Mary Queen of Scots

by Retha Warnicke

  On 19 December Mary wrote to Elizabeth about the commissioners’ recommendation that she prepare for the end of her “long and weary pilgrimage.” After pardoning everyone for the wrongs done to her, she requested that her servants be allowed to witness her death and her constancy to His Church. As to her remains, she wished to be buried in holy ground in France near some of her predecessors, especially her mother at Rheims. She promised to return to Elizabeth the ring she received from her and asked permission to send one with her last goodbyes to her son. Her dying benediction was:

  In the name of Jesus Christ, and in respect of our consanguinity, and for the sake of King Henry VII, your grandfather and mine, and by the honor of the dignity we both held and of our sex in common do I implore you to grant these requests.6

  She also noted that Paulet alleged he was obeying Elizabeth’s instructions when he removed her dais but that she had since learned he was following privy council orders. She was thankful that Elizabeth was not the source of that “wickedness,” which served “rather to vent their malice than to afflict me, having made up my mind to die.” Because Paulet feared that this emotional letter might cause Elizabeth to postpone the execution, he momentarily delayed sending it. In January, he refused to forward to her another of Mary’s messages.

  In preparing for death she also composed letters to Beaton, Mendoza, and Guise in which she denied plotting Elizabeth’s murder, described her secretaries’ confessions as false, and hoped that her death would testify to her willingness to die for the restoration of Catholicism on the island. In her message to Beaton, more particularly, she indicated a softening in her earlier distrustful attitude toward him, referring to him as the principal and the oldest of her servants and signing off as his affectionate and good mistress. To Mendoza, furthermore, she presented a large diamond given to her by Norfolk.

  On 17 December, following orders, Paulet delighted Mary by sending to her du Préau, whose spiritual assistance she valued in preparing for death. In January, however, Paulet and Drury displayed their vindictiveness with petty acts reminiscent of the removal of her dais. On the 21st when without explanation they denied both du Préau and Melville access to her, she greatly condemned and deplored their wickedness. Three days later, they forbade Jean Landet, her butler, to carry the customary rod before her dinner. On the 29th it is no wonder that some predicted that a comet flashing across the sky heralded her doom.

  Elizabeth reluctantly signed the death warrant on 1 February but gave it to Davison without orders for delivering it. Shrinking from publicly executing another monarch and recalling the vigilantism of the original Bond of Association, she instructed Walsingham and Davison to inform Paulet that she believed if he were truly zealous in her service, he would discover some means to shorten Mary’s life. He, of course, refused the assassin’s role. Ironically, in two different conversations with Mary in late January he defended himself from her charge that he might secretly kill her, protesting that she had no right to suspect him, an “honest man and a gentleman,” of such “butchery.”7 While Elizabeth hoped that Paulet would act as an endorser of the bond, Mary feared that he might do so and prevent the public execution by which she could prove to the world that she had prepared well for her death.

  On 4 February realizing that Beale was meeting with Henry Grey, sixth earl of Kent, and Shrewsbury concerning her execution, Paulet hesitated before permitting Burgoyne to gather herbs from the garden to treat her illness. Three days later Shrewsbury, Kent, Beale, Paulet, and Drury requested to see her. Although resting, she arose and received them at the foot of her bed. After they read the warrant for her execution, which the privy council had ordered acted upon without Elizabeth’s knowledge, Mary explained that she had not believed her good sister would consent to her death. After thus indicating an understanding of Elizabeth’s difficult position when advised by her most trusted councilors to order the execution of another monarch, Mary went on to confess that she was pleased that God would permit her to shed her blood for Him. They denied her plea for her priest’s return, offering instead Peterborough’s bishop or dean, both of whom she rejected. She explained that when Shrewsbury was her custodian, she had heard their preachers’ sermons during one Lent and rejected their faith. The outraged Kent responded: “Your life will be the death of our religion, as contrary wise your death will be the life thereof.”8 Finally, the earls dismissed as invalid her vow that she had not conspired to kill Elizabeth because she swore it on a Catholic New Testament. Challenging their judgment, she declared that it was more likely to be true if sworn on a Catholic book.

