Mary Queen of Scots was the Queen of Scotland for around 25 years until she was forced to
abdicate the throne in favour of her son. She was just 6 when she inherited the throne,
and her life was dominated by a tragic love life, and also by political scheming and power
plays. She was then forced to leave Scotland before being imprisoned in England by her
cousin Elizabeth I. Mary for many Catholics across the nation served as a possible Queen
of England, and they wanted her to be Queen over Elizabeth, and Mary would take part in
a number of plots to oust and assassinate Elizabeth, including the Babington Plot which
led to her execution. Inside the walls of Fotheringhay Castle on the 8th February 1587,
the former Queen of Scotland walked into the Great Hall for her date with the executioner,
and she was confronted by the executioner’s block and also the executioner with his axe.
It was a sorry sight with many witnesses seeing the end of a Queen’s life, and the decision
to execute Mary would haunt Elizabeth I until the day she died herself. But following her
execution, Mary’s remains and body was treated in a terrible way, and she was not given initially
the respect she deserved for who she was.
Inside Fotheringhay Castles’ Great Hall, Mary attended on by two of her ladies walked
towards the scaffold where the block was to lay her head. On the scaffold were three stools,
one for her and two for the Queen’s official witnesses and she then disrobed and sorted
her final possessions out. She handed these to her ladies, and then prepared herself for
her execution. She took off most of her outer garments leaving her in her petticoat and
kirtle, and then her ladies prayed for Mary and she embraced them and kissed them bidding
them farewell, telling them not to cry any more tears for her. Mary had come to terms
with her death and demise, and when the two women left her she bid her man servants goodbye,
and it was time for her to address the executioner. He was given some form of payment to take
the former Queen of Scotland’s head clean off, and Mary then gave the executioner her
forgiveness for what he was about to do. She then prayed in latin a number of times, before
she looked at the executioner’s block, and then she grabbed the block and then laid her
head upon it. The executioner’s assistant then held her head, whilst the executioner
prepared his axe. Mary’s arms were held close to the block to begin then she stretched
her arms out saying she was ready to die. With this the executioner’s axe crashed
down and the first strike of the axe missed, and embedded in the back of Mary’s head,
meaning that he could have been knocked out by this. But it would have been very painful
if not, and then the executioner tried again and the second strike was more successful,
almost taking her head off, except for a small part of sinew which he then sawed through
with his weapon. But following this, the executioner grabbed Mary’s head from the floor, and
then as he grabbed the hair, it was actually a wig underneath meaning the head slipped
and then fell to the floor hitting the scaffold as he declared ‘God Save the King.’ It
was a disgraceful and shocking scene, with this being performed in front of a shocked
crowd, and it was no way for a Queen’s remains to be treated.
The display of her head to the crowd inside of the Great Hall of Fotheringhay Castle was
in a a sense a final act of shame to Mary Queen of Scots, as other Queens who were executed
did not have their heads shown to crowds. This practice was done to show that the traitor
was dead and was a threat no more, and when Anne Boleyn lost her head for treason, incest
and adultery inside the Tower of London this did not occur. Mary was more significant and
important than Anne, but the swordsman who performed Anne’s execution just allowed
her ladies to gather her head and remains, and he did not show it to the people inside
of the Tower that day. He had the respect to not do this, but the executioner Bull who
took Mary’s head had no such decorum to not do this. With the fact it fell to the
floor was also seen as an act of savagery, and those who were witnessing it must have
gasped in horror, as the head fell and blood trickled off the scaffold. The only thing
that showed any decency towards Mary whilst she lay their dead in the Great Hall was allegedly
her small dog that was found under her garters, and had been hidden. This animal it’s believed
then laid with her even in her final moments.
But another shocking thing that occurred after her execution was that immediately anything
that touched the Queen’s blood was burned, washed or taken away. The officials were terrified
that anything that could be kept as a relic of Mary’s would be worshipped in the centuries
to come, and the fire inside the Great Hall had much of this dumped upon it. But then
everyone was sent out of the hall as Mary’s remains were left in the scaffold, and the
horror would continue. The Sheriff, his men and the officials were the only ones left
inside the Hall, and they then collected Mary’s head, and her body and placed it into a coffin.
They left the hall and then took this into the main Castle building, and the coffin containing
the former Queen of Scotland was then left inside a presence chamber inside Fotheringhay
ready for embalming. Whilst inside of the chamber, her remains were attended on by the
surgeons and they would have embalmed the former queen in the same way of royalty during
the Tudor period. They removed the heart and the entrails of Mary, cutting her corpse open,
and they then took these in a box and buried them somewhere secret inside Fotheringhay
Castle’s grounds. It’s not known also if her head was sewn back onto her body, as
this did occur at the time, as Charles I later would have his had sewn back on after he faced
the axe in London. The surgeons also placed herbs and spices inside of her body to stave
off decomposition and decay, however the remains following this were simply left inside this
chamber at Fotheringhay for a number of months.
Mary was not buried immediately, as Elizabeth I became indignant and outraged that the privy
council had actually carried out her execution. But Elizabeth would continue in death to inflict
misery upon Mary Queen of Scots, and she would refuse her final wishes and beliefs. Mary
longed following her death to be moved to France, as she wanted to be buried across
the English Channel with her first husband the former King of France. But Elizabeth for
some reason would not grant Mary this wish, and she said that Mary did not deserve to
go to France. It’s not known for certain the reasoning by this but she would wield
power over Mary even in her death. Because of this Mary was then buried in a place which
was completely against her will, and this place would be Peterborough Cathedral. This
was the closest cathedral to Fotheringhay, and it was where Catherine of Aragon the first
wife of Henry VIII was buried. By putting Mary’s remains here, it was worried that
the site could become a place of Catholic pilgrimage, but Mary was buried in a Protestant
service.
This was a huge disgrace as Mary Queen of Scots was a staunch Catholic, and giving her
a Protestant funeral was not acceptable. In England, Catholics and Protestants were almost
at war, and throughout the Tudor period many people were executed and were burned at the
stake during the religious turmoil of the time. But Mary’s wishes for a Catholic funeral
were not adhered to, and this Protestant service was seen as Elizabeth I imposing her will
yet again on Mary, forcing her to have a funeral service comprising of nothing that she believed
in. Today Mary’s tomb in Peterborough Cathedral was nothing, she was just interred at the
side of the chancel under a slab, but then following the death of Elizabeth I, Mary’s
son James I became the King of England and he then ordered his mother to be exhumed in
1612. Mary Queen of Scots’ grave slab was lifted and then her coffin containing her
remains was taken from Peterborough to London where it was reinterred inside of a small
chapel opposite the tomb of her great rival Elizabeth I. James ordered the tomb to be
slightly bigger than Elizabeths, having the last laugh over her. But Mary then decades
after her death was laid to rest in a place and a tomb which was deserving of her status.
Her tomb would be opened in 1867 after the Dean of Westminster was searching for the
resting place of her son.
Mary Queen of Scots’ vault inside Westminster Abbey would contain the remains of a number
of her other descendants down the Stuart line, including even the children of Queen Anne,
the last Stuart Queen. But she was a woman who in death deserved a lot more than she
received, and she got little respect from Elizabeth I following her execution. She should
have at least been given a Catholic funeral and been buried in France where she wanted
to, but this was not adhered to and it showed the disdain that many had towards her in the
Tudor period.
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