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FOTHERINGHAY 
 
 AND 
 
 MARY, OUEEN OF SCOTS. 
 
 BEING 
 
 AN ACCOUNT, HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE, 
 
 OF FOTHERINGHAY CASTLE, 
 
 THE LAST PRISON OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 SCENE OF HER TRIAL AND EXECUTION. 
 
 ^^^^^ <;n g^juoO^ 5aoi^Ux| 
 
 By CUTHBERT BEDE: 
 
 With Illustrations by the Author^ 
 
 And an original contemporary portrait of Mary ^ Queen of Scots ^ 
 
 now first published. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & Co. 
 
 OUNDLE : ALFRED KING. 
 
 1886. 
 
Dear to the Loves, and to the Graces vowed, 
 
 The Queen drew back the wimple that she wore ; 
 
 And to the throng how touchingly she bowed 
 
 That hailed her landing on the Cumbrian shore ; 
 
 Bright as a Star (that, from a heavy cloud 
 
 Of pine-tree foliage poised in air, forth darts, 
 
 When a soft summer gale at evening parts 
 
 The gloom that did its loveliness enshroud) 
 
 She smiled : but Time, the old Saturnian Seer, 
 
 Sighed on the wing as her foot pressed the strand, 
 
 With step prelusive to a long array 
 
 Of woes and degradations hand in hand — 
 
 Weeping captivity, and shuddering fear 
 
 Stilled by the ensanguined block of Fotheringhay. " 
 
 Wordsworth's Sonnet to ^^ Mary, Queen of Scots.'' 
 

 WITH A 
 
 GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
 
 OF A LITERARY AND ARTISTIC FRIENDSHIP, 
 
 EXTENDING OVER THIRTY-FIVE YEARS, 
 
 AND MUCH KIND HOSPITALITY, 
 
 I SUBSCRIBE THIS BOOK 
 
 TO 
 
 JOHN MOVER HEATHCOTE, Esq., 
 
 OF CONINGTON CASTLE, HUNTINGDONSHIRE, 
 
 A BUILDING SO INTIMATELY CONNECTED WITH 
 
 FOTHERINGHAY AND MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. 
 
 Lenton Vicarage^ 
 
 Grantham^ 
 November^ i88j. 
 
 M52S248 
 
PRE FA CE. 
 
 The chief portion of the contents of this book originally 
 appeared in three numbers of " The Leisure Hour" for 
 Nove77iber^ i86j, illustrated with three views ^ drawn on 
 the wood^ by myself from my ow?i sketches taken in that 
 year. 
 
 After an interval of twenty years, Mr. Alfred King, 
 of Oundle, thought that a re-publication of my account of 
 Fotheringhay would be of interest to the 7natiy visitors to 
 that historical spot; and 7ny friend, Dr. Macaulay, Editor 
 of " The Leisure Hour," kindly gave me per7tiission to use 
 both the letterpress and illustrations that had appeared in 
 his Magazine. 
 
 I have, hoivever, very carefully revised and corrected what 
 / then wrote, and have made ve?y considerable additions, in 
 order to 77iake the infor77iatio7i as co77iplete and accurate as I 
 was able. Fresh illustrations have also been added fro7n my 
 07an sketches. 
 
 Further, L have supplemented the descriptive details, by a 
 concise history of the trial and execution of Mary, Queen 
 of Scots, derived fro7n the best authorities. 
 
 CUTHBERT BEDE. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. PAGE 
 
 Fotheringhay a troubled history. — Its foundation. — Sad Chat- 
 illon. — Edward Duke of York. — Proud Cis. — King Edward 
 the Fourth. — Richard the Third. — Catharine of Arragon. — 
 Mary, Queen of Scots. — Queen Elizabeth - ... 7 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth's visit to Fotheringhay. — ^James the First and 
 his supposed "filial justice." — A vulgar error. — The Castle 
 standing in 1625. — The survey of it. — The curse of King 
 James. — Fuller's visit. — Dismantling of the Castle. — Its 
 possessors. — Crown land. — Lord Overstone. — Decadence of 
 the town 15 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. — Conington Castle. — Sir Robert's 
 birth at Denton. — His monument in Conington Church. — 
 The Church and Mansion at Denton. — Sir Robert purchases 
 a portion of Fotheringhay Castle. — The removal to Con- 
 ington of various relics 26 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Banquet-hall of Fotheringhay removed to Conington. — 
 J. M. Heathcote, Esq. — His ancestors, and their purchase 
 of Conington from the Cottons. — The chair from which Mary, 
 Queen of Scots is believed to have risen for execution. — 
 Contemporary accounts. — Other remains of Fotheringhay. 
 — The Talbot Inn, Oundle. — Chapel at Fineshade. — 
 Thorough destruction of the Castle 34 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Fotheringhay village, ancient and modern. — The New Inn. — Its 
 history. — The Market-stead. — Relick Sunday. — The Cross. 
 —The May-pole.— The Bridge.— Queen Elizabeth.— The 
 Collegiate Church. — Distant view. — Archdeacon Bonney's 
 work on Fotheringhay • • • - - - - 41 
 
CHAPTER VI. PAGE 
 
 Description of Fotheringhay Church. — The projected College. — 
 Destruction of the Choir. — The Church tower and clere- 
 story.— The bells.— The porch.— The fetterlock badge.— 
 The font. — The pulpit. — Monuments to the Dukes of York. — 
 Royal funerals. — The hero of Agincourt. — Burial of Richard, 
 Duke of York.— Edward IV. 48 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Fotheringhay Castle, the royal residence of York. — The Castle- 
 keep. — Its shape. — View from the Church tower. — The 
 Castle moats. — Buttressed wall. — Scarcity of illustrations of 
 the Castle. — Mary Stuart albums. — Miss Agnes Strickland. 
 — ^Joseph Cecil, Esq. — Schiller's " Mary Stuart." — D. O. 
 Hill's painting. — T. Bell's poem. 60 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 General view from the lantern of the Church. — Site of the 
 Castle. — Robert Wyatt's find of Queen Mary's ring. — No 
 ruins. — Queen Mary's rooms. — The moats. — The mill-brook. 
 — The Mound. — Hawthorns. — The Scotch thistle. — Miss 
 Strickland's opinion. — Wordsworth's Sonnet. — Burns' poem. 69 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Mary brought to Fotheringhay. — Perio Lane. — Legends concern- 
 ing it. — The Queen of Scots in prison. — Her rigorous treat- 
 ment. — Insults offered her. — Queen Elizabeth's conduct. — 
 A modern criticism. — Scenery of Fotheringhay. — Words- 
 worth's " Lament of Mary , Queen of Scots. " - - - 81 
 
 HISTORY OF TRIAL, EXECUTION, & FUNERAL. 
 
 Part I.— The Mock Trial 94 
 
 Part II.— After the Trial - - - - . - - 107 
 
 Part HI.— The Execution 116 
 
 Part IV. — Funeral of Mary, Queen of Scots - - . . i^g 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Original Letters of Miss Agnes Strickland 174 
 
 Portraits of Mary, Queen of Scots 196 
 
 Original Sonnet on " Fotheringhay : 1885 " - - . . 201 
 
 Notes -.-,....,.. 203 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots. From an original painting on 
 copper — presumed to he a contemporary — in the possession of 
 the Author, and now first published. (Frontispiece.) 
 Three Views of Fotheringhay. Drawn on zvood by the Atithor - i8 
 The Chair from which Mary, Queen of Scots, is believed to have 
 
 risen for execution. Drazun by the Author - . - - 3^ 
 
 Staircase and Window, Talbot Inn, Oundle. Draiun by 
 
 Mr. Caparn, Oundle 39 
 
 Remains of Fotheringhay Castle. Drawn by the Author - - 40 
 The New Inn, Fotheringhay. From a ivater-colotir drawing by 
 
 the Author 42 
 
 The Bridge and Church, Fotheringhay. Drazvft by the Author - 48 
 The outer Wall and Moat, Fotheringhay. Draivn by the Author 62 
 The outer Moat, Mound, Bridge, Church, &c., Fotheringhay. 
 
 Drazvn by the Author - -■ 74 
 
 Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. From an old print - - 128 
 
 Signet-ring of Mary, Queen of Scots. 
 
 Found in the ruins of Fotheringhay, and supposed to have been dropped 
 
 from her finger 071 the scaffold, and to have been swept away in the 
 
 bloody sawdust. 
 
POTHERING HAY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Fotheringhay a troubled history. — Its foundation. — vSad Chatillon. — 
 Edward Duke of York. — Proud Cis. — King Edward the Fourth. — 
 Richard the Third. — Catharine of Arragon. — Mary, Queen of Scots. 
 — Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 FpjHERiNfiHAY^js^a name disting historic annals; 
 
 but, although from the first its castle was connected with 
 royalty, it would appear in every age to have brought to 
 its princely possessors a heritage of misery and blood. Balliol, 
 York, Plantagenet, and Stuart alike found in Fotheringhay 
 either a troubled home, or a gloomy prison, or the grave of a 
 violent death. Originally built by Mary Stuart's ancestor — 
 that Simon de St. Liz who had married the great niece of 
 William the Conqueror, and who had built a second fortress 
 upon the river Nene at Northampton — the old castle of 
 Fotheringhay had been held by the luckless Balliols ; and 
 its last possessor was that Mary of Valence, Countess of 
 
8 
 
 Pembroke, whose husband fell in a tournament upon their 
 bridal day, and whom the poet Gray has celebrated as the 
 
 "Sad Chatillon, on her bridal morn 
 That wept her bleeding love." 
 
 She passed the long days of her virgin-widowhood at Fother- 
 
 inghay, devoting herself to the services of rehgion, and her 
 
 fortune to the foundation of Pembroke Hall, in the University 
 
 of Cambridge, to perpetuate the memory of her husband of a 
 
 few hours. 
 
 Her successor in the lordship was Edmund Langley, the 
 
 fifth son of Edward HI, who rebuilt the castle, and left it to 
 
 his son Edward, Duke of York. He did not, however, live 
 
 long to enjoy it, for he was slain at the head of his vanguard 
 
 of English archers in the famous fight of Agincourt, where he 
 
 was stifled by the heat and by the enemy thronging upon 
 
 him — for, says the old Chronicle, "being a fatte man, he 
 
 w^as smouldered to death." It was his dying wish that he 
 
 should be buried in the collegiate church of Fotheringhay, 
 
 which he himself had founded ; and there he was accordingly 
 
 interred on December i, 141 5. The castle then passed to 
 
 his brother, Richard Plantagenet, Earl of Cambridge, who 
 
 was beheaded, on suspicion of being in a conspiracy against 
 
 Henry V. His son, Richard, Duke of York, was the next 
 
 who held it ; and he, too, inherited the Fotheringhay fate, 
 
 meeting a violent death at the battle of Wakefield Green, 
 
together with his second son, Edmund, Earl of Rutland, a lad 
 of twelve, who was barbarously slain in cold blood by Lord 
 Qifford. The bodies of the father and son were removed 
 from Pontefract to Fotheringhay with the greatest pomp, and 
 with a ceremonial of which a full account has been handed 
 down to us, and were buried in the collegiate church on July 
 2 2, 1466. Richard's widow, Cecily, Duchess of York — who 
 was the " proud Cis " of the familiar proverb — survived her 
 husband thirty-six years ; and, as the " sad Chatillon " had 
 done before her, passed the chief part of her widowhood at 
 Fotheringhay, where also she found her grave. 
 
 By the way. Miss Agnes Strickland was slightly in error in 
 fixing the period of the Duchess of York's " sorrowful widow- 
 hood " at " thirty years "* — thirty-six is the correct date of 
 widowhood, where, at Fotheringhay, she not only wept away 
 her years, but also saw " the last of her male descendants 
 perish tragically, and the name of Plantagenet become 
 extinct." The pronunciation of her Christian name, together 
 with that of her father, is curiously and phonetically shown 
 by the inscription on the east side of the Communion-table 
 in Fotheringhay Church : — " Sissily, Dutchess of York, 
 Daughter to Raulfe Nevell, first Earl of Westmorland." 
 She and the Dukes of York were first buried in the choir ; 
 
 * The Queens of Scotland : Mary Stuart. Vol. VII, p. 419. 
 
 6 
 
10 
 
 but at the dissolution, when the choir was pulled down by 
 the Duke of Northumberland, their bodies were dug up, and 
 (according to Fuller) lay in the churchyard without any 
 monument until Queen Elizabeth visited Fotheringhay, in 
 1573, and ordered the bodies to be re-buried in the church, 
 and appropriate monuments to be erected. On opening the 
 coffin of the Duchess Cecily there was found about her neck 
 a silver ribbon with a pardon from Rome, penned in a very 
 fine Roman hand, as fair and fresh to be read as if it had 
 been written yesterday. Such was the account given by 
 Mr. Creuso, a gentleman who dwelt in the college at the 
 same time, to Henry Peacham, who mentions it in his 
 " Complete Gentleman " (p 160). 
 
 King Edward the Fourth — son of the Duchess Cecily — 
 occasionally fixed his residence at Fotheringhay, coming 
 there on one occasion by water from Croyland to join his 
 Queen, and, on another occasion, granting an audience here 
 to Alexander, who entered into a covenant to do fealty and 
 homage for the realm of Scotland within six months after he 
 had obtained possession of the crown. During her widowed 
 residence at Fotheringhay, the Duchess Cecily not only had 
 to mourn the tragical fate of her little grandsons, Edward V 
 and his brother, but also to have her grief made more poign- 
 ant by the thought that their murderer was her own son, who 
 
II 
 
 had been born within the walls of Fotheringhay : that Duke 
 
 of Gloucester who, as King Richard III, was the last of the 
 
 Plantagenets, and who, having waded to the throne through 
 
 blood, quitted it by a violent end, yet not before he had 
 
 accused his mother of the grossest profligacy. Shakespeare, 
 
 therefore, in his play of " Richard III," makes the duchess 
 
 say of him, " He is my son, ay, and therein my shame;" and 
 
 again, 
 
 *' And I for comfort have but one false gloss 
 That grieves me when I see my shame in him." 
 
 And the Shakespearian reader will also call to mind that 
 
 scene where, in such terrible colours, she depicts her son's 
 
 character from his very birth at Fotheringhay ; where his 
 
 infancy was "tetchy and wayward"; and then solemnly 
 
 curses him with this prophetic malediction : — 
 
 " Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end : 
 
 Shame serves thy life, and doth thy death attend." 
 
 Such was the king of England who was born in Fotheringhay 
 
 Castle, and from whose mother Mary, Queen of Scots was 
 
 fourth in descent. 
 
 After the death of Duchess Cecily, in 1495, ^^^ castle was 
 given by Henry VII to his Queen Elizabeth, who was the sole 
 representative of the House of York. Henry VIII settled it 
 in dower upon his unfortunate Queen Catharine of Arragon, 
 who repaired it at great cost, and would seem to have 
 
12 
 
 been attached to it, until her royal husband wished to turn it 
 into her prison, when she declared that "to Fotheringhay 
 she would not go, unless bound with cart-ropes and carried 
 thither." But in Mary's reign Fotheringhay really became a 
 state-prison, when Edward Courtney, Earl of Devonshire, 
 was removed thither from the Tower, on a charge of having 
 been implicated in Sir Thomas Wyatt's conspiracy. 
 
 Such was the previous history of Fotheringhay Castle up to 
 the period of that terrible tragedy — the imprisonment and 
 execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, which has, as it were, 
 swallowed up the memory of all that had gone before, and 
 caused the name of Fotheringhay to be associated with, and 
 dedicated to, a recollection of the most touching royal death- 
 scene in our country's annals. Into the details of that scene 
 it is not here my province to enter, though they will be 
 narrated at the end of this book. We have to do now with 
 the prison, and not its prisoner ; with the past and present of 
 Fotheringhay itself, and not with the doom of its most 
 illustrious and beautiful captive. She who, as Wordsworth 
 has sung, " Dear to the loves, and to the graces vowed," 
 landed on the Cumbrian shore, 
 
 "With step prelusive to a long array 
 
 Of woes and degradations hand in hand — 
 
 Weeping captivity and shuddering fear, 
 
 Stilled by the ensanguined block of Fotheringhay " 
 
13 
 
 —though the poet is scarcely correct as to " the shuddering 
 fear." It may have dwelt in the guilty bosom of Elizabeth, 
 but was certainly not shown by Mary, even in the supreme 
 moment of her fate. Yet, if the verse of the poet is 
 faulty, there is a verse in a certain Book which, could a 
 voice have gone up from the banquet-hall of Fotheringhay, 
 might have thus denounced the English queen : " Thou 
 hast consulted shame to thyself by cutting off many people, 
 and hast sinned against thy soul. For the stone shall cry 
 out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall 
 answer it." 
 
 " Lo ! on that mound, in clays of feudal pride, 
 Thy towering castle frown 'd above the tide ; 
 Flung wide her gates, where troops of vassals met 
 With awe the brow of proud Plantagenet. 
 
 " But ah ! what chiefs in sable crests appear? 
 
 What bright achievement marks yon warrior's bier ? 
 'Tis York's ! — From Agincourt's victorious plain, 
 They bear the fallen hero o'er the main ; 
 Through all the land his blooming laurels spread, 
 And to thy bosom give the mighty dead. 
 
 " When from thy lap the ruthless Richard sprung, 
 A boding sound through all thy borders rung : 
 It spoke a tale of blood — fair Neville's woe, 
 York's murderous hand, and Edward's future foe."* 
 
 The history of Fotheringhay would seem to have been 
 
 written in letters of blood. Through many generations, it 
 
 * " Antona's Banks." (1797.) 
 
14 
 
 brought to its princely possessors a heritage of misery and 
 bloodshed. Balliol, York, Plantagenet, and Stuart alike 
 found in Fotheringhay a troubled home, a gloomy prison, or 
 the scene of violent death; and Queen Elizabeth — ^who 
 visited Fotheringhay in 1573 — may, perhaps, have had its 
 gruesome antecedents in her mind, when she selected Fother- 
 inghay as the last prison of her lovely and hapless cousin, the 
 Queen of Scots. 
 
 r^f* 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth's visit to Fotheringhay.— James the First and his 
 supposed "filial justice."— A vulgar error.— The Castle standing in 
 1625.— The survey of it.— The curse of King James.— Fuller's 
 visit.— Dismantling of the Castle.— Its possessors.— Crown land.— 
 Lord Overstone. — Decadence of the town. 
 
 Up to this last chapter of its history, Fotheringhay had 
 doomed its princely tenants to more or less of misery; 
 and the majority of the royal personages who were con- 
 nected with it appear, either in their own persons or in those 
 of their nearest relatives, to have met their ends by violent 
 deaths. I Its history was written in characters of blood ; and 
 it would almost seem as if the tragical associations that 
 thronged its towers should cause Queen Elizabeth (who had 
 visited the castle in 1573, and had busied herself by putting 
 up new monuments in the church to the slaughtered Dukes 
 of York) to deliberately select Fotheringhay as the last prison 
 of her regal victim, and as a fortress over whose portals might 
 have been written, " All hope abandon, ye who enter here."j 
 It is, at any rate, a noteworthy circumstance that, in the 
 words of Mr. Nichols,* "Fotheringhay has been distinguished 
 
 *The distinguished historian of Leicestershire. See his "History 
 and Antiquities of Fotheringhay," p. v., 1787 — a scarce work, but, for 
 the most part, embodied in the popular " Historic Notices of Fother- 
 
16 
 
 beyond any other place in Britain, except the capital, by the 
 
 aggravated misfortunes of royalty ;" and its tragical records 
 
 found their consummation in that dread event which, as it 
 
 were, overwhelmed the castle with so great a shame that 
 
 nothing less than its complete annihilation would answer the 
 
 demands of poetic justice. 
 
 Probably some such feeling as this existed from the first, 
 
 and gave a colourable pretext to the popular story (which is 
 
 even entertained by Nichols and other historians), that no 
 
 sooner had James I come to the throne than he caused 
 
 Fotheringhay Castle to be demolished, in order to efface all 
 
 traces of his mother's execution. The local poet who, in 
 
 1797, wrote the poem of " Antona's Banks,"* thus enshrines 
 
 the vulgar error in his verse : 
 
 *' In darkest night for ever veil the scene 
 When thy cold tomb received the captive Queen : 
 For this has Time erased thee from his page, 
 And filial justice, with vindictive rage. 
 Burst on thy princely towers with whelming tide, 
 Nor left one vestige to relate thy pride." 
 
 inghay," by the late Archdeacon Bonney. See also Bridge's " History 
 of Northamptonshire," and Miss Strickland's " Queens of Scotland," 
 vii. 420. 
 
