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
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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.