"Your object was praiseworthy, and you will have a prompt reply," said Paulet; "if you had been as well disposed to reveal certain things to Her Majesty as you were to make requests, Lord Buckhurst would have presented them much more willingly."
"This gentleman was a relative of your mistress, and sent by her on that account," returned Mary, "and I confided to him what I thought desirable."
Paulet remarked that he only spoke of this to remind her that she might have sent a letter through Lord Buckhurst.
"Before things were so advanced," said Mary, "I should have wished to write, but now being condemned, I have other subjects of greater moment to think of; I have to prepare myself for a better life in another world."[57]
"And hereupon," records the pitiless jailer, "she fell into a large discourse on the mercies of God towards her, and of her preparation for death, and into many other impertinent speeches not worthy to be recited. I omit some other talk which passed between her and me, upon this ground tending only to the benefit of her soul and the discharge of my conscience. And thus I departed from her, having endeavoured myself, according to your direction, to solve the two faults mentioned in your letters in as clear a manner as I could, without giving her cause to think that I came to her to that purpose."[58]
The "second fault" alluded to by Paulet, and which had brought down upon him Elizabeth's displeasure, lay in the fact that he had not sufficiently "entertained" Mary "in the desire she had to write unto Her Majesty." Paulet considered that he could not press the matter without a special order to that effect; he was, we know by his own words, "always very curious and precise to be warranted in all his proceedings."
After Lord Buckhurst's departure Mary naturally concluded that her hours were numbered, little thinking that two months of suspense lay before her. On the day on which the foregoing interview took place the noise of workmen in her dining-room led the Queen to think that the scaffold for her execution was even then in process of erection. Under this impression she called her attendants round her and made a declaration that she died a faithful Catholic, and that she was entirely innocent of the crimes of which she was accused. She made them swear to bear witness for her to all the persons she mentioned to them, and to each she assigned the mission he should fulfil after her death.
Although her right hand was much crippled by rheumatism, Mary now passed two days in writing farewell letters to her most faithful friends, which she confided to her chaplain and servants, to be delivered after her death.[59]
There are in all four of these letters, including that to the Archbishop of Glasgow already quoted, and we give the remaining three in their integrity, in the certainty that no description of the Queen's sentiments at this time can be as true or touching as her own words.