 * The river Nene was sometimes called Avon. See Leland's "Itinerary," 
 vol. i., fol. 4-6. " Foderingey stondithe on the farther rise of Avon, as 
 I entered the towne. The bridge to Foderingey over Avon is of timber. 
 The castelle of Foderingey is fair and meately strong, with doble ditches, 
 and hath a kepe very auncient and strong. There be very fair lodgyns 
 in the castel. And as I hard Catharine of Spaine did great costs in late 
 tyme of refreshing of it. This castel longid of late tymes to Edmunde of 
 
17 
 
 Even in a carefully-compiled book of reference by an 
 eminent man — " The English Archaeologist's Handbook : by 
 Henry Godwin, F.S.A.," (Parker, 1867,) the vulgar error 
 is repeated ; for, mentioning Fotheringhay Castle, Mr. God- 
 win says, "Razed to the ground by James I." (p. 200.) 
 Britton and Brayley (1807,) say of the castle, "On the 
 accession of James to the throne of England, an order was 
 issued for its demolition." (p. 218.) Samuel Lewis, in his 
 "Topographical Dictionary," (1835,) says of Fotheringhay, 
 "James I on his accession to the throne, demolished the 
 castle." And this statement is commonly repeated in Guide- 
 books and educational works. * 
 
 Archdeacon Bonney, the historian of Fotheringhay, in 
 speaking of the destruction of the castle, says, "Thus re- 
 moved by degrees it escaped the notice of the antiquary, 
 who probably had recorded its destruction had it been less 
 gradual." And, he adds, "The tale of its having been 
 destroyed by order of James, on account of its having been 
 
 Langeley, Edward the iijd's sunne, and so lineally to the Dukes of York." 
 The Warwickshire Avon takes its rise in Northamptonshire, but has not 
 any connection with the Nene. 
 
 * For example, in the six-volume edition of Pinnock's County Histories, 
 it says of Fotheringhay, " On the accession of James I. it was levelled with 
 the ground. It was demolished by him because it had been the scene of 
 the sufferings and death of his mother, the beauteous and unfortunate 
 (perhaps criminal) ISIary, Queen of Scots, who was imprisoned and 
 t)eheaded here, by order of Queen Elizabeth." In the map of North- 
 amptonshire given in this work, Fotheringhay is not marked. 
 
i8 
 
 the scene of his mother's suffering is clearly disproved ; and 
 
 must be left to those only who are fond of seeing events 
 
 clothed in the language of fiction." The Archdeacon's work 
 
 was printed and published by Mr, Thomas Bell, of Oundle, 
 
 in 1821 ; and, it is not a little singular, that when Mr. T. 
 
 Bell, published, in 1853, a volume of poems, "The Rural 
 
 Album," with descriptive and " historical notices of Barnwell 
 
 and Fotheringhay Castle," he wrote the following lines in a 
 
 poem " On Fotheringhay Castle " : 
 
 " Ah ! let the grave conceal thine errors, Queen ! 
 'Twas not thine errors, but thy charms, I ween, 
 That fir'd a cruel rival's vengeful hate 
 To spurn thy prayers, and leave thee to thy fate. 
 Who woman's tears, "and kindred ties withstood, 
 And stain'd the annals of her reign with lilood ! 
 
 For this, ill-faited Castle ! filial love 
 Struck down thy tow'rs, as vengeance from above, 
 Raz'd thy strong walls, from whose embattled side 
 The white rose banner wav'd in warlike pride. 
 And where the crook-backed king his vassals met, 
 And nobles hail'd the proud Plantagenet !" 
 
 But, in his "Historical Notices" of Fotheringhay, Mr. Bell 
 says, " It has been said that James the First ordered the 
 demolition of this castle ; but, whether this was so or not, it 
 is certain that in the last year of King James' reign it was 
 surveyed, and its condition fully reported, and that soon after 
 it was consisrned to ruin," 
 
19 
 
 It was not, then, " filial love " that struck down the tower 
 of Fotheringhay and razed its strong walls. Unfortunately 
 for those who would desire this story to be true. King James 
 did nothing half so poetical or full of sympathetic "filial 
 justice." On the contrary, although the castle would appear 
 to have been uninhabited after the execution of Mary Stuart, 
 and up to the end of Elizabeth's reign, yet no sooner had 
 James ascended the throne than he turned the castle to 
 account by bestowing it on some of his courtiers. He gave 
 it to three proprietors ; and when the first of these three 
 (Lord Mountjoy, Earl of Devonshire) died, the other two 
 (Sir Edward Blount and Joseph Earth, Esq.) conveyed the 
 castle and lordship to his natural son, Mountjoy, who was 
 afterwards created Earl of Newport. King James died on 
 March 27th, 1625 ; and that the castle was standing in its 
 integrity at that date is fully proved from the survey made on 
 April 3rd, 1625, when it was thus described : — "The castle is 
 a capital house, built of stone, moated with a double moat. 
 A fair court within the castle ; a building upon a mount, 
 eight or sixteen square, with lower and upper chambers, to 
 ascend by stairs, and then descending towards the hall, 
 which is large and spacious. On the left hand the court is 
 the chapel, and goodly lodgings ; the great dining-room well 
 garnished at present with pictures ; next the hall are the 
 
20 
 
 buttery and kitchen ; and, at the other end of the kitchen, a 
 convenient yard for wood, with large beer-houses and back- 
 houses, and offices. From the gate going out of the yard, 
 there is a great yard half encompassing the castle, going 
 round about to the first gate, and a great barn in the west 
 side of the said yard ; a gate house, and another ruinous house 
 in the east corner of the same. The river Nene on the south 
 side serves for the outer moate, and the mill-brooke on the 
 east for the inner moate ; between the mill-brooke and the 
 castle was a great pond. The gate and fore-front of the 
 house looks full north ; and as soon as you are passed the 
 inner drawbridge, at the gate there are some stairs leading 
 up to some fair lodgings, and up higher into the wardrobe, 
 and so to the fetter-lock on the top of the mount, on the 
 north-west corner of the castle, which is built round of eight 
 or sixteen square, with chambers as above." There is nothing 
 said of demolition in this survey ; and it is self-evident that, 
 if James was inspired with that " filial revenge " which popular 
 tradition has ascribed to him, he would have demolished 
 Fotheringhay as soon as he had the power to do so. The 
 popular tradition, indeed, goes still farther than the castle, 
 and includes the whole town of Fotheringhay in the devasta- 
 ting mandate of King James. He laid a curse upon the 
 town, and would have it burnt stick and stone, says the 
 
2t 
 
 legend ; and it is in consequence of this curse (at any rate 
 the people think so) that so many alarming fires have 
 happened in the village. Yet, in the teeth of popular 
 tradition, this fact stands clear, that Mary Stuart's son 
 reigned twenty-two years, and that Fotheringhay Castle was 
 standing after his death, and was then "a capital house," 
 with its great dining-hall well garnished with pictures. This 
 fact overrides the statement of those who, although rejecting 
 the popular tradition, yet say (as was said at the meeting of 
 the Archaeological Institute at Peterborough in August, 1861, 
 and at the meeting of the Lincoln and Northampton Society 
 in September, 1859) that the castle having fallen into decay, 
 and James having no use for it, he did not care to repair it. 
 
 And, indeed, did not Fuller the historian visit the castle, 
 and there (as he tells us) read the following couplet from an 
 old ballad^ written on one of the windows with a diamond by 
 the Queen of Scots herself ? — 
 
 " From the top of all my trust, 
 Mishap hath laid me in the dust." 
 
 Now, as Fuller was not born till the year 1608, when 
 
 James had already been king for five years, we have here 
 
 another proof of his filial revenge, if ever exercised upon the 
 
 destruction of Fotheringhay, was at any rate allowed to 
 
 * It is preserved in Ellis's " Specimens." 
 
22 
 
 slumber for many years after he had the power of gratifying 
 his desires. Fuller was born within ten miles of Fotheringhay, 
 at the rectory-house of Aldwinkle, All Saints, the adjoining 
 parish to Aldwinkle, St. Peter's, in whose rectory-house the 
 poet Dryden was born ; so that he probably visited the castle 
 somewhere about the time when the survey was made in 
 1625, in which year, being then of the age of seventeen. 
 Fuller took his B.A. degree at Cambridge. That survey, 
 taken after the death of King James, does not make special 
 mention of the castle being out of repair, or in a ruinous 
 condition, except with some of the buildings in the court-yard. 
 We are, however, driven to the presumption that the general 
 condition of the castle was such that the expense of restoring 
 it to its former grandeur so alarmed its then possessor, 
 Mountjoy, Earl of Newport, that he preferred to dismantle 
 the building and dispose of the materials. 
 
 Mountjoy died in the garrison at Oxford, Feb. 12, 1645, 
 and was succeeded in his title by his only surviving son 
 Henry, the last Earl of Newport, who died in 1679, without 
 ever having enjoyed the estate, which (as appears from a 
 deed preserved in the Fotheringhay church-chest, and printed 
 by Nichols in the Appendix to his book) had been alienated 
 by his father to Sir George Savile, of Thornhill, in the county 
 of York, Bart., afterwards Marquis of Halifax. His son and 
 
23 
 
 successor, William, the second marquis, dying without male 
 issue in 1700, the manor and lordship was sold by his father- 
 in-law, Daniel, Earl of Nottingham, and the other trustees for 
 the marquis's three co-heiresses, to Hewer Edgeley Hewer, 
 Esq., who died, without issue, Nov. i6th, 1728, w^hen it 
 descended to the family of Blackburne. It then passed 
 through several hands, until it was purchased by the Messrs. 
 Belsey ; and from Thomas Belsey, Esq., the survivor of the 
 two purchasers, it passed to Robert Sacket Tomlin, Esq., of 
 Dane Court, Kent, who sold it to Lord Overstone. 
 
 The late Mr. John Gough Nichols, F.S. A., told me that 
 there was considerable delay in the completion of the 
 purchase of Fotheringhay, respecting its validity ; and that 
 an old inhabitant of the place said to him, "Fotheringhay 
 has had many masters ; but, it's Crown land, and it'll go to 
 the Crown again." 
 
 It will have been noticed that many of the owners of 
 Fotheringhay died without male issue. This was the case 
 of its late owner, who was, perhaps, the wealthiest of her 
 Majesty's subjects. As Mr. Samuel Jones Loyd, the head of 
 the banking firm, Jones, Loyd, and Co., he was raised to 
 the Peerage, in 1850, as Baron Overstone of Overstone and 
 Fotheringhay, in the County of Northampton. He had 
 married, in 1829, Harriet, third daughter of Mr. Ichabod 
 
24 
 
 Wright, of Mapperley Hall, Notts., and was left a widower 
 with one child, a daughter, Harriet Sarah, born in 1837, who 
 was married to Sir Robert James Lindsay, K.C.B., who has 
 taken the prefix surname of Loyd. Lord Overstone died 
 November 17th, 1883, at his residence in Carlton Gardens, 
 in his 8 1 St year; and, as he had no son, the title expired 
 with him. He was the author of at least 28 publications, 
 chiefly Letters, Remarks, Reflections, Reports, &c., on 
 Decimal Coinage, Commerce, Bank Acts, Metallic and 
 Paper Currency, the National Debt, &c. ; but I am not 
 aware that he ever wrote anything concerning Fotheringhay. 
 
 Nor do I know the precise date of Lord Overstone's 
 purchase of Fotheringhay, but, it was some years previous 
 to November, 1865 ; and, at that date, an inhabitant of the 
 dwindling town told me that its owner had only once visited 
 the spot. He said, " The property does not pass from father 
 to son ; and, during the last half century, it has been in 
 possession of three families. The place is gradually becoming 
 of smaller importance and proportions. In my early days, 
 Fotheringhay could boast of two respectable inns, and a 
 cattle and horse fair of considerable importance was held 
 here. Now, it has not a beer shop or house of entertainment 
 where a belated traveller or visitor can rest or refresh himself 
 with a glass of home-brewed. Every farm and every house 
 
25 
 
 has changed its occupant more than once during my short 
 sojourn. There is not a farmer can say, 
 
 '* I could trace out the time, a far distant date, 
 When my grandfather toil'd in the field." 
 
 Trade diminishes in hke proportion. Thirty years ago there 
 
 were three or four famihes of stone-masons ; they are now 
 
 extinct, and there is no tailor, butcher, or shoemaker. Even 
 
 the farm labourers are, for the most part, a new race during 
 
 the last fifty years. It would, of course, be superstition to 
 
 imagine that the curse of James still lingers on the spot ; but, 
 
 it appears to be overhung by " a gloom " ; and this expression 
 
 I have heard repeatedly from visitors, many of whom we see 
 
 during the course of a season. But, whether it is from the 
 
 malediction of King James, or some other cause, I do not 
 
 pretend to know. I should rather attribute its decay to the 
 
 want of some resident family of distinction to watch over the 
 
 welfare, and to alleviate the wants, of those who require 
 
 assistance." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. — Conington Castle. — Sir Robert's birth at 
 Denton. — His monument in Conington Church. — The Church and 
 Mansion at Denton. — Sir Robert purchases a portion of Fotheringhay 
 Castle. — The removal to Conington of various relics. 
 
 The sadly matter-of-fact statement relative to the demolition 
 of Fotheringhay Castle, is altogether out of harmony with 
 the more poetical version of popular tradition ; but, although 
 it annihilates the pleasing evidence of James's fihal affection, 
 it paves the way for a record of an act precisely opposite in 
 its nature by a more distant relative of Mary, Queen of Scots. 
 This was Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, Bart, (so well known as 
 the founder of the Cottonian Library, given to the British 
 Museum by his grandson, Sir John Cotton,) who, being 
 descended from the royal family of Scotland, was of kin to 
 Mary Stuart. The relationship was recognised by King 
 James, who, when Sir Robert appeared at court, was wont to 
 address him as " cousin," and Sir Robert was not a little 
 proud (as well he might be) of his royal ancestors, although 
 he took a somewhat remarkable way of showing and publicly 
 airing his connection with them by erecting complimentary 
 monuments to their memory at Conington Church, Hunting- 
 
27 
 
 donshire, where they may be seen, together with his own 
 monument and others to various members of the family. 
 
 If King James, according to popular tradition, was so 
 desirous (which he was not) of annihilating every vestige of 
 the scene of his mother's murder, it is evident that her 
 cousin. Sir Robert Bruce Cotton — who, happily for posterity, 
 had a collector's love of accumulating and preserving 
 anything and everything on which he could lay hands — was 
 equally anxious to treasure any memorials of that eventful 
 transaction. Therefore, when Mountjoy, Earl of Newport, 
 dismantled Fotheringhay Castle, and disposed of its materials. 
 Sir Robert Cotton seized upon the golden opportunity of 
 acquiring a memento of his " cousin's " execution. At this 
 time Sir Robert had been living (when he was not at Cotton 
 House, Westminster) at the family mansion in the little 
 village of Denton, Huntingdonshire, where he was born on 
 January 22, 15 71, and which, as the crow flies, is not seven 
 miles distant from Fotheringhay ; and he was desirous of 
 building a new mansion on his Conington estate about three 
 miles from Denton, on the other side of the great north road. 
 Conington had come to the Cottons through the Bruces, 
 having descended to them from David i, who had married 
 the widow of Simon de St. Liz, who built Fotheringhay 
 Castle ; so that there was a strong link of connection 
 
.28 
 
 between Conington and Fotheringhay long before it was 
 strengthened by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. 
 
 How Sir Robert came to be born at Denton, and not at 
 Conington, is told in Collins' " Baronetage of England " 
 from whence the account has been more briefly copied by 
 Wotton, the Biographia Britannica^ the writer of the life pre- 
 fixed to Smith's and Planta's "Catalogue of the Cottonian 
 Library," and others. The passage is quaint, and runs 
 thus : — "Robert, only son by the first wife, was born 22. Jan., 
 A.D. 1570, in the village of Denton, near Conington (part of 
 his Ancestor's Inheritance), his Parents having removed 
 thither not long after their marriage, as well for the splendour 
 of his Birth, as to be more at liberty from the incommodious- 
 ness of their own Seat, arising from a great Accession of new 
 Domesticks."* So that, even then, servants would seem to 
 have been considered one of the greatest plagues of life. 
 
 In the year 1852, being then Curate of Glatton-with-Holme, 
 the two parishes lieing between Denton and Caldecote, I 
 copied the inscription of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton's birth, 
 from the Denton register, and of his funeral, from the Con- 
 ington register, and exhibited these, with water-colour draw- 
 ings of the ancient font in Denton Church, and Sir Robert's 
 
 * Ed. 1720 ; p. 197. Fuller was wrong in stating that he was "born 
 at Cunnington." 
 
29 
 
 tomb in Conington Church, before one of the meetings of 
 the Royal Society of Antiquaries, in London. Subsequently, 
 I was Rector of Denton and Caldecote for twelve years — 
 from 1859 to 1 871; so that I had every reason to take a 
 special interest in Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, of Denton and 
 Conington, and of his connection with Fotheringhay. The 
 register of his birth in the Denton register is as follows : — 
 
 "A. Dni. 1571. Mr. Robert Cotton was borne ye xxij 
 of January and baptized ye xxvi of ye same." 
 
 The register is at the foot of the page, and is attested by the 
 names of "William Garfit, Rect, & Ro*. Clarke & WilM 
 Swift," with the monograms of the Churchwardens. The 
 register of his funeral at Conington is as follows : — "Ano 
 Dom. 1 63 1. S^ Robert Cotton, Baronett, sepult fuit xxiij° 
 die Maij." He had died at his house in Westminster, but 
 was buried at Conington, by his own request, in the south 
 chapel of the Nave, close under the spot where his portrait- 
 bust in marble hands down his features to generations who 
 have profited by his well-timed and well-directed labours. 
 The precise spot underneath which he is laid, is marked by 
 a slab, bearing the inscription, "S^ R. C, May 13, 1631." 
 In the inscription on the monument, the date of his birth is 
 given "Natus xxii. Januarii mdlxx.," which makes a 
 discrepancy with the "1571" of the Denton register. We 
 
30 
 
 have to bear in mind, however, that the commencement of 
 the civil year was in March. 
 
 Sir Robert Bruce Cotton rebuilt the little church of All 
 Samts, Denton, in 1620, as is recorded in a stone over the 
 east window. He carefully preserved the curious Norman 
 tower, the early south doorway, and the late Norman hex- 
 agonal font in which he had been baptised. His grandson. 
 Sir John Cotton — the donor to the nation of " the Cottonian 
 manuscripts " — built the outer porch to the church, bearing 
 date 1665.* Subsequently, the interior of the church fell 
 into great decay, from which I was able to rescue it, during 
 the time I had the living. In re-pewing the church, as much 
 of the old oak was preserved as was possible, including a 
 bench end on which was carved the date " 1607." From the 
 Cottonian manuscripts, it appears that there was, formerly, in 
 the east window of Denton church "a shield of arms dis- 
 playing quarterly : first, Cotton ; second, Bruce ; third, Scot ; 
 and fourth. Earl Waltheof." 
 
 The mansion-house of the Cottons, at Denton, stood on 
 the land adjoining the south side of the churchyard, on the 
 precise spot now occupied by a barn and farm-buildings, 
 
 * Mr. W. Caveler, the writer of Part V. of Parker's "Ecclesiastical 
 and Architectural Topography of England," (1851,) is misled by this 
 date, and ascribes the whole of the re-building of the Church to that 
 period. Brayley and others had previously made the same misstatement. 
 
31 
 
 The base of the barn is a part of the foundation of the 
 mansion, which, having fallen into a ruinous state, was 
 pulled down, about the year 1816, by the Lord of the 
 Manor, Admiral Wells, of Holme-wood House. I have 
 had the three-storied mansion described to me by persons 
 who well remembered it ; and I traced, through various 
 possessors, some furniture that had belonged to the house 
 — a carved oak bedstead, a carved oak cabinet, and two 
 carved oak chairs, on which was the royal crown — a badge 
 of which the cousin of King James and Mary, Queen of 
 of Scots was not a little proud. When I first knew the spot, 
 there were other traces of the old mansion-house and its 
 garden and three fish-ponds ; but when, in 1855, a new farm- 
 house was built, the ground was levelled, two fish-ponds were 
 filled up, and other alterations were made. Three of the 
 fields attached to this farm still bear the names of " Cotton's 
 Close," "Cotton Meadow," and "Cotton Hill," the last 
 named being on the brow of the hill between Denton and 
 Stilton. 
 
