only get worse.
36:22James inherited Elizabeth's throne with huge ambitions,
36:26not least to unite the kingdoms of England and Scotland.
36:31But that proved deeply unpopular on both sides of the border,
36:35as did James' lavish spending, particularly on his Scottish favourites.
36:40He's been coveting Elizabeth's throne for his whole life,
36:44and he can feel it slipping from his grasp.
36:46But just how far will he go to save it?
36:49Now, some 400 years later, the discovery of a damning new piece of evidence
36:57is revealing the shocking truth of James' desperation.
37:01It's rewriting this chapter of British history completely.
37:05Tracey has come to the British Library to meet curator Julian Harrison.
37:10Hi, Julian.
37:12Hello, Tracey. Nice to see you.
37:14And see the evidence first-hand.
37:17So, this is one of the original manuscripts
37:21of William Camden's Annals of the Reign of Elizabeth I.
37:25So, William Camden, well-known to Tudor historians
37:28because he was Elizabeth's earliest biographer.
37:31I've used Camden extensively,
37:33but never seen the actual workings out, the original manuscript.
37:37So, this is very, very thrilling.
37:39Camden started writing his official history
37:42in the last years of Elizabeth's reign.
37:44But he quickly gave up, overwhelmed by the size of the task.
37:48He wouldn't revisit the project until a decade later.
37:51It wasn't until a few years into James' reign
37:55that Camden was persuaded by none other than the king himself
38:00to pick up his pen and rewrite it.
38:03And he had to ensure that whatever he wrote would appease the king.
38:07This incredibly rare original draft of Camden's manuscript
38:10is littered with clues that make it clear just how treacherous a task this was.
38:16When you actually look at the handwritten version for the first time,
38:19you instantly see all the corrections, the crossings out,
38:24bits of added text in the margins.
38:27So, he's basically changing the account of Elizabeth's reign
38:31once James is on the throne with a new version under pressure from the king.
38:36Yes. And indeed, Camden sometimes rewrote passages
38:42and pasted them over entirely to such an extent that we can't lift them.
38:47They're completely stuck to the page.
38:49And, say, for 400-plus years, this text has actually been,
38:53in many places, completely invisible.
38:56Now, thanks to the work of PhD student Helena Rutkowska,
39:00those hidden passages have started to be revealed for the first time
39:04since they were written in the early 1600s.
39:06With a new technique, which is called transmitted light,
39:10the British Library's photographers were able to recover
39:13the writing from behind the page.
39:15And this is what it looks like with the transmitted light.
39:19Oh, yes.
39:20And what you can see is different layers of the page,
39:23things extending into the margins, rewritings, more crossings out.
39:27I mean, it's a massive jigsaw puzzle.
39:30These changes exposed the true extent of James's paranoid censorship
39:35as he vetted Camden's every word and made him rewrite history,
39:39as James did with his mother, Mary Queen of Scots's role,
39:42in the plot to murder Elizabeth I.
39:45In his version, she's an innocent victim of the plotter's.
39:49But James's meddling would go even further.
39:52What we have here is one of the most shocking changes
39:56in the whole of Camden's history.
39:58This is his original account of Elizabeth on her deathbed.
40:02And I know that account because in the published version,
40:05he describes how, almost with her last breath,
40:08Elizabeth says to her counsellors who are clustered around her bedside,
40:13you know, it will be the King of Scots who succeeds me.
40:16But it says nothing of the sort.
40:19In the original version,
40:21she doesn't actually explicitly name anybody to succeed her.
40:26Really?
40:27She doesn't nominate him by name until you see the first revised version
40:32on the opposite side of the page.
40:34She says, I would like a king to succeed me,
40:37and none other than the King of the Scots.
40:42Wow. That is spine-tingling to see.
40:45And it's the most blatant of all, isn't it?
40:48Elizabeth's deathbed nomination of James as her heir,
40:51has been accepted history for over 400 years.
40:53But this incredible new evidence,
40:54hidden in the folds and margins of Camden's manuscript,
40:56is exposing that as a lie.
40:58It is likely that Elizabeth never named James as her successor.
41:03And the great Tudor dynasty may have ended in a stolen crown.
41:09Finding something like this in these old manuscripts is so rare and so exhilarating.
41:16You can see history literally being rewritten on the orders of those in power.
41:23Well, James was in a very fragile position teetering on his throne.
41:30And the fact that Elizabeth probably refused to name him heir during her lifetime,
41:37created this power vacuum,
41:39and he was able to manipulate his way to the throne.
41:42And he was able to manipulate his way to the throne.
41:45But he was able to have a stolen crown.
41:48Finding something like this in these old manuscripts is so rare and so exhilarating.
41:52You can see history literally being rewritten on the orders of those in power.
41:59James was able to manipulate his way to the top.
42:02But no amount of rewriting history would be enough.
42:05James's reign went out with a whimper.
42:08And that of his son Charles would be a disaster.
42:12He went to war against his own people and ultimately lost his head.
42:17Within just 40 odd years of Elizabeth's death,
42:20the entire British monarchy had come crashing down.
42:29Next time, the team must get nearly 30,000 fragile ceramic blooms into the fortress.
42:36Obviously, the poppies are very delicate.
42:38And if we drop the boxes, they will break.
42:40And that would be not a good thing.
42:42The ravenous ravens eat the beef eaters out of house and home.
42:48Something else?
42:49Chips?
42:50Ice cream?
42:51And emotions are running high at the tower.
42:56My father was in the war and fortunately he came back.
43:01This is a reminder of the ones that never came back.
43:05Catch all that new next Thursday at 8.
43:10It was a desperate race to unearth Egypt's buried treasures.
43:14Join Dan Snow for King Tut, The Discovery.
43:17Brand new at 8 tomorrow.
43:19And tonight in the first of four original dramas.
43:22Play for today kicks off with Anita Dobson in Never Too Late.
43:26Brand new next.
43:271
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