by Emily Hay
[1] On 8 February 1587, Mary Queen of Scots was executed by her cousin and captor, Queen Elizabeth I of England, closing the curtain on nineteen long years of captivity. Implicated in the Babington Plot which sought to assassinate the Protestant Elizabeth and return England to Catholicism, the Scottish Queen was officially sentenced to death on a charge of treason against the English crown. Mary refused to accept this – as she saw it, she was sentenced to death for no crime other than her unwavering adherence to the Catholic faith. Among her final acts was to argue this vehemently in writing, which she did in her last letter written to her brother-in-law, Henri III of France, mere hours before she walked to the scaffold.
[2] That last letter has been held securely in the National Library of Scotland collections for almost a decade since its last outing – a six-hour special exhibition on 8 February 2017, which had to be extended by three hours due to overwhelming public interest.[1] That is, until the beginning of this year, when the letter went on extended three-month display at Perth Museum, giving audiences a once-in-a-generation opportunity to interact with Mary’s final words up close. Alongside an accompanying exhibition of Robert Burns’ poem ‘Lament of Mary Queen of Scots on the Approach of Spring’ (1790) and early manuscripts of Liz Lochhead’s Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off (1987) at the nearby AK Bell Library, these treasures attest to the enduring nature of Mary’s legacy in the Scottish cultural imagination – particularly as a figure of romantic tragedy.
[3] Even before visitors encounter her last letter they are reminded of the events which led Mary to an English prison and, ultimately the scaffold. Particularly prevalent is an installation of large 3D playing cards which introduce audiences to the key players of Mary’s life, including her three husbands and her murdered Italian secretary, David Rizzio. Amongst these figures Mary herself appears as the Queen of Hearts – a representation indicative of the ongoing cultural obsession with her romantic connections, as well as the hold she exerts on audiences interested in Scottish history.
[4]A more unique take on the events of Mary’s life, however, is present in the close links the exhibition draws between the events of Mary’s reign and the museum’s location. Brought to Perth as part of the NLS Outwith programme – which aims to bring national library treasures to audiences outside the central belt in locations where they resonate – it is no surprise that the exhibition boasts several features linking Mary’s story to its Perth locale. One wall in the outer room features a set of canvasses detailing the routes of Mary’s various travels through the region: including her royal entry to Perth in 1561, the Northern progress of 1562, and the Chaseabout Raid of 1565. Another shows a reproduction of William Craig Sheriff’s 1805 painting ‘Mary, Queen of Scots Escaping from Lochleven Castle’ alongside a map of the region reminding visitors that the ruins of that very castle are located only sixteen miles south of the room in which they stand.
[5] These local connections continue as visitors find themselves moving into the main room, where the threshold is marked by fabric reproducing eight of the embroidered panels of the Marian Hanging, produced by Mary during her English imprisonment with the wife of her jailer, Bess of Hardwick. Embellished with fresh designs by a group of local needleworkers, these panels connect Perth’s status as the UK’s first UNESCO City of Crafts and Folk Art with Mary’s own creative attempts to control her legacy through emblems. Notable amongst these is the image of a phoenix rising from the ashes, a symbol of Mary’s resilience in the face of her English imprisonment.
[6] That the first interpretation panel in the inner room is emblazoned with Mary’s famous motto ‘In my end is my beginning’ continues this emphasis on Mary’s attempts to influence her enduring legacy right until the end. Illuminated in a case at the centre of the darkened room is Mary’s last letter itself, whilst the walls are decorated with reproductions of contemporary sketches of the execution scene as well as the famous Blairs memorial portrait of Mary, commissioned by one of the servants who accompanied her to the scaffold.[2] In these, the exhibition serves to highlight to visitors the material horror of the circumstances in which Mary’s letter was produced – a panel tells us she wrote it at 2am shortly after being informed she was to die the following morning – but also its ongoing impact on Mary’s representation as a martyr and a queen.
[7] Given that this is an exhibition centring around one contemporaneous document written in sixteenth-century French – a language many visitors will be unfamiliar with – the organisers have done an admirable job of highlighting Mary’s words in impactful new ways. Some choice phrases from the letter are translated into English and projected on an opposing wall in a simulacrum of Mary’s italic handwriting, whilst audio listening stations positioned around the room allow visitors to listen to actors reading Mary’s letter in its original French, or in modern English and Scots translations. In doing so, the exhibition goes some way to correcting an oft-repeated historical stereotype of Mary as more French than Scottish – though the fact that the English version of the letter continues to be read in a French accent attests this view is going nowhere fast.
[8] These multimedia elements undoubtedly bring Mary’s words to life, but it is difficult not to wonder why there were not more attempts made to connect the last letter with any of the hundreds of others Mary wrote throughout her imprisonment. Mary’s letters have received an extensive amount of press interest in recent years – particularly in the accidentally deciphered letters discovered in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in 2023, and the research into the last letter’s own locking mechanism in 2021.[3] A nod to either of these very recent and very publicised projects might have given visitors a deeper insight into Mary’s agency as a writer throughout her captivity, and the road this paved towards her last letter.
[9] Regardless, the recently closed exhibition marks a cultural milestone in Scottish History: Perth Museum notes that by the end of the exhibition’s second month over 20,000 visitors had already seen the letter – likely more people than had ever interacted with it in its 450-year history.[4] As the letter returns to secure storage at the NLS, let us hope that it can be preserved to allow future audiences similar opportunities for centuries to come.
NOTES
[1] ‘Last letter of Mary, Queen of Scots on display for six hours’, 1 February 2017, BBC News, <www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-38826244>; ‘Last letter of Mary, Queen of Scots: Display extended by three hours’, 8 February 2017, BBC News, <www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-38907013> [accessed 1 May 2026].
[2] Caroline Rae, ‘New Perspectives on the Sheffield Portraits of Mary, Queen of Scots including the Discovery of a New, Related, Contemporary Portrait’ in The Afterlife of Mary, Queen of Scots, ed. by Steven J. Reid (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024), pp. 53-83, p. 59.
[3] ‘Mary, Queen of Scots prison letters finally decoded’, 8 February 2023, The Guardian, <https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/08/mary-queen-of-scots-prison-letters-finally-decoded>; ‘Mary, Queen of Scots ‘locked’ final letter using paper-folding, research finds’, 10 December 2021, The Guardian, <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/dec/10/mary-queen-of-scots-locked-final-letter-using-paper-folding-research-finds> [accessed 1 May 2026].
[4] ‘Over 20,000 visitors have seen the Last Letter written by Mary, Queen of Scots’, 30 March 2026, Perth Museum, <https://perthmuseum.co.uk/over-20000-visitors-view-last-letter/> [accessed 1 May 2026].