Burghley made a rough sketch of the chamber of presence at Fotheringhay Castle, where Mary was tried on 14 and 15 October. The earls, barons and privy councillors – those who would act as judges in the matter – were seated around the walls. Mary was given a chair in the middle of the hall, immediately opposite a throne beneath a cloth of estate; the empty throne represented the absent queen. It was of course a trial for her life, the parliamentary Act for the Queen’s Safety having declared that any attempt to injure the queen was to be ‘pursued to the death by all the Queen’s subjects’. Mary knew this well enough, and declared to the duke of Guise that she was ready to die in the cause of her religion. She would not be a murderer, but a martyr. In that respect her death would be sanctified.
She may in any case have secretly relied upon Elizabeth’s reluctance to impose upon her the extreme penalty; that was why the English queen held out the possibility of ‘favour’ to her. The lawyers had no precedent for her case; she was an anointed queen who did not recognize the court to which she had been taken. She was also a rightful claimant to the English crown. So she had some cause for confidence. She relied, too, upon her personal presence before her judges. She had a sharp wit and a ready tongue; she also had the aura of majesty. She would not easily be put out of countenance. Burghley and a small party of the commissioners went to her privy chamber at Fotheringhay. ‘I am an absolute queen,’ she told them. She would not bargain with them. ‘My mind is not yet dejected, neither will I sink under my calamity.’ Then she warned them to ‘remember that the theatre of the whole world is wider than the kingdom of England’. She was reminding them that the Catholic princes of Europe might revenge her death.
She entered the chamber of presence, on the morning of 14 October, in a gown of black velvet and sat down upon the seat offered to her: the commissioners took off their hats as a mark of respect to her rank. She was described as a ‘big-made’ woman with a face ‘full and fat, double-chinned and hazel-eyed’; after years of imprisonment, her plumpness was only to be expected. The charges against her were read out, in which she was accused of conspiring for the destruction of the queen and her country. She replied that she had come to England as a suppliant, but had been held in confinement ever since. She was an anointed queen and could be judged by no earthly tribunal. She was, however, ready to refute any falsehoods made against her. Babington’s letters to her were then read aloud. ‘It may be that Babington wrote these letters,’ she replied, ‘but let it be proved that I received them.’ The confessions of her two private secretaries were also recited, in which they confirmed her complicity in the writing of ciphered letters. Once more Mary simply repeated her denials of any involvement in a conspiracy against the queen. She also claimed that the word of a prince could not be challenged. She was entirely calm and self-possessed; Paulet wrote to Walsingham that ‘she was utterly void of all fear of harm’.
It was clear to all others that she could not be allowed to evade the charge. On the second and final day of the trial, Burghley told her that she should not complain of her imprisonment. Only her own mistakes had kept her in confinement. ‘Ah,’ she told him, ‘I see that you are my adversary.’ ‘Yes, I am adversary to Queen Elizabeth’s adversaries.’ Burghley then prorogued the commission for ten days, on the express command of the queen. She did not wish to be seen to rush to judgment.
The commissioners met in the Star Chamber at Westminster on 25 October, where, in the absence of Mary, they reviewed the evidence. The queen of Scots was then found guilty. When she received the news, Elizabeth knelt down in prayer for fifteen minutes. She demurred at any public declaration. She was not yet certain of her next move. When Mary heard the verdict she lifted up her eyes to heaven and thanked God for it. The stage was set for her final scene.
When parliament assembled four days later, the Lords and the Commons bayed for Mary’s blood. Burghley had so arranged matters that it rang with accusations against her. On 3 November one of the queen’s favourites, Sir Christopher Hatton, denounced the practices of Mary as ‘most filthy and detestable’. A commission of the Lords and Commons was appointed, while at the same time a petition for her execution was drawn up. After the queen had heard it, in her chamber of presence, she responded very carefully. She warned those assembled that ‘we princes, I tell you, are set on stages in the sight and view of all the world duly observed’. Just as Mary had warned the commissioners about the possibility of the vengeance of Catholic princes, so now Elizabeth warned her parliament that there were large matters at stake. If she and Mary had been only milkmaids, ‘with pails on our arms’, she would not consent to her death in the same circumstances. But the queen of Scots had her ‘favourers’ in a pattern of alliances and interests that were ready to act against England; it was not the person of Mary, but what she represented, that threatened the country.