 As Sir Robert Bruce Cotton died on May 6th, 1631, and 
 as the survey (already mentioned) of Fotheringhay Castle, was 
 made on April 3rd, 1625, a week after the death of the King, 
 we may, probably, refer the demolition of Fotheringhay to 
 about the year 1626 or 7. It would appear that, at whatever 
 
32 
 
 date this demolition occurred, Sir Robert Bruce Cotton took 
 advantage of it to purchase certain portions of Fotheringhay 
 to incorporate them into the additions that he was making to 
 Conington Castle ; and he would seem to have been chiefly 
 influenced in doing this, not so much for the sake of the 
 material, but in order that he might add to his castle some 
 substantial relics of that other castle, in which his lovely and 
 ill-starred royal cousin had met her doom. 
 
 For this purpose, he purchased the banquetting-hall, which 
 had been the scene of her execution. This consisted, for the 
 most part, of the eleven arches and columns that are placed 
 on the exterior of the north and west fronts of the ground 
 floor of Conington Castle, but which, most probably, stood 
 in the interior of the Fotheringhay banquetting-hall, dividing 
 it into three aisles. This was an arrangement often to be 
 seen in large halls of important castles ; an excellent specimen 
 of which exists in the ancient hall of Oakham Castle, where 
 the horse-shoes are now hung. The original Westminster 
 Hall, as stated in Parker's " Domestic Architecture of 
 England" — is supposed to have been of this form; as was 
 also the Bishop's Hall at Lincoln. The lodgings occupied 
 by the unfortunate Queen of Scots are believed to have been 
 the same as those in which Queen Elizabeth was lodged, 
 when, in one of her progresses, she visited Fotheringhay, 
 
33 
 
 and, on observing in the choir the ruinous state of the monu- 
 ments of her ancestors, the Dukes of York, directed that their 
 ^v bodies should be removed into the present church, and buried 
 on either side of the communion table, aud that proper monu- 
 ments should be erected to their memory. It seems " an 
 irony of fate," that the two Queens should have occupied the 
 same rooms during their sojourn at Fotheringhay. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 / 
 The Banquet -hall of Fotheringhay removed to Conington. — ^J. M. 
 Heathcote, Esq. — His ancestors, and their purchase of Conington from 
 the Cottons. — The chair from which Mary, Queen of Scots is believed to 
 have risen for execution. — Contemporary accounts. — Other remains of 
 Fotheringhay. — The Talbot Inn, Oundle. — Chapel at Fineshade. — 
 Thorough destruction of the Castle. 
 
 f'Sir Robert Bruce Cotton" — according to Camden, who 
 
 was his personal friend — "brought from Fotheringhay the 
 
 whole room where Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded.''*! 
 
 The entrance porch at Conington Castle is also believed to 
 
 have been brought from Fotheringhay, together with two 
 
 handsome pillars, surmounted by carved stone coronets, 
 
 which are placed on either side of the entrance gates on the 
 
 Great North Road. Two autotype plates of Conington 
 
 Church and Castle, in 1800, and in 1875, from original 
 
 drawings by John Moyer Heathcote, Esq., of Conington 
 
 Castle, will be found m that gentleman's illustrated volume, 
 
 " Fen and Mere "; f and in the latter of the two illustrations, 
 
 the columns and arches from the Fotheringhay banquetting- 
 
 hall are plainly seen, together with the entrance porch. 
 
 * See Ca.mden's Brtfanjtm. (Vol. II. "Iceni"; ed. 1789.) 
 
 t Published by Longmans, 1876, price 28s. The arches, porch, &c. 
 are also shewn in a line engraving, from a drawing by J. P. Neale, 
 published by Jones and Co., Finsbury Square, London, Oct. 9, 1830. 
 
35 
 
 Conington Castle would appear not to have been well- 
 cared for by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton's immediate successors; 
 for, his great-grandson, Sir John Cotton, found it to be in so 
 ruinous a state, that — preferring to live at his other seat, 
 Stratton in Bedfordshire — he took down the greater part of 
 the castle, but left standing that portion that included the 
 remains of the banquet-hall from Fotheringhay. When Dr. 
 Stukely visited Conington, in 1724, he "was concerned to 
 see a stately old house, of hewn stone, large and handsome, 
 in dismal ruins. The deserted lares and genius of the place 
 had fled. A poor cottage or two seemed to be the whole 
 town, once in possession of the Kings of Scotland." It is a 
 singular coincidence that relics of the Queen of Scots should 
 have been transported to this Scottish " town of kings " — 
 which is the meaning of the word Conington. 
 
 The manor of Conington was purchased of the heirs of 
 Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, for the sum of ;£"2,5oo, in the 
 year 1753, by Sir John Heathcote,* from whom the present 
 
 * Sir John Heathcote was the son of Sir Gilbert Heathcote, a man of 
 great note. He was one of the founders of the Bank of England, and 
 was the last Lord Mayor of London who rode on horseback in the pro- 
 cession on Lord Mayor's day. He was the " Sir Andrew Freeport " of 
 The Spectator ; is mentioned by Pope (Imitations of Horace ; Book H., 
 Ep. 2, 1. 240,) 
 
 " Heathcote himself, and such large-acred men " ; 
 and appears in Bramble's Letter and Dyer's Fleece : 
 
 "And such the grassy slopes and verdant lawns 
 Of beauteous Normanton, health's pleasing haunts, 
 And the beloved retreat of Heathcote's leisure." 
 
36 
 
 Lord Aveland is lineally descended. Sir John's grandson, 
 John Heathcote (who was born in 1767, and married to 
 Mary Ann Thornhill in 1799,) restored Conington Castle, 
 in 1800 — 1813, from designs by Cockerell, the grounds being 
 laid out by Lappidge. Further additions were made, in 1833, 
 under the direction of Blore, by Mr. John Moyer Heathcote, 
 who also employed Blore in the restoration of the church, 
 which stands close to the castle. The tall tower of the 
 church, with its four-light transomed windows, richly panelled 
 battlement, and octagonal crocketed pinnacles, is well seen 
 by the traveller on the Great Northern railway. 
 
 In the chancel of Conington Church, is a large and finely- 
 carved Abbot's chair, said by Gough, in his " Additions to 
 Camden," to have formerly belonged to Peterborough, and 
 to have been seen by Lord Coleraine in Conington Church, 
 in the year 1743. This chair is traditionally said to have 
 been that which was provided for the Queen of Scots on the 
 scaffold, and in which she sat to hear the reading of her 
 death-warrant. It may have been sent to Fotheringhay from 
 Peterborough ; and, on the demolition of Fotheringhay, 
 removed to Conington by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. The 
 nature of the decorations of the chair would seem to show 
 
 He was Knighted by Queen Anne, and created a Baronet in 1733. He 
 is buried at Normanton, where is his portrait. Anotiier portrait is in 
 the dining-room at Conington Castle. 
 
THE CHAIR FROM WHICH MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, IS 
 iiELIEVED TO HAVE RISEN FOR EXECUTION. 
 .1 
 
37 
 
 that it was used for religious purposes, on the south side of 
 the altar; as the figures of the four angels, and of the two 
 ecclesiastical figures holding books, that ornament the top 
 and sides of the chair, all face sideways, which would be 
 facing to the east. The figures of the four angels bear 
 musical instruments. Another angel is carved in one of the 
 spandrels at the back of the chair ; the other spandrel repre- 
 senting the Virgin Mary, crowned as Queen of Heaven, with 
 her hand raised in benediction, and her emblematic pot of 
 lilies at her feet. At the base of the chair is a band of 
 quatrefoils, carved in high relief. This handsome chair, 
 carefully preserved in Conington Church, is believed to be 
 a mute memorial of that tragic scene in which it once played 
 its part. 
 
 From the accounts of the various historians, there would 
 appear to have been three chairs placed on the scaffold in 
 the banquet-hall at Fotheringhay ; two of these were for the 
 Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury ; and the other, covered with 
 black cloth, with a cushion of black velvet before it, was 
 reserved for the Queen of Scots ; and, on that chair she sat, 
 looking around her smiling, with absolute composure, no 
 muscle quivering in her face, while she listened to Beale, the 
 Clerk of the Council, reading the warrant against her — 
 though, it is said, that she listened to it as though it no 
 
38 
 
 ways concerned her, and (as Froude says) " in all the 
 assembly Mary Stuart appeared the least interested in the 
 words which were consigning her to death." If, as is quite 
 probable, this memorable scene occurred when the Queen 
 of Scots was sitting in the very chair that is now preserved in 
 Conington Church, then we see in it a relic of the first im- 
 portance in connection with the fatal tragedy of Fotheringhay ; 
 and, it can readily be imagined that Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, 
 Mary Stuart's cousin, would desire to possess this relic, 
 together with the stones of the hall in which, so bravely, she 
 suffered her cruel death. 
 
 One of the witnesses of that execution was a person whose 
 initials, " R. W." only are disclosed to us. His account is 
 preserved in the Harleian Manuscripts, and has been given 
 in full by Camden, Nichols, Bonney and others. He makes 
 mention only of " a lowe stoole " on which she sat, and from 
 which, presently, she "began to slide," while the Dean of 
 Peterborough was pestering her with his tedious address ; for, 
 she was saying her own prayers, and this brought her upon 
 her knees, upon " the faire long cushion " provided for her. 
 This " stoole " — if thereby a seat without a back is signified 
 — may have been in addition to the chair. The contemporary 
 painting of the execution, represented in miniature in the 
 back-ground of the Windsor Castle portrait of Mary, Queen 
 
STAIRCASE AND WINDOW, TALBOT INN, OUNDLE. 
 
39 
 
 of Scots, dressed for the scaffold, does not particularly help 
 us to a solution of this point ; for, although it certainly does 
 not show a high chair — and there should be three — it also 
 omits the black-covered rails round the scaffold, and conveys 
 an erroneous idea of its dimensions. It also does not assist 
 us to any idea of the architecture of the hall ; but, on this 
 point, we do not depend upon the slippery ground of tradit- 
 ionary evidence, and are enabled to look upon the series of 
 eleven pillars and arches of Conington Castle as a veritable 
 portion of the banquetting-hall of Fotheringhay. 
 
 Traditionary evidence — and, I fear, that alone — can assist 
 us to some other details of the hall. That very interesting 
 specimen of domestic architecture, the Talbot Inn at Oundle, 
 is said to have been built from the stones of Fotheringhay ; 
 and its great staircase window, looking into the yard, is 
 believed to have once lighted the Fotheringhay banqueting- 
 hall ; the wide oaken staircase, and the great entrance-gates, 
 with their ponderous bolts and ironwork, (lately replaced by 
 new gates) are also supposed to have been brought from the 
 castle. Other portions were used by Robert Kirkham, Esq. 
 for the erection of a chapel at Fineshade, and for various 
 buildings in the immediate neighbourhood ; and since then, 
 even up to the present day, the scattered remains of the 
 castle, even to the very foundations, have been used for the 
 
40 
 
 repair of the navigation of the river, for the renovation of 
 dilapidated farm-buildings, and for all those miscellaneous 
 and useful purposes to which blocks of stone can be applied. 
 It may, therefore, readily be imagined that any one who visits 
 Fotheringhay with the expectation of seeing what are 
 commonly called " ruins " will be woefully disappointed. 
 All that such an one will see will be the mound on which the 
 keep once stood, the inequalities of the ground where the 
 various divisions of the castle have been, and one solitary 
 and shapeless block of masonry (measuring somewhere 
 about six by nine feet in thickness, and seven feet high) 
 which has tumbled over on its side, not far from the river's 
 edge, and has there been permitted to remain as the sole 
 survivor of a destruction more sweeping and complete than 
 almost any other in England's annals of baronial architecture. 
 "Ill-omened spot! where are thy glories now? 
 
 Where the gay helmet and the plumes of snow ? 
 
 Where now the train of gallant warriors ? where 
 
 The Royal victim and her sable bier? 
 
 All gone alike ; no relic left to tell 
 
 Here Richard dwelt, and here Queen Mary fell ! 
 Yet still the muse in sad historic song 
 
 To future ages shall the tale prolong, 
 
 Revive the bloody deed in mournful lay ; 
 
 And, though the saddening scene has pass'd away, 
 
 The feeling heart shall grieve the tale to hear. 
 
 And Mary's cruel death shall claim a tear ! "* 
 
 * "On Fotheringhay Castle," in "The Rural Album," by Thomas 
 Bell, of Barnwell. (J. Masters, London: 1853.) 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Fotheringhay village, ancient and modern. — The New Inn. — Its history. 
 The Market -stead. — Relick Sunday. — The Cross.— The May-pole. 
 —The Bridge.— Queen Elizabeth.— The Collegiate Church.— Distant 
 view. — Archdeacon Bonney's work on Fotheringhay. 
 
 Fotheringhay itself, although reduced from its original 
 importance of a Northamptonshire market town, and as the 
 seat of the proud Plantagenets, still presents much the same 
 appearance that it did in Leland's day ; for it " is but of one 
 street, all of stone building," and " the glorie of it standeth 
 by the paroche church of a fair buildid and coUegiated," and 
 " there be exceeding goodly meadows," and " mervelus fair 
 corn ground and pasture, but little woodde." The village at 
 the present day consists of a long, straggling street, on a 
 gentle rise above the northern bank of the winding river 
 Nene. The houses are wholly built of stone, and many of 
 them are thatched ; those at the eastern end of the street, 
 towards the castle, are called the Old and New Inns, the 
 former having long since been converted into a number of 
 small tenements. The New Inn still remains in much of its 
 integrity ; and, with its large Gothic arch, decorated with 
 roses, quatrefoils, and armorial bearings of the Yorks and of 
 Edward IV, affords an excellent example of the domestic 
 architecture of the time of that monarch. P>om the survey 
 
42 
 
 taken in 1624, it appears that this New Inn had two fair 
 courts and a back part with barns and stables ; the chief 
 portion of the building " containing a hall, a parlour, a 
 kitchen, and divers other chambers." Galleries ran round 
 the inner court. The building was probably erected by King 
 Edward IV, for, on shields to the right and left of the window 
 over the entrance gateway, and also of the gateway itself, four 
 generations, in succession, are represented : (i) Castile and 
 Leon, for Isabel, wife of Edmund of Langley, younger 
 daughter of Peter, King of Castile and Leon, and mother 
 of the Earl of Cambridge ; (2) Mortimer, for the Countess 
 of Cambridge, mother of Richard, Duke of York ; (3) Nevile 
 of Raby, for Richard, Duke of York and his Duchess, Cicely; 
 and (4) a shield bearing France and England, quarterly, for 
 Edward IV. When Sir Amyas Paulet conducted the Queen 
 of Scots to Fotheringhay, this New Inn housed some of his 
 two thousand horse-soldiers, who were billeted there and at 
 various houses in the village; and the commissioners and 
 judges at Mary's mock trial were also put up at the New 
 Inn. Those w^ho attended the funeral of Richard, Duke of 
 York, would also, for the most part, be quartered at the New 
 Inn. Its outer court and galleries have been removed, and 
 its interior greatly altered and modernised for the purposes 
 of a farm-house of the better class. 
 
43 
 
 The old " Market-stead," as it was called, was at the open 
 space at the north-west corner of the churchyard ; and the 
 privilege of the market, and of the annual fair held on 
 Michaelmas-eve and the two following days, is mentioned, 
 in a grant given to the Earl of Richmond, in the year 1309. 
 The grant was afterwards confirmed by Richard, Duke of 
 York, and the time of holding the fair was transferred to the 
 day after "Relick Sunday,""*^ the anniversary of Thomas 
 a'Becket. Though the fair — after a fashion — still remains, 
 the market would appear to have lapsed into disuse in the 
 time of Edward IV. 
 
 It is possible that the cross stood in this spot ; though it 
 may have stood in White-Cross field, to the west of the town. 
 It was destroyed in 1580. It is clearer that the Maypole 
 stood here; for, in the ancient manuscript "book of the 
 affairs of the parish," there is an entry, under date 1578, of 
 a sum paid to a carpenter for "squaring the Maypole that 
 stands in the Market-steede," Squaring a Maypole must 
 have been pleasanter and more profitable work than squaring 
 a circle. 
 
 When the Queen of Scots was brought from Chartley, in 
 Staffordshire, in September, 1586, under the charge of Sir 
 Amyas Paulet, she entered Fotheringhay by the bridge over 
 * The Sunday after the 7th of July. 
 
44 
 
 the Nene, that had recently been built by the Queen of 
 England. It was a stone bridge of four arches, following a 
 gentle curve, and fenced with wooden piers. Previous to the 
 erection of the bridge, the river Nene had to be crossed by a 
 ford,* to guard which, the mound on which the castle was 
 afterwards built, was raised by some Anglian or Danish 
 possessor. A tablet was placed on the bridge, carved with 
 the initials E. R., with a knot between them. Underneath 
 which, was the following inscription : — 
 "God save the Queen. 
 " This Bridge was made by Queen 
 
 Elizabeth in the 15th yere of her Reygne. 
 A. p. 1573." 
 
 Thirteen years later, her victim was carried across that bridge 
 to her last prison. Did she happen to see the inscription ? 
 A few more generations in the whirligig of time, and Crom- 
 well's soldiers were hacking that inscription with their swords, 
 and, in their zeal against monarchy, erased the words " God 
 save the Queen." But, in process of time, the bridge required 
 renewal, and it was re-built, in 1722, by George Portwood, a 
 Stamford mason, of stone from the King Cliffe's quarry, by 
 Daniel, Earl of Nottingham, and the trustees of William 
 Savile, Marquis of Halifax, who were the proprietors of the 
 estate. The navigation of the river Nene, was opened on 
 
 * This ford was in connection with an ancient road that ran from 
 Ermine Street. 
 
45 
 
 September nth, 1728. It had been projected so long ago 
 as the time of Edward IV, who came here by water, from 
 Crowland, in 1469, to join his Queen, who was then in 
 residence at Fotheringhay Castle. 
 
 The beautiful church of Fotheringhay is but a fragment of 
 a great idea. It was designed to be a collegiate church ; but 
 its chancel, and the collegiate buildings, were destroyed in 
 the last year of Edward VI. It is unnecessary to describe it 
 here, further than to say that it consists of a nave with 
 aisles, and a square tower supporting an octagonal lantern ; 
 pinnacles rise from the battlements of the aisles, and flying 
 buttresses support the clerestories. The church contains the 
 original font and pulpit (with Richard Ill's badge of the 
 boar), and the monuments erected by Queen Elizabeth to 
 the Dukes of York. They bear the badge of the falcon 
 enclosed within a horse fetter-lock, which also appears on 
 the summit of the church vane. The church, with its tower 
 and octagon, makes a fine object in the view, as seen by the 
 railway traveller, near to the Elton Station, on the line 
 between Northampton and Peterborough. The castle mound 
 can also be clearly seen. Any traveller who can spare the 
 time for the four hours between trains, would do well to stop 
 at Elton Station, and make his way to Fotheringhay, which 
 is but a mile-and-a-half distant across the fields. It is a 
 
46 
 
 pleasant walk, and the church tower will be his guide. He 
 will be able, on his w^ay, to quote the author of "The Forest," 
 and say, 
 
 " Before me winding pathways lead 
 To upland lawn and level mead ; 
 Where Nene in silent sorrow laves 
 The princely Warriors' lowly graves, 
 And that dismantled Mount where stood 
 The Towers imbued with Stuart's blood." 
 
 On his route, he will see, on the other side of the river, "the 
 exceeding goodly meadowes by Foderinghey," of which 
 Leland speaks, and which gave the name to the place — 
 the "hay," "eye," or inclosure of the foddering meadow. 
 In process of time, " Foderinghey " was more mellifluously 
 pronounced Fotheringhay. In the Domesday book it appears 
 as " Fodringeia." 
 
