Mary Queen of Scots (99 page)
Read Mary Queen of Scots Online
Authors: Antonia Fraser
The time had come for Jane Kennedy to bind the queen’s eyes with the white cloth embroidered in gold which Mary had herself chosen for the purpose the night before. Jane Kennedy first kissed the cloth and then wrapped it gently round her mistress’s eyes, and over her head so that her hair was covered as by a white turban and only the neck left completely bare. The two women then withdrew from the stage. The queen without even now the faintest sign of fear, knelt down once more on the cushion in front of the block. She recited aloud in Latin the Psalm
In te Domino confido, non confundat in aeternum
– In you Lord is my trust, let me never be confounded – and then feeling for the block, she laid her head down upon it, placing her chin carefully with both her hands, so that if one of the executioners had not moved them back they too would have lain in the direct line of the axe. The queen, stretched out her arms and legs and cried:
‘In manus tuas, Domine, confide spiritum meum’
– ‘Into your hands O Lord I commend my spirit’ – three or four times. When the queen was lying there quite motionless, Bull’s assistant put his hand on her body to steady it for the blow. Even so, the first blow, as it fell, missed the neck and cut into the back of the head. The queen’s lips moved, and her servants thought they heard the whispered words: ‘Sweet Jesus.’ The second blow severed the neck, all but the smallest sinew and this was severed by using the axe as a saw. It was about ten o’clock in the morning of Wednesday 8 February, the queen of Scots being then aged forty-four years old, and in the nineteenth year of her English captivity.
In the great hall of Fotheringhay, before the wondering eyes of the crowd, the executioner now held aloft the dead woman’s head, crying out as he did so: ‘God Save the Queen.’ The lips still moved and continued to do so for a quarter of an hour after the death. But at this moment, weird and moving spectacle, the auburn tresses in his hand came apart from the skull and the head itself fell to the ground. It was seen that Mary Stuart’s own hair had in fact been quite grey, and very short at the time of her death: for her execution she had chosen to wear a wig. The spectators were stunned
by the unexpected sight and remained silent. It was left to the dean of. Peterborough to call out strongly: ‘So perish all the Queen’s enemies’, and for Kent, standing over the corpse to echo: ‘Such be the end of all the Queen’s, and all the Gospel’s enemies.’ But Shrewsbury could not speak, and his face was wet with tears.
It was now the time for the executioners to strip the body of its remaining adornments before handing it over to the embalmers. But at this point a strange and pathetic memorial to that devotion which Mary Stuart had always aroused in those who knew her intimately was discovered: her little lap dog, a Skye terrier, who had managed to accompany her into the hall under her long skirts, where her servants had been turned away, had now crept out from beneath her petticoat, and in its distress had stationed itself piteously beneath the severed head and the shoulders of the body. Nor would it be coaxed away, but steadfastly and uncomprehendingly clung to the solitary thing it could find in the hall which still reminded it of its dead mistress. To all others save this poor animal, the sad corpse lying now so still on the floor of the stage, in its red clothes against which the blood stains scarcely showed, with its face now sunken to that of an old woman in the harsh disguise of death, bore little resemblance to her whom they had known only a short while before as Mary Queen of Scots. The spirit had fled the body. The chain was loosed to let the captive go.
At Fotheringhay now it was as if a murder had taken place. The weeping women in the hall were pushed away and locked in their rooms. The castle gates were locked, so that no one could leave and break the news to the outside world. The body was lain unceremoniously in the presence chamber, and even, so Brantôme heard from Mary’s distraught women who had peeped through a crack in the door, wrapped in the coarse woollen covering of her own billiard table. The blood-stained block was burnt. Every other particle of clothing or object of devotion which might be associated with the queen of Scots was burnt, scoured or washed, so that not a trace of her blood might remain to create a holy relic to inspire devotion in years to come. The little dog was washed and washed again. although he subsequently refused to eat, and so pined away. The remaining rosary which Jane Kennedy had not managed to rescue and which the queen had worn was burnt. Even the executioners were not allowed to enjoy the benefits of the perquisites for which they had fought, since the custodians confiscated them, and replaced them with money.
