The next morning, Elizabeth told Davison that she had suffered a terrible dream about the death of her cousin and told him to delay affixing the seal to the warrant. He told her that it had already been done and Elizabeth passed no further comment. Perhaps she thought that her councillors would come to her again before enacting a document of such vital import.
When the queen had signed the warrant for the Duke of Norfolk in 1572, she had promptly revoked it and he had remained in the Tower until she changed her mind again, five months later. This time she did not withdraw the warrant.12
Yet Elizabeth later said that she had signed the warrant only as a surety and had never meant it to be carried through. Certainly, everyone around her moved fast once they had her signature, because they thought there was a possibility she might rescind.
Cecil wanted the matter settled. He gathered a secret Privy Council meeting on 3 February, without the knowledge of the queen, and talked of the execution. They decided to enact it immediately without telling Elizabeth, declaring it was ‘neither fit nor convenient to trouble her Majesty further’.13 Beale, the clerk of the council, was given it and sent to Fotheringhay. The queen was to be kept in the dark and not told ‘until it were done’.14 It was, to them, essential to the safety of Elizabeth and, as Walsingham put it from his sickbed, ‘the universal quietness of the realm’. Mary’s old friend Talbot was to be tasked with enacting her execution, along with the Earl of Kent and Derby.
Chapter Thirty-Six
‘I Am Ready’
There is no document that specifies the order of the execution, who must do it and how the hall should be arranged. Was there ever such a thing? Cecil had been obsessive about the details of the trial, who should sleep where and who should stand where in the building. Surely he couldn’t have left the execution to chance? The document must have been lost or more likely destroyed; the document in which was laid out how to execute a queen.
Mary had no idea what was about to occur. But on Tuesday 7 February, news came through of arrivals at the castle, including Talbot and Kent, and the household was thrown into apprehension. Bourgoing suspected the worst.
On that Tuesday evening, Mary had eaten and was preparing for bed when Kent and Talbot arrived in her chamber, along with Robert Beale, who had been sent to find them and deliver the execution warrant. Mary asked for time to dress and received them in her room. Beale read the warrant to her and Mary spoke with dignity and clarity. ‘You will do me much good in withdrawing me from this world out of which I am very glad to go.’ She placed her hand on the Bible and declared herself innocent of all crimes. Kent complained that it was a Catholic Bible and Mary nimbly pointed out that her oath on a ‘translation in which I do not believe’ was not going to be ‘more true’.1 It was a fair point and Kent desisted from further protests.
She feared an assassination and was reassured by Drury, assistant to Paulet, who told her gently that she would be killed properly in front of noble witnesses since she was a ‘Christian queen’.
Mary asked for the attendance of her chaplain to receive her confession and give her his blessing and the Last Sacrament, but she was brutally denied. Instead, they informed her she should receive, in her words, ‘the consolation and instruction of their minister brought here for that purpose’ – the Dean of Peterborough.2 She was heartbroken at the blow and it must have been doubly painful to receive it from her old friend, Talbot.
She asked if she might be buried in France near her first husband or her mother. Talbot said that it would be impossible for her to be buried there, taking yet another comfort from her. She knew then that it would be unlikely she would receive a Catholic funeral. She asked for her papers and account books, to set matters in order and compose her will, but again she was refused.
Mary received her sentence with grace. She had once said that all she had was her religion and her royal blood. Now, with her death, she could die a martyr to the Catholic religion and perhaps she would be avenged in death as she had not been in life. ‘In the name of God these tidings are welcome’, she said. ‘I bless and praise Him that the end of all my bitter sufferings is at hand. I did not think that the queen, my sister, would have ever consented to my death, but God’s will be done. He is my principal witness, that I shall render up my spirit into His hands innocent of any offence against her, and with a pure heart and conscience clear before His divine majesty of the crimes whereof I am accused.’3
Her skill at oratory, her brilliant charm, was not undimmed. She spoke about her own claim to the throne and how her cousin had never agreed to see her. Her final thoughts were still of Elizabeth.