 The best and most complete description of this beautiful 
 church will be found in Mr. Parker's tract, " Some Remarks 
 upon the Church of Fotheringhay" (1841), illustrated by 
 thirty-one woodcuts, and containing a copy of the original 
 contract for building the church, in the 13th of Henry VI, 
 1435. This contract is one of the few original documents of 
 this kind that have been preserved to us from the Middle 
 Ages, and affords some curious and interesting information, 
 which Mr. Parker has explained and illustrated throughout 
 from the building itself. 
 
47 
 
 Archdeacon Bonney's well-known book on Fotheringhay 
 has long been out of print, and is now somewhat scarce.* 
 With great industry and painstaking, he obtained the sources 
 of his materials, from ancient manuscripts in his own, and 
 the Vicar's possession ; the Harleian collection ; Records in 
 the Chapter-house, Westminster ; Bridge's History of North- 
 amptonshire; Rymer's "Foedera," and other works, especially 
 an unpublished Record of Dugdale in the possession of 
 George Finch Hatton, Esq. Archdeacon Bonney's account 
 of Fotheringhay Church occupies twenty-five pages, exclusive 
 of his description of the College and its dissolution ; but, it 
 will be sufficient for the purpose of this handbook if the 
 following abbreviated description is given ; referring to the 
 Archdeacon's work for the fuller account, together with its 
 views of the Church, and the plates of shields. 
 
 * ■* Historic Notices in reference to Fotheringhay." Illustrated by 
 Engravings. By the Rev. H. K. Bonney, M.A., author of the Life of 
 Bishop Taylor. Oundle : Printed by and for T. Bell. London : Longman. 
 Edinburgh: Constable. 1821. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Description of P'otheringhay Church. — The projected College. — Destruc- 
 tion of the Choir. — The Church tower and clere-story. — The bells. 
 — The porch. — The fetterlock badge. — The font. — The pulpit. — 
 Monuments to the Dukes of York. — Royal funerals. — The hero of 
 Agincourt. — Burial of Richard, Duke of York. — Edward IV. 
 
 The stately Church of Fotheringhay is, throughout, in the 
 
 Perpendicular style, and, although but a fragment of the 
 
 original idea, is an excellent specimen of the architecture 
 
 of that period. 
 
 Edmund of Langley having projected the building of a 
 college at Fotheringhay, began to fulfil his intentions by 
 erecting "a large and magnificent choir," at the east end 
 of the old parish church. And after his death, his son, 
 Edward, Duke of York, wishing to rebuild the nave of the 
 old church upon the same plan as the choir, appointed 
 trustees for that purpose. The death of the Duke of York 
 at Agincourt, put a stop to further proceedings ; but the 
 present church is a monument of the care with which the 
 trust was afterwards fulfilled. The Duke did not live to see 
 even the foundation of the building laid. The plan was 
 carried into execution by his nephew and successor, Richard, 
 Duke of York, through his Commissioners, who signed a 
 
illp 
 ill ■ 
 
 ■It. 
 
 mm Y 
 
 
49 
 
 deed of agreement with "William Howard, a freemason of 
 Fotheringhay," on the twenty-fourth day of September, in 
 the thirteenth year of Henry VI, 1435. It is more than 
 probable that the buildings were not completed till the time 
 of Edward IV, who erected the cloister, which, for its superior 
 elegance, was styled "the fair cloister;" the windows of 
 which were enriched with painted glass. 
 
 In the year 1477, King Edward IV erected on the north 
 side of the high altar, over the graves of his father, Richard, 
 Duke of York, and his brother, Edmund, Earl of Rutland, 
 a handsome shrine, which Leland describes as "a pratie 
 chapelle," and Camden as "a magnificent monument." 
 
 The destruction of the choir and college may be dated 
 from the last year of Edward VI, when they were 
 granted to Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. The progress 
 of their ruin was more gradual than has been represented ; 
 for part of the choir was standing in the reign of Elizabeth, 
 and the glass was in the windows of the cloister and college 
 hall, when Dugdale visited the spot in 1641. Of the shields 
 of arms that were then remaining, Dugdale gives a minute 
 description. 
 
 The windows of the nave and side aisles were also painted; 
 and contained figures of saints, cardinals, and prelates. 
 Alcove these were angels playing on various musical instru- 
 
50 
 
 ments ; the Bohemian plume, and the falcon inclosed by a 
 fetterlock, already mentioned as the device of the House of 
 York. Whilst that powerful family was contending for the 
 Crown, the falcon was represented as endeavouring to expand 
 its wings, and force open the lock. When the family had 
 actually ascended the throne, the falcon was represented as 
 free, and the lock open. The western windows were orna- 
 mented with the rose, the white hart, the fetterlock, and the 
 lion. "The whole," says Stukely, "were saved during the 
 civil war by the minister of the parish, who bribed the soldiers 
 to preserve them." Many of these figures were perfect in the 
 year 1787 ; but, at present, not a window retains its former 
 beauty. 
 
 The remains of the collegiate church exhibit an admirable 
 specimen of the architecture of the fifteenth century. A 
 tower of two stories rises above the west end of the nave. 
 The lower story is square, and is finished with a plain 
 parapet, ornamented at the angles with octagonal, embattled 
 turrets. Upon these were originally placed figures that were, 
 probably, the symbols of the four Evangelists ; no uncommon 
 ornament on the towers of churches. The sides of this part 
 of the tower are pierced with three small and four larger 
 windows, under obtuse-angled arches, and are divided by 
 plain tracery. The upper story is octagonal, embattled, and 
 
51 
 
 adorned at the angles with crocketed pinnacles. In each of 
 its sides is a lofty window of three lights, elegant tracery, and 
 of more easy curvature than that of the windows in the tower 
 below. 
 
 The clere-story of the church is strengthened by ten seg- 
 ments of arches, which spring from the top of the buttresses 
 of the aisles ; some of these are fallen into decay. The 
 buttresses are finished with a pinnacle ; and between each is 
 a window of four lights, and handsome tracery. Both the 
 aisles and the clere-story are embattled. 
 
 At the west end of the church, beneath the tower, is a 
 spacious entrance, under an arch, within a square moulding, 
 ornamented at the angles by an escutcheon in the centre of 
 a quarter-foil. Above this is a large and lofty window, divided 
 into fourteen lights, and finished with elegant tracery. There 
 is also a window at the west end of the aisles, which projects 
 westward, so as to be nearly even with the wall of the tower. 
 The entrance under the tower is flanked by two bold and 
 lofty buttresses. 
 
 The peal consists of four bells : round the first is inscribed, 
 " Thomas Notris made ifie, 1634." Round the second, 
 ^^ Domini laudem, 1634, non verho sed voce resonahoy Round 
 the third, ''A. M. R. B. W. W. C. 4. idog." Round the 
 fourth, ''W,W. isgS' Praise God, H, Br 
 
52 
 
 The entrance most in use is under a large plain porch, on 
 the north side of the church. A similar porch stood on the 
 south side, adjoining the south-eastern end of the aisle. 
 This was the entrance from the college, that covered the 
 eminence on the south of the churchyard. The wall, which 
 now bounds the churchyard in that quarter, was the north 
 side of the cloister. 
 
 The device of the fetterlock remained in most of the 
 windows of the church, till the year 1807 ; and, it is 
 retained to this day upon the point of the flag-pole on the 
 tower. 
 
 Warton, in his History of Poetry, notices the church at 
 Fotheringhay ; and commends it as a specimen of bold 
 and perfect style. He classes it with the divinity-school at 
 Oxford, and the chapel of King's College, Cambridge. To 
 the latter of these the groining and spandrels, beneath the 
 tower, have a strong resemblance. Thence the nave, flanked 
 by four arches, of simple but elegant construction, (which 
 divide it from the aisles,) and terminated by a lofty arch and 
 font beneath — presents a view of the edifice, as it existed in 
 the time of its royal and munificent benefactor. 
 
 The length of the church from west to east is 87 feet, and 
 the width 68 feet. The height of the nave beneath the 
 tower, is 41 feet; of the tower, from the floor to the roof of 
 
:)6 
 
 the octagon, 133 feet 4 inclies ; and of the aisles 27 feet 
 to the top of the battlement. 
 
 The font is an interesting object. The basin is octagonal, 
 adorned with foliage and grotesque heads, within gothic 
 compartments ; and supported on a low octagonal pillar, and 
 elevated upon two steps. On the west side of it is a stone 
 pedestal, designed for the station of the priest, when he 
 performs the office of baptism. Baptisteries are seldom 
 found so conveniently arranged as this to give the congrega- 
 tion a complete view of the ceremony. At the great festivals, 
 when a full congregation is in the nave, the sponsors are 
 kneeling on the steps around, and the minister elevated in 
 his proper place, the ability of the architect's design is the 
 more visible and impressive. 
 
 The old seats in the area of the church were removed 
 in 181 7, when wainscot pews were substituted for them. 
 The pulpit is original and in good preservation. It is hex- 
 agonal, supported on one pillar, and adorned with carved 
 panels inserted in a border of tracery. Above are the 
 remains of the canopy ; which, generally, since the Reform- 
 ation, has given place to a large sounding-board. On 
 examining the canopy, whilst it was under repair, some of 
 the ancient gilding was discovered. At the back is a shield 
 of arms, bearing France and England quarterly ; supported 
 
54 
 
 on the dexter side, by a lion rampant guardant, for the 
 earldom of March ; and a bull, for Clare ; on the sinister, by 
 a hart, showing the descent from Richard II., who took that 
 device ; and by a boar, for the honour of Windsor, possessed 
 by Richard III. Gray, alluding to the murder of the Princes, 
 characterizes Richard by this badge, and says. 
 
 The bristled boar, in infant gore, 
 
 Wallows beneath the thorny shade. 
 
 The shield of arms is surmounted by an imperial crown. 
 
 The memorials of the dead within these hallowed walls are 
 numerous. The pavement contains many stones ; but the 
 brasses that once represented effigies, and recorded names and 
 dates, have mostly disappeared ; only one plate remaining. 
 
 There are, however, two regal monuments which merit 
 especial notice, though rather from the rank of the personages 
 than for architectural beauty. When Queen Elizabeth visited 
 Fotheringhay, in one her progresses, she observed the graves 
 of her ancestors, the Dukes of York, neglected amongst the 
 ruins of the choir. She, therefore, commanded that their 
 bodies should be removed into the present church," and 
 deposited on each side the communion-table, giving directions 
 to her treasurer, for monuments to be erected to their 
 memory. On opening the graves, the bodies were found to 
 to be inclosed in lead ; and, round the neck of Cicely, 
 
55 
 
 Duchess of York, was a silver ribbon, with a pardon from 
 Rome, written in a fine Roman hand, " as fair and fresh " 
 says Fuller, " as if it had been written yesterday." 
 
 The monuments are in the debased taste of that age, and 
 ornamented with ducal coronets and falcons and fetterlocks. 
 The one on the south side bears France and England 
 quarterly, with a label of five points for Edward, Duke of 
 York, who was slain at Agincourt ; and, on the cornice, was 
 a Latin inscription. The monument on the north side is a 
 counterpart of the other, bearing France and England 
 quarterly, with a label of five points, impaling a saltire, 
 surmounted by a ducal coronet, for Richard, Duke of York, 
 who was killed at Wakefield; and his Duchess, Cicely, 
 daughter of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmorland. It is 
 singular that there was no inscription on this monument to 
 the memory of Edmund, Earl of Rutland, whose remains 
 were interred in the same grave with those of his father. 
 
 Over each of the monuments is a wooden tablet. On the 
 southern one is this inscription : — " Edward, Duke of York, 
 was slain at the Battle of Agincourt, in the 3rd year of 
 Henry the 5th, 141 5." On the northern tablet is, " Richard 
 Plantagenet, Duke of York, Nephew to Edward, Duke of 
 York, and father to King Edward the 4th, was slain at 
 Wakefield, in the 37th year of Henry the 6th, 1459 : and 
 
56, 
 
 lies buried here with Cicely, his wife. — Cicely, Duchess of 
 York, was daughter to Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmor- 
 land." 
 
 A few more details may be acceptable to the reader 
 relative to the royal funerals at Fotheringhay. 
 
 The hero of Agincourt left directions for his funeral, 
 ordering his body to be buried in the parochial church of 
 Fotheringhay, in the midst of the choir, near the steps, under 
 a flat marble. His body was, accordingly, brought over to 
 England, and carried to Westminster ; his exequies being 
 solemnly performed by the archbishops and most of the 
 bishops, by the king's order, in St. Paul's cathedral. From 
 Westminster it was brought to Fotheringhay, and on Dec. i, 
 141 5, interred in the choir. The tomb is described by 
 Leland, who saw it, as "a flat marble stone ; and upon it 
 was his image flat in brass." 
 
 Richard, Duke of York, fell in the battle of Wakefield.* 
 His body was first interred at Pontefract, but afterwards 
 removed, with that of his son Edmund, Earl of Rutland, in 
 great pomp, to Fotheringhay. On July 22, 1466, their 
 remains were put into a chariot, covered with black velvet, 
 
 * Queen Margaret set his head above Micklegate Bar, 
 
 " That York might overlook the town of York." 
 Edward IV removed the head of his father to Fotheringhay. 
 
57 
 
 richly wrapped in cloth of gold and ropl habit. At the feet 
 of the duke stood the figure of an angel clothed in white, 
 and bearing a crown of gold, to signify that of right he was a 
 king. The chariot was drawn by seven horses, trapped to 
 the ground, and covered with black, charged with escutcheons 
 of that prince's arms. Every horse carried a man, and upon 
 the foremost rode Sir John Skipwith, who bore the duke's 
 banner displayed. The bishops and abbots, in their robes, 
 went two or three miles before, to prepare the reception of 
 the remains. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, followed next 
 after the chariot, accompanied by several of the nobility and 
 officers of arms. In this order, they left Pontefract, and 
 that night rested at Doncaster, where they were received 
 by the convent of Cordeliers, in grey habit. Thence by easy 
 stages, they proceeded to Blithe, Tuxford in the Clay, 
 Newark, Grantham, and Stamford ; and on Monday, July 29, 
 the procession reached Fotheringhay, where the bodies were 
 received by several bishops and abbots in their robes, and 
 supported by twelve servants of the deceased. At the entrance 
 of the churchyard. King Edward IV, accompanied by several 
 dukes, earls, and barons, in mourning, were in attendance, 
 who proceeded to the choir of the church, near the high 
 altar, where was a hearse covered with black, furnished 
 with banners and other insignia. Upon this hearse were 
 
58 
 
 placed the remains of the duke and his son Edmund. The 
 queen * and her two daughters were also present in mourn- 
 ing, attended by several ladies and other persons. Over the 
 image was a cloth of majesty of black sarcenet; with the 
 figure of our Lord sitting on a rainbow, of beaten gold, 
 having in every corner an escutcheon of the arms of France 
 and England quarterly ; with a valence round the hearse also 
 of deep, black sarcenet, fringed half a yard deep, and orna- 
 mented with three angels of beaten gold, holding the duke's 
 arms within a garter, in every part above the hearse. 
 
 Upon the morrow, the 30th, several masses were said ; and 
 at the offertory of the mass of requiem, the king offered for 
 the prince his father; and the queen, her two daughters, 
 and the duchess (countess) of Richmond, offered afterwards. 
 Then Norroy, king of arms, offered the prince's coat of 
 arms ; March, king of arms, the target ; Ireland, king of 
 arms, the sword ; Windsor, herald of England, and Raven- 
 don, herald of Scotland, offered the helmet ; and Mr. de 
 Ferreys, the harness and courser. 
 
 Edward, Earl of March, afterwards Edward IV, succeeded 
 his father, both in the honours of his house and the possession 
 of Fotheringhay Castle and lordship ; Cicely, his mother, still 
 
 * Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Richard Woodville, and widow of Sir 
 John Gray, ICnight, who was killed at the battle of St. Albans. 
 
59 
 
 retaining her right in it until the ninth year of his reign; 
 when Guy Woolston, Esq., was appointed constable of the 
 Castle of Fotheringhay, and keeper of the Great Park. 
 Fotheringhay, from Leland's description, would seem to have 
 been the favourite residence of this powerful and royal 
 house; and the Duchess Cicely, who survived her husband 
 thirty-four years, inhabited the castle during the greater part 
 of her widowhood. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Fotheringhay Castle, the royal residence of York. — The Castle-keep. — 
 Its shape. — View from the Church tower. — The Castle moats. — 
 Buttressed wall. — Scarcity of illustrations of the Castle. — Mary 
 Stuart albums. — Miss Agnes Strickland. — ^Joseph Cecil, Esq. — 
 Schiller's " Mary Stuart."— D. O. Hill's painting.— T. Bell's poem. 
 
 The author of the manuscript poem, " Antona's Banks " — 
 
 written in 1797 — has shewn how Fotheringhay Castle was 
 
 the royal residence of the house of York : — 
 
 Lo ! on that mound, in days of feudal pride, 
 Thy tow'ring castle frown'd above the tide ; 
 Flung wide her gates, where troops of vassals met 
 With awe the brow of high Plantagenet. 
 But, ah ! what chiefs in sable vests apjDear ! 
 What bright achievements mark yon warrior's bier ! 
 'Tis York's : — from Agincourt's victorious plain, 
 They bear the fallen hero o'er the main ; 
 Through all the land his blooming laurels spread, 
 And to thy bosom give the mighty dead. 
 When from thy lap the ruthless Richard sprung, 
 A boding sound through all thy borders rung ; 
 It spoke a tale of blood — fair Neville's woe, 
 York's murd'rous hand, and Edward's future foe. 
 
 The keep of the castle was built in the form of a fetter-lock, 
 
 a circumstance which caused Philemon Holland, in his first 
 
 edition of Camden's " Britannia," to " digress a little " into 
 
 the followmg anecdote : — " Edmund of Langley, Duke of 
 
 York, who built that keep, and garnished the glass windows 
 
6i 
 
 there with fetter-locks, when he saw his sons, being younger 
 scholars, gazing upon the painted windows, asked them what 
 was the Latin for a fetter-lock. They, studying and looking 
 silently one upon another, not able to answer, 'If you cannot 
 tell me', says he, * I will tell you. Hie hsec hoc taceatis, i.e.y 
 hie h3ec hoc — Be silent and quiet :' and therewithal added, 
 'God knoweth what may happen hereafter.' This, King 
 Edward IV, his great-grandchild, publicly reported, when he, 
 having attained the crown, created Richard, his younger son, 
 Duke of York, and then commanding that he should use for 
 his badge the fetter-lock open, to verify the presage of his 
 great-grandfather." Up to that time, and while they were 
 contending for the throne, the falcon was represented as 
 endeavouring to expand its wings and force open the lock. 
 
 Passing underneath an avenue of limes that completely 
 overarches the approach to the north porch of the church, 
 let us ascend the belfrey-steps and climb up to the lantern, 
 at whose lower story are the shattered figures of the four 
 Evangelists standing upon embattled turrets. From this 
 commanding station we have a bird's-eye view of Fotheringhay. 
 Looking eastward, the village street cleaves past us to the 
 left, having at its further extremity the picturesque New Inn, 
 whose buildings form the three sides of a square, but whose 
 inner galleries, existing when Nichols wrote his history, in 
 
62 
 
 1787, have been since removed. We can see its Gothic 
 gateway and flanking buttresses, and its mullioned windows, 
 but three-fourths of this building, which once supplemented 
 the accommodation afforded by the castle, has been converted 
 into barns, and granaries, and farming purposes. Leading 
 directly southward from this new Inn is the high road to 
 Oundle, passing between an avenue of trees, and then crossing 
 the Nene by the stone bridge which Queen Elizabeth had 
 once repaired. Eastward from the New Inn we see a road 
 leading into the fields and round to the castle ruins. 
 Immediately to the right of this road, the grass-field on the 
 other side of the hedge falls into a sweeping hollow, measur- 
 ing seventy-five feet across, which we very clearly perceive to 
 be the dried-up (and partially filled-up) bed of the outer 
 moat. On the further side of its bank is a long wall, 
 against the southern side of which barns and other farm- 
 buildings have been erected. The further end of this is a 
 genuine relic of the old castle, but I am sorry to miss, at this 
 nearer end, a still more interesting relic, in the shape of the 
 continuation of this wall, supported by three very massive 
 buttresses, which were taken down by Lord Overstone (about 
 the year 1863 or 1864), in order to use up their materials 
 and gain a little space for some new farm-buildings. At the 
 same time this portion of the outer moat was also filled up, 
 
63 
 
 and has been converted into a garden. So far as I have 
 been able to learn, no sketch of this outer-buttressed wall 
 and moat is known to exist, save one that I myself took in 
 1852, and which I contributed to the volume for 1861 of 
 the Amateur Anastatic Drawing Society. 
 