  After they departed, she called for an early supper. Near the meal’s end, she drank a toast to her weeping servants and commenced the final preparations for her death. First, she asked for the inventory of her goods and jewels on which she wrote the names of the recipients of the articles. Second, she sent a letter to du Préau, still detained with Melville in another part of the castle, requesting his pardon and absolution for her sins and seeking advice about the prayers appropriate for her to say before her death.

  Third, she drew up her will, naming Guise, Beaton, Leslie, and de Ruisseau as executors. After testifying to her Catholic apostolic faith in her will, she requested funeral services at St Pierre in Rheims and at St Denis in Paris and arranged for an annual obit. Then, she bequeathed her dower funds, which she expected to be collected for a year after her death, to her relatives, servants, and several charities, including the Foundling Hospital at Rheims, her scholars, four mendicants, and some hospitals. Hoping that Henry III would assist her executors, she informed him of the bequests.

  These tasks accomplished, at 2:00 a.m. her feet were washed in imitation of Christ before his crucifixion. After resting on her bed for a few hours, she rose about 6:00 a.m. to pray for awhile before her maids dressed her. According to Robert Wingfield’s report to Burghley, she wore a gown of black satin with a train, a petticoat of crimson velvet, a pair of purple sleeves, Spanish leather shoes, and a linen veil that fell from her head to the ground. Around her neck was hung a pomander chain and an Agnus Dei and at her waist was attached a pair of rosaries. To her assembled household, she read her will and distributed some small amounts of money before returning to her prayers.

  Between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m. Sir Thomas Andrews, sheriff of Northamptonshire, arrived to escort her to the great hall. As her attendants declined to enable her execution, two of Paulet’s soldiers supported her under each arm as she moved haltingly behind the sheriff. At the hall’s entry Melville knelt tearfully to converse with her as she approached. With tears in her own eyes, she told him to testify to the world “That I do die a true woman to my religion and like a true woman of Scotland and France.”9 Also awaiting her were Kent, Shrewsbury, Paulet, Drury, the dean, and others. To her requests that a certain sum of money be forwarded to Curle, that her bequests be given to her servants, and that they be permitted to return home, Paulet responded that he would attend to those arrangements for her.

  After the earls rejected her plea for her priest, she begged them to permit her servants to witness her execution, a concession they initially denied from concerns that her attendants might superstitiously dip handkerchiefs in her blood, as children had done, for example, at Northumberland’s execution. Finally, the earls agreed she could select some of them to accompany her, and she chose seven attendants: Melville, Burgoyne, Jacques Gervais, her surgeon, Pierre Gorion, her apothecary, Didier, her porter, and two ladies, Jane Kennedy and Elizabeth Curle.

  At the hall’s upper end stood a railed scaffold, twelve feet wide and two feet high, hung with black cloth, on which were placed a stool, a cushion, and a block about one-foot high covered in black cloth. Still supported by the soldiers, she moved calmly, almost cheerfully into the room and sat down on the stool in front of about 300 spectators, who observed that her diseased body was somewhat swollen and that she had a double-chin. To her right stood the earls and to her left the sheriff. Beale then read the warrant for he
r execution. Displaying her religious constancy, she refused the dean’s exhortation to repent her faith or to listen to his prayers. First sitting and then kneeling, she held up a crucifix and prayed in Latin from the Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary with her servants until he had finished. Turning from Latin to English, she pleaded for the well-being of Christ’s oppressed Church, her son, and Elizabeth.

