An Accidental Tragedy

by Roderick Graham

  Mary then reiterated her personal sovereignty as a crowned queen and Elizabeth’s lack of help for her plight. This was simply ignored and the commission drove steadfastly ahead with direct accusations.

  Gaudy, the royal sergeant-at-law, vividly robed in blue with a red hood, now described the Babington plot in detail, avowing ‘that she knew of it, approved it, assented unto it, promised her assistance, and showed the way and means’. This was crucial and Mary knew it. She could also guess that at least some of her correspondence would have been compromised and would also presume that some evidence against her would have been obtained under torture. However, she had no way of knowing how much detail was in Walsingham’s hands and she had been given no notice of the evidence that would be produced at the trial. Mary was certain that the commission would find her guilty and that parliament would sentence her to death, although she may have harboured some fragile hope that the sentence would never be carried out. Therefore, since she now had nothing to lose, Mary had no hesitation in making the most extreme statements.

  Opting for the blanket denial she had given to Paulet at Chartley, she denied knowing Babington, Ballard or anyone else. She ‘excited no man to commit any offence, and being shut up in prison, she could neither know nor hinder what they attempted’. She did admit that she fervently had wanted to gain her freedom, ‘a very natural wish’. Babington’s confession was read and Mary simply declared that many men wrote to her and ‘it could not thereby be gathered that she was privy to all their wicked counsels’. Then her letters from Babington were read and she denied she had ever written any to him. The response to this was immediate and her incriminating letter of 12 July 1585 was also read.

  Now the court could connect Babington’s ‘six noble gentlemen’ who would ‘undertake the tragical execution’ or the ‘dispatch of the usurping competitor’ with Mary’s request to Babington to know how the ‘six gentlemen deliberate to proceed’ and when it ‘shall be time to set the gentlemen on work’, leading to her rescue and the restoration of the Catholic faith. Mary was staggered to find the depth of Walsingham’s penetration of her correspondence and realised that if the letter was accepted by the court as having been written by her – and she knew very well that their inclination would be strongly for acceptance – then her guilt was inevitable. She feared that things were being effected now by Walsingham ‘who, as she had heard, had practised against her life and her son’s’, to bring about her death.

  Mary had to respond immediately, and her defence was simple. She told the court that while it was true that the letter in question was written in her ciphers, these ciphers had been stolen from her agents in France and the letter was a complete forgery. Mary, reasonably, asked to see the originals of the letters; ‘If my enemies possess them, why do they not produce them?’ Walsingham could only bite his lip at this. Mary went on to declare that she had not so much as thought of the destruction of the queen, ‘And withal she shed plenty of tears.’ At this point Walsingham smiled and slowly rose to his feet. He replied that being ‘very careful for the safety of the Queen and realm, I have curiously searched out the practices against the same’. Mary said that spies could not be relied upon and burst into more tears. ‘I would never make shipwreck of my soul by conspiring the destruction of my dearest sister.’

  This was the moment when Walsingham desperately needed the original minute, but lacking it he had to move to the evidence of Nau and Curle. They did not appear in person but their confessions were read out. Given the opportunity to question the pair, Mary might well have been able, by appealing to their loyalty, to gain some retraction of their testimony, but instead she was left with no option but to rise above it: ‘The majesty and safety of all princes falleth to the ground if they depend upon the writings and testimony of secretaries . . . If they have written anything which may be hurtful to the Queen [Elizabeth] they have written it altogether without my knowledge . . . sure I am that if they were here present, they would clear me of blame in this cause. And I, if my notes were to hand, could answer particularly to these things.’

