“Whereas you have had and still have the custody of the Queen of Scots, against whom judgment has been given whereby she hath been judged to have attempted our death and divers things to the hurt, death, and destruction of our person, as by our late proclamation of 4th December has been published. We have been continually by the states of Parliament moved, urged, and pressed to cause further execution to be made of the sentence, as without that it is solemnly protested that they can by no device find means for the surety of our person, the preservation of themselves, their posterity, and the realm. Whereupon we are, against our own natural disposition, drawn to yield thereto; and therefore we have directed our commission under the Great Seal to the sheriff of the county of Northampton to repair to you and receive the person of the said Queen into his charge, and without delay do execution upon her as by our commission may appear to you. Therefore we command you to deliver her into his charge, so that he without delay shall in the presence of sundry noblemen and yourself, within our castle (Fotheringay) do the execution, and that you aid and assist the sheriff and others who shall be there for that service.”
After the issue of the proclamation and of this letter to Paulet we have still some characteristic documents to produce in connection with this great event in Scottish history. We do not think the public are aware that the speeches of the Earls of Shrewsbury and Kent at the execution were prepared several weeks in advance by Elizabeth and her ministers. This appears from a paper published by the Historical MSS. Commission entitled, “Memorial from Walsingham respecting the execution of the Queen of Scots,” and its purport to consider what speeches were fit for the two earls to use at the time of the execution (noted in margin by Burghley), to express her many attempts both for destruction of the Queen's person (Elizabeth) and the invasion of the realm; that the hope and comforts she hath given to the prince Palatine, traitors of this realm, both at home and abroad, are the occasion of all the attempts that have been made against Her Majesty's person. By the laws of God and man she is justly condemned to die; the whole realm hath oftentimes vehemently required that justice might be done, which Her Majesty cannot longer delay. To appoint only the Scottish Queen's chief officers and servants to assist at the execution, excluding the women; to direct the earls what to do in case she shall desire any private speech (noted by Burghley); not to refuse it, so it be to three or two at the least; some special person to be appointed to take note of her speech. The body to be buried in the night in the parish church in such uppermost place as the two earls shall think fit. Whether not meet to be embalmed? To take order that her jewels and plate may not be embezzled by her servants. The lords at the court to give out that there will be no execution.
The last sentence of this paper is very mysterious and quite inconsistent with the proclamation of 4th December; unless it be that that proclamation was not published at Fotheringay for fear of creating a panic. In that event the people would have probably rescued the Queen, and there can be no doubt that Elizabeth had this eventuality before her and provided for it. She knew she had taken up a very critical position. The execution of so high a personage as the Scottish Queen was an astounding event; and, like all tyrannical rulers, she was in terror lest by some accident the scheme would be overturned. It was therefore in her opinion essential that the deed should be accomplished with all possible privacy and all possible speed. It has further to be noticed that in connection with the order for “no execution” there was issued what was called the “Hue and Cry,” sent out on the pretence that the Scottish Queen had fled from Fotheringay. This was done conform to the following order from Elizabeth:—“These are to charge you in the Queen's name that you make 'Hue and Cry' forward with all speed, and that you appoint, watch, and keep watch in the Queen's highway and at suspect places, and that you suffer none to pass without examination, and that you make 'Hues and Crys' and send them forth with all speed to every highway; for Fotheringay Castle is broke, and traitors are fled out.”
The publication of the “Hue and Cry” in these days was a common mode of warning the people of any important event, and the official order to issue this notice shows that the Queen of England took the utmost precautions to make the people in the provinces believe that there was no execution taking place at Fotheringay. If Elizabeth's conduct had been just and lawful, and her sentence against the Scottish Queen conform to the principles of justice, no such precautions were necessary. Queen Mary, fourteen days after the issue of this proclamation, wrote her last letter to the English Queen (see Bourgoyne's Journal, pp. 250-55). This communication is the cleverest of all her letters to Elizabeth. If she had adopted this style of composition when her captivity began it might have been better for all parties and led to different results. If Elizabeth had any feelings at all, this letter, with its dignified eloquence and its bitter reproaches, must have touched her to the quick. Elizabeth's refusal to grant any of Mary's last requests, even the place of interment of her remains, was an act which has rendered her name infamous to posterity.
