Seated on the black stool, her eyes bandaged, and the crucifix raised in her hands, she prays aloud, "My God, I have hoped in thee, I give back my soul into Thy hands." The executioners lead her to the block; Lord Shrewsbury lifts up his wand; a deep silence falls upon the hall as the axe trembles in the air, and is broken only by the last words of Mary Stewart as she awaits the deadly blow,--"Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit."
"The neck is bared--the blow is struck--the soul is passed away,
The bright, the beautiful, is now--a bleeding piece of clay."
The executioner taking up the head, according to custom, and exposing it to the gaze of the people, cried out, "God save the Queen." "So perish all the Queen's enemies," added the Dean of Peterborough; "such be the end of all the Queen's and the Gospel's enemies," remarked the Earl of Kent. But even that hostile assembly was melted to tears, and scarcely a voice was heard to answer, "Amen."
The body of the Scottish Queen, notwithstanding her dying request that it be consigned to the care of her servants and by them borne away to France and laid beside that of her mother, was detained for six months in Fotheringay Castle. It was then removed, by order of Elizabeth, to the Cathedral of Peterborough, a few miles distant, and laid in a vault opposite the tomb of another noble victim of Tudor tyranny, the blameless Catherine of Arragon. Twenty-five years later her son, King James, who had in the meantime succeeded to the throne of England, in partial reparation for his former neglects, removed her remains to Westminster Abbey, and caused a beautiful monument, with a marble effigy of the Queen in a recumbent position, to be erected over them, in the south aisle of Henry the Seventh's chapel.
No more need be added to this brief review of Mary Stewart's history. The opinions set forth and defended in the above pages will not be received by all, for the leading events of her life will continue to be interpreted very generally according to theories conceived by party zeal, before the historical evidence bearing on them has been examined. I do not pretend that I myself have approached the study of her life without prejudice. Say what we will, where party spirit has run high, our feelings are always enlisted before our judgment has been moved. This, however, should be borne in mind: the prejudices of a writer cannot destroy the force of the evidence with which he supports his contention; and, whithersoever my sympathies may tend, I have endeavoured to give my reasons--the intelligent reader will judge of their value--why I refuse to believe that Mary was the paramour of Bothwell and a party to the murder of her husband, and why I maintain that her conviction, on the charge of having sanctioned the projected murder of Queen Elizabeth, was unjust.
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS IN HISTORY ***