There was certainly to be no question of the captive eluding her fate: at Paulet’s request the garrison at Fotheringhay was strengthened by seventy foot-soldiers and fifty bowmen. In November Paulet had been joined in his charge by Sir Drue Drury. In mid-December Mary sent for both her custodians, and asked them to dispatch on her behalf a farewell letter to Elizabeth. Dramatically, Mary wiped her cheeks with both sheets, in order to show that the leaves were not poisoned. She then sealed the letter with Spanish wax and closed it with white silk.9 Mary’s main points to Elizabeth concerned firstly the disposal of her body after death – she was anxious that her servants should be allowed to convey it to France, rather than Scotland, where the Protestant burial rites would constitute a profanation by her standards; secondly she expressed her fears of the ‘secret tyrannies’ of those whom Elizabeth had placed around her, which she dreaded would result in her secret assassination; thirdly Mary asked to be allowed to send a jewel and last farewell to her son James; finally Mary raised once more the vexed question of the royal dais. She concluded on a magisterial note of warning to Elizabeth: ‘Do not accuse me of presumption if, on the eve of leaving this world and preparing myself for a better one, I remind you that one day you will have to answer for your charge, as well as those that are sent before. …’ Mary signed the letter: ‘Your sister and cousin, wrongfully imprisoned.’10
Despite the innocuous character of Mary’s last requests, Paulet and Drury did not immediately dispatch this missive, not so much out of fear of Elizabeth’s anger, as out of dread that its mildness might move the English queen to clemency, and further delay the execution of justice. Paulet confided to Davison, the secretary of the Council, that as they were strongly hoping the sentence would be carried out before Christmas, it was planned that the letter should arrive a few days afterwards, when the queen of Scots would be already dead and it would be too late for Elizabeth to exercise mercy. In Paulet’s opinion, there were many pressing reasons why the sentence should be carried out as fast as possible, not the least among them being the return of Mary’s priest (or almoner as she always termed him) de Préeau.11
On de Préau’s arrival, Paulet took the precaution of searching his papers, and was rewarded by finding two leaves of paper in the form of a diary inserted among his philosophical exercises; luckily he decided de Préau was of no particular account – being ‘of weak and slender judgment’. All the same, for what he chose to describe as Christian reasons, Paulet wished that de Préau had been restricted to a single visit to the queen on the eve of her death: the spiritual perils of his continual association with his mistress seemed yet another reason for bringing Mary’s life to a speedy close. After all, expostulated Paulet, Mary showed no signs of repentance, no signs even of wishing to live, and an ignorant papist priest would surely only confirm her in such reprobate tendencies. The return of the little store of money which had been seized from Mary at Chartley, although performed by Paulet with some reluctance, seemed a minor evil compared to this quite unnecessary display of tolerance on behalf of the central government.
Around Christmas Paulet either fell ill or pleaded a diplomatic illness to avoid those argumentative interviews with Mary which he so greatly disliked. Paulet’s withdrawal affected Mary herself depressively: Paulet might dread the interviews, but to Mary they were her solitary contact with the outside world, and represented her only source of stimulus, to rehearse her arguments, and in arguing to keep up her spirits. The weeks now passed slowly and heavily; without Paulet to joust with verbally, for the first time Mary began to feel the suspense of her situation. By 8th January Mary was begging Paulet to pay her another visit, for although both were within the confines of the same castle, she had not seen him since before Christmas, and as to his illness she had heard he had been out of doors the previous day. Part of Mary’s anxiety arose through having heard nothing from Elizabeth in answer to her farewell requests. On 12th January she wrote another long letter, in which she pleaded with Elizabeth to end the miserable uncertainty of the situation, not so much for herself as for her poor servants, on whom the strain was telling. In her last paragraph she even tried to tempt Elizabeth’s curiosity once more by inquiring to whom she might confide her death-bed’s secrets; it was as though the notion of the unfulfilled meeting still haunted her after all these years, and she had some wild hope that Elizabeth might still pay her a personal visit at the end. The bait, however, was never extended where Elizabeth might see it for Paulet refused to dispatch this second letter at all, on the grounds that he was lying in bed with his arms bandaged, and that Mary must content herself with awaiting the answer to her first missive. Later he explained that he would not send the letter at all, because he had no orders to do so.12
Slowly the winter days passed by. It was now over three months since those booted and spurred judges had galloped away from Fotheringhay and there was still no news from London that the end was even near. It was inevitable that the hopes of those faithful partisans and observers, Mary’s servants, should begin to rise. Although Mary had no doubts herself that sooner or later she would die, when Christmas had passed, the long delay encouraged her retainers to begin to hope on her behalf. On 20th January Melville interpreted a remark of Paulet’s on the subject of the royal servants’ wages as meaning that the period of their service to Mary was likely to be extended indefinitely into the future. This made the blow which fell upon them the next day all the more painful to bear: brusquely Paulet informed Melville and the chaplain de Préeau that although they were to continue in residence at Fotheringhay, henceforth they were to be parted from their mistress. Only the physician Bourgoing was to be allowed to continue in attendance. The removal of these loyal servants lowered Mary’s spirits further: her old fears of a secret death were revivified. But when Mary expressed these anxieties to Paulet through the medium of Bourgoing, she succeeded in causing him considerable offence: he fell into a rage at her taunts, and told Bourgoing that ‘he was a man of honour and a gentleman, and he would not wish so to dishonour himself as to wish to exercise such cruelty or to conduct himself like a Turk’.13 Man of honour as he professed himself – and time was to prove the truth of his claim – Paulet had no objections to imposing a series of further petty humiliations on his prisoner. On the following Monday Mary’s butler was forbidden to carry the rod before her meat dishes, a service he was performing in the absence of the steward Melville. Once again Mary jumped to the conclusion that this regal dignity was being stripped from her in order to kill her secretly. In answer to her protest she received the chilling reply from Paulet that her priest, her steward, her canopy and her rod had all been taken from her for the same reason: because she was no longer a queen but ‘an attainted, convicted and condemned woman’. It was left for Mary to derive what consolation she could from the reflection that King Richard II also had been treated in this opprobrious manner.
