Execution of Mary Queen of Scots,
from the background of the [Blairs Portrait]. (enlarged.)
[Enlarge]

The executioner lifted the axe, but stopped at a sign from his assistant, who had perceived that the Queen, to enable herself to breathe, had placed her hands under her chin. The assistant moved them and held them behind her back. Mary continued to pray aloud, and in the deep silence that reigned in the hall she could be heard repeating the verse, "In manus tuas Domine commendo." These were her last words. The executioner, affected perhaps by sympathy and by the general emotion visible among the bystanders, struck with an ill-assured aim, and only wounded the Queen severely, but she neither moved nor made a sound.[162] At the third blow the soul of Mary Stuart passed to its eternal reward.

And here we would fain end our narrative, letting our thoughts dwell only on the sorrow that filled the hearts of the Queen's desolate servants and the sympathy evinced by others present at her execution,[163] for, as a contemporary writer tells us, "it was remarked that the Earl of Shrewsbury and many others were bedewed with tears;" but other and cruel incidents claim our attention.

As soon as the Queen was dead the executioner "forthwith took the head, and raising it and showing it to the people, he said, according to custom, 'God save the Queen.'... To these words the people answered, 'Amen.' 'Yes,' said the Earl of Kent, with a loud voice and with great forwardness, 'Amen, Amen. May it please God that all the Queen's enemies be brought into the like condition.' The Dean of Peterbro spoke to the same effect."[164] "The gates of the castle were kept closed, so that no one could pass out until a messenger had been despatched first to the court (and this was about one o'clock of the same day) with a letter and the certificate of the execution."[165] This messenger was Henry Talbot, third son of Lord Shrewsbury, from whose report we have already quoted.

When Kent and Shrewsbury had left the scaffold, "every man being commanded out of the hall except the sheriff and his men, she was carried by them up into a great chamber, lying ready for the surgeons to embalm her;"[166] but before this was done the executioner placed the head on a dish and showed it from the window to the crowd assembled in the courtyard. This he did three times.[167] About four o'clock in the afternoon the body was "stripped, embalmed, and placed in a coffin, after having been wrapped in a waxed winding sheet."

Mary had earnestly charged her women to care for her body as they had done for her soul, but they were absolutely denied this last favour. "The tragedy ended," says Blackwood, "these poor ladies, careful of their mistress's honour, addressed themselves to Paulet, and begged that the executioner should not touch the body of Her Majesty, and that they might be allowed to undress it after every one had left," but he sent them away fort lourdement, telling them to leave the hall. The room belonging to the Queen's ladies was next the great chamber where the body was placed. They could see the remains of their beloved mistress by looking through the keyhole, and consoled themselves by kneeling and praying by the door; but Paulet, discovering this, had the keyhole stopped up.[168] The story of the Queen's faithful little dog has been often told, but it is impossible not to refer to the touching incident as recorded by a contemporary. "The Queen of Scotland," says he, "had a little dog with her upon the scaffold, who was sitting there during the whole time, keeping very quiet and never stirring from her side, but as soon as the head was stricken off and placed upon the seat, he began to bestir himself and cry out; afterwards he took up a position between the body and the head, which he kept until some one came and removed him, and this had to be done by violence."[169] The poor animal was washed, and everything else stained by the Queen's blood was either washed or burnt. "The Paternosters were tossed into the fire which was in the hall," and the executioners were sent away, "not having any one thing that belonged unto her."[170]

Thus ends one of the great tragedies of history in which the vanquished becomes truly the victor. To use the words of an old Scottish writer, "The Queen of England may do what she will, the tomb of our Queen is more durable than she imagines, as her effigy and that of her virtues are better engraven in our hearts than they could be in marble."[171]

[CHAPTER XII]
PETERBOROUGH