e
At about four o’clock in the afternoon the body was further stripped and the organs including the heart were removed and handed to the sheriff, who with the fear of creating relics ever in his mind, had them buried secretly deep within the castle of Fotheringhay. The exact spot was never revealed. The physician from Stamford examined the body before he embalmed it with the help of two surgeons: he found the heart sound, and the health of the body itself, and the other organs apart from a slight quantity of water, not so much impaired as to justify Cecil’s prognosis that the queen would have died anyway. The body was then wrapped in a wax winding-sheet and incarcerated in a heavy lead coffin, on Walsingham’s explicit orders.
Only Shrewsbury’s eldest son, Lord Talbot, was allowed to gallop forth from the castle about one o’clock, hard towards London, to break the news of what had taken place that morning to Elizabeth. He reached the capital next morning at nine. The queen was at Greenwich and had been out riding early; on her return she held a conversation with the king of Portugal. When she was told the news, according to Camden, she received it at first with great indignation, and then with terrible distress: ‘her countenance changed, her words faltered, and with excessive sorrow she was in a manner astonished, insomuch as she gave herself over to grief, putting herself into mourning weeds and shedding abundance of tears.’
31
In the meantime, before grief could overcome her altogether, she turned like an angry snake on the secretary Davison and had him thrown into prison for daring to use the warrant for the execution which she herself had signed. Elizabeth now maintained that she had only signed the warrant ‘for safety’s sake’ and had merely given it to Davison to keep, not to use. Her Council were cross-examined as though they were criminals, and Davison impeached before the Star Chamber. Further ostentatious manifestations of her displeasure might have followed, had not Cecil himself felt obliged to remonstrate with Elizabeth. He pointed out that such theatricals even if they salved her own conscience would cut little ice with the outside world, when it was known that Davison had both her Commission and her seal, at his disposal. On the other hand, the papists and the queen’s enemies might all too easily be encouraged, if it was suggested that the queen of Scots had been killed unlawfully. In the end Davison, the scapegoat, underwent a token period of imprisonment and had a fine of £10,000 imposed on him; the other members of the Council went free. Unlike its queen London itself suffered from no such doubts: the bells were rung, fires were lighted in the streets and there was much merry-making and banqueting to celebrate the death of her whom they had been trained to regard as a public enemy. Some bold spirits even asked the French
ambassador to give them some wood for their bonfires and when he indignantly refused, lit an enormous blaze in the street in front of his house.
But at Fotheringhay itself nothing was changed. It was as though the castle, cut off from the rest of the world, had fallen asleep for a thousand years under an enchantment, as a result of the dolorous stroke which had there slain Mary Queen of Scots. The queen’s servants were permitted to have one Requiem Mass said by de Préau the morning after her death; but otherwise everything went on as before. Her attendants were still kept in prison within the castle, in conditions which were harsher than ever; nor were any of them allowed to return to their native lands of France and Scotland as Mary had so urgently stipulated at the last. Sir Amyas Paulet, made a knight of the Garter in April for his pains, was still in charge of arrangements at Fotheringhay, and continued to complain over the excessive expenses of his prisoners’ diet.
32
The queen’s farewell letters to the Pope remained unposted and undelivered, lingering in the hands of her household. Spring turned to summer. The snowdrops which had scattered the green meadows round the River Nene on the day of her death gave place to purple thistles, sometimes romantically called Queen Mary’s tears. Still the body of the dead queen, embalmed and wrapped in its heavy lead coffin, was given no burial, but remained walled up within the precincts of the castle where she had died.
*
Dr D.H. Willson, in his biography of James
I
, thinks it not impossible that Stewart had secret instructions over Gray’s head, on the subject; in spite of James’s publicly expressed anger at Stewart’s statements, Stewart was allowed to return to Scotland with impunity.
6
†
A more rational explanation might be that the mysterious fire was produced by a comet. In Elizabethan England, comets were traditionally associated with the deaths of famous people, or as Shakespeare put it in
Julius Caesar: ‘When beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the deaths of princes.
