The sentence was passed, but Elizabeth hesitated to put it in execution, as she had hesitated to bring her royal cousin to trial. Parliament made an effort to deliver her from the odious responsibility which she dreaded, and, on the 12th of November, the two Houses implored the queen to provide for her safety, by causing, as soon as possible, the punishment which her crimes deserved, to fall upon the guilty head. Elizabeth replied to her faithful subjects, while dwelling upon the absence of any rancour in her soul, "If we were two milk-maids, with pails upon our arms, and it was merely a question which involved my own life, without endangering the religion and welfare of my people, I would willingly pardon all her offences." She prayed God to enlighten her upon the course to follow, promising to make known her resolution within a short time. In the meanwhile, she caused the two Houses, through the chancellor, to be asked whether there was not some means of placing her life in safety without interfering with that of Mary. Parliament replied in the negative. But the hesitations of Elizabeth were not yet at an end; a fresh speech expounded her scruples to her people. "Many opprobrious books and pamphlets (she said) accuse me of being a tyrant, which is indeed news to me; but what would they now say if a maiden queen should shed the blood of her own kinswoman? Yet it were a foolish course to cherish a sword to cut my own throat, and I am infinitely beholden to you who seek to preserve my life. If I should say I will not do what you require, it might peradventure be saying more than I should mean, and if I should say I will do it, it might, perhaps, breed greater perils than those from which you would protect me; for an answer, I will dismiss you, then, without an answer." The sentence of death was meanwhile posted up in all parts of London, and greeted with shouts of joy by the people.
Lord Buckhurst was chosen to announce her condemnation to Mary; it was hoped that some confession would be obtained from her, in the agitation and despair of an approaching death. But whatever might have been the crimes of Mary in the past, and her wrongs towards Queen Elizabeth, her courage had not relaxed in misfortune, and did not abandon her at the supreme hour. A bishop had accompanied the fatal messenger; the queen refused to see him, asking for her chaplain, "I am weary of this world," she said, "and glad that my troubles are about to end." She repeated that she had never taken part in any plot against the life of Elizabeth, and her last care was to write to the Pope and the Archbishop of Glasgow, to enjoin that her reputation should be cleared of all stain; it was a task above the power of those to whom it was entrusted by the unfortunate woman, who could not appeal to her son to defend her.
In her quality of a condemned person, the Queen of Scotland was degraded from all the honours which had hitherto been rendered her. Her jailor, Sir Amyas Pawlet, would sit down before her without permission. "I am an anointed queen," said the fallen sovereign; "in spite of the Queen of England, her council, and her heretical judges, I will still die a queen." The last letter of Mary to Elizabeth was truly a royal epistle, without complaints or recriminations, thanking God inasmuch as He was good enough to put an end to a sorrowful pilgrimage, and asking no other favour than that of dying in the presence of her servants, to whom she begged the queen to cause the small legacies indicated in her will to be given. It was in the name of Jesus Christ, of their kinship, of the memory of Henry VII., their ancestor, and of the royal dignity which was common to them, that the captive, upon the point of dying, proudly demanded these modest favours of her triumphant rival.
The King of France, Henry III., had not absolutely abandoned his sister-in-law in her extremity; he sent to the court of England an ambassador extraordinary to plead her cause. Elizabeth delayed before giving him an audience; when she admitted him into her presence, with great ceremony, it was not without keen tokens of emotion that she affirmed that the Queen of Scotland had three times attempted her life. All the arguments of Bellièvre were useless; when he declared that his sovereign would consider as a cause of rupture the execution of a Dowager Queen of France, Elizabeth flew into a passion. The emissary received his passports. The ordinary ambassador, M. de l'Aubespine, accused of having been implicated in a fresh conspiracy against the life of the queen, saw his secretary cast into prison. A third emissary was no more successful.
While he was interceding for Mary with the Queen of England, King Henry III. was endeavouring to awaken in the breast of James VI. the natural feelings of a son for his mother. What more cruel condemnation of the conduct of the King of Scotland could be imagined than the fact that it shocked and scandalized Henry III.! He succeeded in obtaining a preliminary mission to Elizabeth, but by a personage of so little importance, and so deep in the interests of England, that France was not satisfied with this proceeding, which, nevertheless, aroused the anger of Queen Elizabeth. James hastened to write, excusing himself humbly, alleging that he in nowise imputed to her the blame of what she had done against his mother. Sir Robert Melville accompanied the second embassy. "Why does the Queen of Scotland seem so dangerous to you?" asked the emissaries. "Because she is a Papist and wishes to succeed to my throne," said Elizabeth, flatly. "Does her grace still live?" said Melville, tremblingly. "I think so," replied the queen, "but I would not answer for it in an hour." The old servant of Mary interceded ardently for her, but his colleague, Gray, assured the ministers that it was not a dangerous affair, adding coarsely, "A dead woman does not bite." Walsingham was seriously astonished that a Protestant monarch should not feel that the existence of his mother was incompatible with the safety of the Reformed Churches in England and Scotland. James VI. recalled his ambassadors and contented himself with recommending his mother to the prayers of all his subjects; the greater number of Presbyterian pastors refused to obey his orders.
Elizabeth had repelled all foreign intervention; meanwhile, she still hesitated; she was heard to mutter between her teeth, in Latin "Aut ferire, aut feriri; ne feriare, feri." (Either to strike or to be stricken; in order not to be stricken, strike). The warrant had been ready for six weeks, when the queen signed it, in private, on the 1st of February, consigning it to the secretary of state, Davison, "without other orders," as she subsequently asserted. She only suggested that Sir Amyas Pawlet might spare her all that trouble, and she commanded that he should be written to in that strain, Pawlet formally refused, saying that his property and life were at the disposition of her majesty, but that God did not permit him to sacrifice his conscience, nor to leave an infamous stain upon his name. None would incur the responsibility of the crime; the queen did not even command the warrant to be sent. It went, however, without her having inquired into it, a precaution which was useful to her subsequently. On the 7th of February, while the scaffold was being erected in the courtyard of Fotheringay, Elizabeth told Davison that he should write again to Sir Amyas. "It is useless, I think," began the secretary; she did not allow him time to explain himself, and turned towards one of her ladies who was entering. Davison was never to see his mistress again.
The Earl of Shrewsbury now arrived at Fotheringay. Queen Mary immediately understood what the arrival of the Earl-Marshal meant. When the sentence was read, Mary made the sign of the cross, then, without agitation, she said that death was welcome, but that she had not expected, after being detained twenty years in prison, that her sister Elizabeth would thus dispose of her. She at the same time placed her hand upon a book beside her, swearing that she had never contemplated nor sought the death of Elizabeth. "That is a Popish Bible," exclaimed the Earl of Kent, brutally, "your oath is of no value." "It is a Catholic testament," said the captive, "and therefore, my lord, as I believe that to be the true version my oath is the more to be relied on;" and she asked what would be the time of the execution. "Tomorrow morning, at eight o'clock," said Lord Salisbury, in great agitation. "Your death will be the life of our religion," said Kent, "as your life would have been its death." The queen smiled bitterly. She was left alone with her servants: she bade farewell to them, drinking to their health at her last repast, and asking pardon of them all. She passed a portion of the night in writing to her confessor, to the King of France, and to the Duke of Guise.
Mary Stuart Swearing She Had Never Sought The Life Of Elizabeth.