by Jean Plaidy
This was what I dreaded. I wanted her dead but I did not want to have any part in her removal.
But the court at Fotheringhay had proved her guilty. The letters were as damning as they could be. She deserved to die, and yet…
When the court had adjourned at Fotheringhay it was announced that it should meet again in the Star Chamber at Westminster and there sentence should be passed. It was the 25th of October and I remember that day every year when it comes round. The day Mary Stuart was sentenced to death.
They were all urging me. Walsingham was triumphant. We could remove one of the greatest menaces to our throne for it had been clearly proved that this woman had plotted against my life, which was treason. She had been in touch with foreign courts; she wanted to bring about the ruin of the Protestant Church and set up the Catholic in its place. What greater treason could there be! The execution should take place without delay. It was unwise to dally. It would be better for the Queen of Scots herself if we acted promptly for she must know she was guilty and what the inevitable consequences must be.
I knew they were right. I knew that for the sake of my safety and that of my country she must die—and yet, I should be the one, in the generations to come, who would be accused of killing her.
If only she would die! If only I did not have to put my name to that death warrant!
I hesitated but they would give me no peace. Even Robert wrote from the Netherlands. He was thinking of me all the time, he wrote. He knew what a quandary I found myself in. Did he not understand my innermost feelings? But Mary of Scotland was a threat to me and to every Englishman who did not hold the Catholic Faith. I must sign that death warrant.
“Your Majesty must sign it,” insisted Walsingham, Burghley, Bacon… all of them.
And still I hesitated.
My secretary William Davison came to me and told me that he was being entreated by Amyas Paulet to beg me to sign the death warrant without delay. It was difficult for him to carry on in such a state of tension. Every day they were expecting the order to arrive, each day the Queen of Scots prepared herself, and still the days passed and there was no decision.
“Davison,” I said, “I am loath to sign this warrant for reasons you know well. I should have thought there might be some means of saving me from this unpleasant duty.”
Davison looked taken aback. I felt impatient with him. He was not one of my favorite men. He lacked the grace of the charmers, and although he was able, he did not have the cold clear brain of the clever ones.
It was irritating to have to explain. Burghley would have caught my meaning at once.
“We have heard much of the sufferings of the Queen of Scots. She is not a young woman. Paulet is in charge up there. Could he not be persuaded to help us out of this delicate matter?”
Davison stammered: “You mean … remove the Queen … by … by secret methods…”
“I believe I have made myself clear,” I said. “Write to Paulet… very discreetly. I am sure he will see the wisdom of this.”
But I had reckoned without Paulet's self-righteousness. His miserable conscience came between him and his duty.
He was almost indignant. He could not perform an act which God and the law forbade.
“God forbid,” he wrote, “that I should make so foul a shipwreck of my conscience or leave so great a blot to my poor posterity, to shed blood without law or warrant.”
I knew I could not delay indefinitely. I had to stop trying to placate outsiders. I should have no criticism from the people who really mattered—my own Protestant subjects, who wanted the death of Mary Stuart as much as I did.
So I signed the death warrant and at eight o'clock on that February morning Mary Stuart entered the hall at Fotheringhay Castle and went to the block.
As soon as I knew she was dead I was thrown into a panic of remorse.
I had signed her death warrant. In generations to come I should be known as the one responsible for the death of Mary Stuart. It was no use trying to placate my conscience, to tell myself that she had planned my death. I could not forget that I had signed the paper without which she would have been alive. I could not ease my mind except by pretending that I had not meant it. I looked about me for someone to blame. I sent for Davison but I was told that he was suffering from an attack of palsy and was not at Court.
I knew that he was subject to these attacks and I had no doubt that this matter of the death warrant had brought on this one. I worked myself into a passion of dislike against this man, and when Christopher Hatton came to me, I burst out that I was distressed because of the death of my kinswoman.
Hatton was too much of a courtier to express surprise. He had been one of those—as indeed had every one of my councilors—who had urged me to sign the death warrant. He must have been a little taken aback but being Hatton of the graceful manners he waited for me to say what was in my mind.
“That fool Davison…He knew I did not wish him to send the warrant to Paulet… yet he did so…”
Hatton looked grave. I could see the words forming in his mind: Then why did you sign it? But he did not say them, of course. Wise, tactful Hatton!
“He hurried it off,” I declared, “although I had told him to hold it back until he had permission to release it.”
That was not strictly true. I had told myself that it was what I wanted and that Davison had known it. Had he? He was not a mind-reader. He had not the subtlety of Burghley and Walsingham.
“The Queen of Scots has been executed and it is Davison's fault. I want him in the Tower.”
Hatton said: “He is a sick man. It may be that he has misconstrued Your Majesty's orders, but…”
“I want him in the Tower,” I insisted.
Hatton knew better than to argue with me.
