An Accidental Tragedy (60 page)

Giving the feeble excuses of bandaged arms and a lack of direct commands, Paulet delayed sending Mary’s letter since he hoped the order for her execution was soon to arrive and would render the letter useless, but 1587 dawned with Elizabeth no nearer to giving the fatal order.

Elizabeth saw the ambassadors again on 6 January and asked them if they saw any other way out of the dilemma since ‘she had never shed so many tears . . . as she had done in this unfortunate affair’. They had no solution to offer and both sides knew very well that they were simply performing a diplomatic charade. Mary’s dread of assassination was increased when on 7 January a new plot to murder Elizabeth came to light. It involved the confession by a debtor by the name of Thomas Stafford, a ‘lewd miscontented person’, in a London prison. He intended to poison the queen’s shoes or stirrups, by some method which was never revealed. Most people suspected Walsingham of inventing the confessions to break the royal inertia.

Paulet continued his petty privations by removing Melville from Mary’s service. He was her mâitre d’hôtel and one of her most long-standing servants. Then, late in January, Elizabeth wrote to Paulet – but not with the hoped-for death warrant. Elizabeth thanked him for his diligence and assured him, ‘If I reward not
such deserts, let me lack when I have most need of you.’ This was puzzling since it seemed to promise a reward for a deed as yet undone, but all became clear on 2 February in a letter from Walsingham and Davison telling Paulet that the Queen was disappointed

that you have not in all this time . . . found out some way of shortening the life of the Scots Queen, considering the great peril she is hourly subject to so long as the said queen shall live. And therefore she taketh it most unkindly, that men, professing that love towards her that you do, should in a kind of sort, for lack of discharging our duties, cast the burden upon her, knowing as you do her indisposition to shed blood, especially of one of that sex and quality and so near her in blood as that queen is.

Paulet was being asked to murder Mary in secret, and given that Walsingham’s letter would have arrived after Elizabeth’s, then the English queen could claim ignorance of the whole affair. She could simply say that she was merely congratulating Paulet on his past service and did not intend to provoke him to murder.

Paulet replied immediately: ‘I am so unhappy as living to see this unhappy day in which I am required, by direction from my most gracious sovereign, to do an act which God and the law forbiddeth. My goods and my life are at her Majesty’s disposition and I am ready to lose them the next morrow should it please her . . . But God forbid I should make so foul a shipwreck of my conscience, or leave so great a blot to my poor posterity, as to shed blood without law or warrant.’ Loyal and unimaginative as he was, there was a line Paulet would not cross. Mary told Paulet of her fears of secret death and he was furious that she could have thought him capable of such a deed. ‘He did not exercise cruelty like the Turk.’

The rumour mill, its handle vigorously turned by Walsingham, in spite of a severe illness, continued to feed anti-Marian hysteria. ‘Information came daily from Ireland and Wales of forces of people in arms, and the report scattered abroad that Fotheringhay Castle was broken, the prisoners gone.’ The Constable of
Honiton raised a ‘hue and cry’ to seek the fugitive Mary in the West Country. Elizabeth realised that she was now cornered. She had ‘been backward and unwilling to yield to that which all her realm desired and sued at her hands’. The members of the Privy Council watched her with great care as she met with ambassadors from France and Scotland who pled, unsuccessfully, for Mary’s life.

The death warrant had been drawn up, and on the day that these ambassadors left, Lord High Admiral Howard took Davison aside at Greenwich and told him to take the warrant to Elizabeth.

What then took place is, like so much else concerning Mary Stewart, shrouded in legend, but, according to his testimony at his subsequent trial, Davison visited Elizabeth with a bundle of papers for signature. She noted that the weather was mild – this was 1 February – and hoped he was getting enough exercise. He agreed with her about the weather and told her he was quite well. She then asked if the papers he was holding contained the document from Lord High Admiral Howard. He told her that it did and handed them to her. She read the death warrant, called for pen and ink and then signed it where it lay ‘upon her mats’. She then asked Davison if he was not sorry to see it done, and he replied that he preferred to see a live queen even at the cost of another. Elizabeth told him to take the warrant to the Lord Chancellor for the Great Seal to be attached and ‘to use it as secretly as might be’. He was to tell Walsingham, although Elizabeth felt that the relief might kill him, and to instruct him that the execution was to be performed indoors and not publicly on the castle green. She then gave Davison precise instructions that she should be told no more of the matter until everything was resolved.

