Church buys Mary Queen of Scots' death warrant

By Alastair Sharp

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - The Church of England has bought the warrant which authorised the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, saving the historical document for the nation.

Mary, a Catholic who claimed the Scottish and English crowns, was executed in 1587 at Fotheringhay Castle outside London on the order of her Protestant cousin, Queen Elizabeth I.

Dressed in scarlet, a Catholic colour of martyrdom, with her pet dog hidden among her skirts, legend has it that it took two blows of the executioner's axe to kill her.

The warrant, a contemporaneous copy of the lost original, was purchased from a California auction house by the Lambeth Palace Library for 72,485 pounds ($140,000), with the sum raised from heritage organisations and wealthy benefactors.

"(We're) delighted to have played a part in saving this document for the nation," said Richard Palmer, a librarian and archivist at the library.

"The warrant is now reunited with the papers with which it belongs and accessible for the benefit of all."

Elizabeth is said to have reluctantly signed the death warrant at the behest of her privy council, who feared that having another queen living in England, albeit imprisoned, was a threat to Elizabeth's legitimacy.

"She (Elizabeth) was prevaricating. To execute a monarch was such a dramatic thing in international politics," Palmer said.