Looking back, I am ashamed. It is a great weakness to take a certain action and then try to defend it by blaming others. As always, I had done what my common sense urged me to do. It was just that I felt so deeply about this woman. I had been so envious of her; she had had so much… and yet so little. The Tudor claim to the throne was not built on a very strong foundation. There were many who said that Queen Katharine had never been married to Owen Tudor; there were many who would say that my father had never truly been married to my mother and that I was a bastard. These matters rankled. The Stuart claim was legitimate, based on royalty. Then there was that legendary beauty of hers which attracted all men. I had my admirers, but I had always known in the secret places of my mind that the glitter of a crown and absolute power can be an irresistible magnet. Yes, I had envied her in so many ways… and pitied her. I often thought of what her childhood and girlhood had been at the elegant Court of France and compared it with mine when I had lived through those formative years under the shadow of the axe; hers so cushioned; mine so harsh; and then myself on the throne triumphant and Mary an uneasy Queen and a captive for twenty years. I had no reason to envy her and yet I could not altogether erase that feeling from my mind. I had thought of her so much and the fact that I should never see her somehow added to the mystic bond between us.
She had been such a fool. In fact it seemed to me that she had rarely shown any wisdom at all. She had plunged headlong into disaster; she had had lovers but what had any of them brought her but misery—except perhaps little Franois who had adored her, but that was in the early days when she was the darling of the French Court.
It was true that she had obsessed me in life and now she was doing so in death and in such a manner that to give myself some ease of mind I was accusing a sick and innocent man of something he had never committed. He had never swerved from his duty, yet here I was raging against him, insisting that the poor palsy-stricken creature be taken to the Tower.
Burghley was horrified. He came to me and said it would be well to release Davison without delay.
“Davison has failed in his duty,” I insisted.
“Your Majesty signed the death warrant, which was the right and proper action to take.
Davison merely delivered it to Paulet.”
“He knew that I did not wish it to be delivered.”
“Did Your Majesty tell him this?”
“It was understood, and since when has my Lord Burghley become the Queen's judge?”
He was silent but very disturbed.
“I beg Your Majesty to release Davison,” he said quietly.
I could not do it. I derived some comfort from blaming my secretary and I needed comfort. I could not sleep at night. I dreamed of her headless body. I saw her eyes fixed on me accusingly.
Davison in the Tower offered me some comfort and I clung to that.
He was charged with misprision and contempt, and tried in the Star Chamber. He said that I had signed the death warrant and told him that I could not be troubled anymore with it, which he had taken to mean that I did not want it set before me a second time. He said that there was nothing else he could say and that he had acted sincerely and honestly.
They fined him ten thousand marks and sent him back to the Tower to await my pleasure.
One thing he did not do—which he might have—was to disclose the fact that I had made him write to Paulet suggesting that the Queen of Scots might be quietly removed. I had behaved badly to that man; but while I could convince myself that I had never meant the execution of Mary to be carried out, I could placate my conscience. Like most people who have done some person an injury, I disliked that person more than I had before I wronged him. I built up the case against him in my mind. It was weak; and I hated weakness in myself more than in others. But this was a matter so disturbing to me that I had to ease my conscience even with untruths.
Davison was my scapegoat; but he stopped my nightmares about Mary Queen of Scots. In my fantasy I exonerated myself from having played the chief part in her execution. It helped me considerably.
ROBERT WAS HOME—A FACT WHICH GAVE ME THE GREATest pleasure, and the joy of seeing him far outweighed any rancor I felt for his behavior. It was always like that with Robert. I could be madly angry with him but when he stood before me bowing low, raising his face to mine, I thought how foolish I had been to let him go. We were not so young… either of us… that we could afford to waste time. I was not going to let him stray far away again.
So he was back in high favor. The Netherlands venture had been a terrible disaster. I had always known that wars brought little profit. I had been against going in; it seemed no easy task to defeat the Spaniards even in the Netherlands where they were far from their homeland.
There were disturbing reports coming from Walsingham about the preparations for war. Whom could they plan to strike against but England? And this was confirmed by the fact that they were assembling a mighty armada to come against us.
I was pleased to have in my service such men as Sir Francis Drake—buccaneers of the sea who were really already at war with the Spaniards, intercepting their ships, taking their treasure and showing them that although they might have a great armada, the English were natural men of the sea and were a match for them. Drake had brought home great treasure and for that I was grateful. I was in need of money; the Netherlands had swallowed up vast sums—a waste of money I called it—and I was in sad financial straits; but even so I was not so poor as Philip, which was a comforting thought.
Drake had returned from one of his expeditions with quantities of booty—all taken from the Spaniards—and on the way home he had called in at Cadiz and as he said “singed the beard of the King of Spain.” This meant that he had gone in among the ships in the harbor and sunk or burned thirty-three of them and brought away four of them laden with provisions.
He had also brought back news that Spain was fast preparing to attack England and that the conflict would take place at sea. Philip must be stopped now and forever. He believed that our ships, which might lack the grandeur of the Spanish galleons, would be a match for them when the time came for them to test their strength.
