Mary Stuart (41 page)

Throughout the night carpenters had been at work in this hall. The tables and chairs had been removed. At one end a scaffold had been erected, two feet high and twelve feet broad, “with rails round about, hanged and covered with black, with a low stool, a long fair cushion and a block covered also with black.” The cushion was in front of the block; on it the Queen was to kneel in order to receive the fatal stroke. To right and to left were seats for the Earls of Shrewsbury and Kent, as representatives of Queen Elizabeth. Against the further wall stood two men, masked and clad in black velvet, with white aprons, grim and silent, the executioner and his assistant. Spectators thronged the rest of the hall. Across the floor had been run a barrier, guarded by Paulet and his soldiers. Behind it were two hundred of the nobility and gentry who had assembled in haste from the neighbourhood to witness so unique a spectacle as the execution of a queen. Outside the castle-gates hundreds upon hundreds of the common folk were thronging, allured by the news, but none of them would be admitted to the castle. Only the blue-bloods might see the shedding of the blood royal.

With an unmoved countenance Mary entered the hail. A queen since she was but a few days old, she had early learnt to demean herself royally, and this exalted art did not forsake her in the supreme moment. Head erect, she mounted the two steps to the scaffold. Thus proudly, when a girl of fifteen, she had ascended the throne of France; thus proudly, the steps leading to the altar at Rheims. Thus proudly would she have mounted the throne of England if other stars had presided over her destiny. With mingled pride and humility she had kneeled beside a King of France, and later beside a King of Scotland, to receive priestly benediction; with mingled pride and humility she now bowed her head to receive the benediction of death. She listened unmoved while Beale read the death warrant aloud to her. So calm was her expression, friendly and almost joyful, that even Richard Wigmore, Cecil's secret agent, declared in his report to his master that she listened to the document “with so merry and cheerful a countenance as if it had been a pardon from Her Majesty.”

But a hard trial still awaited her. Mary Stuart wished this ultimate hour to be a triumph, in which she could disclose herself to the world as a pillar of the faith, as a splendid flame of Catholic martyrdom. The Protestant lords were no less determined that the last gesture of her life should not be an impressive avowal of Catholicism, and they therefore did their utmost to diminish Mary Stuart's dignity by acts of petty spite. Several times on the way from her bedchamber to the hall of execution, the Queen looked round to see whether her confessor was not among those present, that, if only by a sign from him, she could be assured of blessing and absolution. Vainly, however! Father Préau was imprisoned in his room. Now, when she had made up her mind to suffer the execution without ghostly counsel, there appeared on the scaffold the Dean of Peterborough, Dr Fletcher, a fanatical champion of the Reformed creed, who, to the final moment of her life, was to embody for her the war of religions which had troubled her youth and wrecked her career. The magnates in charge of the execution had thrice been sufficiently informed that Mary, a devout Catholic, would rather die without priestly aid than accept the ministrations of a heretic. But just as Queen Mary wished, on the scaffold, to make the most of her own religion, so did the Protestants wish to bring theirs to the front; it was their God who was to be honoured on this occasion, not hers. Under the pretext of care for her salvation, the dean began an evangelical exhortation, which Mary, in her impatience, several times tried to cut short. Again and again she interrupted Dr Fletcher by assuring him that she persisted, that she was “settled”, in the ancient Catholic and Romaine religion, in defence whereof, by God's grace, she was that day to spend her blood. But Fletcher was a paltry creature, with scant respect for the will of a dying woman, and inflated by vanity. Having carefully prepared his sermon, he was delighted with the chance of delivering it before so distinguished a congregation. He went on with his oration until Mary found no other means for deafening her ears than to throw herself on her knees, crucifix in one hand and missal in the other, to pray aloud in Latin, that she might drown the unctuous outpourings of the dean. The two religions, instead of joining forces to pray on behalf of the victim, were still at grips upon the scaffold, hatred being always stronger than reverence for distress. Shrewsbury and Kent, and with them most of those assembled, prayed aloud in English, while Mary and her servitors prayed aloud in Latin. As soon as Fletcher's oration came to an end, and when the silence had healed up again, Mary rose, kneeled down once more and prayed in English for Christ's afflicted Church, for a surcease of her troubles, for her son and for the Queen's Majesty. Pressing the crucifix to her breast, she desired the saints to make intercession for her to the Saviour of the world, Jesus Christ. Again the Earl of Kent, likewise a Protestant fanatic, interfered with her devotions, urging her to lay aside these “popish trumperies”. But the dying woman was by now far beyond earthly contentions. She uttered no sound, made no sign, in answer; her voice pealed through the hall saying that she forgave her enemies with all her heart, those who had long sought her blood, and begged God to lead them to the truth. Silence was restored. Mary knew that the end was near. For the last time she kissed the crucifix and crossed herself, saying: “Even as Thy arms, O Jesu Christ, were spread here upon the cross, so receive me into the arms of mercy, and forgive me all my sins. Amen.”

