An Accidental Tragedy (59 page)

The commissioners reassembled in the Star Chamber at Westminster on 25 October. After Nau and Curle ‘had by oath, viva voce, voluntarily without hope of reward, before them avowedly affirmed and confirmed all and every the letters and
copies of letters before produced to be most true, sentence was pronounced against the Queen of Scots’. Below a preamble as to dates, it declared that ‘the aforesaid Mary pretending title to the crown of this realm of England, [had embraced] divers matters tending to the hurt, death and destruction of the royal person of our sovereign lady the Queen, contrary to the form of the statute in the commission aforesaid specified’. This sentence did ‘derogate nothing from James, King of Scots, in title or honour, but that he was in the same place, degree and right as if the same sentence had never been pronounced’. A few days later, parliament made a lengthy list of Mary’s misdeeds and declared, ‘we cannot find that there is any possible means to provide for your Majesty’s safety, but by the just and speedy execution of the said Queen’. Elizabeth’s reaction was predictable:

my life hath been dangerously shot at . . . nothing hath more grieved me that one not differing from me in sex, of like rank and degree, of the same stock, and most nearly allied to me in blood, hath fallen into so great a crime. And so far have I been from bearing her any ill will, that upon discovery of certain treasonable practices against me, I wrote unto her secretly, that is she would confess them by a private letter unto myself, they should be wrapped up in silence.

Then, at great length and, it must be said, with polished literary style, Elizabeth promised to ‘signify our resolution with all conveniency’. She asked the Lord Chancellor to devise some better remedy that Mary might be spared. The Lord Chancellor and Puckering, the Speaker of Parliament, besought her at length to make a decision and she gave them ‘her answer answerless’. Burghley instructed Davison, Elizabeth’s private secretary, to urge her to make a decision and order the execution of Mary. Davison’s urging had no effect.

Whether Elizabeth delayed making her final decision out of her normal procrastination or out of a deeper reluctance to order
the death of a sister sovereign has been long debated to no result, but other factors may have come into play. The execution of Mary would be seen by the Catholic powers in Europe as an attack on them, requiring a response. Rome would see Mary as a Catholic martyr, as would the English Catholics, making Elizabeth the most sought-after target of all Catholic zealots. At Elizabeth’s elbow were Burghley and Walsingham, pleading expediency and urgency, although it would not be their throats which would be cut by an assassin’s knife. Lastly, Elizabeth had been carefully informed of Mary’s physical health and knew that if she could wait long enough, Mary would probably predecease her naturally. For the moment there were more arguments in favour of delay. All Mary could do was await her fate.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

You are but a dead woman

With the departure of the commissioners and the inevitable verdict expected, Paulet became more lenient towards Mary, and she relaxed more in his presence. Bourgoing never ‘saw her so joyous nor so much at her ease more constantly in his seven years of service, speaking only of leisure and recreation, especially giving her opinion on the history of England, the reading of which occupied the best part of the day, then spending time with her court familiarly and joyfully with no appearance of sadness’.

All people suffer from the dread of death, but we are mostly troubled by the uncertainties of time and circumstance. Mary now had a certainty that she would die under a law which she regarded as invalid, and although the method of her death was as yet undecided, she knew that, given her rank, it would be as painless and dignified as possible. Mary had witnessed such executions in the past – the poet Chastelard, for example – and had seen how quickly the axe did its work, if expertly handled. She had also seen the butchery of Lord John Gordon’s execution, but, wisely, managed to put it out of her mind.

On 1 November 1586, All Saints’ Day, Mary, having prayed all day, had a long conversation with Sir Amyas, who was astonished at her composure, since ‘no living person has ever been charged with such horrible and odious deeds’. Mary said that she ‘had no occasion to feel upset or troubled since she had done nothing wrong’. She was reconciled to the fact that the commissioners had come with their minds already made up and the trial had been entirely for show. Mary and Paulet argued over Elizabeth’s claim to be head of the Church as declared by
her father, Henry VIII, and Mary, tired of the now-sterile discussion, said that, in effect, the facts were of no importance since they were whatever Elizabeth wished them to be. Paulet was heartily glad to take his leave from Mary’s ‘superfluous and idle speeches . . . I have departed from her as otherwise she would never have let me go.’

Two weeks later, on 13 November, Sir Drue Drury came to assist Paulet, and on 19 November, Lord Buckhurst and Robert Beale arrived at Fotheringhay with instructions from Elizabeth to tell Mary that parliament had passed sentence of death on her. They were also instructed to eavesdrop whenever they could and were allowed secret meetings with Mary in case she wanted to ‘reveal some secret matter to be communicated unto us’. Elizabeth’s conscience was uneasy since she still lacked Mary’s open admission of treason. Mary was warned to prepare herself and was told that the Dean of Peterborough would be sent to her. She replied, ‘The English have many times slaughtered their kings, no marvel therefore, if they now also show their cruelty upon me, that am issued from the blood of their kings.’ She stressed that she was not afraid of death and that she was resolved to meet it with total resolution. She was not guilty of the plots against Elizabeth, but had formed alliances with Christian and Catholic princes ‘not for ambition – but for the honour of God and his church and to be delivered from the misery and captivity where I found myself’. Mary was now moving herself out of the temporal sway of politics and preparing herself to die for the honour of God and His Church.

Paulet also found himself in misery, since there seemed to be no end to his hateful duties as gaoler. The obvious end – Mary’s death – seemed as far off as ever, and in his letters Paulet finds euphemisms for the act: ‘the sacrifice of justice to be duly executed upon this lady, my charge, the root and well-spring of all our calamities’. There was also the terrifying, nagging possibility that Mary might be spared and even outlive Elizabeth. However, Paulet’s next action was his most hurtful and petty.

As Buckhurst left Fotheringhay, having delivered his news,
Paulet and Drury met with Mary and told her that she must once again remove her dais and cloth of state, this time permanently. Their reasoning was cold-hearted and sadistic: ‘You are but a dead woman, without the honours and dignity of a queen.’ As we have seen, these heraldic symbols were of vital importance to Mary. She carried the fleur-de-lis of France, the lion of Scotland and the lions of England, and in this triplet of honours lay encapsulated her past as Queen of Scotland, then of France, then, at her father-in-law’s bidding, her claim to the throne of England. In Paulet’s view she was the dowager of France and therefore of no consequence in his Anglo-centric mind. She had abdicated from the throne of Scotland and had no right to the throne of England. Condemned to die by the English parliament she was, thus, no more than a piece of unfinished business. Mary remonstrated with Paulet and her servants refused to dismantle either the dais or cloth, but the task was quickly performed by six or seven of Paulet’s men. Paulet then sat in her presence, unbidden – a gross insult – and ordered that Mary’s billiard table be removed. Mary replied that she had not used the billiard table since it had arrived at Fotheringhay as her mind had been occupied with other things. She then told Paulet that her reading of English history made her compare herself with Richard II as she was stripped of her royal dignities. Paulet did not answer but left her without begging permission to withdraw.

Mary replaced the cloth of state with a crucifix and pictures of the Passion of Christ, thus exchanging secular power for spiritual faith. She also wrote to Elizabeth deploring Paulet’s actions and praying that it had not come from her. Mary also told Elizabeth that she was being treated in ‘a form degrading to princes and noble women’ and she repeated Paulet’s insults to her state.