Younger men were coming to Court to seek their fortunes. The old favorites remained—Robert, Hatton, Heneage—and I loved them all. The fact that they were getting old did not make me love them less. When Walsingham fell ill and Burghley had a fall from his horse, I was really anxious and I visited them and scolded them for not taking greater care of their health. I was a mother to them and they looked to me for comfort. I never failed them as I knew they would never fail me. It was a very special relationship I shared with my men; it was only those who had never broken through into the magic circle—like Davison—who did not enjoy it.
There were two newcomers—two of the most exciting young men I had ever known. One was Robert Devereux and the other Walter Raleigh.
Robert had brought his stepson to Court and clearly wanted me to receive him well. I don't know why I took an instant liking to him—for he was the son of my great enemy, that she-wolf, whom I had never ceased to hate and who had been banished from my Court since her marriage to Robert.
But there was something disarming about Robert Devereux—Earl of Essex since the age of nine when his father had died rather mysteriously in Ireland, poisoned as the chronicler of Leicester's Commonwealth put it.
He had been seventeen when Robert had first presented him to me, and I remembered him as the charming boy I had noticed when I had visited Chartley after that memorable time at Kenilworth.
He was most attractive. I thought, grudgingly, that he had inherited his good looks from his mother. He certainly had her auburn hair and dark eyes. He had an unusual way of walking, taking great strides, holding his head a little forward and stooping slightly. There were many beautiful young men in my life but this one was outstanding. He appealed to me immediately not unlike the manner in which Robert had. There had been only two for whom I had felt this romantic feeling until this time. One was Thomas Seymour and the other, of course, Robert. Robert was of my own age, and now that we were old both of us knew that nothing could change between us. No one else could ever mean to me what he did; but I did feel this flutter of romantic feeling for Essex, which was extremely odd because he was Leicester's stepson and the son of the woman I hated more than any other. Perhaps these facts were a fillip to my emotions regarding Essex. I was unsure, but that they existed I knew full well.
My impulse would have been to reject him because obviously she would be hoping for his success at Court; but he immediately caught my attention as he had all those years ago at Chartley.
He was very raw—and I saw at once that he had no political sense. He was the sort of man who spoke before he considered the effect his words might have—so he lacked the first quality of a courtier. It was once said of him in my hearing: “He is no good pupil of my Lord Leicester, who is wont to put all his passion in his pocket.”
I suppose that was true of Robert. No one knew better than he did how to dissimulate. One could never be absolutely sure with Robert. Perhaps that was what made him so fascinating. Essex left no one in doubt. I often thought this in him might bring about his downfall.
And then there was that other—that dark handsome brilliant man— Walter Raleigh. He was about thirty when he first caught my attention, and he had come to Court to do exactly that, hoping to make his fortune. He was the kind of man who must be noticed sooner or later. He was tall, wellbuilt and outstandingly handsome. He had thick black hair and the ruddy complexion of a countryman; but what was most noticeable about him was his amazing vitality; he seemed to have twice as much energy as most men.
He came to my attention one day when I was out walking surrounded by a group of the ladies and gentlemen of the Court. We had come to a road which was muddy and we stood for a few moments contemplating how best to get across without picking up too much mud. Then Raleigh came forward. He was wearing a beautiful plush coat, which was obviously new, and with a flourish he took it from his shoulders and spread it over the muddy patch for me to walk on.
I always accepted these extravagant gestures gracefully, though I knew that in his heart the young man would count cheap th
e cost of a coat, however fine, if it brought him royal favor.
But I had noticed him and I asked about him and learned that he was one Walter Raleigh from Devonshire, the county which had brought me my most excellent Francis Drake; and I decided that I would know more of this enterprising young man.
I learned that he had been in trouble. That was inevitable, I assumed, with a man of his spirit. He was quick-tempered, but not reckless with it as Essex was. I thought Raleigh was a man who would weigh well his actions. He was far cleverer than my charming Essex. He was witty, his badinage amusing and his conversation sparkling. Much more than Essex he had the qualifications to make him a success at Court. He had quarreled with Thomas Perrot and that had resulted in a brawl which had brought them to the Fleet Prison for a few days. Then he had had a fight with a man named Wingfield over a game of tennis, which had meant a brief spell in the Marshalsea. He had certainly had some questionable adventures but he had won distinction at sea.
During his early days at Court he had been befriended by Leicester, who also liked his spirit, and he had fallen in with the Earl of Oxford whom, though one of my favorites, I did recognize as a rather disreputable young man for he had behaved abominably to Burghley's daughter and was a real scoundrel. Raleigh and he soon fell out, however, and became enemies.
There was great jealousy between them, but that often happened between my men. Our relationship was such that it engendered jealousy. They really behaved like petulant lovers sometimes. I did not complain. My nature being what it was, I enjoyed it and perhaps encouraged it.
I enjoyed Raleigh's company very much. He was one who set great store on climbing to fame. I did not mind that. A man who will rise must climb.
One day he wrote on a window with a diamond the words:
“Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.”
And I replied with a diamond I was wearing:
“If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all.”
He turned to me, his eyes shining, and I loved him in that moment, for he had the qualities which I admired most in men.