That was a cruel and violent age, but it was not therefore wholly unspiritual. In many of its customs it remained more keenly aware of its own inhumanity than we are aware of our own inhumanity today. At every execution, however barbarous the method, there was a moment of human greatness amid the horror. Before the executioner stretched forth his hand to slay or to torture, he asked the victim's pardon for the wrong he was about to commit. The two masked men, Bulle, the executioner and his assistant kneeled in front of Mary and begged forgiveness since it was their duty to put her to death. She answered: “I forgive you with all my heart. For I hope this death shall give an end to my troubles.” The two black-robed men rose to their feet once more and made ready for their work.

Simultaneously, Jane Kennedy and Elizabeth Curie began to disrobe Mary. She helped them by removing from her neck the chain with the Agnus Dei. She made these preparations firmly and, as Wigmore reported, “with such speed as if she had longed to be gone out of the world.” When the black gown had been removed, her red velvet underclothing shone forth and, thus robed, with her long scarlet sleeves to match, she looked like a flame of blood, splendid and unforgettable. Now came the farewells. The Queen embraced her assistants and exhorted them not to weep too loudly: “
Ne cry vous, j'ay preye pur vous
”
—
Do not cry, I have prayed for you. Then, kneeling on the cushion which had been spread for her, she intoned the Latin psalm: “
In te, domine, confido, ne confundar in aeternum
”
—
O Lord, in you I confide, let me not be eternally confounded
.

Little remained to be done. She laid her head on the block, which she embraced with both arms, as one in love with death. To the end Mary Stuart maintained her royal dignity. With neither sign nor word did she show any fear. The daughter of the Stuarts, of the Tudors and of the Guises made ready to die worthily. But what help is human dignity, what help is acquired or inherited poise, against the horror which necessarily surrounds murder? On no one (however much the books and reports may lie about the matter) can the execution of a human being produce a romantic and touching impression. Always death by the executioner's axe must be a horrible spectacle of slaughter. The first blow fell awry, striking the back of the head instead of severing the neck. A hollow groan escaped from the mouth of the victim. At the second stroke, the axe sank deep into the neck, and the blood spurted out copiously. Not until a third blow had been given was the head detached from the trunk. Now came a further touch of horror. When Bulle wished to lift the head by the hair and show it to those assembled, he gripped only the wig, and the head dropped onto the ground. It rolled like a ball across the scaffold, and when the executioner stooped once more to seize it, the onlookers could discern that it was that of an old woman with close-cropped and grizzled hair. For a moment, the spectators were overcome by their feelings, so that all held their breath in silence. At length, however, when the executioner lifted up the head and shouted: “God save the Queen!” the Dean of Peterborough summoned up courage to say: “Amen! Amen! So perish all the Queen's enemies.” The Earl of Kent came up to the dead body and, with lowered voice, said: “Such end happen to all the Queen's and Gospel's enemies!”

Pallid, where not stained with blood, was the white-haired head as it confronted the noblemen who, had her fate been different, would have been her most loyal servants and zealous subjects. For nigh on a quarter of an hour the lips continued to twitch convulsively. To lessen the horror of the spectacle, a pall was hastily drawn over the headless trunk and the gorgon-like head. Then, while amid a paralysed silence some underlings were carrying away the gloomy burden, a trifling incident revived the general consternation. As the executioner and his assistant were raising the decapitated trunk, which was to be borne into a neighbouring room to be embalmed, something stirred beneath the clothing. Unnoticed, Mary's Skye terrier had crept beneath her petticoat. Now the little beast sprang forth “embrued in her blood”. Afterwards, “it would not depart from the dead corpse, but came and lay between her head and shoulders.” By force it was taken away and sent to be washed. “The executioners were discharged with money for their fees, not having any one thing that belonged at her.” Then, “everyone was commanded forth of the hall, saving the sheriff and his men, who carried her up into a great chamber and made ready for the surgeon to embalm her, and there she was embalmed.”