 And while on the subject of pubhshed illustrations of 
 Fotheringhay Castle, I may here mention what is surely a 
 very remarkable fact, when we consider the interest universally 
 attaching to the spot, that only two representations of its 
 remains have been published, viz., the frontispiece to Arch- 
 deacon Bonney's work (182 1), and the print in Bridge's 
 "Northamptonshire," which has been copied in several 
 publications of Mr. Charles Knight. The latter view was 
 taken in 17 18, and shows Queen Elizabeth's bridge, and the 
 river wall of the castle wherein two archways are discernible, 
 beyond which is the Castle Mound. But of the appearance 
 of the towers that rose from the mound, we have not the 
 slightest record. No painting, engraving, or plan — not even 
 the rudest scribble of the pen that could give us the least 
 idea of the exterior or interior of any portion of Fotheringhay 
 Castle — is known to exist. Books and manuscripts in the 
 British Museum, the Bodleian, and other public and private 
 libraries have been searched in vain, with the hope of meeting 
 with some record, however rude and slight, of the ancient 
 
64 
 
 appearance of Fotheringhay Castle. Not even the Cottonian 
 collection, despite the indefatigable industry of its founder, 
 affords the most trivial help in this particular ; and, although 
 every other point in Mary's eventful history can be illustrated 
 by contemporaneous engravings or paintings, yet, when we 
 come to fatal Fotheringhay, there we encounter a total blank. 
 It is as though the annihilation that visited the castle had 
 also swept away every trace of it that had been made by the 
 pencil or graver. Miss Strickland, the distinguished historian 
 and biographer of Mary, Queen of Scots, possessed a Mary 
 Stuart album, in which she had stored a goodly collection of 
 drawings and prints to illustrate her favourite's life ; but it 
 lacked all records of Fotheringhay Castle, except those made 
 in modern times.* 
 
 The late Mr. Joseph Cecil, of Northampton, a friend of 
 the writer's, had a still more extensive collection (filling two 
 enormous scrap-books), in which every spot (except Fother- 
 inghay) that Mary ever visited is illustrated by contemporary 
 views or plans, and every person with whom she ever had 
 any dealings is represented by every known engraved portrait 
 (sometimes forty in number), and by copies or photographs 
 of portraits in oils. This collection is supposed to be unique, 
 and was amassed by many years of intelligent labour and 
 
 * Including some by the writer. They are referred to in Miss Strick- 
 land's "Queens of Scotland," vii. 420, note. 
 
65 
 
 valuable research regardless of cost, but it lacks any 
 representation of Fotheringhay before its demolition. That 
 no such record should be known to exist is certainly a 
 curious fact. 
 
 I am glad to say that this unique collection of Mr. Cecil 
 has now become national property, and has been added to 
 the print-room at the British Museum. In the autumn of 
 1884, I happened to be in communication with Mr. Richard 
 Sims, of the British Museum, on the subject of Fotheringhay. 
 Mr. Sims had been applied to by the agent of a royal person- 
 age in Germany, who was desirous that Schiller's " Mary 
 Stuart " * should be placed on the stage with as complete a 
 scenic reproduction as was possible, of the localities intro- 
 duced in the tragedy ; and Mr. Sims wrote to me to help 
 him with any details of Fotheringhay. This I did, assisted 
 by Mr. Caparn, drawing-master of Oundle School ; and the 
 
 * It was first produced at Weimar, in the year iScxD. Racine had 
 previously written a tragedy on the same theme. It was in his " Marie 
 Stuart " that Rachel appeared ; and a fine line engraving of this dis- 
 tinguished tragedienne — a fiill length portrait — costumed for the last 
 scene in the Tragedy, will be found in " George Cruikshank's Omnibus : 
 edited by Laman Blanchard," (Tilt and Bogue, 1842,) a magazine that 
 numbered Thackeray among its contributors. The writer of the letter- 
 press to the steel engraving of " Rachel, in the character of Marie 
 Stuart," says, "Quiet, earnest, intense, with a look of passion that has 
 its spring in tenderness, that is just the expression she should wear. It 
 pervades all her performance, because in all of them she was the Woman. 
 There it was, as you see it, when she said for this unhappy Mary that she 
 was ready to go to death, for all that which could bind her to earth had 
 passed away ; and, as she said it, there came with its choking denial to 
 her heart a sense of the still living capacity for joy or grief about to be 
 quenched for ever." (p. 129.) 
 
66 
 
 result was deemed highly satisfactory by Mr. Sims' royal 
 patron. The arcade at Conington, and the window and 
 staircase at Oundle, greatly helped to the scenic production 
 of the banquet-hall. 
 
 I then mentioned to Mr. Sims the wish of Mrs. Cecil to 
 carry out her late husband's desire that his Mary Stuart 
 album should be added to the National collection. This 
 was accomplished, early in 1885, after considerable corres- 
 pondence with Professor Colvin ; and it is a matter of thank- 
 fulness, that a collection so unique, and formed after years 
 of labour, expense, and intelligent research, should now be 
 preserved, where it is in safe custody and can be consulted 
 by the artist and author. Previous to this, I have Mr. 
 Sims' authority for saying, that, with the exception of the 
 engravings already mentioned, the only illustrations of 
 Fotheringhay in the National collection were two pencil 
 sketches by Carter, the one representing the exterior of a 
 building attached to the castle ; and the other, a sketch of 
 the ruins. 
 
 In this age of illustration and pictorial rendering of 
 historical scenes, it also seems to me, somewhat surprising, 
 that so interesting and picturesque a spot as Fotheringhay 
 should not have been more frequently represented in en- 
 gravings. 
 
67 
 
 Pictures of Fotheringhay, too, are by no means frequent 
 in our art exhibitions. I can recall but one, and that painted 
 by a Scotsman, D. O. Hill, who treated the subject most 
 poetically, with a twilight effect, taking his point of view from 
 the opposite side of the river, and having the park-hill to the 
 right, the castle mound in the centre, and the chiirch to the 
 left. When this picture was shown at the Edinburgh Ex- 
 hibition, in 1852, it was thus described in a brochure entitled 
 "Pictorial Musings": — 
 
 " He who seeks Nature in her gay attire, 
 Where streams smile back to heaven the bright sapphire, 
 When evening tints the azure vault with gold, 
 And zephyrs, 'mong the reeds, their wings enfold — 
 The soft sweet sunset of a summer day, — 
 May dream and ponder Hill's fair 'Fotheringhay.'" 
 
 In this picture a ghostly-looking heron, standing on the 
 river's brink, was the only figure introduced. I looked upon 
 the real scene on a twilight evening in the summer, and 
 thought that it only wanted the solitary bird to realize the 
 artist's picture, when flop ! flop ! a heron rose from the very 
 spot amid the sedge upon the river's brmk, and, wheeling 
 into the air, bore away until he was lost in the sunset. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Bell, in his poem " On Fotheringhay Castle," 
 shows how this portion of the quiet scener}' and solitude of 
 the Nene, may influence the imagination. 
 
68 
 
 " Ah ! what is that unearthly voice ! Again 
 I hear its murmurs o'er the silent Nen ; 
 It tells a tale of woe, of cruel hate, 
 Of England's shame, and Mary's ruthful fate ! 
 
 Again I hear it, as it dies away. 
 Then louder swells, when gentle Zephyrs play. 
 And hov'ring o'er the hill, in accents clear, 
 Pours forth a mournful requiem on the ear 
 To Stuart's mem'ry, and to Stuart's fall ; 
 Relates the horrors of the blood-stained hall, 
 Melvin's devotion, and the mournful train, 
 And fills the breast with sympathizing pain ; 
 Till at the visionary scene I weep, 
 And o'er my senses chilling terrors creep." 
 
 Mr. Bell says, " Elizabeth's treatment of this accomplished 
 Princess, her cousin, and a fugitive who sought her protection, 
 must ever be considered as the foulest blot on the annals of 
 her reign." An opinion which I heartily endorse. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 General view from the lantern of the Church. — Site of the Castle. — 
 Robert Wyatt's find of Queen Mary's ring. — No ruins. — Queen 
 Mary's rooms. — The moats. — The mill-brook. — The Mound. — 
 Hawthorns.— The Scotch thistle.— Miss Strickland's opinion.— 
 Wordsworth's Sonnet. — Burns' poem. 
 
 Returning from the artistic digression to our high position 
 on the lantern of Fotheringhay Church, we see the castle 
 mound, on which stood the keep and Mary's prison ; and 
 just beyond it the fiat area on which was the fatal banquet- 
 ing-hall, and the moat, and the various inequalities of 
 the ground, with the hawthorn-trees scattered over them, 
 and the shapeless fragment of the castle's masonry standing 
 in solitary state near to the river ; and, beyond the castle 
 area, the line of hedge where flows the mill-brook which 
 did duty for the outer moat ; and then, the ground rising 
 abruptly to the park hill, which has a high precipitous bank 
 clothed with trees frowning over the river, which goes gleam- 
 ing on with snake-like windings among the flat green 
 meadows until it is well-nigh lost to view beneath the long 
 timber viaduct of the Northampton and Peterborough 
 Railway. The traveller who is journeying to the latter place 
 by this railway should look out of the left-hand window 
 
70 
 
 shortly before he approaches Elton, and he will have an 
 excellent view of Fotheringhay, with its church and castle- 
 mound, at little more than half a mile distant. Beyond the 
 railway-bridge we see the beautiful early-English spire of 
 Warmington Church ; and, further to the left, the tall tower 
 of Elton Church, with the richly-timbered park of the Earl of 
 Carysfort, and the high range of ground on the borders of 
 Huntingdonshire. 
 
 Now let us descend from our high position to the village 
 street, and, passing the Gothic portals of the New Inn, and 
 the new farm-buildings that have replaced that old bit of 
 buttressed wall, we walk by the side of the outer moat 
 until we turn to the right, and find ourselves before the 
 mound on which was the fetter-lock keep. A part of the 
 moat is here filled up, and marks the former position of the 
 drawbridge, the foundation of which was taken away in June, 
 1820, when a considerable portion of the foundation-stones 
 of the castle were also removed. On this occasion the 
 eastern side of the mound was dug into in the search for 
 stone, and the excavations brought to light the back of a 
 chimney, the entrances to two closets, and a pavement of 
 Norman bricks. Some coins of Edwards II and IV were 
 also found. One of the workmen employed on this occasion 
 was a man of the name of Robert Wyatt, formerly a private 
 
71 
 
 in "The Prince of Wales's 3rd," who, having grown old, 
 chiefly gained his living of late years by acting as guide to 
 the castle ruins. He will doubtless be well remembered by 
 many who read this book, to whom he will have told, as he 
 has often told to the present writer, how he dug up the 
 drawbridge, and how he filled-in the moat, and how a Scotch 
 gentleman measured out the execution-room and found it 
 correct, and, above all, how he himself had Yound Queen 
 Mary's own ring. This was that signet-ring (with the inscrip- 
 tion "Henri. L. Darnley, 1565," the monogram of Henry 
 and Mary bound up in a true-lover's-knot, and the lion on a 
 crowned shield within the hoop) of which Miss Strickland 
 has given an illustration, and of which she says, " Perhaps it 
 dropped from Mary's finger in her death agony on the block, 
 and was swept away among the bloody sawdust unobserved." 
 What a lucky find for the old man ! I have searched again 
 and again, year after year, in the ruins of Fotheringhay, but 
 never found anything of greater consequence than some 
 human bones that the rabbits had scratched out of a burrow 
 on the eastern side of the mound. Robert Wyatt, then 
 eighty-two years of age, and nearly blind, was enabled to tell 
 his tale to Miss Strickland herself, and to Messrs. Parker, 
 Freeman, and other learned antiquarians and members of 
 the Archaeological Society, when they visited Fotheringhay 
 
72 
 
 on Monday, July 29, 1861. "Miss Strickland proposed a 
 subscription ; and, the hat being sent round, the old man 
 was made happy with a larger fee than his threadbare tales 
 had probably ever won for him." This was, as it were, his 
 last public appearance ; for when I went to Fotheringhay 
 early in September, 1862, my inquiries after Robert Wyatt 
 were met by the painful information that, a short time 
 previous, he had returned late in the evening from the 
 Warmington " feast," considerably the worse for drink, and 
 had been put to bed, and there found dead in the morning. 
 
 As soon as we have crossed the inner moat, and stand 
 within the castle precincts, we plainly perceive that although 
 there are no " ruins," in the accepted sense of the word, yet 
 that abundant evidence is afforded by the moats, the artificial 
 mound, the inequalities of the soil, and, above all, by the 
 plentiful debris of stone, that a great building has once stood 
 upon this spot. From the drawbridge, whose site we have 
 just passed, a flight of stairs to the right anciently led 
 to some " fair lodgings," and up higher to the wardrobe, and 
 so on to the fetter-lock on the top of the mound, which 
 enclosed about sixteen feet in the form of an octagon, with 
 upper and lower chambers. Within the castle was a goodly 
 court, leadmg to the spacious banqueting-hall, where the 
 execution of Mary took place, and where also she was 
 
73 
 
 arraigned on her sham trial ; and on the left hand was the 
 chapel, some stately lodgings, and that " great dining-room, 
 well garnished with pictures," which was mentioned in the 
 surveyor 1625. Miss Strickland is of opinion that "these 
 were possibly the apartments appropriated to the use of the 
 unfortunate Mary, where her last melancholy days were worn 
 away." The foundations of the various outer and inner walls 
 can be distinctly traced, and a ground-plan of the castle 
 could be made with a probable approach to accuracy. 
 
 The inner moat, which is sixty-six feet wide, circles round 
 the mount, which is everywhere precipitous, but more 
 especially so on its northern and western sides. At these 
 points the moat is thick with rushes, and still contains a little 
 water, wherein the forget-me-not grows luxuriantly. On the 
 other side the moat was the castle-yard, having, in its north- 
 west corner, the great barn, a portion of which still remains. 
 The inner moat ends by the river-front of the mount, which 
 is about thirty-three yards distant from the Nene, which there- 
 fore served for the outer moat ; but between the mount and 
 the river there are traces of a wall, about twenty yards distant 
 from the latter, and midway between this wall and the Nene 
 is that shapeless block of masonry that is the sole represent- 
 ative of the castle architecture. The inner moat is continued 
 from the drawbridge in an easterly direction, sweeping round 
 
74 
 
 the river. Though half-choked with reeds and rushes, yet it 
 has not been filled up with earth ; and its western bank, now 
 fringed by fine hawthorns, is crowned with the stony debris 
 of the brewhouses, bakehouses, and other adjuncts of the 
 buttery and kitchen. Modern evidences of al fresco dinners 
 may also be found in the tattered biscuit-bags littering the 
 ground, and in the burnt patches where pic-nic parties have 
 boiled their kettles. 
 
 On the other side of this moat is a flat grass field, about 
 eighty yards in width, which was formerly the "yard half 
 encompassing the castle," and which is bounded on its 
 further or eastern side by the mill-brook flowing into the 
 Nene, and forming the outer moat. This "yard" between 
 the brook and the castle was laid out as an orchard and 
 garden, and once contained a "great pond," which had been 
 "landed up " when the survey was made in 1625. The mill- 
 brook still flows in its former channel, rich in forget-me-nots, 
 and shaded by hawthorns. A boat-house covers it at its 
 junction with the river ; and on the other side of it from the 
 castle is " the little park," where the ground rises abruptly to 
 a hill (its precipitous river-front clothed with foliage), from 
 whence we have an excellent view of the castle precincts, the 
 winding river, the beautiful church, and the village of Fother- 
 inghay. About one hundred yards from the river the mill- 
 
mmm 
 
 
 |U\WJ ' i 
 
75 
 
 brook is crossed by a well-made road-bridge of stone, coeval 
 with the castle, having floodgates towards the river, the 
 timbers of which are nearly destroyed from age. Here was 
 the "gate-house, and another ruinous house," spoken of in 
 1625 survey; but, although they have disappeared, the in- 
 teresting bridge still remains, and, with its adjuncts, will be 
 found a capital subject for the artist, as well as the anti- 
 quarian. 
 
 The most conspicuous object in the sketches of the site of 
 Fotheringhay Castle is the mound on which stood the fetter- 
 lock keep. At the present day its tenants are of a very peace- 
 ful and timid order, for it is completely honey-combed with 
 rabbit-holes, whose indefatigable inhabitants are continually 
 scratching up to the surface fragments of stone that, from 
 their fresh colour, have evidently never seen daylight since 
 the time of Edmund Langley. Fourteen hawthorns grow on 
 various parts of the mound, many of them of great size and 
 beauty; and scattered profusely over the mound, and the 
 whole area of the castle, is Mary Stuart's own floral emblem 
 - — the Scotch thistle* — with its purple coronals, and its glossy 
 
 * " Few are the flowers that wave upon that mound ; 
 No herb salubrious yields the blighted ground ; 
 Beside the thorn the barren thistle springs : 
 The raven there his pilfer'd carrion brings 
 To glut in secret ; or, impressed with fear, 
 Croaks his hoarse song to desolation's ear." 
 
 "Antona's Banks," (1797.) 
 
76 
 
 green leaves veined with milky white, from which it has 
 derived its name of the Milk Thistle (Car dims marianus). 
 This is the thistle of which Tennyson speaks (in his Welling- 
 ton Ode) :— 
 
 "The stubborn thistle bursting 
 
 Into glossy purples which out-redden 
 
 The voluptuous garden rose." 
 
 But it has been a vexed question whether this or the cotton 
 thistle (Onopordium acanthium) has the stronger claim to be 
 called the Scotch thistle, and to figure as Scotia's emblem. 
 The balance of testimony appears to lie in favour of the milk 
 thistle ; and certainly we are not inclined to dispute this 
 decision here on the Fotheringhay mound, where, on this 
 beautiful September morning, its purple blooms are charming 
 the eye and awakening memories of the hapless " Queen of 
 the Castle " (as Burleigh nicknamed her, when he wrote to 
 Elizabeth a report of the sham trial in the banqueting-hall), 
 who, doubtless, selected this milk thistle, from all others of 
 its tribe, to be her national badge. 
 
 For, if this were not the case, how is it that we find this 
 peculiar thistle (and not the cotton thistle) growing around 
 and about all the prisons and palaces and castles from 
 Dunbarton to Fotheringhay where Mary may have tarried? 
 " Mary was a horticulturist and poet," says Miss Strickland, 
 in a private letter to the writer of these hnes ; " and I should 
 
77 
 
 imagine that she sowed the seeds of the royal thistle of Scot- 
 land in the gardens of her English prisons." Or, if this may 
 not have been the case at Fotheringhay, where, during the 
 six winter months of her imprisonment she was confined to 
 her bed or chamber, racked by neuralgic pains occasioned 
 from loss of exercise and nineteen years' close detention in 
 damp prisons, yet (as Miss Strickland further suggests) the 
 appearance of this thistle at Fotheringhay and elsewhere, if 
 not to be ascribed to Mary herself, may probably be attri- 
 buted to the romantic gallantry of her many admirers, who 
 wished the very ground to bring forth souvenirs of her whose 
 presence had thrown a charm over the spot. 
 
 I append Wordsworth's Sonnet, supposed to have been 
 written by Mary, Queen of Scots, in her " Captivity."* 
 
 "As the cold aspect of a sunless way 
 Strikes through the traveller's frame with deadlier chill, 
 Oft as appears a grove, or obvious hill, 
 Glistening with unparticipated ray, 
 Or shining slope where he must never stray ; 
 So joys, remembered without wish or will, 
 Sharpen the keenest edge of present ill, — 
 On the crushed heart a heavier burthen lay. 
 Just Heaven, contract the compass of my mind 
 To fit proportion with my altered state ! 
 
 * Poems of the Imagination. Miscellaneous Sonnets. 
 
78 
 
 Quench those felicities whose light I find 
 
 Reflected in my bosom all too late ! 
 