Attainted, convicted and condemned Mary might be, yet there was still no official word concerning her execution. But it was said afterwards that on the Sunday, 29th January, between midnight and one o’clock in the morning, the heavens gave their own portent that the end was not far off, for a great flame of fire illuminated the windows of the queen’s room three times. The light was bright enough to read by, and blinded the guards stationed beneath her chamber, already made nervous and apprehensive by the phenomenon, which was seen nowhere else in the castle.14 This supernatural warning,* if warning it was, was certainly borne out by events. Three days later, at her court at Greenwich, Queen Elizabeth at last sent for Davison to bring the warrant for the execution, which for so long had lacked her own signature. Davison discreetly placed the warrant in the middle of a pile of other papers which the queen was due to sign. The ruse – for Elizabeth had made it increasingly clear to her anxious ministers that she must be the subject of a ruse – was successful. It was thus, in the midst of an innocuous conversation on the subject of the weather, that Elizabeth finally signed the warrant, with all her other p
apers, and having done so, threw them idly down on the table. But the queen could not quite bear to let this vexatious yet momentous subject, on which she had expended so much emotion, pass so easily. She asked Davison teasingly if he felt distressed to see her give the famous signature after so long. Davison replied tactfully that he preferred to see the death of a guilty person to that of an innocent one. Elizabeth now instructed Davison to get the Great Seal of England attached to the warrant by the Lord Chancellor and then take it to Walsingham. Her vein of humour was not exhausted: ‘I fear the grief thereof will go near to kill him outright,’ said Elizabeth happily. She then concluded the subject with a practical direction – the execution was under no circumstances to be held in public, but in the great hall of the castle. Elizabeth then laid it down that she personally was to be told no more on the subject until the execution was successfully completed.16
Despite this Pilate-like observation, Elizabeth still did not totally wash her hands of the matter. Mary’s fears of a secret death were not altogether groundless. Even before Elizabeth had affixed her signature to the warrant, she had been heard muttering in the hearing of her ministers that the provisions of the Act of Association might make it a positive duty for a loyal subject to kill the queen of Scots … thus ridding the English queen of the responsibility. Her ministers, understanding her intentions only too well, pretended not to grasp her meaning. On 1st February, however, Elizabeth was more explicit. Having signed the warrant she murmured wistfully to Davison that if a loyal subject were to save her from embarrassment by dealing the blow, the resentment of France and Scotland might be disarmed. The obvious loyal subjects to assume this helpful role were Paulet and Drury at Fotheringhay. Davison’s first reaction was to fear yet another excuse for delaying the execution itself. But against his advice, the queen insisted on the point being made to Paulet: a letter was duly sent to the custodians regretting that they had not ‘found out some way to shorten the life of that Queen [Mary] considering the great peril she [Elizabeth] is subject unto hourly, so long as the said Queen shall live’.17
Now the issue which Mary had so long dreaded was squarely placed before her jailer; and it is one of the ironies of history that Paulet, the man whom Mary had for so long both disliked and feared, hesitated for an instant, but seized his pen and wrote back to his royal mistress in the most trenchant language refusing the odious commission: ‘I am so unhappy to have lived to see this unhappy day,’ he replied, ‘in which I am required by direction from my most gracious sovereign to do an act which God and the law forbiddeth. … God forbid that I should make so foul a shipwreck of my conscience, or leave so great a blot on my poor posterity, to shed blood without law or warrant.’18 Paradoxically Mary was saved from the private extinction which she dreaded by the action of the Puritan who had done so much to make her last months uncomfortable and humiliating. Elizabeth, on the other hand, by a course of action which did neither her courage, her character nor her reputation any credit, gave Paulet a chance to redeem himself at the bar of history – unimaginative, bigoted, petty tyrant be might be, he was still no assassin. It was left to Elizabeth when his answer was conveyed to her to exclaim furiously over his ‘daintiness’, the ‘niceness’ of ‘those precise fellows’ such as Paulet, who professed great zeal for her safety, but would perform nothing.19
Elizabeth’s Council, experienced in the ways of their mistress, did not wait for Paulet’s answer before acting. With the warrant in their possession, it was unanimously decided to set proceedings in hand immediately. Elizabeth’s ability to continue to toy with the subject despite her signature was confirmed on 5th February when she told Davison roguishly that she had dreamt the night before she was running him through with a sword for causing the death of Mary. Her interest in assassination was also not exhausted: she appeared to play with the idea of having Mary smothered by Robert Wingfield, pretending that this had been the advice of Archibald Douglas. The Council did not wait to see through the full comedy of such behaviour before acting. The warrant was handed to Beale, the clerk of the Council, who was instructed to set forth immediately for Fotheringhay, accompanied by Shrewsbury and the earl of Kent, with a covering commission to go into Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire to hear ‘hues and cries’, in order to cloak his mission in the utmost secrecy.* The greatest thought was given to the details of the execution in Walsingham’s memorial on the subject – down to the speeches which the two earls were to make at the ceremony. Cecil added his own comment on the subject in the margin of the memorial: the speeches should be used ‘To express her many attempts both for destruction of the Queen’s person, and the invasion of this realm’.20