Another version of the event, unconfirmed by Davison, was that he gave the bundle of papers to Elizabeth and she signed them all without reading any of them then, turning to Davison, said, ‘You know what has occurred?’ Davison said he did and left for the Lord Chancellor. This sounds very much like a version of the event after it had passed through the Tudor spin doctors.

The next day, Elizabeth asked Davison if the warrant had been sealed, and, when she was told that it had been, asked him, ‘What needeth that haste?’ On 5 February, she received the news that Paulet would not undertake a secret assassination. Elizabeth was furious at ‘that precise fellow Paulet’ but plans for secret assassination were not entirely abandoned and Elizabeth declared, ‘I can do without him. I have Wingfield, who will not draw back.’ The Privy Council, realising that Elizabeth was wavering again, sent Beale, the Clerk of the Council, to Fotheringhay with the warrant. Beale noted, ‘One Wingfield should have been appointed for this deed . . . but . . . by the example of Edward II and Richard II it was not thought convenient or safe to proceed covertly, but openly according to statute.’

To perform the deed, Walsingham sent a man called Bull with his ‘instrument’ as executioner. Bull would carry his axe and already knotted ‘restraining ropes’ should Mary prove violent. He was to be disguised as a servant and paid £10 for his efforts. ‘There [was] great care taken to have the matter pass in secrecy’ and Walsingham gave precise instructions as to who should attend the execution. Mary’s jewels should be seized in case her servants ‘embezzle them’ and after death she was to be buried ‘uppermost’ at night in the parish church. George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, as Earl Marshal, would be in overall command, although he tried, unsuccessfully, to resign his earl marshalship in favour of Burghley. He was to be aided by the Earl of Kent, while the legalities would be seen to by Thomas Andrews, Sheriff of Nottingham.

Paulet had been kept fully informed of what was happening in London and was embarrassed on 4 February, when Bourgoing asked for permission to leave the castle in order to gather herbal remedies for Mary’s rheumatism. Paulet prevaricated and the next day Mary realised that messengers were arriving at Fotheringhay. One of them was, in fact, Beale. She then told Bourgoing that he need not collect his cures, since she would have no need of them. A controlled sense of calm was descending on Mary Stewart.

By 7 February, the principal characters had arrived at
Fotheringhay, although Shrewsbury was lodged outside the castle, and at about eight or nine o’clock, accompanied by Paulet and Drury, they assembled outside Mary’s first-floor apartment to deliver the news. Mary’s lady told them that the queen had taken off her mantle and was preparing for bed. Nevertheless they were admitted.

There was an air of embarrassment in the room. The earls were bareheaded but remained standing – a confused mixture of insult and deference. Mary was now wearing her mantle over her nightdress and sat barefoot in an armchair at the foot of her bed with a small table in front of her, flanked by her waiting women with the ever-careful Bourgoing at her shoulder.

Her old gaoler, Shrewsbury, apologised for the necessity of Elizabeth’s actions and Beale then read the warrant. Mary listened, then praised God at the news: ‘I am of no good and no use to anyone.’ She delighted that she was to be freed from her imprisonment and continual affliction. ‘All my life has been full of tragedies and I am glad that God is taking me from the hands of my enemies.’ For the last time she announced that if only she could have met Elizabeth then their differences could have been settled to everyone’s satisfaction. She then put her hand on an English-language Bible and swore that she was innocent of all crimes.

Kent, being ‘fiery hot in religion’, begged her, since she only had a few hours to live, to think of her conscience and turn to the Church of England. She was once again offered solace from the Dean of Peterborough, Dr Fletcher, but Mary asked for her own chaplain, de Préau. This request, however, was denied. She asked if pleas for her life had been made by other Christian princes and was told there had been, but to no avail. She was not told, nor did she ask, if her son James had been pleading on her behalf. Mary then asked when she would die. ‘Tomorrow at eight in the morning,’ said a stuttering Shrewsbury. She requested that she be taken for burial either to Reims or to St Denis, only to be told that Elizabeth had expressly forbidden this. Her plea for a guarantee that her dispositions to her servants would be
honoured was likewise rejected by the earls, who told her that they had no powers to give such guarantees. She asked after Nau and Curle, and when told that they were both still alive she protested that they had betrayed her and would live, while she, who had been steadfast, would die.