 Oh, be my spirit, like my thraldom, strait ; 
 
 And, like mine eyes that stream with sorrow, bUnd ! " 
 
 I may also here quote Burns' touching poem, the " Lament 
 of Mary, Queen of Scots, on the approach of Spring." Burns 
 thought highly of this poem ; for, he wrote concerning it — 
 " Whether it is that the story of our Mary, Queen of Scots, 
 has a peculiar effect on the feelings of a poet, or whether I 
 have, in the ballad, succeeded beyond my usual poetic 
 success, I know not ; but, it has pleased me beyond any 
 effort of my muse for a good while past." I think that my 
 readers will also be pleased to peruse it. 
 
 " Now Nature hangs her mantle green 
 
 On every blooming tree, 
 And spreads her sheets o' daisies white 
 
 Out owre the grassy lea : 
 Now Phoebus cheers the crystal stream. 
 
 And glads the azure skies ; 
 But nought can glad the weary wight 
 
 That fast in durance lies. 
 
 Now lav'rocks wake the merry morn. 
 
 Aloft on dewy wing ; 
 The merle, in his noontide bow'r, 
 
 Makes woodland echoes ring ; 
 The mavis mild, wi' many a note. 
 
 Sings drowsy day to rest : 
 In love and freedom they rejoice, 
 
 Wi' care nor thrall opprest. 
 
79 
 
 Now blooms the lily by the bank, 
 
 The primrose down by the brae ; 
 The hawthorn's budding in the glen, 
 
 And milk-white is the slae ; 
 The meanest hind in fair Scotland 
 
 May rove their sweets amang ; 
 But I, the Queen of a' Scotland, 
 
 Maun lie in prison Strang. 
 
 I was the Queen o' bonnie France, 
 
 Where happy I hae been, 
 Fu' lightly rase I in the morn, 
 
 As blythe lay down at e'en ; 
 And I'm the sov'reign of Scotland, 
 
 And mony a traitor there ; 
 Yet here I lie in foreign bands. 
 
 And never-ending care. 
 
 But, as for thee, thou false woman. 
 
 My sister and my fae, 
 Grim vengeance, yet, shall whet a sword 
 
 That thro' thy soul shall gae ; 
 The weeping blood in woman's breast 
 
 Was never known to thee ; 
 Nor the balm that draps on wounds of woe 
 
 Frae woman's pitying e'e. 
 
 My son ! my son ! may kinder stars 
 
 Upon thy fortune shine ; 
 And may those pleasure gild thy reign, 
 
 That ne'er wad blink on mine ! 
 God keep thee frae thy mother's faes. 
 
 Or turn their hearts to thee ; 
 And where thou meet'st thy mother's friend. 
 
 Remember him for me ! 
 
8o 
 
 Oh ! soon, to me, may summer suns 
 
 Nae mair light up the morn ! 
 Nae mair, to me, the autumn winds 
 
 Wave o'er the yellow corn ! 
 And in the narrow house o' death 
 
 Let winter round me rave ; 
 And the next flow'rs that deck the spring, 
 
 Bloom on my peaceful grave ! 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Mary brought to Fotheringhay. — Perio Lane. — Legends concerning it. — 
 The Queen of Scots in prison. — Her rigorous treatment. — Insults 
 offered her. — Queen Elizabeth's conduct. — A modern criticism. — 
 Scenery of Fotheringhay. — Wordsworth's " Lament of Mary, Queen 
 of Scots." 
 
 It was on the 25th of September, 1586, that Mary Queen of 
 Scots was brought from Chartley to Fotheringhay by its 
 castellan, Sir William Fitzwilliam (whose chivalrous kindness 
 she acknowledged by bequeathing him that portrait of her 
 son which hung at her bed's head at Fotheringhay, and 
 which is still preserved by the family at Milton), by Sir 
 Thomas Gorges, and by her rigorous gaoler, Sir Amyas 
 Paulett. It is believed that she approached Fotheringhay 
 by that south-western road which is called " Perry Lane " — 
 the word being written " Perio," and twice so spelt on the 
 Ordnance Map. At the corner of the lower end of this lane 
 she would gain her first view of her last earthly home ; the 
 mound, then crowned with its castled towers, occupying the 
 centre of the view, with the hill of the Httle park to the right, 
 the church and village to the left, and the river winding at 
 the foot of all, and spanned by her persecutor's bridge. 
 
82 
 
 "The conviction," says Miss Strickland, in her History, 
 "that her name was doomed to complete the melancholy 
 list of princely sufferers whose calamities were associated with 
 Fotheringhay Castle, elicited from Mary Stuart, on first be- 
 holding these gloomy towers from the lane or avenue of 
 approach, which derives its name from that circumstance, 
 the prophetic exclamation, '■Perio!^ I perish." And such is, 
 indeed, the popular belief; but Miss Strickland told me, 
 that, after she had quoted this legend in her History, she 
 discovered a deed of a prior date to the time of Mary, Queen 
 of Scots, in which the name " Perio " occurs. This, therefore, 
 gives the finishing stroke to the old tradition in its present 
 form, although it is quite possible that Mary Stuart may, 
 when they entered upon Perio Lane, have been told its 
 name, and then seized upon the idea contained in the word, 
 and used it to express her own forebodings. Another legend 
 is also attached to the word, which is thus given by Nichols : 
 — "There is an idle tradition that Perry Mills, at a little 
 distance from Fotheringhay, were so named from the queen's 
 hearing a messenger's horn winding on that spot just before 
 her execution, and thence expecting a reprieve ; in her dis- 
 appointment, she is said to have exclaimed, ^ Perio I" Of a 
 like complexion is the ridiculous couplet which says, 
 
 " If Fotheringhay Castle had not been so nigh, 
 Peterborough spires had not been so high ! " 
 
83 
 
 — a very hazy reference, I suppose, to her burial in Peter- 
 borough Cathedral. The above " idle tradition " is falsified 
 by all the events of her execution. 
 
 The day of her death was February 8, 1587 ; and on 
 the 19th of the previous December she had written her 
 last noble letter to Elizabeth, never, either at that time or 
 afterwards, expecting any better fate than the block, and 
 only fearing that she might be privately murdered, and thus 
 that her enemies might clear themselves by stigmatizing her 
 memory with the sin of suicide. Those must have been 
 six dismal wintry months that she passed at Fotheringhay, 
 when the November fogs would settle heavily over the low- 
 lying valley of the Nene, shrouding in their damp mystery 
 the stretch of "dismal flats," and tending to aggravate her 
 pensive melancholy and embitter her misery by adding to 
 her severe bodily sufferings. Tortured with neuralgic pains, 
 which so frequently kept her for days together to her 
 bed, and crippled her from taking the least exercise, even 
 if the weather and her goalers had permitted it, the wintry 
 months of her detention at Fotheringhay must have been 
 the most embittered of her many and long imprisonments. 
 She could amuse her mind, it is true, by writing French 
 verses ; yet they were of this nature : — * 
 
 * Translated in Seward's "Anecdotes," ii. 155, 
 
84 
 
 "Alas what am I ? and in what estate? 
 
 A wretched corse bereaved of its heart ; 
 An empty shadow, lost, unfortunate : 
 
 To die is now in life my only part. 
 Foes to my greatness ! let your envy rest, 
 
 In me no taste for grandeur now is found : 
 Consumed by grief, with heavy ills oppress'd. 
 
 Your wishes and desires will soon be crown'd. 
 And you, my friends, who still have held me dear. 
 
 Bethink you, that, when health and heart are fled, 
 
 And every hope of fortune good is dead, 
 'Tis time to wish our sorrows ended here ; 
 
 And that this punishment on earth is giv'n 
 That I may rise to endless bliss in heav'n." 
 
 Three months before her death, her goaler insulted her 
 by taking down the dais or canopy over her head, to sig- 
 nify to her that " she was a dead woman, and deprived 
 of the honours and dignity of a queen ; " and Paulett, 
 covering his head in her presence, coarsely told her that 
 as there was no longer any time or leisure for her to waste 
 in idle recreations, he should take away her billiard-table ; 
 to which the Queen of Scots replied that she had never 
 used it during those six weeks that she had been there; 
 for that they had given her other occupations. So it was 
 taken away from her, and not used again until its green 
 cloth was torn off to form the first shroud for her head- 
 less corpse. 
 
 Her whole treatment at Fotheringhay was so rigorous 
 
8s 
 
 that it suggests the idea there was nothing her captors would 
 have hked better than for Mary to have given them the 
 chance of killing her. If she attempted to escape, she was 
 to be shot by any of the two thousand soldiers that 
 guarded her; if any attempted to rescue her, she was to 
 be slain; if there was any noise or disturbance in her 
 lodgings, or in the place where she was, she was to be at 
 once put to death. Such were the standing orders during 
 the time of her captivity at Fotheringhay ; and these, com- 
 bined with her well-grounded fear of secret assassination or 
 poisoning, must have fearfully aggravated her sufferings, and 
 have daily heaped fresh coals of fire on the head of 
 Elizabeth. For the last two months of her imprisonment 
 her chamber and bed were hung with black; and her forty- 
 fourth and last birthday dawned upon her amid these 
 funereal trappings. 
 
 I wonder if we shall ever know the real parts played 
 by Elizabeth, Davison, Harrison, and Walsingham in that 
 document of death which released the royal prisoner from 
 all her indignities and sufferings? Partisanship, and con- 
 flicting considerations begotten of Roman Catholicism and 
 Protestantism, unfortunately have so encrusted the subject, 
 that, in gazing upon it, the clear eyes of the historian be- 
 come dimmed, and more or less affected by those clouds 
 
86 
 
 of incense that Mary Stuart's worshippers have raised around 
 her death and varied fortunes. The clue to EHzabeth's 
 motives is one of those historical problems that admits of 
 more than one solution. 
 
 I remember being present on an occasion when the 
 instinct of a little workhouse girl guided her into the 
 probable path for this discovery. It was at the examination 
 of a certain industrial school of workhouse children, who, 
 in a most surprising manner, answered questions that would 
 infallibly have plucked many undergraduates and civil-service 
 candidates. One of the examiners on this occasion was a 
 member of Parliament, who had a good opportunity of 
 airing his historical knowledge before the ladies and gentle- 
 men who were present ; and he at length asked the question, 
 "What motives induced Queen Elizabeth to proceed to ex- 
 treme measures against Mary, Queen of Scots ? " " Because 
 she was jealous of her," at once answered a bright-looking 
 girl of fourteen, dressed in demure workhouse garb. The 
 M. P. was scarcely satisfied with the answer ; but, instead 
 of resting content with it, he heedlessly asked, "And why 
 was she jealous of her?" "Because Mary, Queen of Scots, 
 was more beautiful and had more lovers ! " was the prompt 
 reply of Miss Workhouse. It is needless to say that the 
 M. P. asked no more questions concerning Elizabeth and 
 
87 
 
 Mary, Queen of Scots. It was time for him to close the 
 subject ; and it is time for me, also, to imitate his example. 
 
 Yet, ere we say farewell to Fotheringhay, stand with me 
 here awhile on the mound on this lovely morning in the 
 first week of September, when all around looks so sweetly 
 calm and peaceful that it is hard to realize the fact 
 that, this spot was devoted to the consummation of a 
 wicked deed that (happily) stands alone in our historic 
 annals. Nor, just now, can we realize those November 
 fogs and wintry mists that must have made the prospect 
 so cheerless to the royal captive's eyes; for, bathed in the 
 brightness of a meridian sun, the landscape borrows a 
 beauty that is not its own, and would be accounted 
 sufficiently picturesque to meet the tastes of all who, like 
 truth speaking Goldsmith, preferred a flat country where 
 you could walk about without fatigue, to a highland district 
 where precipitous mountains gave the pedestrian unneces- 
 sary toil. Yet the flatness of the greater portion of the 
 landscape is relieved by the extensive woods and gentle 
 hills that bound the view ; and the level stretch of meadows 
 immediately before us is girdled by the shining windings 
 of the river, and dappled over with flocks and herds, Down 
 by the water's edge, standing knee-deep in the cooling 
 stream, and whisking the summer flies with busy tails, a 
 
88 
 
 bevy of cows have pushed their way through the sedgy 
 margin of the river, and are mirrored in its clear surface, 
 where the fishes are rising, and making white circles in 
 the dusky shadows of the bank. Other evidences of a 
 peaceful agricultural life meet the eye, in rick-yards and 
 homesteads, and in those English gold-fields where the 
 white-shirted reapers are making paths through the golden 
 grain, while the heavy-laden waggons bear away their rich 
 freight of treasure. Nearer still, the sun gleams on the 
 ruddy hawthorn-berries on the castle mound, on the tur- 
 quoise patches of the bright forget-me-nots in the sedgy 
 moat, and on the glossy purples of the chosen flower of 
 the Queen of Scots. 
 
 It is a scene of peace, gazing on which we think of her 
 own words, " That soul is far unworthy of the joys of heaven 
 whose body cannot endure for a moment the stroke of the 
 .executioner." 
 
 Here — before I append an account of the mock trial and 
 ghastly execution, I may aptly quote from Wordsworth's 
 beautiful poem, the " Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots, on 
 
89 
 
 the Eve of a New Year" — her last New-year's eve upon 
 
 earth being destined to be spent amid funereal trappings in 
 
 her gloomy prison at Fotheringhay. 
 
 *' Smile of the moon ! — for so I name 
 That silent greeting from above ; 
 A gentle flash of light that came 
 From her whom drooping captives love ; 
 Or art thou of still higher birth ? 
 Thou that didst part the clouds of earth, 
 My torpor to reprove ! 
 
 Bright boon of pitying Heaven — alas ! 
 I may not trust thy placid cheer ! 
 Pondering that time to-night will pass 
 The threshold of another year ; 
 For years to me are sad and dull; 
 My very moments are too full 
 Of hopelessness and fear. 
 
 And yet, the soul -awakening gleam. 
 That struck perchance the farthest cone 
 Of Scotland's rocky wilds, did seem 
 To visit me, and me alone ; 
 Me, unapproached by any friend, 
 Save those who to my sorrows lend 
 Tears due unto their own. 
 
 To-night, the church-tower bells will ring 
 Through these wide realms a festive peal ; 
 To the new year a welcoming ; 
 A tuneful offering for the weal 
 Of happy millions lulled in sleep ; 
 While I am forced to watch and weep, 
 By wounds that may not heal. 
 
90 
 
 Born all too high, by wedlock raised 
 Still higher — to be cast thus low ! 
 Would that mine eyes had never gazed 
 On aught of more ambitious show 
 Than the sweet flowerets of the fields ! 
 It is my royal state that yields 
 This bitterness of woe. 
 Yet how? — for I, if there be truth 
 In the world's voice, was passing fair ; 
 And beauty, for confiding youth. 
 Those shocks of passion can prejjare 
 That kill the bloom before its time. 
 And blanch, without the owner's crime, 
 The most resplendent hair. 
 Unblest distinction ! showered on me 
 To bind a lingering life in chains : — 
 All that could quit my grasp, or flee, 
 Is gone ; — but not the subtle stains 
 Fixed in the spirit ; for even here 
 Can I be proud that jealous fear 
 Of what I was remains. 
 A woman rules my prison's key ; 
 A sister Queen, against the bent 
 Of law and holiest sympathy. 
 Detains me, doubtful of the event ; 
 Great God, who feel'st for my distress, 
 My thoughts are all that I possess. 
 Oh, keep them innocent ! 
 Farewell desire of human aid. 
 Which abject mortals vainly court. 
 By friends deceived, by foes betrayed, 
 Of fears the prey, of hopes the sport ; 
 Nought but the world -redeeming cross 
 Is able to supply my loss, 
 My burthen to support. 
 
91 
 
 Hark ! the death-note of the year 
 Sounded by the castle clock ! 
 From her sunk eyes a stagnant tear 
 Stole forth, unsettled by the shock ; 
 But oft the woods renewed their green, 
 Ere the tired head of Scotland's queen 
 Reposed upon the block !"* 
 
 * This poem was penned in 1817, and will be found in Wordsworth's 
 Poems founded on the Affections." 
 
PA H T II. 
 
 istDticaL 
 
A BRIEF HISTORY OF 
 
 THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF 
 
 MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, 
 
 AT FOTHERINGHAY CASTLE, 
 
 PART L— THE MOCK TRIAL. 
 
 In less than three weeks after the Queen of Scots' removal 
 from Chartley to Fotheringhay, the thirty-four out of the 
 forty-six Peers appointed by Queen Elizabeth* as a Com- 
 mission for her trial, assembled at Fotheringhay, on October 
 nth. 1586 (the 21st of October by modern reckoning), and 
 had to be accommodated at the New Inn and various houses 
 
 * *' After delivering the deed to her secretary, Davison, and commend- 
 ing him to carry it to the Chancellor, she affected to have changed her 
 mind ; and burst forth in lamentations, when informed that it had passed 
 into the hands of those whose duty it was to see that the Queen's man- 
 date was obeyed. Never was a piece of acting more clumsily per- 
 formed, because no one was deceived by it. Elizabeth intended from 
 the first that Mary should die ; and her sole regret was, that there should 
 not be found among her loving subjects, persons willing to sacrifice both 
 honour and life, in order that her character might be screened from the 
 ignominy of participating in the execution." 
 
 '"''History of England ^^ by Rev. George R. Gleig, M.A. 
 
96 
 
 in the village, the precincts of the castle being already filled 
 with the two thousand soldiers and others who had already 
 been quartered there. 
 
 The Queen of Scots was confined to her bed by indis- 
 position ; but Sir Amyas Paulet introduced to her presence 
 Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and 
 Barker, the Notary, who gave her the letter in which 
 Queen Elizabeth declared to her that her crimes were dis- 
 covered, — that she was amenable to the laws of England, 
 and that the Commissioners had been sent to hear, and 
 enquire into, the cause. 
 
 / Mary replied that she was sorry that her good sister, the 
 Queen, had refused the offers made in her behalf : that she 
 had nearly lost the use of her limbs through her long cap- 
 tivity ; that she was innocent of any plot against the Queen 
 of England, and that she herself was a Queen, and would 
 not prejudice the son who was to succeed her, by behaving 
 as though she were a subject : that she had been deprived of 
 all her papers, and was ignorant of the laws of the country ; 
 and that she was willing to refer any controversy to the 
 judgment of foreign princes. 
 
 They retired from her presence, but again waited upon 
 her to read over to her what she had stated to them, and 
 to enquire if she adhered to those statements. She replied 
 
97 
 
 in the affirmative ; but wished to add, that she had not hved 
 under the protection of the law ; but, that when she came 
 to crave it, the Queen had put her in prison. 
 
 Lord Chancellor Bromley, accompanied by Burghley, 
 Hatton, and others, then waited upon her, advising her to 
 appear at her trial, or that they would proceed with it in 
 her absence. Mary repHed that she would rather die a 
 thousand deaths before she would acknowledge herself as 
 a subject ; and that she would answer only before a free 
 and full Parliament. As for the Commission, she did not 
 know how it was composed; and, very probably, they had 
 already condemned her ; but, she would have them "to look 
 into their consciences, and to remember that the theatre of 
 the world was wider than the realm of England." Burghley 
 then changed his tactics, and sought to win her consent ; 
 wherein he was supported by Sir Christopher Hatton ; and, 
 though, for some time, she declared that she would only 
 appear before the Queen in Council, or the Estates of the 
 realm lawfully assembled, she finally consented to appear, if 
 her protest against the competency of the tribunal was placed 
 on record. 
 
 On the next morning, Friday, October 14th, at nine 
 o'clock, Mary, walking with difficulty, from rheumatism, 
 and supported on either side by Burgoigne, her physician, 
 
98 
 
 and Sir Andrew Melville, Master of the Household, descend- 
 ed to the great hall of the castle,"^ where benches were 
 placed against the walls for the Commissioners, the Earls 
 on one side, and the Barons on the other. Dressed in black 
 velvet,! with a white lawn veil thrown over her pointed 
 widow's cap, with one of her ladies bearing her train, and 
 three other of her ladies following her, she took her seat on 
 a chair in the centre of the hall, a footstool being placed for 
 her feet. Looking at the chair of state raised at the upper 
 end of the hall for the Queen of England, she proudly said, 
 " I am a Queen by birth, and have been the Consort of a 
 King of France ; my place should have been there." Bowing 
 gracefully to the nobles, she said to Sir Andrew Melville, 
 " Alas ! how many counsellors ! and not one for me." 
 
 The trial was then opened by Lord Chancellor Bromley, 
 who said that the Queen of England having been acquainted 
 with Mary's plot against her person, her realm and her 
 religion, desired to know, through her Commissioners, 
 whether she pleaded guilty or not guilty to the charge. 
 
