£350k for Mary, Queen of Scots letters

Published on Tuesday 7 December 2010 14:53

A COLLECTION of state letters covering an "important but little-known" period in the long captivity of Mary, Queen of Scots was sold yesterday for £349,250.

The cache of 40 until-now unpublished letters, including four signed by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, were expected to fetch 150,000-200,000 at the auction at Sotheby's in London.

The letters were part of the collection of the late Lord Hesketh, who died in 1995.

Said to provide "an extraordinary insight" into the tragic and increasingly bitter relationship between the two queens, the letters include detailed instructions for Mary's new jailer from the Tudor court, but also detail how Mary insisted on having the luxuries befitting a queen and behaved like royalty on a rare public outing.

They also show a growing obsession among Elizabeth and her advisers to rule out any chance of Mary escaping.

Historian John Guy said: "Some of the material is genuinely important and new."

The notes were written to Sir Ralph Sadler, an English nobleman who was given the task to guard Mary in 1584-5, two years before her execution.

A spokesperson for Sotheby's said: "It was an honour that few will have envied - it meant he was constantly under the court's intense and highly critical gaze, faced Elizabeth's resentment when he incurred inevitable expenses, and had to deal with constant complaints from Mary."