On this day in Tudor history, 2 May 1568, Mary, Queen of Scots, who had recently been forced to abdicate in favour of her son, King James VI, successfully escaped from Lochleven Castle.
How did she end up a prisoner at Lochleven? How did she escape? And what happened next?
Let me explain...
Also on this day in history:
- 1536 - The arrest of Queen Anne Boleyn at Greenwich Palace.
- 1542 – Burial of Henry Clifford, 1st Earl of Cumberland and close friend of Henry VIII, at Skipton Church in Yorkshire. Cumberland served the King as Warden of the West Marches, and was rewarded for his service and loyalty during the Pilgrimage of Grace by being elected as a Knight of the Order of the Garter.
- 1550 – Burning of Joan Bocher, an Anabaptist, at Smithfield. Bocher believed that Christ's flesh was “not incarnate of the Virgin Mary” and was convicted of heresy and condemned to death. Click here to find out more.
- 1551 – Birth of William Camden, historian, headmaster and herald, at the Old Bailey, London. Camden is known for his “Britannia”, the first chorographical survey of Great Britain and Ireland, and his Annales Rerum Gestarum Angliae et Hiberniae Regnate Elizabetha, his history of Elizabeth I's reign, but he also wrote a Greek grammar and “Remaines of a Greater Worke, Concerning Britaine”, which was a collection of historical essays.
- 1587 – Burial of Sir Thomas Bromley, Lord Chancellor, in Westminster Abbey.
- 1620 – Burial of Edward More, poet and grandson of Sir Thomas More. He was buried at Barnborough, Yorkshire.