 Although suffering from rheumatism, she rose and ad- 
 dressed the Commissioners, reminding them that she had 
 
 * A fine painting, by Mr. Laslett J. Pott, of " Mary, Queen of Scots, 
 descending the steps of the hall at Fotheringhay," is to be seen in the 
 famous gallery of pictures formed by Mr. A. G. Kurtz, at Grove House, 
 Wavertree, Liverpool, and generously thrown open by him to the public. 
 
 t Froude says she wore "a plain grey dress": but this is not borne 
 out by other historians. 
 
99 
 
 come to England to seek the assistance that had been 
 promised to her by a Queen, who had thrown her into 
 prison, but who had no jurisdiction over her ; and that she 
 had appeared there, solely to protest against the unfounded 
 charges made against her, and which she was ready to hear 
 and refute, although she did not consider any of those 
 present to be her peers or judges. 
 
 Gawdy, the Queen's Serjeant, then opened the case for the 
 Crown detailing the circumstances of the Babington con- 
 spiracy, and reading the three letters purporting to have been 
 sent to him by Mary, on which the charge against her 
 depended. These documents were copies and not the 
 originals ; and she denied that she had written them. As to 
 the letter in cipher, which was said to be hers, she said that 
 it was easy to imitate ciphers ; and she implied that 
 Walsingham might have had something to do with it. He 
 indignantly denied this -, upon which she begged him not to 
 be displeased with her, and would forgive her if she had 
 accused him wrongfully, and that he should do the same to 
 her. "Spies" she said, "are men of doubtful credit, who 
 make a show of one thing and speak another ; therefore, I 
 beseech you not to believe that I have ever consented to the 
 Queen's, my sister's, destruction. I would not make ship- 
 wreck of my soul by conspiring her destruction." 
 
100 
 
 The Commissioners replied that witnesses would be called; 
 and they then adjourned for an interval. 
 
 On reassembling, more letters were brought forward, that 
 were alleged to have been written by Babington, and her 
 secretaries, Nau and Curie. She demanded that if there 
 were any letters in her own hand-writing, they should be 
 produced; that if anything hurtful to the Queen had been 
 written by them, it was done without her knowledge; and 
 that she ought n^t to be convicted except by her own words 
 and writing. " I am held in chains : " she said. " I have 
 no counsel, you have deprived me of my papers, and all 
 means of preparing my defence, which must, therefore, be 
 confined to a solemn denial of the crime imputed to me ; and 
 I protest, on the sacred honour of a Queen, that I am 
 innocent of practising against your Sovereign's life. I do not, 
 indeed, deny that I have longed for liberty, and earnestly 
 laboured to procure it. Nature impelled me to do so ; but, 
 I call God to witness that I have never conspired the death 
 of the Queen of England. I have written to my friends, and 
 •solicited them to assist me to escape from her miserable 
 prisons, in which she has kept me now nearly nineteen years, 
 till my health and hopes have been cruelly destroyed ; but I 
 never wrote the letters you pretend, nor would I have done 
 so, to purchase a crown. I cannot answer, indeed, that my 
 
lOI 
 
 secretaries may not have received and answered such letters ; 
 but, if so, it was unknown to me, and I claim the privilege of 
 being convicted on my own writing alone, or words proved 
 by lawful witnesses ; but, sure I am, nothing of the kind can 
 be produced against me." 
 
 Burghley, after accusing her of comphcity in the criminal 
 designs of Morgan, Paget and Mendoza, to which Mary 
 replied with the same vigour and decision, without falling 
 into any of the traps so astutely laid for her, the proceedings 
 of the first day of the trial were brought to a close. 
 
 On the following morning, the Queen of Scots again 
 appeared in the hall, attended as on the preceding day ; but 
 the Attorney and Solicitor General and Queen's Serjeant took 
 no part in the proceedings, which were conducted by Burghley, 
 who brow-beat her " with great stomaching " — as he himself 
 expressed it in a letter to Davison. He endeavoured to con- 
 fuse her by touching upon a variety of topics apart from the 
 main issue, to which she had repeatedly to bring him back ; 
 but he would not reply to her demands to be confronted with 
 her secretaries, and to produce the letters that were attri- 
 buted to her. '^" My innocence," she said, "is well known to 
 God. My crimes consist in my birth, the injuries that have 
 been inflicted on me, and my religion. Of the first, I am 
 justly proud ; the second I can forgive ; and the third has 
 
102 
 
 been my sole consolation and hope under all my afflictions ; 
 and, for its advancement, I would cheerfully give my best 
 blood, if so be I might, by my own death, procure relief for 
 the suffering Catholics. But, not even for their sakes would 
 I purchase it at the price of the blood of others, having 
 always been tender of the lives of the meanest of God's 
 creatures. It is, in sooth, more in accordance with my 
 nature to pray with Esther, than to play the part of Judith. 
 I know you call me irreligious. There was, indeed, a time 
 when I would willingly have been instructed in the Protestant 
 creed ; but, that was not permitted, my soul being regarded 
 of no value." Here she wept bitterly : but the assembled 
 
 commissioners 
 
 "Saw fair Mary weep in vain."* 
 
 " Look here, my lords," she said, drawing a ring from her 
 finger. " I came to England relying upon the friendship 
 and promises of your Queen. Look at this pledge of love 
 and protection that I received from your mistress. Regard it 
 well. Trusting to this pledge I came among you. You all 
 know how it has been kept." This was the diamond ring 
 that Elizabeth had sent to her when she was a prisoner at 
 Lochleven, with the assurance, that, if she could effect her 
 escape, the English Queen would meet her on the border 
 
 * Sir Walter Scott's ballad of " Cadzow Castle," 
 
I03 
 
 with a force sufficient to protect her against her rebelhous 
 subjects. 
 
 JMary was then charged with corresponding with Mendoza 
 and offering to make over the kingdom of England to the 
 King of Spain ; and she complained bitterly that her letters 
 had been garbled, and perverted to meanings that they did 
 not bear.y Burghley plodded on, labouriously, with the evi- 
 dence that had been laid before the commissioners ; and 
 acquitted himself so much to his own satisfaction, that, in 
 his letter to Davison, he boasted of the skill and success 
 with which he had encountered and defeated "The Queen 
 of the Castle," as he nicknamed the Queen of Scots. " My 
 lord," she said, " you are my enemy." " I am the enemy," 
 he rephed, "of all Queen Elizabeth's adversaries." Mary 
 demanded to have an advocate, and another day to prepare 
 her defence. And, when Burghley refused this, she rose 
 with scorn, and left the hall, demanding to be heard in a full 
 Parhament in presence of the Queen of England and her 
 Council. 
 
 The Court then abruptly broke up at one o'clock, and the 
 so-called Trial was ended. For two days, the Queen of Scots 
 had stood at bay against thirty-six assailants, displaying the 
 courage and ability that were her great characteristics. Her 
 life now lay at the mercy of Elizabeth, 
 
I04 
 
 1 In speaking of this trial, Sir James Mackintosh says, " It 
 is impossible to read without admiration, in the minute 
 records of the trial, the self-possessed, prompt, clear, and 
 sagacious replies by which the forlorn woman defended 
 herself against the most expert lawyers and politicians of 
 the age, who, instead of examining her as judges, pressed 
 her with the unscrupulous ingenuity of enemies."^ 
 
 Mr. John Hosack, in his " Mary, Queen of Scots and her 
 Accusers," says of this trial, "It cannot be denied that, 
 even according to their own account, and we have no other, 
 she had maintained throughout a decisive superiority over 
 her opponents. Without counsel, or witnesses, or papers, 
 and armed with nothing but her own clear intellect and 
 heroic spirit, she had answered, point by point, all their 
 allegations." 
 
 Froude says, "She had confidence in her presence of 
 mind, in her intellect, in the majesty of her appearance and 
 bearing. She had never yet, in private, encountered any 
 man, except perhaps John Knox, who had resisted wholly 
 the fascination of her presence. The first lawyers in England 
 would be in the court, but on that score she had neither 
 diffidence nor alarm. She was not afraid to encounter the 
 ablest of them with their special weapon of the tongue, and 
 
I05 
 
 she had no fear that they would have the advantage of her. 
 * ^ * She perfectly comprehended Elizabeth's char- 
 acter. The court had been commissioned to pass sentence." 
 Dr. Lingard says, " She was placed in a situation in which, 
 though she might assert, it was impossible that she could 
 prove her innocence. A single and friendless female, the in- 
 mate of a prison for the last nineteen years, ignorant of the 
 law, unpractised in judicial forms, without papers, or wit- 
 nesses, or counsel, and with no other knowledge of the 
 transactions than the reports collected by her female servants, 
 nor of the proofs to be adduced by her adversaries but what 
 her conjectures might supply. She could be no match for 
 that array of lawyers, judges and statesmen, who sat 
 marshalled against her ; and if, among the commissioners, 
 she espied two or three secret friends, they were men whose 
 fidelity was suspected, and whose lives and fortunes probably 
 depended on their vote of that day ; the rest comprised the 
 most distinguished of those who, for years, had sought her 
 death in the council, or had clamourously called for it in 
 Parliament. Yet, under all these disadvantages she de- 
 fended herself with spirit and address. For two days she 
 kept at bay the hunters of her life ; on the third, the pro- 
 ceedings were suspended by an adjournm€nt to West- 
 minster." 
 
io6 
 
 Sir Walter Scott says, " Mary, left to herself, and having 
 counsel of no friend, advocate, or lawyer, made, nevertheless, 
 a defence becoming her high birth and distinguished talents. 
 * * * Through the whole sitting of the court, unaided 
 by counsel or legal advice of any kind, she sustained and 
 repelled the accusations brought against her by professional 
 persons of eminence, with an ingenuity and address which 
 could hardly have been expected from a person of her rank, 
 sex and education." 
 
PART IL— AFTER THE TRIAL. 
 Mary kept her bed for some days after this mock trial, and 
 the departure of the commissioners, who met again, on the 
 25th of October, in the Star Chamber at Westminster. The 
 two secretaries, Nau and Curie, were exammed ; and the 
 former affirmed that the principal heads of accusation — those 
 alone on which could be based any pretext of condemnation 
 — were false. His testimony was not accepted ; and sentence 
 of death — at the pleasure of the Queen — was pronounced 
 against the two secretaries and Mary, Queen of Scots. A 
 clause was added, that this judgment would not affect her 
 son's claim to the throne. 
 
 The sentence of the commissioners was brought before the 
 Lords and Commons who besought the Queen to put it in 
 immediate execution. To which request, Elizabeth made 
 this ambiguous reply, — " If I should say that I meant not to 
 grant your petition, by my faith, I should say unto you more 
 perhaps than I mean. And if I should say that I mean to 
 grant it, I should tell you more than is fit for you to know. 
 Thus, I must deliver to you an answer answerless." 
 
 Elizabeth bade her kinsman, the accomplished young 
 
io8 
 
 nobleman, Lord Buckhurst, (author of the tragedy " Porrex 
 and Ferrex,") to go to Fotheringhay and communicate the 
 sentence of death to Mary, Queen of Scots. Beale, the Clerk 
 of the Council, went with him, and they reached Fothering- 
 hay on the 19th of November. They executed their com- 
 mission, the royal prisoner, who was still ill, receiving the 
 tidings with great fortitude. On the day of their departure. 
 Sir Amyas Paulet — with whom Sir Drue Drury was now 
 associated as keeper of the Queen's person — insulted Mary 
 by knocking down the dais, covering his head in her 
 presence, and saying that he should take away her billiard- 
 table, as she had no longer time or leisure to waste on idle 
 recreations. To which she replied, that she had never used 
 the table, as they had given her other occupations. 
 
 vx^ary then wrote to Elizabeth, thanking God, that it had 
 pleased Him, through her, to put an end to the wearisome 
 pilgrimage of her life. She asked nothing for herself, except 
 that her body, after death, might be given over to her 
 servants to be buried in France, where it might find that 
 repose, which, living, it had never known. She begged also 
 that she might not be put to death in secret, but in the pres- 
 ence of her servants and others, who might testify that she 
 died in the true faith. And she further prayed that her 
 servants might be allowed to go freely where they pleased. 
 
log 
 
 She begged Elizabeth to give her a word in her own hand, to 
 say that she would grant these requests. But, the Queen 
 never replied to the letter, although, in writing to Walsing- 
 ham, she said, " There is a letter from the Scottish Queen 
 that hath wrought tears, but I trust shall do no further harm, 
 albeit the delay is too dangerous." 
 
 On the plea that a new plot against the Queen's life had 
 been discovered, the sentence of death against the Queen of 
 Scots, was publicly proclaimed by heralds, with the sound of 
 trumpets, on the fourth of December, and was received in 
 London,* and all through the country, with frantic delight, 
 the ringing of church bells and the blazing of bonfires. 
 
 Through the intervention and remonstrances of the French 
 King, the Queen of Scots life was spared for a time, though 
 she was in daily expectation of secret assassination. A 
 deputation had waited upon her at Fotheringhay, announcing 
 the sentence that had been pronounced upon her in London : 
 and on her forty-fifth birthday, the nth of December,! the 
 royal prisoner found that her bed and chamber were hung 
 
 * In Dr. Freshfield's privately printed book of the Registers of St. 
 Christopher-le-Stocks, in the City of London, is the following : " Item, 
 paide for ringing when Babington with thother traytors were appre- 
 hended and weare takenn, and also when the queen of scotts was be- 
 hedded." The last word has been struck through with a pen, and the 
 words " proclamed conspirator to ye queen and our realme " substituted. 
 
 t The date is somewhat uncertain. The 8th, nth, and I2th being 
 variously given. 
 
no 
 
 with black, to intimate that she was to be regarded as a dead 
 woman. Sir Amyas Paulet wrote to Walsingham that he 
 feared " Fotheringhay was forgotten, although the lady 
 under his charge had given all her Majesty's true and faith- 
 ful subjects cause not to sleep soundly till the head and seed- 
 plot of all practises and conspiracies were utterly extirpated;" 
 while Queen Elizabeth was often heard to lament that among 
 the many who professed to be attached to her, not one would 
 spare her the necessity of dipping her hands in the blood of 
 a sister Queen. Both Sir Amyas Paulet and Sir Drue Drury 
 refused to make shipwreck of their conscience by shedding 
 blood without law or warrant. 
 
 While the Queen of England kept Christmas with her 
 Court at Greenwich, the Queen of Scots was languishing in 
 her prison at Fotheringhay, in hourly anticipation of death 
 and racked with rheumatic pains, increased by the dense fogs 
 and mists that arose from the flat meadows by the river. In 
 the middle of January, Sir Andrew Melville, the Master of 
 the Household, was removed from the Castle ; and, on the 
 night of Sunday, January 29th, the soldiers who were on 
 guard under the prison window were alarmed by the appear- 
 ance of a brilliant meteor, which appeared thrice just before 
 her window. 
 
 Two days after this, Elizabeth signed, at Greenwich, the 
 
Ill 
 
 order for the execution of the Queen of Scots, saying that 
 it was made needful, and desiring to be troubled no further 
 on the subject till all was over, but suggesting the hall 
 of the Castle as a fitter place than the court-yard for the 
 scene of the execution. Secretary Beale, in company with 
 the executioner — who was clad in a suit of black velvet, — 
 arrived at Fotheringhay, on Sunday, February the fifth. 
 Early the next day, Beale went in search of Lord Shrews- 
 bury, who was staying in the neighbourhood, and sent a 
 messenger to the Sheriff of Northamptonshire to be in attend- 
 ance at the Castle on Wednesday morning. The Earl of 
 Kent got to Fotheringhay on Monday, and the Earl of 
 Shrewsbury on the following day, when they demanded an 
 audience of the Queen of Scots, who was in bed, suffering 
 from a rheumatic attack. She, however, rose, and received 
 them, sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed. 
 
 In the presence of these two Lords, with Paulet, Drury, 
 Beale, and her attendants, the warrant of her execution was 
 read by Beale. She listened to it attentively and with com- 
 posure, thanking God for the tidings that the end of her 
 troubles was at hand. " I did not think," she said, " that the 
 Queen, my sister, would ever have consented to my death ; 
 but, God's will be done. He is my principal witness, that 
 I shall render up my spirit into His hands innocent of any 
 
112 
 
 offence against her, and with a pure heart and conscience 
 clear before His divine majesty of the crimes whereof I am 
 accused. That soul is far unworthy of the joys of Heaven, 
 whose body cannot endure for a moment the stroke of the 
 executioner." 
 
 Mr. Froude says that " she was dreadfully agitated " and 
 that " she broke down altogether." But, this is not in 
 accordance with all the contemporary accounts of Camden, 
 Jebb, Egerton and others; and Burghley's reporter wrote 
 thus to his patron — " She seemed not to be in any terror, for 
 aught that appeared by her outward gesture or behaviour; 
 but rather, with smiling cheer and pleasing countenance, 
 digested and accepted the said admonition of preparation to 
 her unexpected execution, saying that her death would be 
 welcome to her." This behaviour accords with her whole 
 conduct during the last scenes of her life. 
 
 She enquired as to the date of her execution ; when Lord 
 Shrewsbury replied, " To-morrow morning, at eight o'clock." 
 " That is very sudden, and leaves no time for preparation," 
 she said ; and she asked for time to make her will and put 
 her affairs in order. Beale said that she had already had 
 two months to prepare for her fate : and Lord Shrewsbury 
 told her the execution could not be deferred. Lord Kent 
 said that she might have the Bishop or Dean of Peterborough 
 
113 
 
 for her consolation ; and recommended her to choose the 
 Dean, who was a learned divine who would " be able to show 
 her the errors of her false religion." She firmly replied that 
 she would die in her faith and would willingly shed her blood 
 in its cause. The Earl of Kent said " Your life would be the 
 death of your religion, and your death will be its preser- 
 vation." " I did not flatter myself," she replied, "that I was 
 worthy of such a death, and I humbly receive it as an earnest 
 of my acceptance into the number of God's chosen servants." 
 
 She then spoke of those who had intrigued against her, and 
 had detained her in cruel captivity for nineteen years. 
 Placing her hand on a New Testament, she said, " I take 
 God to witness, that I never desired, sought, nor consented 
 to the death of your Queen." The Earl of Kent said " That 
 book is a Popish Testament ; and an oath taken on that 
 Testament is as worthless as the book itself." She replied, 
 " It is, according to my belief, the true Testament. Would 
 you, my lord, give more credit to my oath, if I swore upon 
 your version, which I do not believe ? " She then enquired 
 if her son had forgotten his mother in her distress ; and 
 whether any foreign powers had interceded in her behalf. 
 The Earl of Shrewsbury, with the others, then withdrew, after 
 he had given the Queen of Scots into the custody of Sir 
 Amyas Paulet. 
 
114 
 
 Burgoigne and her other servants gave way to their distress, 
 when Mary said to Jane Kennedy, " Up ! leave weeping and 
 be doing, for the time is short. Did I not tell you that it 
 would come to this ? Blessed be God that it has come, and 
 that fear and sorrow are at an end. Weep not, for it will 
 avail nothing : but, rejoice that you see me so near the end 
 of my long troubles and afflictions. Now, then, take it 
 patiently, and let us pray God together." She then prayed 
 with them ; after which she divided her money into portions, 
 putting each portion into a little purse, with instructions to 
 whom it should be given. 
 
 After supper, she pledged them in a cup of wine — the cup 
 being made of an Indian nut, mounted in silver. She be- 
 queathed it to her god-daughter, Mary Strickland, of Sizergh 
 Castle, Westmoreland ; and it is still preserved. She then 
 divided her wardrobe and jewels among her women; sending 
 her sapphire ring to her kinsman, Lord Claud Hamilton. 
 She then wrote to De Prean, her almoner, who was housed 
 in the castle, but denied admittance to her, praying him that 
 he would keep vigil that night, and that as she was denied 
 receiving the Sacrament, she must content herself with a 
 general confession. Perhaps, in the morning, when she was 
 brought forth, she might see him and ask for his blessing on 
 her knees. 
 
ii5 
 
 She then, with much celerity, made her will, writing it on 
 two sheets of paper. She also wrote a letter to the King of 
 France ; but, being exhausted, she said she would take 
 some repose, after her damsels had washed her feet. Jane 
 Kennedy read, at her request, from the Book of Hours, the 
 story of the penitent thief. " He was a great sinner," she 
 said, " but not so great a sinner as I am. May my blessed 
 Saviour, in memory of His passion, have mercy on me in the 
 hour of death, as He had upon him." 
 