I
N THE GREEK DRAMA
a long and gloomy tragedy was always followed by a short, rollicking farce. Such an epilogue was not wanting in the drama of Mary Stuart. She was sent to the block on the morning of 8th February 1587. Next morning all London heard of the execution. A wave of intense jubilation spread through the capital and the country. Had not the usually acute ears of the Queen of England been suddenly deafened, Elizabeth must have known from the pealing of the church bells that a festival not in the calendar was being celebrated by her subjects, and what was the occasion of that tumultuous rejoicing. But she carefully refrained from asking, wrapping herself more and more closely in the mantle of ignorance. She was waiting to be officially informed of the execution of her rival, and to be seized with “astonishment” at the news. The gloomy task of acquainting the “unsuspecting” monarch of the execution of her “dear sister” had been allotted to Cecil. He did not like the job. During the many years he had held high office under Protector Somerset, Edward VI, Mary Tudor and Queen Elizabeth, he had been through stormy times and, especially under his present mistress, had had to endure frequent storms of indignation, some genuine and some feigned. On the present occasion, therefore, the calm and serious-minded man equipped himself with an armour of indifference before he entered the royal reception room to acquaint the Queen officially with the fact that Mary had been executed. But Elizabeth's fury, this time, was unexampled. What? Mary Stuart had been put to death without her knowledge and without her express command? Impossible! Inconceivable! Never had she contemplated so cruel a measure, as long as no foreign invader set foot upon English soil. Her counsellors had cheated and betrayed her, were a pack of rascals. Her prestige, her honour, had been irrevocably tarnished before the world through this perfidious and underhand deed. Her poor, unhappy sister had been the victim of a disastrous error, a scandalous plot! Elizabeth sobbed, screamed and stamped on the floor in her frenzy. She railed like a fish wife at the grey-haired statesman who, in conjunction with other members of her council, had dared, without her express commission, to act upon the death warrant she had signed.

Never for a moment had Cecil and his friends expected anything else than that Elizabeth would repudiate the action they had taken as “illegal”, as a “gross usurpation of power by subordinate authorities”. Believing their “usurpation of authority” would be welcome to her, they had decided to relieve Queen Elizabeth of the “burthen” of responsibility. They had expected, however, that this attitude of repudiation would be assumed by the Queen only when she was playing to the gallery, and that, under the rose, in her private audience-chamber, she would thank them for so promptly clearing her rival out of her path. But, in the depths of her mind, Elizabeth had so carefully rehearsed her simulated wrath, that, despite herself, it took possession of her and became genuine. Thus the storm that burst over Cecil's bowed head was not mere stage-thunder, but the discharge of furious indignation, a hurricane of invectives, a cloud-burst of abuse. Not content with berating Cecil, Elizabeth was almost ready to slap her most faithful adviser's face. She reviled him so unmercifully that he, now well up in years (he was fifty-five), tendered his resignation and, in punishment for his alleged excess of zeal, was actually forbidden the court for some time.

It became clear that Walsingham, who had been the prime mover in the matter, had been guided by a shrewd instinct when he fell sick, or appeared to do so, during the decisive days. For the vials of the royal wrath were emptied upon the head of his henchman, the unhappy Davison. Davison was selected as scapegoat, as the butt who was to demonstrate Elizabeth's innocence. Never, insisted Elizabeth, had she told the secretary to convey the death warrant to Cecil and to have the Great Seal affixed thereto. He had acted on his own initiative, against her will and, by thus exceeding his instructions, had wrought immeasurable harm. By the Queen's command this “unfaithful servant”, whose offence was that he had been too faithful, was haled before the Star Chamber. A decision of that august court was to proclaim to Europe that the execution of Mary Stuart had been exclusively the work of the rascal Davison, and that Elizabeth had been completely innocent in the matter. It need hardly be said that the privy councillors who had sworn to shoulder the responsibility jointly with Cecil hastened to leave their comrade, and Davison as well, in the lurch. All that concerned them was to save their own ministerial positions and sinecures amid this royal storm. Davison, who had no witnesses to confirm his story of Queen Elizabeth's orders, was sentenced to pay a fine of ten thousand pounds. Since his whole worldly wealth amounted to nothing like this sum, he was cast into jail. On the quiet, subsequently, he was granted a pension, but never while Elizabeth lived was he allowed to appear at court; his career was at an end, and thenceforward he was a broken man. It is always dangerous for courtiers to fail to understand the secret wishes of their sovereign. At times, however, it is still more disastrous when they understand these secret wishes too well.

