On Tuesday, February 7, 1587, the Earls of Shrewsbury and Kent arrived at Fotheringay, and read in Mary's presence the warrant for her execution, which was appointed for the ensuing day. "That soul," said Mary, calmly crossing herself, "is unworthy the joys of heaven, which repines because the body must endure the stroke of the axe. I submit willingly to the lot which heaven has decreed for me; though I did not expect the Queen of England would set the first example of violating the sacred person of a sovereign prince." Then laying her hand on a Bible, which happened to be near her, she solemnly protested her innocence.
At the scaffold she prayed for the prosperity of her son, and for a long and peaceable reign to Elizabeth. She hoped for mercy, she declared, only through the death of Christ, at the foot of whose image she willingly shed her blood. With intrepid calmness she laid her neck on the block; her hands were held by one executioner, while the other, with two blows, dissevered her head from her body. "So perish all the enemies of Elizabeth!" exclaimed the dean, as he held up the streaming head. "Amen," answered the Earl of Kent alone; every other eye was drowned in tears; every other voice was stifled in commiseration. Thus, after a life of forty-four years and two months, nineteen years of which had been passed in captivity, perished the lovely and unfortunate Mary, Queen of Scots.[Back to Contents]
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH[12]
By Marion Harland
(1579-1631)
Of the antecedents of John Smith, Esquire, Captain and Knight, little is recorded beyond the facts that he was of gentle blood and honorable lineage, and that he was born in Lancashire, England, in 1579.
He was still under age when he enlisted as a private soldier and fought with "our army" in Flanders. Sigismund Bathor, Duke of Transylvania, was warring with the Turks, and young Smith, athirst for adventure, next took service under him. Before the Transylvanian town of Regall, he killed three Turkish officers in single combat, for which doughty deed he was knighted. The certificate of Sigismund's patent empowering the Englishman to quarter three Turks' heads upon the family coat-of-arms is in the Herald's Office in London.
The tables were turned by his subsequent capture by the Turks. He was sent to Tartary as a slave, not a prisoner of war, and compelled to perform the most ignoble tasks, until, escaping by killing his brutal master, he made his way by his wits to his native country in 1604. He was now twenty-five years of age, and emphatically a soldier of fortune. The tale of his prowess and adventures had preceded him, and he was eagerly welcomed in London by kindred spirits who were preparing to emigrate to America to form the colony of Virginia under the grant and direct patronage of James I. By the time the enterprise was ripe for execution, Smith had made himself so useful in counsel and preparation that the king named him as one of the councillors of the prospective colony.
The boundary lines of the royal grant were two hundred miles north, and the same distance south, of the mouth of the James River, and east and west "from sea to sea."
On December 19, 1606, the band of adventurers, 100 in number, embarked at Gravesend in three small vessels. Christopher Newport was in command, but Smith, and his close allies, Bartholomew Gosnold and George Percy, a younger brother of the Duke of Northumberland, were the ruling spirits of the voyagers. Carpenters and laborers were oddly jumbled upon the list of emigrants with jewellers, perfumers, and gold refiners, and "gentlemen" held prominence in numbers and influence. The officers outnumbered the privates. The little fleet was hardly out of the offing when the struggle for power began. The voyage was not half accomplished when John Smith was charged with complicity in a discovered mutiny. He had intended, it was alleged, to murder his superiors, seize the fleet, and make himself king of Virginia. The "General History of Virginia" tells how serious an aspect the affair wore: