Mary Queen of Scots on the 8th February 1587 made her way into the Great Hall of Fotheringhay
Castle.
She had been told the night before that her execution was to be in the morning as Elizabeth
I her cousin and the Queen of England had ordered her death sentence and signed the
death warrant.
Mary is considered today a woman who was complicit in a number of plots to overthrow and kill
the English monarch, as she had been imprisoned by her for almost 2 decades.
But Mary’s execution was not swift, and it was not successful, with the executioner
having a nightmare when he performed the job to take the head off the iconic Queen of Scotland.
Following her death her remains were treated rather poorly also, as she was buried in a
place against her will, and in a service which was not in fitting with her religious beliefs,
but she would later be exhumed.
Join us today as we look at the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, and as always to support
our channel, please make sure to subscribe.
Previously Mary had been placed on trial inside of Fotheringhay Castle accused of treason.
She claimed that she had never been a subject of Elizabeth I and therefore could not be
convicted of treason, however despite this and her involvement in the Babington Plot
she was condemned to death.
The Babington Plot would see Mary made Queen of England if successful, and it was said
that Elizabeth I would have been executed by Catholics as they believed she was not
the rightful Queen.
But following the passing of Mary’s death sentence, Elizabeth I who had to sign her
death warrant could not bring herself to do it, and despite the fact Mary was her cousin,
she worried that God would judge her for taking the life of anointed Queen.
But Mary was told in the evening of the 7th February 1587 that she was to die the next
day.
That night she spent her final hours in prayer and she made arrangements to distribute her
belongings to the women of her household, and she wrote her will and final letters.
All whilst this was happening, Fotheringhay Castle’s great hall was being transformed
into becoming a site of execution, with a scaffold being made in the centre of the room.
It was on this platform that the block would be placed for Mary to rest her head before
the axe would come down upon her.
The scaffold was covered in black cloth, and it had two or three steps to climb onto it,
and also was a cushion for Mary to kneel on, and there were also three stools for her and
the official witness the Earls of Shrewsbury and Kent to sit down upon.
The executioner a man named Bull was summoned and his assistant arrived at Fotheringhay
to perform the job.
But then the following morning it was the time for Mary Queen of Scots to meet her executioner.
She was a Queen who had spent a lot of time locked up, and had reached the end of her
teather and with this she went to her execution with calm and quiet, but also with grace.
She entered the Great Hall, and the witnesses were shocked by what they saw, and they said
Mary entered with two female servants who remained with her until the axe fell.
The accounts of her execution were recorded by a witness who said, ‘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.
Mary’s execution did not go well.
She was not beheaded in a single strike, and the first blow that rained down missed her
neck, and the axe hit the back of her head causing immense pain.
This could have knocked her out.
But the second blow of the axe then landed and did not completely perform the job, with
the executioner then needing to saw through the final part with his axe.
When he picked the head up, her wig slipped off and then the head fell onto the floor.
It was a terrible end for a woman who was incredibly significant in history.
She was the embalmed and was buried briefly inside of Peterborough Cathedral, but then
when her son became the King of England after the death of Elizabeth I, he would move her
remains into Westminster Abbey, and the heart of English religion and government in a huge
tomb, showing her importance.
She was a victim of Elizabeth I, however the English Queen would for the rest of her life
regret the signing of the death warrant of Mary Queen of Scots.
Thanks for watching
To support our channel, please make sure to subscribe
Thanks for watching