The pretty tale of Queen Elizabeth's innocence and ignorance as regards this matter of the execution of Mary Stuart was too obvious a fabrication to impose upon her contemporaries. Perhaps there was only one person who really came to believe in this fable of the imagination, and that, strangely enough, was Elizabeth herself. One of the most remarkable capacities of persons of hysterical disposition is, not only their ability to be splendid liars, but to be imposed upon by their own falsehoods. For them the truth is what they want to be true, what they believe is what they wish to believe, so that their testimony may often be the most honourable of lies, and therefore the most dangerous. Hysteria apart, we have a tendency to self-justification and self-exculpation, and Elizabeth, presumably, felt perfectly sincere when she assured all and sundry that she had neither commanded nor desired the execution of Mary. As already said, she was bipolar in the matter. In part, she had never willed the death of Mary, and now that the death had taken place, this part, her remembrance that she had not wanted it, gradually became supreme over her remembrance that also she had desired her rival's death. Her outburst of wrath on receipt of the news, which she wished to be true but did not wish to hear, was not exclusively theatrical, but also—since her whole nature was double-faced—a genuine and honest anger; the outcome of an inability to forgive herself for having allowed her better instincts to be overpowered; and also a perfectly genuine anger against Cecil for having allowed himself to be persuaded to the execution, without instigating steps that would have relieved her of responsibility. So powerful was Elizabeth's autosuggestion to the effect that the execution had taken place in defiance of her will, so well did she succeed in deceiving herself, that again and again, thereafter, we hear the tone of genuine conviction in her asseverations. She was not merely humbugging when she put on mourning to receive the French ambassador, and assured him that she had not been so greatly moved by the death of her father or by that of her sister as by the death of Mary Queen of Scots; but she was “a poor, weak woman, environed by foes”. Had not the members of the Privy Council who had played her this sorry trick been long in her service, she would have sent them to the block. She had signed the death warrant only in order to pacify her subjects, but had never intended to have it carried into effect unless her realm were invaded by foreign armies.

In her holograph letter to James VI of Scotland, Queen Elizabeth persisted in the half-truth and half-falsehood that she had never really desired the execution of Mary Stuart. She reiterated her profound distress that the execution had been carried out “without her knowledge and consent”. She called God to witness that she was “innocent in this matter”, and declared that she “had never thought to put the queene your mother to death”; although her advisers were perpetually dinning into her ears that it was incumbent on her to do so. To forestall the natural objection that she was simply making a scapegoat of Davison, she proudly declared that no power on earth could induce her to shift onto another's shoulders the blame for anything she had herself commanded.

James VI, on his side, was not particularly eager to learn the truth. All he wanted was to avert from himself the suspicion of not having done enough to defend his mother. Of course it would not do for him to accept Elizabeth's assurances without demur; he, likewise, must maintain the semblance of surprise and indignation. He therefore made a great gesture, solemnly declaring that such a deed must not be left unavenged. Elizabeth's envoys were forbidden to set foot on Scottish soil, and King James's own messengers took over their dispatches from them in the town of Berwick. The world was to see that James VI showed his teeth to the murderers of his mother. But the cabinet in London had long since mixed the jam that was necessary to make the angry son swallow the unpalatable powder which was the news of his mother's execution. Simultaneously with Elizabeth's letter intended for public consumption, there was dispatched to Edinburgh a private diplomatic missive in which Walsingham informed the Scottish secretary of state that James would be successor to the throne of England, so that the whole dark affair would redound to the general good. The effect was all that could be wished. James had not a word more to say of an open breach with England. He was no longer troubled at the thought that his mother's corpse was still lying in some out-of-the-way corner of a churchyard. He made no protest because one of her last wishes, to the effect that her remains should be laid to rest in French soil, was being flatly disregarded. As if by magic, he was suddenly convinced of Queen Elizabeth's innocence, and gladly accepted the official version that the execution had been a “mistake”. “Ye purge youre self of ane unhappy fact,” he wrote to the Queen of England and, as her contented pensioner, expressed the hope that her “honourable conduct would become known to the world”. A golden wind of promise rapidly appeased the storm of his wrath. Thenceforward peace and harmony prevailed between an undutiful son and the woman who had passed a death sentence on his mother.

