On the 8th February 1587, the swing of an executioners axe changed the face of History
forever.
Mary Queen of Scots made her way into the Great Hall of Fotherinhay Castle, and she
had been ordered to be executed by her cousin Queen Elizabeth I.
The Tudor Queen had signed her death warrant, and Mary is believed to have been involved
in a number of plots that saw her plot against Elizabeth, and Mary wanted to take the throne
of England for herself.
She was a woman who had been imprisoned by Elizabeth for almost 2 decades, however the
execution of Mary Queen of Scots did not go very well and it was not a clean job, as the
executioner struggled to take off the head of the anointed Queen.
Following her death there were gasps with the crowds that saw, and her remains were
also treated terribly as she would be buried in a place where she did not want to be buried,
and she would also be exhumed later.
But her execution took place to disgrace her, but what is the exact story of the ruthless
execution of Mary Queen of Scots.
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Mary Queen of Scots had been placed on trial inside of the very place where she would lose
her head, and she was accused of treason but she said that she had never been a subject
of the English Queen, and as an anointed Queen herself, she said there was no way that she
could be convicted of treason.
But her involvement in the Babington Plot condemned her to death, and this plot would
have placed Mary on the throne of England if it had been successful.
But this plot would have seen the death of Elizabeth I herself, as the plotters planned
to kill her.
However this was foiled and then the plan was to sentence Mary Queen of Scots to death.
Following the trial, Elizabeth I had a big problem as she would dither on signing the
death warrant of Mary who was her first cousin.
She was worrying about executing another woman who was a queen, and she would for the rest
of her life consider this and she believed in her own final days that Mary’s execution
would prevent her getting into heaven.
But Mary would be held inside of Fotheringhay, and on the 7th February 1587 she was told
that the next day she would be executed.
Messengers arrived to pass on this, and that evening she spent her final moments in prayer,
and made arrangements to distribute her possessions to the women of her household and she also
crafted her final letters and also her will.
But whilst this was occurring, inside of Fotheringhay Castles’ great hall, there was a huge transformation
taking place as a place where banquets would be held would be an execution chamber.
The platform and scaffold which was in the centre of the room was where the execution
would take place, and the block was found on the platform which Mary would rest her
head on, and then the axe would come down upon her.
The scaffold was decorated in black cloth to mark the moment, and there were three steps
to climb onto the scaffold and also a cushion for Mary to kneel on.
There were also three stools for her, and the official witnesses the Earls of Shrewsbury
and Kent would sit on these.
The executioner was a skilled man named Bull, and he had been fetched along with his assistant
to get to Fotheringhay quickly perform the job of taking Mary’s head off her shoulders.
The next morning the time came for Mary Queen of Scots to meet her executioner, and she
had spent many years locked up and she felt liberated by the execution.
She believed that her time had now came to transition into heaven, and that before she
was just existing and not living.
She entered the Great Hall with quiet, calm and dignity, and this surprised the witnesses
and two of her female attendants remained with her.
One account of her execution states that, ‘‘Her Mary queen of Scots prayers being
ended, the executioners, kneeling, desired her Grace to forgive them her death: who answered,
‘I forgive you with all my heart, for now, I hope, you shall make an end of all my troubles.’
Then they, with her two women, helping her up, began to disrobe her of her apparel: then
she, laying her crucifix upon the stool, one of the executioners took from her neck the
Agnus Dei, which she, laying hands off it, gave to one of her women, and told the executioner
he should be answered money for it.
Then she suffered them, with her two women, to disrobe her of her chain of pomander beads
and all other her apparel most willingly, and with joy rather than sorrow, helped to
make unready herself, putting on a pair of sleeves with her own hands which they had
pulled off, and that with some haste, as if she had longed to be gone.
All this time they were pulling off her apparel, she never changed her countenance,
but with smiling cheer she uttered these words, ‘that she never had such grooms to make
her unready, and that she never put off her clothes before such a company.’
Then she, being stripped of all her apparel saving her petticoat and kirtle, her two women
beholding her made great lamentation, and crying and crossing themselves prayed in Latin.
Then she, with a smiling countenance, turning to her men servants, as Melvin and the rest,
standing upon a bench nigh the scaffold, who sometime weeping, sometime crying out aloud,
and continually crossing themselves, prayed in Latin, crossing them with her hand bade
them farewell, and wishing them to pray for her even until the last hour.
This done, one of the women having a Corpus Christi cloth lapped up three-corner-ways,
kissing it, put it over the Queen of Scots’ face, and pinned it fast to the caule of her
head.
Then the two women departed from her, and she kneeling down upon the cushion most resolutely,
and without any token or fear of death, she spake aloud this Psalm in Latin, In Te Domine
confido, non confundar in eternam, Then, groping for the block, she laid down
her head, putting her chin over the block with both her hands, which, holding there
still, had been cut off had they not been espied.
Then lying upon the block most quietly, and stretching out her arms cried, In manus tuas,
Domine, etc., three or four times.
Then she, lying very still upon the block, one of the executioners holding her slightly
with one of his hands, she endured two strokes of the other executioner with an axe, she
making very small noise or none at all, and not stirring any part of her from the place
where she lay: and so the executioner cut off her head, saving one little gristle, which
being cut asunder, he lift up her head to the view of all the assembly and bade God
save the Queen.
Then, her dress of lawn falling from off her head, it appeared as grey as one of threescore
and ten years old, polled very short, her face in a moment being so much altered from
the form she had when she was alive, as few could remember her by her dead face.
Her lips stirred up and down a quarter of an hour after her head was cut off.
Then Mr Dean [Dr Fletcher, Dean of Peterborough] said with a loud voice, ‘So perish all the
Queen’s enemies,’ and afterwards the Earl of Kent came to the dead body, and standing
over it, with a loud voice said, ‘Such end of all the Queen’s and the Gospel’s enemies.’
Then one of the executioners, pulling off her garters, espied her little dog which was
crept under her clothes, which could not be gotten forth but by force, yet afterward would
not depart from the dead corpse, but came and lay between her head and her shoulders,
which being imbrued with her blood was carried away and washed, as all things else were that
had any blood was either burned or washed clean, and the executioners sent away with
money for their fees, not having any one thing that belonged unto her.
And so, 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.
As mentioned, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots did not go well.
An execution during the Tudor period was considered successful if it was performed in one swift
blow of the axe.
The axe was considered less reliable than the sword, but the haste of the execution
of Mary would result in a swordsman not being able to fetched from places in Europe.
Many also probably wouldn’t have taken the job to execute a Catholic Queen.
But the first blow of the axe missed Mary’s neck completely, and the axe hit the back
of her head and this caused a huge amount of pain and suffering.
This could even have knocked her out, but the second blow found it’s target and this
almost took the Queen’s head off, except for a small piece of sinew which held the
head onto the body.
Following this, the executioner sawed through the sinew, and then he picked up the head,
and Mary’s wig slipped off, and her head fell onto the floor.
It was a shocking and botched sight, and was not the end for a Queen who had a huge role
in the history of the 16th century.
Mary would then following this be embalmed, and she was left inside of the presence chamber
in Fotheringhay whilst preparations were made for her burial.
But in one final act of disgrace, Mary Queen of Scots would be buried in a Protestant ceremony
against her wishes, and she would also be buried inside of Peterborough Cathedral.
But she would later be moved during the reign of her son, and she would then be buried inside
a huge ornate tomb in Westminster Abbey.
Queen Elizabeth I would even until her dying day regret signing off on the execution of
Mary Queen of Scots.
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