  When Kent beseeched her to leave off her Popish “trumpery” and receive Jesus Christ into her heart, she confessed that she hoped to be saved “by and in the blood of Jesus.” She further prayed that God would “avert his wrath from this island and that he would give unto it grace and forgiveness of sins.” Pardoning her enemies and desiring the saints to intercede for her, she kissed her crucifix, crossed herself, and asked Jesus Christ for absolution.10

  Mary’s English prayer can be viewed as her last speech, a customary part of the contemporary ceremonial drama of death. Those facing imminent demise, whether by natural causes or execution, routinely attempted to demonstrate by their comments and demeanor that they had prepared well for a Christian death following the ars moriendi tradition. An integral part of the condemned’s atonement was, moreover, an expected public admission of all offenses against the crown and the request for royal pardon, but Mary finished her prayer without this confession and plea. Clearly, this omission and her serenity in her final hour must have deeply impressed all spectators. Walsingham, himself, had considered her last speech important enough to list among his duties in preparing for her execution the need to designate a specific person to heed it. Given her society’s death customs and beliefs, her last speech offers further support for the contention that Phelippes did, indeed, add the references to the six gentlemen to her Babington letter probably because Elizabeth might otherwise have refused to sign the death warrant.

  To modern observers, Mary’s declaration of innocence may seem to carry with it an element of sophistry or deception. She not only approved a plot that involved Elizabeth’s assassination but also promoted foreign invasions of England, which, if successful, would surely have led to her cousin’s removal as queen and possibly her death. In these conspiracies, believing herself to be imprisoned illegally, Mary seems to have focused on her liberation, leaving to others the issue of Elizabeth’s demise.

  Her prayers over, she pardoned at their requests, her executioner, Bull, and his assistant. After her weeping maids helped her to stand up, Bull and his assistant aided them in removing her outer garments, leaving her dressed in a black kirtle and the red petticoat; red, of course, was the color of martyrdom of the Catholic Church. She joked that “she never had such grooms before to make her unready, nor to put off her clothes before such a company.” After exhorting her attendants to cease weeping, as she was leaving her sorrows behind, she knelt again, lifted her hand with the crucifix to heaven, and with her eyes covered by a Corpus Christi cloth, she knelt on the cushions with the assistance of the executioners. Extending her neck, she placed her head on the block, holding out her arms to either side, signaling that she was prepared to die. As long as she could speak, she said, “In manus tuas domine commendo spiritum meum” ( Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit). The first stroke of the axe plunged into the back of her head; the second cut it off except for a sinew; using the axe as a saw, the executioner completed his task. When, as he cried “God save the Queen,” he lifted up her head by its auburn tresses, it fell forward from the wig she wore, revealing her grey hair. The dean said, “So perish all the Queen’s enemies,” and Kent exclaimed that such an “end” should “happen to all the Queen’s and Gospel’s enemies.” For a further 15 minutes, her lips moved silently “up and down” during which time her little Skye terrier was discovered hidden under her bloody dress.11 The next morning du Préau said a mass for her.

  The world’s reaction was mixed. Attempting to distance herself from the execution, Elizabeth ordered Davison fined and imprisoned for delivering the warrant without her permission. The courts of France, Spain, and Lorraine dressed in mourning and held funeral services in her honor. Philip became more fully committed to sending an armada to collect Parma’s army in the Netherlands for an invasion of England. Although James protested the execution, many people believed he was more concerned about his succession rights and a promised English pension than his mother’s life, but he did order his court to go into full mourning for one year.

  At Fotheringhay surgeons embalmed her body shortly after her death, but it was not until August that she was buried and a heraldic funeral was held for her. Elizabeth decided to have her interred in the choir of Peterborough Cathedral near Catherine of Aragon’s grave. On the evening of 30 July carrying torches, William Dethick, garter king of arms, five other heralds, and 40 horsemen escorted her body to the cathedral where it was immediately buried. On 1 August, Lammas Day, an effigy rather than a coffin was carried in the funeral procession of some 300, a small number for a royal occasion, in which Bridget Hussey, countess of Bedford, acted as chief mourner.12 William Wickham, bishop of Lincoln, the conductor of the Protestant service, admitted in his sermon that he was unacquainted with Mary but that he learned “she took her death patiently, and recommended herself wholly to Jesus Christ.”13

