The trial ended on the 15th October. Mary rose from her seat before the Commissioners and passed out of the hall, addressing a few words of good-humoured reproach to the lawyers for their "quibbling," as she moved past the table around which they were seated. The Commissioners, in compliance with instructions received from Elizabeth, withdrew to Westminster before passing sentence. Assembled in the Star-Chamber ten days later, they declared Mary "to be accessory to Babington's conspiracy, and to have imagined diverse matters, tending to the hurt, death, and destruction of Elizabeth, contrary to the express words of the statute, made for the security of the Queen's life" (Camden). Parliament sat a few days after, and both houses, having sanctioned the sentence of the Commissioners, presented an address to Elizabeth, requesting her to publish and execute without delay the sentence against her dangerous rival.
Mary in the meantime was ignorant of what was being done since the rising of the Commission at Fotheringay. However, she maintained an extraordinary cheerfulness and surprised the observant Sir Amias by her "quietness and serenity." The feast of All Saints arrived, but without the joyous anthems and splendid ceremonial that marked it in Catholic lands. The Queen passed the day reading the lives of the Saints and Martyrs and praying in her oratory. In the afternoon she received a visit from Paulet. In the course of their conversation, this censorious pedant, anxious to execute the will of Elizabeth, who had instructed him to carefully observe whether his prisoner should reveal a disposition to sue for pardon, undertook to instruct her in the necessity of having a clear conscience and of confessing her crimes before God and the world. Mary promptly answered, saying:--"No one can say that he is free from sin. I am a woman and human, and have offended God, and I repent of my sins, and pray God to forgive me, doing penance for the same; but at present I do not know to whom I could or should confess--God forbid that I should ask you to be my confessor."
CHAPTER XIV.
THE SENTENCE OF DEATH.
On November the 30th, 1586, Lord Buckhurst, as envoy of Queen Elizabeth, waited upon the lonely captive, and announced to her that sentence of death had been passed upon her. "The person of the Queen," added Buckhurst, "the state and religion are no longer safe; it is impossible for you both to live, and therefore one must die. For this end then, in order that you should not be taken by surprise, Mr. Beale and I have been sent to warn you to prepare for death, and we will send you the Bishop of Peterborough or the Dean of ---- for your consolation."
The news was, in some respects a relief to Mary; it relaxed her consuming mental tension. Now she knew the worst, and her conduct needed no longer to be disturbed by alternating hopes and fears. She had striven hard, during the weary years of her captivity, to resign herself with Christian cheerfulness to the inevitable. But the love of liberty, and perhaps too a subtle desire of revenge, had at times ruffled the serenity of her spirit, and had dulled the pure flame of her religious zeal. Human aid now seemed no longer available, human prospects of glory and power no longer captivated her imagination, and the time and energy which she had hitherto expended on profitless plans and visionary deeds, she could now devote, with rich and enduring profit, to the preparation for a better life. When she heard Lord Buckhurst's message, her face, as Camden relates, "became illumined with an extraordinary joy at the thought that she was about to die for the cause of religion," and with perfect composure, she made answer:--"I expected nothing else. This is the manner in which you generally proceed with regard to persons of my quality, and who are nearly related to the crown, so that none may live who aspire to it. For long I have known that you would bring me to this in the end. I have loved the queen and the country, and have done all that I could for the preservation of both. The offers which I have made are the proof of this, as Beale can bear me witness. I do not fear death, and shall suffer it with a good heart. I have never been the author of any conspiracy to injure the queen. I have several times been offered my freedom, and have been blamed for refusing my consent. My partizans have abandoned me and troubled themselves no more with my affairs. To prevent this I have attempted to obtain my deliverance by gentle means, to my great disadvantage, till at last, being repulsed on the one side and pressed on the other, I placed myself in the hands of my friends, and have taken part with Christian and Catholic princes, not, as I have before declared, and as the English themselves can bear witness by the papers which they have in their possession, through ambition nor the desire of a greater position, but I have done it for the honour of God and His Church, and for my deliverance from the state of captivity and misery in which I am placed. I am a Catholic,--of a different religion from yourselves; and for this reason you will take care not to let me live. I am grieved that my death cannot be of as much benefit to the kingdom as I fear it will do it harm; and this I say not from any ill-feeling or from any desire to live. For my part, I am weary of being in this world, nor do I, or any one else, profit by my being here. But I look forward to a better life, and I thank God for giving me this grace of dying in his quarrel. No greater good can come to me in this world; it is what I have most begged of God and most wished for, as being the thing most honourable for myself and most profitable for the salvation of my soul. I have never had the intention of changing my religion for any earthly kingdom, or grandeur, or good whatever, nor of denying Jesus Christ or His name, nor will I now. You may feel well assured that I shall die in this entire faith and with my good will, and as happy in doing so as I was ever for anything that has come to me in my life. I pray God to have mercy on the poor Catholics of this kingdom, who are persecuted and oppressed for their religion. The only thing I regret is, that it has not pleased God to give me before I die the grace to see them, able to live in full liberty of conscience in the faith of their parents, in the Catholic Church, and serving God as they desire to do. I am not ignorant that for long certain persons have been plotting against me; and to speak plainly, I know well it has been done at the instance of one who professes to be my enemy. But I have spoken sufficiently of this before the Commissioners."
After this trying ordeal, Mary's first thought was to send letters of final greeting to her dearest friends. She wrote to the Archbishop of Glasgow, then in Paris; to Pope Sixtus V., to Barnard De Mendoça, Spanish Ambassador at Paris; and to the Duke of Guise. In the course of her letter to the Archbishop, referring to the proposal that she should accept the services of the Anglican divines, she writes:--
"As to their bishops, I praise God that without their aid I know well enough my offences against God and His Church, and that I do not approve their errors, nor wish to communicate with them in any way. But if it pleased them to permit me to have a Catholic priest, I said I would accept that very willingly, and even demanded it in the name of Jesus Christ, in order to dispose my conscience, and to participate in the Holy Sacraments, on leaving this world. They answered me that, do what I would, I should not be either saint or martyr, as I was to die for the murder of their queen and for wishing to dispossess her. I replied that I was not so presumptuous as to aspire to these two honours; but that although they had power over my body by divine permission, not by justice, as I am a sovereign queen, as I have always protested, still they had not power over my soul, nor could they prevent me from hoping that, through the mercy of God, who died for me, he will accept from me my blood and my life which I offer to Him for the maintenance of His Church outside of which I should never desire to rule any worldly kingdom."
Her letter to the Pope is lengthy, but as no one interested in her history would be satisfied with an abbreviated form of so interesting a document, I shall give it in full.
"Jesus Maria,