  On the next day she again protested against her situation and ‘saw herself barred from all hope of her liberty’ and hoped there might be another trial at which she would be allowed an advocate. She also noticed that the commissioners had all arrived in the chamber in boots and riding clothes, and presumed correctly that this would be the last day of the trial. Mary started by attacking her accusers. ‘The manner in which I am treated appears to me very strange. I find myself overwhelmed under the importunity of a crowd of advocates and lawyers, who appear more versed in the formality of petty courts of justice, in little towns, than in the investigation of questions such as the present. I demand that, as this assembly appears to have been summoned for my accusation, another shall be summoned in which I may enter freely and frankly, defending my rights and honour, to satisfy the desire I have of proving my innocence.’ Burghley said that her protests would be noted and that the letters held by Walsingham were proof enough. Mary, with some forensic skill, pointed out that ‘the circumstances may be proved but never the fact’. Next, Burghley accused her of awarding her inheritance in England to Philip of Spain. Mary said it seemed ‘good to some’ that the crown should pass to a Catholic. He then told her that Morgan had sent Parry to murder the queen. There was no possibility that Mary could be linked to the intrigues of third parties without any evidence, and Mary leapt on him. ‘Ah! You are my adversary.’ Burghley responded, ‘Yea, I am adversary to Queen Elizabeth’s adversaries.’

  Mary cut short the slanging match and asked to be heard in a full parliament or that she might speak in person with the queen. She then rose ‘with great confidence of countenance’ and pardoned the gathering for what they had done. The trial was over. She spoke privately to Walsingham ‘which seemed to cause him disquiet’ and turned to the now-standing assembly. ‘My lords and gentlemen, I place my cause in the hands of God.’ The commissioners managed not to say ‘amen’, and Mary started to leave the chamber. To disguise her need for a rest after only a few steps, she paused by the table of lawyers. ‘Gentlemen, you have shown little mercy in the exercise of your charge . . . the more so as I am one who has little knowledge of the laws of quibbling, but may God keep me from having to do with you all again.’ The lawyers recognised this as a royal joke and smiled. After she left the room the atmosphere lightened, and with much clearing of noble throats the commissioners mounted their waiting horses and departed from Fotheringhay. Walsingham wrote to Leicester, ‘we had proceeded presently to sentence, but we had a secret countermand’. This was the beginning of Elizabeth’s procrastination. Mary and her little court were left alone with Paulet and his armed guards in the vast castle of Fotheringhay.

  The commissioners reassembled in the Star Chamber at Westminster on 25 October. After Nau and Curle ‘had by oath, viva voce, voluntarily without hope of reward, before them avowedly affirmed and confirmed all and every the letters and copies of letters before produced to be most true, sentence was pronounced against the Queen of Scots’. Below a preamble as to dates, it declared that ‘the aforesaid Mary pretending title to the crown of this realm of England, [had embraced] divers matters tending to the hurt, death and destruction of the royal person of our sovereign lady the Queen, contrary to the form of the statute in the commission aforesaid specified’. This sentence did ‘derogate nothing from James, King of Scots, in title or honour, but that he was in the same place, degree and right as if the same sentence had never been pronounced’. A few days later, parliament made a lengthy list of Mary’s misdeeds and declared, ‘we cannot find that there is any possible means to provide for your Majesty’s safety, but by the just and speedy execution of the said Queen’. Elizabeth’s reaction was predictable:

  my life hath been dangerously shot at . . . nothing hath more grieved me that one not differing from me in sex, of like rank and degree, of the same stock, and most nearly allied to me in blood, hath fallen into so great a crime. And
so far have I been from bearing her any ill will, that upon discovery of certain treasonable practices against me, I wrote unto her secretly, that is she would confess them by a private letter unto myself, they should be wrapped up in silence.

  Then, at great length and, it must be said, with polished literary style, Elizabeth promised to ‘signify our resolution with all conveniency’. She asked the Lord Chancellor to devise some better remedy that Mary might be spared. The Lord Chancellor and Puckering, the Speaker of Parliament, besought her at length to make a decision and she gave them ‘her answer answerless’. Burghley instructed Davison, Elizabeth’s private secretary, to urge her to make a decision and order the execution of Mary. Davison’s urging had no effect.

