[127] Melville.
[128] This will was preserved for long at the Scotch College in Paris. It bore the traces of the tears shed by the Queen as she wrote it.—Strickland, vii. 482; see also Blackwood, p. 304.
[129] Labanoff, vi. 492.
[130] The copies of this letter here differ, some reading seven, some eight o'clock.
[131] Chantelauze, p. 399.
[132] The details respecting the last hours of the life of Queen Mary are derived chiefly from two original narratives, both of which are printed in the second volume of Jebb. They are the following: (1) Blackwood, Adam, Martyre de Marie Stuart, Paris, 1644, Jebb, p. 175; (2) La Mort de la Royne d'Escosse, 1589, ibid. p. 611. The information which they contain has been carefully used by Hosack, Chantelauze, Bourgoing, and Kervyn de Lettenhove, thereby rendering unnecessary further references to the several authorities given by Jebb.
[133] She "charged him as he would answer before God, to deliver her speeches and messages to her son in such sort as she did speak them, all which tended to will him to govern wisely in the fear of God, to take heed to whom he betook his chiefest trust, and not to be an occasion to be evil thought of by the Queen of England, her good sister."—MSS. Cal. B. v. f. 175 b.
[134] "'Ah, madame, unhappy me, what man on Earth was ever before the Messenger of so important Sorrow and Heaviness as I shall be, when I shall Reporte that my good and gracious Queen and Mistress is behedded in England?' This sayde, Tears prevented him of any further speaking; whereupon the sayde Queen, powring forth hir dying Tears, thus answered him," etc. etc.—"Account of the Execution by Robert Wyngfield" (Clarendon Hist. Soc.)
[135] "But commend me to my son once again, and tell him that I have not done anything that can be prejudicial to his state, and say unto him from me that he trust not too much to practices and policies, for practices and policies will have an end."—See Ashmole MSS., [Appendix], p. [258].
[136] "The true report of the death of that rare and princely martyr Mary Stuardo," etc.—Mary Queen of Scots, vol. xxi. No. 14. "Being come into the hall, she stayed, and with a smiling countenance asked Shrewsbury why none of her own servants were suffered to be present at her death. He answered that the Queen his mistress had so commanded.