If her kinswoman had failed her, God was still her support. ‘I am quite ready and very happy to die, and to shed my blood for Almighty God, my Saviour and my Creator, and for the Catholic Church, and to maintain its rights in this country.’ She would die for the church. Elizabeth and Cecil had been right not to have Mary at the Tower and publicly executed. Such sentiments were wildly incendiary.
She asked for a little time to put her affairs in order but was told she must die and her death ‘cannot be delayed’.4 Where had this instruction come from? Elizabeth’s death warrant only said that Talbot, Kent and Derby must make to Fotheringhay at their earliest convenience, with no further detail. Her death was to be at eight o’clock in the morning, and there was barely the opportunity to ready anything.
Mary’s servants begged the men for mercy and to allow Mary more time. Bourgoing reminded Talbot that he had once relieved his ill health.5 It was to no avail. They wanted Mary executed as soon as possible – presumably before Elizabeth had a chance to find out what was happening and halt proceedings.
The men departed, leaving the servants heartbroken and weeping. Mary tried to comfort them. ‘Did I not tell you this would happen’, she said to Jane Kennedy, ‘I knew they would never allow me to live, I was too great an obstacle to their religion.’6 She was given a little food, the servants sobbing as they brought dishes to her.
She had been denied the papers which she would need to write a full will distributing all her properties and possessions but devoted herself to doing what she could, appointing her cousin Henry, Duke of Guise as executor, and directed her debts to be paid, her servants to be rewarded and Masses to be said for her soul in France. She then looked over her wardrobes and cabinets and distributed her effects to her gentlewomen and servants. She gave Bourgoing silver boxes, two lutes, her music book and her red valances and bed curtains. The miniature gold guns she had sent her secretary to give to James were given to her surgeon and other gifts she had meant for her son to her grooms. She made bequests to the poor and divided her remaining money between her servants, asking that her coach and horses be sold for their travel expenses.
She sat down to write her final goodbye, to her brother-in-law and once childhood playmate, the little boy she had babied when she was growing up in France, Henry III. She wrote to her ‘royal brother’ how she wished to be remembered as a queen who died for the Catholic faith. She was desperately regretful of ever trusting Elizabeth.
Royal brother, having by God’s will, for my sins I think, thrown myself into the power of the queen, my cousin, at whose hands I have suffered so much for almost twenty years, I have finally been condemned to death by her and her Estates. I have asked for my papers, which they have taken away, in order that I might make my will, but I have been unable to recover anything of use to me, or even get leave either to make my will freely or to have my body conveyed after my death, as I would wish, to your kingdom, where I had honour to be queen, your sister and old ally.7
If only she had remained in France, the place of her happiness, a dowager queen and a widow at court. A life of embroidering with Catherine de’ Medici would have been signally without event but yet her life would have been preserved.
Tonight, after dinner, I have been advised of my sentence. I am to be executed like a criminal at eight in the morning. I have not had time to give you a full accou
nt of everything that has happened, but if you will listen to my doctor and my other unfortunate servants, you will learn the truth, and how, thanks be to God, I scorn death and vow that I meet it innocent of any crime, even if I were their subject. The Catholic faith and the assertion of my God-given right to the English throne are the two issues on which I am condemned, and yet I am not allowed to say that it is for the Catholic religion that I die, for fear of any interference with theirs.
She begged him to pay the wages of her servants that were in arrears and to commemorate her as a Catholic queen, asking him to have ‘prayers offered to God for a queen who has herself been called Most Christian, and who dies a Catholic stripped of all her possessions. As for my son, I commend him to you inasmuch as he deserves it, for I cannot answer for him.’
She asked that her chaplain, de Preau, be given a small benefice in France, from where he could offer prayers for Mary’s soul. She sent the king two precious stones from her collections, ‘talismans against illness, trusting you will enjoy good health and a long and happy life’. It was her final farewell. She signed it ‘Marie, Queen of Scotland’, the last time she would ever write herself as such.8 She did not write a final letter to Elizabeth or her son. She had now accepted that there was nothing they could do for her. As she was writing, guards lined up outside her room, marching back and forth. Paulet had doubled the men, just in case Mary managed to escape at the last moment. Downstairs, the men were hammering up the scaffold. Mr Bull arrived and sharpened his axe.