’
15
‡
Afterward Beale believed that this mission had fatally blighted his career: in 1599 he attributed his failure to find advancement ‘for that my name was made odious to the whole world for conveying down the Commission for the execution of the Scottish Queen’.
§
In fact, so far as can be made out from divergent accounts, the queen did not die at 8
A
.
M
., but later.
‖
These objects did not appear in the later inventories as Paulet reported: ‘They have nothing to show for these things from their mistress in writing … all the smaller things were delivered by her own hands.’ It seems, from the subsequent history of some of these mementoes, that in certain instances they were entrusted to servants still in attendance at Fotheringhay to be handed on to others who had left, or been debarred from the queen’s service, at the end.
a
It is notable that in his extremely detailed account of the queen’s last hours, Bourgoing does not mention that she paused to compose or extemporize the Latin prayer
O Domine Deus! speravi in te
traditionally attributed to her, on the eve of her execution.
b
An adagio piece of music marked as having been played at the execution of Mary Queen of Scots was reproduced by George Robert Gleig in his
Family History of England
(1836); he related that ‘a fortunate accident’ had thrown a copy of it in his way. But as the contemporary sketch of the scene within the great hall itself does not illustrate musicians, and none of the contemporary accounts mentions the fact that there was music, the piece, if authentic, must presumably have been played before the queen’s appearance.
29
c
But it was a dark red, a sort of crimson-brown, not scarlet as is sometimes suggested.
30
d
This gold rosary was intended for Mary’s friend Anne Dacres wife of Philip, earl of Arundel, to whom it was subsequently delivered by Jane Kennedy; it is now in the possession of the earl of Arundel’s descendant, the 16th duke of Norfolk.
e
These rigorous precautions on the part of the English government, carried out savagely, cast a doubtful light on the many so-called relics of Mary Stuart which are said to date from her execution.
27 Epilogue: The Theatre of the World‘Remember that the theatre of the world is wider than the realm of England.’
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS
before her judges, October 1586
As the gates of Fotheringhay were locked, so were the English ports closed immediately after the death of the queen of Scots. It was three weeks before the French ambassador Châteauneuf could write back to his master in Paris with tidings of the calamity. The news of the death of Mary Stuart, their own queen dowager, was received in France with national and solemn mourning. On 12 March a Requiem Mass was held in the black-draped cathedral of Notre Dame; the whole court was present including King Henry
III
, the Queen Mother Catherine, others who had known Mary well such as her uncle René of Elbeouf, and the younger generation of Guises. The preacher was Renaud de Beaune, archbishop of Bourges, a man old enough to recall in poignant language that day nearly forty years before, when Mary had been married in that self-same cathedral to the dauphin of France:
*
‘Many of us saw in the place where we are now assembled to deplore her, this Queen on the day of her bridal, arrayed in her regal trappings, so covered in jewels that the sun himself shone not more brightly, so beautiful, so charming withal as never woman was. These walls were then hung with cloth of gold and precious tapestry; every space was filled with thrones and seats, crowded with princes and princesses, who came from all parts to share in the rejoicing. The palace was over-flowing with magnificence, splendid fêtes and masques; the streets with jousts and tourneys. In short it seemed as if our age had succeeded that day in surpassing the pomp of all past centuries combined. A little time has flowed on and it is all vanished like a cloud. Who would have believed that such a change could have befallen her who appeared then so triumphant, and that we should have seen her a prisoner who had restored prisoners to liberty; in poverty who was accustomed to give so liberally to others; treated with contumely by those on whom she had conferred honours; and finally, the axe of a base executioner mangling the form of her who was doubly a Queen; that form which honoured the nuptial bed of a sovereign of France, falling dishonoured on a scaffold, and that beauty which had been one of the wonders of the world, faded in a dreary prison, and at last effaced by a piteous death. This place, where she was surrounded with splendour, is now hung with black for her. Instead of nuptial torches we have funereal tapers; in the place of songs of joy, we have sighs and groans; for clarions and hautboys, the tolling of the sad and dismal bell. Oh God, what a change! Oh vanity of human greatness, shall we never be convinced of your deceitfulness….’
1
