LONDON, Nov 14: UK’s Culture Minister Margaret Hodge has placed a temporary export bar on the document most intimately associated with one of Britain’s most dramatic historical events.

This will provide a last chance to raise the money to keep the rare copy of the Mary Queen of Scots execution warrant in the United Kingdom.

According to a government handout the minister’s ruling follows a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest, administered by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.

The Committee recommended that the export decision be deferred on the grounds that the manuscript is so closely connected with our history and national life that its departure would be a misfortune and that it is of outstanding significance for the study of the events leading to the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. The committee awarded a starred rating to the warrant meaning that every possible effort should be made to raise enough money to keep it in the country.

Mary, Queen of Scots, with her claims to the crowns of Scotland and England, her beauty and charisma, disastrous marriages and love affairs, and years of imprisonment at Fotheringhay has long been a heroine in the popular imagination. Her execution, ordered after great agonising by her much more politically adept cousin, Elizabeth I, is one of the best known and most dramatic events in British history.

Reviewing committee member, Christopher Wright, said: “This document played an integral part in one of the most dramatic episodes in British history”.