When Mary finally completed the letter, it was long past two in the morning. Her gentlewomen were busy preparing her clothing for the next day and Mary lay down and attempted to rest. She asked Jane Kennedy to read to her, asking for the life of a great sinner. Kennedy chose that of the good thief, crucified on the cross next to Jesus – who had asked Jesus to remember him in heaven. Even with Jane’s soothing voice, the queen could not sleep and when the candles were lit for morning at six, it was a relief. She dressed and then asked her servants to assemble in her presence, where her will was read; she signed it and knelt to pray. Bourgoing persuaded her to take a little bread and wine. A messenger came for her, and shouted that the lords awaited her, but Mary asked for more time to pray.9
The prayers were scarcely completed before the sheriff of Northamptonshire and the Earl of Shrewsbury knocked violently on the door. They had come to escort her to the great hall where she had been tried. Mary met them with dignity and moved forward, holding her ivory crucifix. Her secretary reminded her to take her prayer book and she received it from him. She kissed the crucifix and moved to the men. Outside, spectators were arriving to watch the queen die.
Mary, who had worn so many magnificent gowns, had dazzled the world in white at the grand wedding to the dauphin, was now in black satin embroidered with black velvet figures, with sleeves that passed to the ground, set with buttons of jet and trimmed with pearl. Her beautiful wig, as auburn and handsome as her hair had once been, was tied into a veil of white lawn which flowed to the ground. She wore as her headdress a pomander chain and an Agnus Dei and around her neck she had a golden crucifix and a pair of beads at her girdle bearing a medal. She was every inch the queen and the Catholic martyr.
At the door, she was told that her servants could not attend her and she must die alone. Mary asked why she was not permitted attendants and she was told that Elizabeth had commanded it since her servants might scream out and cry ‘and trouble you and us’ or try to seize her blood ‘and keep it for a relic and minister offence that way’. Mary promised that her servants would remain quiet. ‘Alas, poor souls,’ said Mary, ‘it would do them good to bid me farewell.’10 She recalled that other gentleladies were accompanied by their attendants and said she could not credit that Elizabeth would expect a queen to die without her ladies to assist her – for without her ladies, she would be undressed by the executioner. Kent relented, presumably because he had never been given such orders in the first place. But still, the words had been spoken and Mary went to her death not knowing if Elizabeth had decreed her immediate execution and ordered the cruel touch of forbidding her servants. Mary moved forward with Melville, Bourgoing and two other men, and Jane Kennedy and her secretary’s sister, Elizabeth Curle. She had another companion too; her tiny dog had followed her down the stairs and hidden under her skirts, without anyone noticing. While the queen was preparing to die, men across England were shutting up the ports. Walsingham and Cecil wanted to prevent the news from reaching France.
As Mary entered the hall, she saw her final stage – about five feet in height and seven feet around. Three hundred spectators had crammed in to watch.
The block was in the centre, covered in black, and behind it was a small stool for Mary to sit on while she was disrobed. Mr Bull was standing upon the stage with his axe. There were stools for Talbot and Kent on either side. The sheriff and various knights were standing around the stage. Mary kept her composure and walked forward. Her ladies, Jane and Elizabeth, immediately burst into tears but Mary told them to stop since she had promised the lords they would be ‘quiet and not offend them’. She gave her speech, reminding those assembled that ‘all this world is but vanity and full of troubles and sorrows. Carry this message from me and tell my friends that I died a true woman to my religion, and like a true Scottish woman and a true French woman; but God forgive them that have long desired my end and thirsted for my blood.’11
Mary walked majestically to the block, where she heard the commission for her execution read out and then was met by Dr Fletcher, Dean of Peterborough, who told her that the ‘queen his sovereign, moved with an unspeakable care of her soul, had sent him to instruct her and comfort her in the words of God’. Poor Mary, suffering attempted humiliations right until the end.12 Her rosary was taken from her. She proudly refused to listen to the Protestant dean. ‘I will have nothing to do with you or your doctrine,’ she said and bowed to the block. Talbot then instructed her he would pray with her. Mary told the Protestant Dean he should ‘pray secretly, by yourself, for I will not pray with you’. She kissed her two ladies, told her men to remember her to her son, promised to pray for him in heaven, and wished goodbye to her servants. The Dean was praying loudly but Mary ignored him and said her own prayers yet louder in Latin and then in English, asking blessings for the church, her son and for Elizabeth. The tears ran down her face as she prayed.
