When the English guns breached Edinburgh Castle in May 1573 after a five-day bombardment, William Maitland of Lethington — Mary's greatest secretary of state and the most brilliant political mind of the Scottish Reformation — was found dying in the castle. Whether he took poison to avoid execution or died of illness is disputed; he died in custody days after the surrender. Maitland had guided Scottish foreign policy through twenty years of crisis and his death removed one of the last possible architects of a restored Marian regime. Kirkcaldy was hanged; Maitland cheated the gallows.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in Britain — drawing on Domesday records, scheduled monuments, Victorian OS maps, geological data and archaeological archives to tell the full story of a place.
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