Throughout the interview she had remained calm and almost business-like, much to the astonishment and relief of Shrewsbury and his party. However, by now Mary’s servants, including Bourgoing, were all in tears. There being nothing more to say, the officials withdrew.

Mary prayed with her female servants, then, still in a calm, orderly mood, put what money she had left into paper packets, writing names on them. She was brought supper but ate little. She forgave her servants for anything they might have done and then asked their forgiveness for any harshness she may have shown to them. She gave away what was left in her wardrobe – Bourgoing got two rings, two small silver boxes, two lutes, Mary’s music-book and her red bed hangings. She then wrote to de Préau asking him what prayers she should say and begging him to give her absolution for her sins.

Mary then made her final testament, appointing the Duc de Guise, the Bishop of Ross and du Ruisseau, her nominal chancellor looking after her affairs in France, to be executors and asking for provision for requiem masses to be said in Reims and at St Denis in the presence of her servants. An annual ‘obit’ or requiem was to be funded by the sale of property at Fontainebleau. Further, 57,000 francs was to be distributed among her servants and friends after her debts had been settled and after her personal servants had received their arrears. She also made charitable provision for poor children and scholars in Reims.

Mary then wrote a letter to Henri III, her brother-in-law, in her own hand. The large handwriting is firm and clear with no sign of nervousness and the letter covers three pages. Beginning ‘Royal brother, having by God’s will, for my sins I think, thrown myself into the power of the Queen my cousin, at whose hands I have suffered much for almost twenty years’, Mary went on to
declare her innocence of any crime and said that she was condemned for the Catholic faith and her ‘god-given right to the English crown’. She complained that she was deprived of her chaplain ‘although he is in the building’, and so could not receive the last sacrament. She commended her servants and her son to him, ‘as far as he deserves, for I cannot answer for him’ and sent him ‘two rare stones, talismans against illness’. She signed the letter ‘Wednesday, at two after midnight. Your most loving and true sister,
MARIE R
’.

Mary then lay fully dressed on her bed and asked Jane Kennedy to read to her from the life of some great sinner. Kennedy read the story of the good thief, but Mary interrupted her: ‘In truth he was a great sinner, but not as great as I have been. I wish to take him for my patron for the time that remains to me. May my Saviour, in memory of his Passion, remember me and have mercy on me, as He had of him at the hour of his death.’ She asked a lady to bring a bandage to be used to bind around her eyes on the scaffold, selecting a silk handkerchief with gold trimming. Mary then lay on her back on the bed with her arms folded.

At six in the morning, ‘The said 8th day of February being come, and time and place appointed for the execution, the said Queen being of stature tall, of body corpulent, round shouldered, her face fat and broad, double chinned and hazel eyed her borrowed hair auburn’, Mary dressed carefully in a skirt and bodice of black satin over a russet brown petticoat and an over mantle of black satin embroidered with gold and trimmed with fur. On her head she wore a white crepe headdress and a long lace veil. There were scented beads as a pomander around her neck along with an Agnus Dei, as well as a crucifix and a gold rosary at her waist. Having fully dressed she went into an antechamber and prayed, kneeling with some difficulty at her prie-dieu and surrounded by her ladies. Now everyone could hear the sounds of the construction of the scaffold being completed below them in the Great Hall. Seeing that she was in some physical distress, Bourgoing gave her some bread and wine as the Sheriff of Nottingham knocked on the door for her to accompany
him. Bourgoing put him off for a few moments and on the second knock, Mary said, ‘Yes, let us go.’

She took her ivory crucifix, promised it to Bourgoing, but, for the moment lacking a priest, she gave it to Hannibal Stuart, acting as her valet de chambre, to carry it in front of her. Then, with an overharsh regard for security, her servants were forbidden to accompany her any further in case they dipped their handkerchiefs in her blood for relics. Even more absurdly, her guardians were afraid that the female servants might cry out and distress the soldiers. Two of Paulet’s soldiers took her by the arms and, with her crucifix in her hand, she came haltingly down the stairs into the hall where she was met by Kent and Shrewsbury. The scaffold was complete, and a huge fire was roaring in the fireplace. The assembled company, thought to number nearly 300, fell silent as Mary entered.