As was custom, Mr Bull and his assistants asked for Mary’s forgiveness. She replied, ‘I forgive you with all my heart, for I now hope you should make an end of all my troubles.’13 Her ladies helped her to undress, with the assistance of the executioner, and removed her black dress and veil, revealing her scarlet petticoat, red sleeves and red satin bodice. She was clothed in the colours of blood and Catholic martyrdom. She had often been denied her voice – and now her clothes would speak for her. Her ladies wept to behold her. Mr Bull and his assistants asked for the queen’s jewellery, which was their right.
The executioners took hold of her and Mary refused to be frightened, instead smiling out and saying, ‘I never had two such grooms waiting on me before!’ Jane took her handkerchief, embroidered in gold, and bound it around Mary’s eyes and she and Elizabeth left their mistress, giving her a final touch in farewell. Fletcher, still determined to win, tried again, informing her she must die in the true faith of Christ. Mary was steadfast. ‘I believe firmly to be saved by the passion and blood of Jesus Christ, and therein also I believe, according to the faith of the Ancient Catholic Church of Rome, and therefore I shed my blood.’14
Mary knelt down and spoke a psalm in Latin, then, groping for the block because she could not see it, laid her head down in position, holding her hands to her face. In Latin, she commended herself to God. One executioner reached down to hold her steady while the other brought up the axe. The executioner’s hands on her were unnecessary. She did not move as the axe was brought down. Mr Bull was nervous. The first hit smite the back of the head and the queen’s lips were seen to
move. The second was better: he took the whole head, leaving nothing but a small sinew, which he then cut by using the axe as a saw.15
Some say Mr Bull held up her head by her hair, not realising it was a wig, and so the head fell to the ground. It was reported that her lips continued to move for a quarter of an hour after the execution. The Dean pronounced, ‘So perish all the queen’s enemies,’ and Kent uttered similar words.16 The men filed out of the hall, congratulating themselves on a job well done. Mary’s poor wasted body was left on the stage, and the executioners began to strip it, as was customary. Under the petticoats, they found Mary’s small dog, cowering and covered in blood, holding tight to the still-warm body of its long-tormented mistress.
The body was treated with no dignity, wrapped in the rough wool covering that had been over the queen’s own billiard table and deposited in the presence chamber. Every piece of the queen’s property was taken and burnt and even Mr Bull was deprived of Mary’s jewels, as the officers wanted them destroyed. Mindful of Mary’s declaration that she wished to be a martyr, they were ensuring that nothing remained that might be used as a relic. The queen’s heart and organs were removed and the sheriff buried them deep under Fotheringhay Castle.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
‘An Abundance of Tears’
The servants had been sent back to Mary’s rooms to order her belongings, but some were too great to be moved. The many unfinished pieces of embroidery were taken away. The cloth of state that Mary had been so proud of was left to grow dusty and neglected in a storeroom, ‘upon its front in letters of fading gold’, ‘En ma fin est mon commencement’: In my end is my beginning. Jane, Elizabeth, Melville, Bourgoing and the rest were imprisoned in the castle and not permitted to return home, contrary to what Mary had requested. Walsingham was too afraid of their emotive accounts reaching the outside world. In the haste to avoid anything becoming a relic, the block was burned but Mr Bull was permitted to take his axe, to be used on the next person who had fallen on the wrong side of the government.
The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots Page 39