With the pain of rheumatism now adding to her discomforts, Mary wrote four letters on 23 November, one to her ambassador in France, asserting her faith: ‘I wished to die and obey the Church, but not to murder anyone in order to possess his rights.’ Her second letter was to Pope Sixtus V, hoping to die shriven by a priest. Mary’s priest, or almoner, de Préau, was in
Fotheringhay but, in a piece of unnecessary privation, was forbidden to meet with his mistress except on the eve of her death. Mary continued in her letter to ask the Pope to arrange with Henri III that her dowry be used to pay her servants, as well as to pay for prayers for her soul and for the setting up of an annual requiem. Unable to resist intrigue and gossip, Mary warned His Holiness against the Lord de Saint-Jean, since she suspected he was a spy acting for Burghley. The third letter was to Mendoza: ‘I have had the heart to receive this unjust sentence of heretics with resignation . . . I have accepted without contradiction the high honour which they confer upon me, as one most zealous for the Catholic religion, for which I have publicly offered my life.’ She continued that her accusers ‘told me that, whatever I may say or do, it will not be for the cause of religion that I shall die, but for having endeavoured to murder their queen’. Furthermore she told Mendoza of the removal of her cloth of state and also that ‘They are at present working on the hall – erecting the scaffold, I suppose, whereon I am to perform the last act of this tragedy.’ Finally she told him to inform Philip II that if her son James were to stay in the Protestant faith then Philip would inherit her claims to the English throne. Mary sent him the diamond which she had received from Norfolk. Lastly, she wrote to the Duc de Guise, whom she had written to in September ‘fearing poison or some other secret death’. She repeated the requests she had made to the Pope to pay her servants, clear her debts and to arrange for an annual requiem for her soul.

It might seem that these were simply the business-like letters of someone putting their affairs in order before an expected death, but they help to explain Mary’s change of attitude at this time from the much-wronged monarch to the beatific prisoner. Paulet’s removal of her cloth of state and her replacement of it with pictures of the Passion of Christ reinforced her position as innocent victim. Mary Stewart was preparing for her final role, that of a martyr for the Catholic faith.

Four days later, on 27 November, Châteauneuf was sent to Elizabeth to remonstrate against the sentence. On 1 December
he was joined by Pomponne de Bellièvre, the personal envoy of Henri III, and they were given an audience at Richmond six days later. They pled for Mary’s inviolability as a sovereign princess, invoked the sacred rights of hospitality and pointed out that Elizabeth would gain the enmity of ‘Catholic princes’ if the execution were carried out. They ended by assuring Elizabeth of the immortal obligation France would feel for Elizabeth’s mercy.

Elizabeth largely ignored their arguments, telling them that there were no precedents for the current situation and that nothing they said would make her change her mind, adding ‘I pray that God will guard and keep me and give me the power to keep the peace of my people.’ She ended by saying that it was impossible to save her own life and preserve that of the said queen.

On 10 December Elizabeth took another tentative step along the road to confirming the death sentence when she told Paulet that parliament had forced her ‘against our own natural disposition . . . to yield thereto’. Mary was to stay at Fotheringhay as Paulet’s charge but under the overall command of the Sheriff of Nottingham, who would ‘without delay do execution upon her’, presumably when he received a warrant. Later that month Burghley wrote another memorandum to himself: ‘The Queen of Scots is so afflicted as she can live but few years or days and [is] therefore not to be douted [feared] but rather to be pitied over.’ But he did nothing to prevent the now-unstoppable juggernaut of justice.

Paulet had made clear that the instructions to remove the cloth of state had come from the Privy Council and not personally from Elizabeth, and on 19 December, after protests and petty obstructions from Paulet, Mary was finally allowed to write to Elizabeth. Mary, who was clearly furious at Paulet’s attitude, showed him the unsealed letter, then, mockingly, rubbed it against her face to show the absence of poison, wrapped it in white silk and sealed it with Spanish wax. She then gave it to him for onward transmission.

Mary told her cousin that Jesus Christ had given her the power ‘to
endure the unjust calumnies, accusations and condemnations (of those who have no such jurisdiction over me) with a constant resolution to suffer death, for upholding the obedience and authority of the apostolical Roman Catholic Church’. She then asked to be buried with ‘the other queens of France, my predecessors, especially near the late queen, my mother’ and hoped that ‘a place will not be given to me near the kings your predecessors’. She asked for a public execution so that no rumours of suicide might spread. Mary returned the diamond which Elizabeth had given her on her arrival in Scotland in 1561 and asked permission to send a jewel and a last adieu to her son. She signed the letter ‘Your sister and cousin, prisoner wrongfully, Marie Royne.’ Previous to the abdication her signature had simply been the bold ‘
MARIE
’.