  Whether Elizabeth delayed making her final decision out of her normal procrastination or out of a deeper reluctance to order the death of a sister sovereign has been long debated to no result, but other factors may have come into play. The execution of Mary would be seen by the Catholic powers in Europe as an attack on them, requiring a response. Rome would see Mary as a Catholic martyr, as would the English Catholics, making Elizabeth the most sought-after target of all Catholic zealots. At Elizabeth’s elbow were Burghley and Walsingham, pleading expediency and urgency, although it would not be their throats which would be cut by an assassin’s knife. Lastly, Elizabeth had been carefully informed of Mary’s physical health and knew that if she could wait long enough, Mary would probably predecease her naturally. For the moment there were more arguments in favour of delay. All Mary could do was await her fate.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  You are but a dead woman

  With the departure of the commissioners and the inevitable verdict expected, Paulet became more lenient towards Mary, and she relaxed more in his presence. Bourgoing never ‘saw her so joyous nor so much at her ease more constantly in his seven years of service, speaking only of leisure and recreation, especially giving her opinion on the history of England, the reading of which occupied the best part of the day, then spending time with her court familiarly and joyfully with no appearance of sadness’.

  All people suffer from the dread of death, but we are mostly troubled by the uncertainties of time and circumstance. Mary now had a certainty that she would die under a law which she regarded as invalid, and although the method of her death was as yet undecided, she knew that, given her rank, it would be as painless and dignified as possible. Mary had witnessed such executions in the past – the poet Chastelard, for example – and had seen how quickly the axe did its work, if expertly handled. She had also seen the butchery of Lord John Gordon’s execution, but, wisely, managed to put it out of her mind.

  On 1 November 1586, All Saints’ Day, Mary, having prayed all day, had a long conversation with Sir Amyas, who was astonished at her composure, since ‘no living person has ever been charged with such horrible and odious deeds’. Mary said that she ‘had no occasion to feel upset or troubled since she had done nothing wrong’. She was reconciled to the fact that the commissioners had come with their minds already made up and the trial had been entirely for show. Mary and Paulet argued over Elizabeth’s claim to be head of the Church as declared by her father, Henry VIII, and Mary, tired of the now-sterile discussion, said that, in effect, the facts were of no importance since they were whatever Elizabeth wished them to be. Paulet was heartily glad to take his leave from Mary’s ‘superfluous and idle speeches . . . I have departed from her as otherwise she would never have let me go.’

  Two weeks later, on 13 November, Sir Drue Drury came to assist Paulet, and on 19 November, Lord Buckhurst and Robert Beale arrived at Fotheringhay with instructions from Elizabeth to tell Mary that parliament had passed sentence of death on her. They were also instructed to eavesdrop whenever they could and were allowed secret meetings with Mary in case she wanted to ‘reveal some secret matter to be communicated unto us’. Elizabeth’s conscience was uneasy since she still lacked Mary’s open admission of treason. Mary was warned to prepare herself and was told that the Dean of Peterborough would be sent to her. She replied, ‘The English have many times slaughtered their kings, no marvel therefore, if they now also show their cruelty upon me, that am issued from the blood of their kings.’ She stressed that she was not afraid of death and that she was resolved to meet it with total resolution. She was not guilty of the plots against Elizabeth, but had formed alliances with Christian and Catholic princes ‘not for ambition – but for the honour of God and his church and to be delivered from the misery and captivity where I found myself’. Mary was now moving herself out of the temporal sway of politics and preparing herself to die for the honour of God and His Church.

  Paulet also found himself in misery, since there seemed to be no end to his hateful duties as gaoler. The obvious end – Mary’s death – seemed as far off as ever, and in his letters Paulet finds euphemisms for the act: ‘the sacrifice of justice to be duly executed upon this lady, my charge, the root and well-spring of all our calamities’. There was also the terrifying, nagging possibility that Mary might be spared and even outlive Elizabeth. However, Paulet’s next action was his most hurtful and petty.