On 24 November Elizabeth once more prevaricated with them. ‘I have strived more this day, than ever in my life,’ she told them, ‘whether I should speak or use silence.’ As for their petition ‘I shall pray you for this present, to content yourselves to an answer without answer; your judgement I condemn not, neither do I mistake your reasons, but pray you to accept my thankfulness, excuse my doubtfulness, and take in good part my answer answerless . . .’ She allowed her speech to be published, in a copy approved by her.
The queen had indeed fallen into agonies over the decision. It was whispered to her that ‘the dead cannot bite’, but did she have the right to execute an anointed queen? Could she execute her cousin? The kings of France and Scotland, near to Mary in blood, were eager to rescue her from death; she had, after all, once worn the crown of France and was the mother of the Scottish sovereign. Philip of Spain had the highest interest in her as a Catholic princess and, however remote the chance, still a potential successor to Elizabeth. It was also possible that her execution would dissolve the bonds that held together the Protestants and Catholics of England in a frail unity. Might her death precipitate the civil war that was always to be feared? So Elizabeth told the Lords and Commons that ‘I am not so void of judgement as not to see mine own peril, nor yet so ignorant as not to know it were in nature a foolish course to cherish a sword to cut mine own throat’. Her dilemma could not have been better expressed. William Camden, Elizabeth’s first historian, relates that she sat many times ‘melancholic and mute’. Two phrases occurred to her: Aut fer, aut feri – ‘Bear with her or smite her’ – and Ne feriare, feri – ‘Strike lest thou be stricken’.
In the first week of December the news of Mary’s guilt was finally proclaimed in London to the sound of trumpets. Bonfires were lit in the streets and the church bells tolled for twenty-four hours. After the delivery of the verdict the chair of state, and the canopy above it, was removed from her. Writing to Scotland, she said that the act was ‘to signify that I was a dead woman, deprived of the honours and dignity of a queen’. She feared that, according to the articles of the Bond of Association, any loyal Englishman had the duty to kill her. This may also have been the private wish of the queen, who would thereby be relieved of the responsibility of ordering her execution. So in these final weeks Mary went in constant fear of assassination. In a last letter to Elizabeth she requested that her corpse be taken to France, where she might lie beside her mother, Mary of Guise, at the convent of Saint-Pierre at Rheims.
Parliament had reassembled on 2 December, two days before the reading of the proclamation, but now Elizabeth prorogued it until the middle of February. She wanted ten weeks to steady her nerve for the final decision. Rumours and counter-rumours flew around London in January 1587; it was whispered that Mary had escaped confinement, and that the Spaniards had launched an invasion. The council may have encouraged such false reports, however, in order to force Elizabeth’s hand. A ‘plot’ was revealed to Walsingham, involving a poisoned saddle to be given to Elizabeth; the enterprise is likely to have been concocted further to frighten the queen. She could afford no more delay; the feelings of the country co
uld not with impunity be ignored. All of her councillors declared that Mary must be executed.
At the beginning of February the queen was at Greenwich. She asked her secretary, Sir William Davison, to carry to her the warrant for Mary’s execution. He brought it to her chamber, mixed with other papers. She commented to him on the brightness of the morning, and signed the papers given to her without paying any particular attention to the warrant. But then she mentioned it to him. She had delayed for so long in the matter to demonstrate her unwillingness to act against Mary. Was he not sorry to see such a paper signed? He replied that it was best that the guilty should suffer before the innocent.