Morality and policy take divergent paths. We judge an event quite differently according as we consider it from the standpoint of humanity or from that of temporal advantage. Morally, the execution of Mary Stuart was utterly unjustifiable. Contrary to international law, in peacetime, the Queen of one country had imprisoned the Queen of another, had woven a snare for her, and had perfidiously encompassed her death. Just as little, however, can we deny that, from a purely political outlook, England was right in ridding the world of Mary Stuart. For, alas, what is decisive in politics is not the abstract right of what is done, but whether it is or is not advantageous in its results. Now, as regards the execution of Mary Stuart, the results, politically speaking, provide full justification, since the murder brought England not unrest, but rest. Cecil and Walsingham had rightly estimated the positive forces that were at work in one direction and another. They knew that foreign states are always inclined to sing small when faced by a really strong government, and are ready to overlook the deeds of violence and even the crimes committed by such a government. They had been right in their supposition that the world would not be greatly disturbed by this execution. The alarums and excursions in France and Scotland, the threats of vengeance, soon quieted down. Henry III refrained from breaking off diplomatic relations with England, as he had threatened to do. He never proposed to send a soldier across the Channel on behalf of Mary Stuart when she was alive, and he was not likely to take up arms in her cause now that she was dead. Of course he had a Requiem Mass read in Notre Dame, and the court poets wrote a few elegies; but therewith, as far as France was concerned, the affair of Mary Stuart was over and done with.

Some threats were mouthed in the Scottish parliament; James VI put on mourning, but he continued to ride the horses which had been presented him by Queen Elizabeth, used the hounds she had sent him in his favourite sport of the chase, and remained the most friendly neighbour England had ever known. Only Philip the Procrastinator of Spain at length set to work seriously upon the equipment of his Invincible Armada, but he stood alone, and against him was ranged Elizabeth's good fortune, which was part of her greatness, as it is part of that of all famous rulers. The Armada was scattered by storms quite as much as by the resistance of the English fleet, and therewith the carefully planned onslaught of the Counter-Reformation collapsed. Elizabeth was victorious, and with the death of Mary Stuart her chief danger had been removed. The period of the defensive was over. English warships could now move to the attack, could navigate all the oceans and begin the foundation of a worldwide empire. The wealth of England steadily increased; a new art grew during the last years of Elizabeth's life. Never was the Queen more admired, never more loved and honoured, than after the basest act of her life. Again and again do we find that the great edifices of state are built out of blocks of harshness and injustice; always their foundations cemented with blood. In political life it is only the vanquished who are wrong, and history strides over them with iron-shod heels.

The son of Mary Stuart was not spared a great test of his patience. He did not, as he had hoped, mount the English throne forthwith; the payment for his cowardly inertia was long delayed. He had to do what is the hardest thing for an ambitious man—to wait, to wait, to wait. For sixteen years, almost as long a time as that during which his mother had been imprisoned by Elizabeth, he was inactive at Edinburgh, waiting until at length the sceptre fell from the old woman's shrivelled hand. Moodily he passed his days at one or other of his Scottish castles, riding often to the chase, writing treatises upon religious and political questions; but his chief occupation was to wait for a dead woman's shoes, to expect tidings from London. She survived with remarkable persistence until well on into her seventieth year. It seemed as if the blood of her rival must have been transfused into Elizabeth's arteries, rejuvenating her. She became stronger, more self-assured, healthier, after Mary's death. No longer did she suffer from obstinate sleeplessness. The fierce torments of an uneasy conscience that had plagued her during the months and years of indecision were assuaged now that she and her country had at length found repose. No mortal was left to threaten her position as ruler, and she devoted the remainder of her passionate energy to a struggle against Death, who must in the end rob her of her crown. When she was approaching seventy, tenacious and unyielding, the thought of dying became a horror to her. She wandered about her palaces, would not keep her bed and moved aimlessly from room to room. Why should she vacate the position for which she had fought so long and so ruthlessly?