  CONTROVERSY OVER QUEENS REGNANT

  In life and death she was and remains the center of controversy. Her accession and that of the other two queens regnant in the British Isles intensified sixteenth-century debates over the locus of sovereignty. Representing the humanist opposition to women rulers, Buchanan validated the theory of popular sovereignty that justified the revolutions against Mary of Guise and her daughter. In De Jure Regni Apud Scotos and in Rerum Scoticarum Historia, published in 1579 and 1582 respectively, although both dated from about 1567, he manipulated Scottish history and customs, which he identified with natural law, to prove his case. Claiming that monarchs were subject to their realm’s laws, he argued that they must carry out the will of a majority of the people, who possessed the right to restrict regal authority. Identifying as elective the Scottish monarchy, allegedly founded by Fergus I in 330 BC, Buchanan was able to claim that the coronation oath represented a pact between rulers and their subjects. If monarchs acted tyrannically, as had Mary, whose alleged licentiousness led her to aid and abet her husband’s murder, the people had the right to revolt against them. For the most recent historical exercise of that right before Mary’s reign, Buchanan cited the murderous rebellion against James III in 1488.

  In the 1580s several Catholic writers, including Mary’s clients, Ninian Winzet and Adam Blackwood, responded with publications defending divine-right theories of monarchy. In some ways, however, the most interesting reaction was that of James, who demanded in 1584 that all who possessed copies of Buchanan’s De Jure or Historia must hand them over to the privy council to be censored or incur a fine of £200. Ironically, in condemning the slanderous comments about his mother, he also denounced the theory that justified the revolution enabling his accession.

  Scholarly debate continues about whether or not he was responding to the deceased Buchanan’s work in The True Law of Free Monarchies, which was published in 1598 during his struggle with those Presbyterians who espoused the popular sovereignty theory. As James’s assertion that kings were answerable only to God relied on scriptural evidence, which was not essential to Buchanan’s arguments, The True Law as a whole cannot be said explicitly to refute his theory. Some scholars do believe, however, that his view of Scottish history and his approach to fundamental laws were intended to counter Buchanan’s version of natural law. Denying that the Scottish monarchy was elective, James insisted that Fergus I had conquered the realm and that James III was assassinated by a few murderers and not removed from office by the majority exercising their right of rebellion. Furthermore, as the kingship was hereditary, it was impossible for the coronation oath to represent a pact between the monarch and his subjects. As they were God’s agents, kings were obligated to rule according to the law but were responsible
only to God for their actions. A patriarchal analogy expressed his understanding of natural law: as children must obey their fathers, subjects must obey their monarchs.

  HENRY VII’S CHAPEL AT WESTMINSTER ABBEY

  The attitude of James toward his mother was somewhat ambivalent during her lifetime, but after his accession to the English throne in 1603, he honored her memory as a step in the process of validating his dynasty’s legitimacy. Although he failed to order the destruction of Fotheringhay Castle as legend claims, he did finalize arrangements to transfer her remains from Peterborough Cathedral to Westminster Abbey while leaving his father’s body undisturbed at Holyrood chapel. First in 1606, however, James had Elizabeth buried in the north aisle of the chapel of Henry VII at the Abbey under a white marble tomb holding a recumbent figure of her, valued at £785. Beneath her coffin lies her half-sister Mary. Six years later, his mother’s tomb, which cost £2,000 and which displays a white marble, recumbent effigy of her with her hands raised in prayer, was completed in the south aisle of the same chapel.

  It is appropriate that the remains of these three British queens regnant should together occupy the chapel of their ancestor, Henry VII. Although provided with a humanist education like their male counterparts’, their subjects still doubted their ability to rule and demanded they heed the advice of male councilors. Even Mary’s son James stated in the Basilikon Doron, his advice book for his heir Henry which was published in 1599, that when his grandfather, James V, died, he left a “double curse behind him to the land, both a woman of sex, and a new borne babe of age to reign over them.” Although he also described Buchanan’s and Knox’s works as “infamous libels,” thus condemning their outrageous statements about his mother, his belief that women were the “frailest sex,” may have influenced his decision to accept his councilors’ recommendation to reject the treaty of association with her.14