Elizabeth then told him to get the warrant sealed by the chancellor as quickly and as quietly as possible; it was then to be sent, without proclamation of any kind, to the commissioners. She asked him to inform Walsingham, who was then lying sick; the grief, she said sarcastically, would probably kill him. Davison was about to leave her presence when she called him back. What if a loyal subject, a member of the Bond of Association, would commit the deed? She mentioned two such subjects, one of whom was Mary’s gaoler, Amyas Paulet. By these means she might be able to avoid censure and the unfavourable attention of rival powers. She did not wish to incur the guilt of regicide. She asked Davison to raise the matter with Walsingham; he agreed reluctantly to do so but told her that it was a labour lost. No official would contemplate such an act without the queen’s express commandment.
Burghley summoned the council and informed his colleagues that Elizabeth had at last signed the warrant. It was now necessary to act secretly and swiftly. The warrant was quickly on its way to Fotheringhay, and the necessary letters were sent to the principal commissioners. Elizabeth did not mention the matter. She asked no questions. When she read Paulet’s response to her letter, refusing her request to kill Mary without a warrant, she exploded in rage; she called him a ‘precise’ fellow who pledged himself to her but would do nothing to protect her safety.
Her caution and her patience, two days later, had worn thin. Had Davison expedited the matter? Was the warrant sealed? Davison, in his own narrative, described her as ‘swearing a great oath, it was a shame for them all that it was not already done’. Mary’s self-confidence had returned. She had sent another letter to Elizabeth protesting her innocence and asking for a private interview; she received no reply but Leicester said that her letter ‘hath wrought tears’. On 4 February the principal executioner travelled to Fotheringhay Castle dressed as a serving man; the axe was concealed in his trunk. On Tuesday 7 February, the commissioners arrived at Fotheringhay and, when they were admitted into Mary’s presence, they informed her that they had received an instruction under the Great Seal; she was to be executed on the following morning.
She refused to believe them at first; then she became agitated. She called for her physician and began to discuss money owed to her in France. At that point she broke down. She asked to see her Catholic chaplain, but the commissioners did not want to turn her execution into the martyrdom she so much wished for; instead they offered her the presence of a Protestant dean. She sent a note to her confessor and asked him to pray for her that night; in the morning, when she was led to her death, he might see her and bless her.
At eight o’clock, on the morning of 8 February, the provost-marshal of Fotheringhay Castle knocked on the door of her apartments; there was no response at first, prompting fears that the queen of Scots had taken her own life. Suicide was a mortal sin, however, and Mary did not wish to stain her personal glory. The door was opened. She stood on the threshold, wearing a robe and jacket of black satin trimmed with velvet. Her hair was arranged in a coif; over her head, and falling over her back, was a white silk veil. A crucifix of gold hung from her neck. In her hand she held another crucifix of ivory.
As she passed into the chamber of presence, where she had been tried, the master of her household knelt and wept. ‘Melville,’ she told him, ‘you should rejoice rather than weep that the end of my troubles is come. Tell my friends I die a true Catholic.’ She asked for her chaplain; he had been forbidden to attend, for fear of some religious demonstration. Then she looked around for her women. They also had been kept back as a precaution against unseemly scenes; they might scream, or faint. Yet Mary needed her courtiers to send an authentic account of her death to her admirers, at home and abroad; in the end it was agreed that she could choose six of her closest followers to attend her. ‘Allons donc,’ she told them when they were assembled. ‘Let us go then.’ She descended the staircase to the great hall.
The hall had been cleared of its furniture, and at the upper end stood the scaffold, 12 feet square and 2½ feet in height; it was covered with a black cloth, and railed. A black cushion had been placed before it, together with a black chair. The axe had been put against the rail. A wood fire blazed in the chimney. Present in the hall were 300 knights and gentlemen of the neighbourhood, to witness the memorable occasion, and thousands had gathered outside the castle. The news of her imminent execution had soon spread.
Quite calm and giving no sign of fear, she sat down in the chair made ready for her, in front of the block, and listened to the reading of the warrant against her. The earl of Shrewsbury approached her. ‘Madam, you hear what we are commanded to do.’