Next in order in connection with these proceedings we have a paper on the execution of Mary said to be by Lord Burghley:—
“Notwithstanding that the Scottish Queen had oftentimes sought the destruction of Elizabeth, and has now been by order of justice convicted and found guilty of attempting her death by certain murderers, and that for the same she deserved death, and so by the states of Parliament adjudged; and requests being importunately made to Her Majesty that for the avoiding of danger to herself and the whole realm she might be executed: Her Majesty, always inclined to mercy, was most unwilling to assent thereto, as appeared by her answers to Parliament, much to the comfort of all evil-disposed persons whose estates depended on the Scottish Queen's life and well-doing in the hope of her coming to this crown by depriving the Queen's Majesty of her life, a life subject to daily peril so long as the Queen of Scots is not executed. Her Majesty was continually solicited by all who saw her perils and understood how much her enemies at home and abroad were comforted and inspired with hope of the Scottish Queen's life and her treasonable attempts against Her Majesty's life. Herewith followed the vehement solicitations by Ambassadors out of France and Scotland to save the Scottish Queen, without any stipulation how the Queen's Majesty's life might be safe from the attempts and treasons of many of them in England and abroad. For preserving the Scottish Queen to be Queen of this realm, they would never desist from attempts against Elizabeth's person. These Ambassadors were vehemently handled, in promoting her foul acts intended for killing Her Majesty, and for invasion and alteration of the whole state of the realm. There was also discovered a practice between the French Ambassador and a lewd young miscontented person named William Stafford, and one Maude, a prisoner in Newgate, a mischievous, resolute person, how Her Majesty's life should be taken, and all in favour of the Scottish Queen. After this followed a seditious general stirring up of the common people into arms by circulating billets in writing from one shire to another and from town to town; which though the justices sought to pacify, yet though it was stayed in one part it rose up again in another; and by these seditious practices sought to procure a rebellion. The whole realm was greatly stirred. Her Majesty, in view of these causes of danger likely to arise to her own person and her realm, thought it needful to have more regard how, if these dangers should continue by these seditious persons and stirrers of the common people, some factious and treasonable persons might by force recover the Queen of Scots out of the house where she was, there might be some order in readiness for prevention thereof, and therefore she signed a writing which had long before been devised, which was an order to certain lords, the Earls of Kent, Shrewsbury, Derby, Cumberland, and Pembroke, that they or any three or two of them might have authority to cause execution of justice to be done on the Queen of Scots. Which writing so signed was in the custody of her secretary Davison, who took it to the Lord Chancellor to put the Great Seal thereto, which was done very secretly, and afterwards did declare the same to certain of the lords and others of the Privy Council, who seem glad thereof; and being at the same time greatly troubled with daily reports from many parts of the realm, of the seditious stirring up of people to take arms, and seeing the....”
Left unfinished, 17th February 1587.
It is by no means clear that Lord Burghley was the writer of this paper. It is unfinished and unsigned, two points against Burghley's authorship. Burghley was unlikely to leave a paper on this or on any subject unfinished. The paper is reproduced from the Report of the Historical MSS. Commission, and except the title, there is nothing to identify it with Burghley. It evidently belongs to one of two classes, namely, it is either a forgery of Walsingham and Phillips, or, if Burghley's, it is written under a total misapprehension of the facts as recorded in the official papers deposited in the State Paper Offices. The age that produced it was pregnant with forgery. Forgery, deciphering, and the surreptitious opening and closing of letters, were at that period in a high state of perfection. If we want an illustration of this we have only to refer to the treatment experienced by Mary and to the remarkably cunning artifice of the brewer's cart, [16] due to the ingenuity of Walsingham, when every letter she wrote or received was opened and copied quite unknown to her. Again, no man knew better than Burghley that Mary was never except once arraigned for being concerned in a plot against Elizabeth (Babington Plot), and of which she was totally innocent. If she had “ofttimes sought the destruction of the Queen's Majesty,” we would have had some proof of it, especially as every effort was made at the time to publish slander against the Scottish Queen. Considering the mock trial at Fotheringay and the unfounded charges brought against her, none of which Burghley could prove, we should think it very unlikely that he would write such a paper ten days after the execution. The primary object of the paper was to defend Elizabeth's sentence of execution, a sentence that could not be defended without resorting to the most unblushing falsehoods such as compose the text of this paper.