More practical aspects of the affair were not neglected. Walsingham made himself responsible for contacting the actual executioner. In the greatest secrecy, his servant Anthony Hall acquired the services of one Bull, £10 being the agreed fee for ‘his labour’. Another of Walsingham’s servants, Digby, conducted Bull down to Fotheringhay, disguised as a serving-man with ‘his instrument’ – the axe – hidden in a trunk. Such efficiency resulted in the smooth working of all the preliminary arrangements, except that Sir Walter Mildmay, whether out of fear of public opinion, apprehension regarding Elizabeth’s reactions, or genuine fastidiousness, refused to house the executioner at his own house of Apethorpe, so that he had to be lodged secretly in an inn at Fotheringhay. On arrival, in order to give every appearance of legality to the proceedings, Beale took care to inform the local justices of the peace and officials, both of Northamptonshire and Huntingdon, including the sheriff of Northampton who was to be responsible for providing the surgeons for the occasion.21
Still the sadly depleted royal household at Fotheringhay had no inkling of what was afoot. On the Saturday, 4th February, Bourgoing went to Paulet and asked if he could go visit the neighbouring villages and search for certain herbal remedies which might help the queen against her rheumatism for the rest of the winter season. Paulet was evasive, and said he could take no decision until the Monday. On Sunday, however, Mary learnt that Beale had arrived at Fotheringhay and, interpreting the significance of his arrival correctly, told Bourgoing he might cease searching for a cure since she would now have no need of it. But no authoritative intimation was given to the queen concerning her fate, which left her servants free to continue to hope for the next few days. It was not until the Tuesday, 7th February, that the arrival of several more people at the castle, including Shrewsbury and Kent who had been lodging at Orton nearby, ‘threw the household into a terrible state of apprehension. Having for the last three months imagined many coming evils for Her Majesty,’ as Bourgoing put it,22 there could now be no doubt that the blow so long anticipated was about to fall.
The official time given to the queen to prepare for death was of the minimum. It was not until after dinner that the two custodians and the two earls asked to see Mary. She had retired to bed, but on being told that the matter was urgent, asked for a little time in which to dress, and then received them in her room, seated in a chair at the foot of her bed. Of the deputation, including Beale, it was Shrewsbury who told Mary that she had been found guilty and condemned to death. Beale now read aloud from the warrant, from which the yellow wax Great Seal of England dangled, in order to emphasize once more that Mary’s judges were acting legally, in accordance with the Act of Association. Mary received the news with absolute calm. When Beale had done, she replied with great dignity and no show of emotion: ‘I thank you for such welcome news. You will do me great good in withdrawing me from this world out of which I am very glad to go.’ She touched on her queenly position and royal blood, adding that in spite of this ‘all my life I have had only sorrow’, and saying that she was now overjoyed to have the opportunity at the end to shed her blood for the Catholic Church. Mary then placed her hand on the New Testament and solemnly protested herself to be innocent of all the crimes imputed to her. When Kent objected that it was a Catholic version of the Bible, Mary answered: ‘If I swear on the book which I
believe to be the true version, will your lordship not believe my oath more than if I were to swear on a translation in which I do not believe?’
But Mary’s captors were not prepared to concede either the sincerity of her religious convictions or the need to display a certain tolerance towards a woman in extremis. They now offered her the services of the Protestant dean of Peterborough to help her make ready for her end, and eliminate from her mind at the last ‘the follies and abominations of popery’. Mary crossed herself, and utterly refused even to consider the suggestion, saying that when she had first arrived in England she had listened to both sides of the question, but now all that was passed, and the hour of her death was the very moment to show constancy. The result of this interchange, in which as Paulet reported afterwards ‘we prevailed nothing’, was that when Mary proceeded to ask for her own chaplain to be readmitted to her presence, in order to make ready her soul, in Paulet’s words ‘we utterly denied that unto her’. This was a serious blow to Mary, who had not anticipated this final inhumanity. However, when Kent exclaimed: ‘Your life would be the death of our religion, your death would be its life,’ her face lit up.23 At least his words revealed that already in the opinion of the world her death was linked with the survival of the Catholic Church in England.
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