‘You will do your duty.’ She then prepared herself to kneel and to pray, when the dean of Peterborough tried to forestall her; but he stuttered his words. ‘Mr Dean, I am a Catholic, and must die a Catholic. It is useless to attempt to move me, and your prayers will avail me but little.’ There was a slight altercation. When she knelt down he began to call out an English prayer in which the assembly joined. So she recited in a loud voice the penitential psalms in Latin, striking the crucifix against her bosom.
The executioners, dressed in black, stepped forward to ask her forgiveness for the duties they were obliged to perform. ‘I forgive you,’ she told them, ‘for now I hope you shall end all my troubles.’ They began to arrange her dress for the final scene, and she looked at the earls close to her. ‘Truly, my lords, I never had such grooms waiting on me before.’ She laid her crucifix on the chair; the principal executioner took it up, as a prize of his office, but was commanded to leave it. Her silk veil was then removed, together with the black robe and the black jacket. Beneath them she was wearing underclothes of crimson velvet and crimson satin. She was now blood-red, the colour of the martyr.
She knelt upon the cushion as her ladies sobbed around her. ‘Adieu,’ she said, ‘au revoir.’ One of her entourage then bound her eyes with a handkerchief. She recited the psalm In te, Domine, confido, before feeling for the block, ‘I trust in you, my Lord God.’ She whispered, ‘In manus tuas, Domine, commendo animam meam’ – ‘Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.’ As she stretched forward one of the executioners held her while the other raised the axe. But his aim was awry and the blade fell on the knot of the handkerchief. He raised the axe again and, this time, he was successful; he severed the head, with the exception of a small shred of skin. The coif and the false hair fell off, and when he picked up the head to show to the spectators it was that of a withered and nearly bald grey-haired old woman.
The dean stepped forward. ‘So perish all enemies of the queen.’ The assembly called out ‘Amen’. It was over. Then a lapdog was found concealed in her clothes and, yelping, it slid in her blood. It was taken away and carefully washed. Anything touched by Mary – the scaffold, the handkerchief, even the beads of her rosary – was now burned in the great hall. No relics were allowed to survive. Yet she had played her final part to perfection, and the story of Mary, queen of Scots, has remained in the public imagination ever since.
On the morning of 9 February Elizabeth went out riding and, when she returned to the palace at Greenwich, she heard the bells of London ringing. She asked for the reason. ‘I never saw her fetch a sigh,’ Elizabeth’s young cousin, Robert Carey recalled, ‘but when the queen of Scots was beheaded.’ It was more than a sigh. It was
a rant, an explosion of guilt and rage. She became almost hysterical, accusing those closest to her of deceit and duplicity. She had never intended that her dear cousin should die. She commanded Burghley from her presence, and refused to allow him back to the court for two months. She admitted to signing the warrant but claimed that she had asked Davison to keep hold of it. Now she wanted Sir William Davison’s life in revenge. She was persuaded out of this impolitic course, and instead Davison was tried in the court of the Star Chamber for abusing the confidence of the queen; he was committed to the Tower, but was released a year later. He, too, had played his part.
Within four days of Mary’s execution Elizabeth had written to James VI, denying any involvement in the act. ‘My dear brother,’ she wrote, ‘I would you knew (though not felt) the extreme dolour that overwhelms my mind, for that miserable accident which (far contrary to my meaning) hath befallen . . .’ It is true that she had been placed under intolerable pressure by her councillors, principal among them Walsingham and Burghley, and she may have persuaded herself that she had acted against her will. Her ministers had conspired behind her back to hasten Mary’s death. But her distress may also have been caused by the pangs of an awakened conscience.
The threat to her reign now grew stronger. By the spring of 1587 reports reached the court of Spanish preparations at Cadiz and at Lisbon; a squadron of ships was then assembled at Plymouth under Sir Francis Drake’s command with orders to sail to Spain. Knowing the inconstancy of his mistress, Drake made haste to leave the shores of England before she could countermand her previous orders. Sure enough the order to cease and desist came through but, by then, Drake was far away. He sank many store-ships and transports at Cadiz before moving on to Cape St Vincent, where he might confront any Spanish invasion force.
Tudors (History of England Vol 2) Page 48