  As Buckhurst left Fotheringhay, having delivered his news, Paulet and Drury met with Mary and told her that she must once again remove her dais and cloth of state, this time permanently. Their reasoning was cold-hearted and sadistic: ‘You are but a dead woman, without the honours and dignity of a queen.’ As we have seen, these heraldic symbols were of vital importance to Mary. She carried the fleur-de-lis of France, the lion of Scotland and the lions of England, and in this triplet of honours lay encapsulated her past as Queen of Scotland, then of France, then, at her father-in-law’s bidding, her claim to the throne of England. In Paulet’s view she was the dowager of France and therefore of no consequence in his Anglo-centric mind. She had abdicated from the throne of Scotland and had no right to the throne of England. Condemned to die by the English parliament she was, thus, no more than a piece of unfinished business. Mary remonstrated with Paulet and her servants refused to dismantle either the dais or cloth, but the task was quickly performed by six or seven of Paulet’s men. Paulet then sat in her presence, unbidden – a gross insult – and ordered that Mary’s billiard table be removed. Mary replied that she had not used the billiard table since it had arrived at Fotheringhay as her mind had been occupied with other things. She then told Paulet that her reading of English history made her compare herself with Richard II as she was stripped of her royal dignities. Paulet did not answer but left her without begging permission to withdraw.

  Mary replaced the cloth of state with a crucifix and pictures of the Passion of Christ, thus exchanging secular power for spiritual faith. She also wrote to Elizabeth deploring Paulet’s actions and praying that it had not come from her. Mary also told Elizabeth that she was being treated in ‘a form degrading to princes and noble women’ and she repeated Paulet’s insults to her state.

  With the pain of rheumatism now adding to her discomforts, Mary wrote four letters on 23 November, one to her ambassador in France, asserting her faith: ‘I wished to die and obey the Church, but not to murder anyone in order to possess his rights.’ Her second letter was to Pope Sixtus V, hoping to die shriven by a priest. Mary’s priest, or almoner, de Préau, was in Fotheringhay but, in a piece of unnecessary privation, was forbidden to meet with his mistress except on the eve of her death. Mary continued in her letter to ask the Pope to arrange with Henri III that her dowry be used to pay her servants, as well as to pay for prayers for her soul and for the setting up of an annual requiem. Unable to resist intrigue and gossip, Mary warned His Holiness against the Lord de Saint-Jean, since she suspected he was a spy acting for Burghley. The third letter was to Mendoza: ‘I have had the heart to receive this unjust sentence of heretics with resignation . . . I have accepted without contradiction the high honour which they confer upon me, as one most zealous for the Catholic religion, for which I have publicly offered my life.’ She continued that her accusers ‘
told me that, whatever I may say or do, it will not be for the cause of religion that I shall die, but for having endeavoured to murder their queen’. Furthermore she told Mendoza of the removal of her cloth of state and also that ‘They are at present working on the hall – erecting the scaffold, I suppose, whereon I am to perform the last act of this tragedy.’ Finally she told him to inform Philip II that if her son James were to stay in the Protestant faith then Philip would inherit her claims to the English throne. Mary sent him the diamond which she had received from Norfolk. Lastly, she wrote to the Duc de Guise, whom she had written to in September ‘fearing poison or some other secret death’. She repeated the requests she had made to the Pope to pay her servants, clear her debts and to arrange for an annual requiem for her soul.

  It might seem that these were simply the business-like letters of someone putting their affairs in order before an expected death, but they help to explain Mary’s change of attitude at this time from the much-wronged monarch to the beatific prisoner. Paulet’s removal of her cloth of state and her replacement of it with pictures of the Passion of Christ reinforced her position as innocent victim. Mary Stewart was preparing for her final role, that of a martyr for the Catholic faith.

  Four days later, on 27 November, Châteauneuf was sent to Elizabeth to remonstrate against the sentence. On 1 December he was joined by Pomponne de Bellièvre, the personal envoy of Henri III, and they were given an audience at Richmond six days later. They pled for Mary’s inviolability as a sovereign princess, invoked the sacred rights of hospitality and pointed out that Elizabeth would gain the enmity of ‘Catholic princes’ if the execution were carried out. They ended by assuring Elizabeth of the immortal obligation France would feel for Elizabeth’s mercy.