 She then lay down on her bed for the last time, while her 
 faithful maidens kept watch by her bedside. They saw that 
 her eyes were closed, but her lips moved as if in prayer. 
 
 And thus, the Queen of Scots spent her last night on 
 earth. 
 
PART III.— THE EXECUTION. 
 
 The morning of the Execution came — Wednesday, the 8th 
 of February, 1587 ; but, before it had dawned, the Queen of 
 Scots had risen from her bed, and, at six o'clock, her ladies, 
 at her own request, had dressed her "as for a festival," as 
 " she had but two hours to live." 
 
 Her dress, according to the contemporary account sent to 
 Lord Burghley, was as follows : — " On her head she had a 
 dressing of lawn, edged with bone lace, a pomander chain, 
 and an Agnus Dei about her neck, a crucifix in her hand, a 
 pair of beads at her girdle, with a golden cross at the end of 
 them, a veil of lawn fastened to her cowl, bowed out with 
 wire, and edged round about with bone lace ; her gown was 
 of black satin, printed, with a train and long sleeves to the 
 ground, set with acorn buttons of jet and trimmed with pearl, 
 and short sleeves of black satin, cut, with a pair of sleeves of 
 velvet whole under them ; her kirtle wholly of a figured 
 black satin, and her petticoat upper-body, unlaced in the 
 back, of crimson satin, and her petticoat skirt of crimson 
 velvet ; her shoes of Spanish leather, with the rough side 
 outwards, a pair of green silk garters, her nether stockings 
 
117 
 
 worsted coloured watchet, clocked with silver, and next her 
 legs a pair of Jersey hose, white." 
 
 Miss Agnes Strickland, quoting from a contemporary manu- 
 script in the Vatican, written by an eye-witness of the execu- 
 tion, says that "she had caused a camisole of fine Scotch 
 plaid, reaching from the throat to the waist, but without a 
 collar, to be prepared the night before, that, when her upper 
 garments should be removed, she might escape the distress 
 of appearing uncovered before so many people." 
 
 She then prayed earnestly in her oratory, her devotions 
 
 including the following prayer : — 
 
 ** O Domine Deus ! speravi in Te ; 
 O care me Jesu, nunc libera me ! 
 In dura catena, in misera poena, desidero Te ! 
 Languendo, gemendo, et genuflectendo, 
 Adoro, imploro, ut liberes me ! " 
 
 "" My Lord and my God, I have hoped in Thee ; 
 
 Jesu, sweet Saviour, now liberate me. 
 
 1 have languished for Thee in affliction and chains ; 
 Lamenting and sighing through long years of pains. 
 Adoring, imploring, on humbly bowed knee, 
 
 I crave, of Thy mercy, by grace set me free." * 
 
 * Another paraphrase of Queen Mary's prayer is as follows, and has 
 been set to music by Dr. ITarington, of Bath : — 
 
 "In this last solemn and tremendous hour. 
 My Lord, my Saviour, I invoke Thy pow'r ! 
 In these sad pangs of anguish and of death. 
 Receive, O Lord, Thy suppliant's parting breath ! 
 
11$ 
 
 After her private devotion, she concluded her letter to her 
 brother-in-law, Henry III, King of France, signing it, " The 
 morning of my death, this Wednesday, 8th February. 
 Marie R." She then returned to her bed-chamber, where, 
 sitting by the fire, she consoled her attendants. Bourgoigne 
 then brought her a little wine and a piece of toasted bread, 
 which he begged her to take : and she, smilingly, thanked 
 him for bringing her her last meal, and begged him to read 
 her will before her servants. This he did ; and she then 
 asked them all to kneel down and pray with her for the last 
 time. 
 
 While they were thus engaged, the castle clock struck the 
 hour of eight, and Thomas Andrews, the High Sheriff, 
 rapped at the door of the ante-chamber, to command her 
 attendance. Being told that she was engaged in prayer, he 
 left her for a quarter of an hour ; and then, returning with Sir 
 Amyas Paulet, the Earls of Shrewsbury and Kent, Beale, and 
 several others, he was admitted to the room, at the upper end 
 of which, Mary and her attendants were still kneeling. 
 
 " Madam," he said, in a faltering voice, "the Lords have 
 sent me for you." "Yes! let us go!" she rephed : and 
 
 Before Thy hallow'd cross she prostrate lies, 
 O hear her prayers, commiserate her sighs ! 
 Extend Thy arms of mercy and of love, 
 And bear her to Thy peaceful realms above ! " 
 
119 
 
 Burgoigne assisted her to rise. As her own faithful servants 
 would not lead her to death, she asked for the assistance of 
 two of Sir Amyas Paulet's servants, who led her from the 
 room. The two Earls prevented the ladies and attendants 
 from following her : and Mary entreated them to allow her 
 " poor afflicted servants to be with her at her death, that they 
 might see how patiently their Queen endured it." With in- 
 conceivable brutality the Earl of Kent replied that her 
 request could not be granted, as they might be troublesome 
 by their speeches and behaviour, and also " would not stick 
 to put some superstitious trumpery in practise, if it were but 
 dipping their handkerchiefs in her blood." 
 
 " My lord," said Mary, " I will pass my word they do no 
 such thmg. Alas ! poor souls, it will do them good to bid 
 their mistress farewell. Your mistress, being a maiden 
 queen, for womanhood's sake, would not deny me this 
 courtesy. I know she hath not so straitened your com- 
 mission but that you might grant me more than this, if I 
 were of a far meaner condition." 
 
 Seeing they would not grant her request, she added, with 
 tears, " I am cousin to your Queen ! descended of the blood- 
 royal of Henry VII ; a married Queen of France, and the 
 anointed Queen of Scotland." 
 
 After a consultation, they reluctantly granted her request 
 
I20 
 
 in part, and permitted that two of her women and four of her 
 men should attend her. She selected Jane Kennedy and 
 Elizabeth Curie,* who had always slept in her bed-room, and 
 had been with her for upwards of twenty years, — Sir Andrew 
 Melville, Master of the Household ; Bourgoigne, her 
 physician ; Gourion, her surgeon ; and Gervais, her apothecary. 
 Then she bade a tender farewell to the others, who were 
 locked in the room; but whose cries penetrated even to the 
 banquet-hall. 
 
 She then lent on the arms of Paulet's two retainers, saying, 
 with pleasant courtesy, " it is the last trouble that I shall give 
 you." At the foot of the great staircase, Melville flung him- 
 self on his knees before her in great grief that it should be 
 his lot to carry back to Scotland such sad tidings. 
 
 " Melville," she said, " you should rather rejoice than weep 
 that the end of Mary Stuart's troubles is come. Tell my 
 friends I die a true Catholic. Commend me to my son ; tell 
 him I have done nothing to prejudice his kingdom of 
 Scotland. So, good Melville, farewell." And she stooped 
 and kissed her faithful old servant on the cheek. She then 
 asked for her chaplain, but he had been refused admission. 
 
 Sir William Fitzwilliam, of Milton, who then held Fother- 
 
 * Dr. Lingard calls her " Elspeth " Curie. Froude erroneously says, 
 " Elizabeth Kennedy and Curie's young wife, Barbara Mowbray." 
 
121 
 
 inghay on a lease from the Crown, stepped forward to kiss 
 her hand, and to express " his regret and indignation that 
 her blood should be cruelly shed while under his roof." 
 Mary thanked him for " his gentle entertainment of her, and 
 begged that he would accept as a memorial of her grateful 
 appreciation of his courtesy, the picture of the King, her son, 
 which was hanging at her bed's head, and which was the 
 last remaining possession she had not bequeathed." 
 
 Then the procession passed into the banquet-hall, cleared 
 of its tables and forms, Andrews, the High Sheriff, being 
 first, followed by Sir Amyas Paulet and Sir Drue Drury — the 
 Earl of Kent — Beale — and the Earl of Shrewsbury with his 
 marshal's baton. The Queen of Scots, her train borne by 
 Melville, and followed by her attendants, entered the hall 
 with a firm step and unruffled composure, though, for the first 
 time, she was in sight of the scaffold. It was erected at the 
 upper end of the hall, near to the large fire-place, in which a 
 fire was burning. It was a platform, twelve feet square, two 
 and a half high, covered with black cloth, as were the rails 
 that surrounded it. On the platform was the block, covered 
 with black, the axe, a chair covered with black, with a square 
 black velvet cushion before it, and two stools for the two 
 Earls. The scaffold was surrounded by a strong guard of 
 halberdiers, and Earl Marshal's men, nearly two hundred 
 
 I 
 
122 
 
 in number ; and about a hundred gentlemen of the neigh- 
 bourhood were in the hall. Outside, in the court-yard, were 
 many hundreds, who, while waiting for the completion of the 
 execution, were entertained with music* 
 
 There were two steep steps to the scaffold, and Sir Amyas 
 Paulet offered his arm to the Queen to assist her in the 
 ascent. " I thank you, sir," she said, with graceful courtesy, 
 as she accepted his help : " it is the last trouble that I shall 
 give you, and the most acceptable service you have ever 
 rendered me." 
 
 She stepped upon the scaffold and sat upon the chair 
 provided for her. The two Earls walked on either side of 
 her ; and, in front of her, was the executioner, clad in black 
 velvet, and holding his axe with the edge turned towards her. 
 His assistant stood beside him. She saw them, and the 
 block, and the crowd in the hall, thirsting for her blood ; and 
 she saw it all without betraying any trepidation or fear. The 
 eye-witnesses of the scene testify that she " regarded the 
 
 * I was able to give Miss Agnes Strickland a copy of the music 
 believed to have been played on this occasion. It was discovered, in 
 manuscript, at Oxford, and is the old tune called "Jumping Joan," 
 which, in tliose days, was played to brutalise the rabble at the burning of 
 a witch. It is remarkable, however, that when the tune is played in 
 slow time, it produces a solemn and pathetic effect, and is very similar 
 to the " Dead March" in Saul. Miss Strickland thinks that the tune 
 may have been played to slow time, at Fotheringhay (Vol. viii, p. 487). 
 A charitable supposition, but scarcely in accordance with the indignities 
 and insults that characterised the tragedy. (For further notes on this 
 subject, see Miss Strickland's letter to me, in the Appendix to this book.) 
 
123 
 
 assembly with a joyous countenance ; " and that when Beale 
 stepped on the platform and read her sentence of death, "she 
 listened unto it with as small regard, as if it had not con- 
 cerned her at all, and with as cheerful a countenance as if it 
 had been a pardon from her Majesty for her life." And yet, 
 the biassed historian Froude brutally calls this a piece of 
 " brilliant acting " — " a dramatic sensation " — by " a bad 
 woman, disguised in the livery of a martyr." The "livery of 
 a martyr " is something new in word-coinage ! There is not 
 a tittle of evidence to shew that she could have hoped for 
 either reprieve or rescue. The military guard surrounding 
 the scaffold rendered a rescue impossible ; while a reprieve 
 was hopeless. 
 
 Beale ended the reading of the death-warrant, and the 
 Queen of Scots bowed her head in token of submission to the 
 will of God. Then said the Earl of Shrewsbury, "Now, 
 madam, you know what is to be done." " Do your duty ! " 
 she replied. Then she addressed the assembly, that, although 
 she was a sovereign princess, and not subject to the Parlia- 
 ment of England, she had been unjustly accused of crimes of 
 which she was altogether innocent. She had never devised 
 any harm against the Queen of England ; and she believed 
 that, after her execution, much would be brought to light that 
 was now hid, and that the objects of those who so eagerly 
 
124 
 
 sought her death would be disclosed. From her heart she 
 pardoned all her enemies, and her tongue should not utter 
 that which should turn to their prejudice. 
 
 She then asked for her almoner, that she might pray with 
 him : but, her request was refused ; and Dr. Fletcher, Dean 
 of Peterborough, came to the rail and delivered a lengthy, 
 tiresome, and ill-timed harangue, which, as reported by Lord 
 Burghley's commissioner, occupies four pages in Archdeacon 
 Bonney's "Fotheringhay." Suffice it to say here, that it 
 stated, that the Queen's most excellent majesty, notwith- 
 standing all her trespasses against her sacred person, state, 
 and government, had yet a tender care for her soul, and was 
 anxious for her salvation, and that she should be brought into 
 the true fold of Christ, out of the communion of that church 
 in which if she remained, she must perish everlastingly. 
 
 She stopped him — or endeavoured to stop him — more 
 than once, by requesting him not to trouble himself in the 
 matter, as she was resolved to die in her own faith. 
 
 Then she turned from him ; but he would not be put off ; 
 and went round the scaffold, and again facing her, continued 
 his harangue. At last, the Earls were constrained to put an 
 end to this extraordinary scene : and commanded him to 
 cease his exhortation and to begin to pray, 
 
125 
 
 The Dean, kneeling upon the steps of the scaffold, offered 
 
 up the following prayer : — 
 
 " O most gracious God, and merciful Father, who, according to the 
 multitude of thy mercies, dost so put away the sins of them that truly 
 repent, that thou rememberest them no more ; open, we beseech thee, 
 thine eyes of mercy, and behold this Person appointed unto death, whose 
 eyes of understanding and spiritual light, albeit, thou hast hitherto shut 
 up, that the glorious beams of thy favour in Jesus Christ do not 
 shine unto her, but is possessed with blindness and ignorance of heavenly 
 things (a certain token of thy heavy displeasure, if thy unspeakable 
 mercy do not triumph against thy judgment), yet O Lord our God, 
 impute not, we beseech thee, unto her those her offences which separate 
 her from thy mercy ; and if it may stand with thine everlasting purpose, 
 and good pleasure, O Lord, grant unto us, we beseech thee, this mercy 
 which is about thy throne, that the eyes of her heart may be enlightened, 
 that she may understand, and be converted unto thee ; and grant her, 
 also, if it be thy blessed will, the heavenly comfort of thy Holy Spirit, 
 that she may taste and see how gracious the Lord is. Thou hast no 
 pleasure, good Lord, in the death of a sinner, and no man shall praise 
 thy name in the pit ; renew in her, Lord, we most humbly beseech thy 
 majesty, whatsoever is corrupt in her, either by her own frailty, or by the 
 malice of the ghostly enemy : visit her, O Lord, if it be thy good 
 pleasure, with thy saving health, as thou didst the offender at the side 
 of thy Cross, with this consolation : ' This day shalt thou be with me 
 in Paradise : ' Say unto her soul, as thou didst unto thy servant David, 
 I am thy salvation; so shall thy mercy, being more mighty, be more 
 magnified. Grant these mercies, O Lord, to us thy servants to the 
 increase of thy kingdom and glory, at this time. And further, O most 
 merciful Father, preserve, we most humbly beseech thy majesty, in long 
 and honourable peace and safety, Elizabeth thy servant, our most 
 natural Sovereign Lady and Queen ; let them be ashamed and con- 
 founded, O Lord, that seek after her soul ; let them be turned backward, 
 and put to confusion that wish her evil. And strengthen still. Lord, 
 we pray thee, the hand and balance of justice amongst us, by her gracious 
 
126 
 
 government ; so shall we, both now and ever, rest under thy faithfulness 
 and truth, as under a shield and buckler, and bless thy name and 
 magnify thy mercy which liveth and reigneth one most gracious God 
 for ever. Amen." 
 
 Mary heard but little or nothing of this prayer. She sat 
 upon the low stool provided for her, and engaged in devotion, 
 praying aloud ("with powerful, deep-chested tones?" says 
 Froude), in Latin, from Psalms 31, 51, and 91, having her 
 crucifix in her hands, and, at her girdle, a pair of beads, with 
 a gold cross at the end. Her women were weeping and 
 wailing around her, and, sliding from her stool, she knelt on 
 the cushion, and prayed again, not only in Latin, but also in 
 French, and then in English. She prayed for herself — for 
 Christ's afflicted Church — for her son — for Queen Elizabeth, 
 and for peace and prosperity to England and Scotland. 
 Then, rising from her knees, and holding up her crucifix, she 
 said "As Thy arms, O Christ, were extended on the cross, 
 even so receive me into the arms of Thy mercy, and blot out 
 all my sins with Thy most precious blood." 
 
 With inconceivable insult, the Earl of Kent told her, that 
 " it would be better for her to eschew her popish trumperies, 
 and bear Christ in her heart." 
 
 She meekly replied, " Can I hold the representation of my 
 crucified Redeemer in my hand, without bearing him, at the 
 same time, in my heart ? " 
 
127 
 
 The two executioners then, according to custom, knelt 
 down to ask forgiveness of what they had to do. " I forgive 
 you," she said, " with all my heart ; for, I hope this death 
 will give an end to all my troubles." 
 
 The executioners then, with an eye to perquisites, began 
 to attempt to disrobe her; but, she stayed their advances, 
 saying, with a smile, that she had never had such grooms to 
 wait upon her before, nor had she ever disrobed before so 
 numerous a company. 
 
 She then beckoned to her maids, Jane Kennedy and 
 Elizabeth Curie, who were kneeling outside the scaffold. 
 They went to her, but were so overcome by their emotion 
 that they could render her but little help, and she herself 
 took out the pins from her dress. As they continued weep- 
 ing, she placed her finger to her lips, to command their 
 silence, saying to them, "Do not weep ! I am very happy to 
 leave this world. You ought to rejoice to see me die in so 
 good a cause." 
 
 They then assisted her to disrobe, taking off her chain of 
 gold pomander beads, and laying her crucifix on the stool. 
 The chief executioner seized it as his perquisite ; and Jane 
 Kennedy, after a struggle, snatched it from him. 
 
 " Friend ! " said Mary to him, " let her have it ; she 
 
128 
 
 will give you more than its value in money." It was the 
 rosary she had bequeathed to the Countess of Arundel, and 
 it is still possessed by Mr. Howard, of Corby Castle. 
 
 She then took a final farewell of her weeping ladies, who 
 were crossing themselves and praying. She also, as they 
 knelt at her knees, signed them with the cross, and bidding 
 them farewell, prayed them to pray for her to the very last. 
 
 Divested of her outer garments, she now appeared in the 
 petticoat and laced camisole of crimson velvet, and covered 
 her arms with a pair of crimson velvet sleeves. Thus, she 
 appeared attired from head to foot in crimson.* Then she 
 knelt, while Jane Kennedy bound round her eyes a gold- 
 bordered handkerchief and Corpus Christi cloth in which 
 had been the consecrated wafer. Having pinned this, the two 
 maidens were compelled to descend from the scaffold, leaving 
 their royal mistress alone to close up the tragedy of her life. 
 
 "Then the Queen," wrote the eye-witness to Burghley, 
 "kneeled down upon the cushion, at which time, very 
 resolutely, and without any token of the fear of death, she 
 
 * Or as Froude says, " blood-red from head to foot." Carrying out his 
 theory of a theatrical performance, he adds, " Her reasons for adopting 
 so extraordinary a costume must be left to conjecture. It is only certain 
 that it must have been carefully studied, and that the pictorial effect must 
 have been appalling." He says, " she stood on the black scaffold, with 
 the black figures all around her." Except her own maidens, there is no 
 evidence that there were any black figures besides the two executioners 
 in black velvet. But Mr. Froude is nothing, unless picturesque. 
 
^'W^^ 
 
 .fm/4 
 
 Pi 8 
 
 < <3 
 
 IS - 
 
 o t^ 
 o 
 
 U 
 
129 
 
 spake aloud this Psalm (XXXI.) in Latin, " In Te, Domine, 
 speravi, ne confundar is oeternum," &c. Then, groping for 
 the block,* she laid down her head, putting her chain over 
 her back with both her hands, which, holding there still, had 
 been cut off, had they not been espied. Then she laid her- 
 self upon the block most quietly, and stretching out her arms 
 and legs, cried out " In manus tuas, Domine," &c. (" Into 
 Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit ! ") three or four 
 times. At last, while one of the executioners held her 
 straightly with one of his hands, the other gave two great 
 strokes with the axe, before he did cut off her head, and yet 
 left a httle gristle behind ; at which time she made very small 
 noise, and stirred not any part of herself from the place 
 where she lay." 
 
 Dr. Lingard, Miss Strickland, and Mr. Hosack, quoting 
 from other authorities, say that the executioner struck three 
 times ; and that, at the first stroke, he inflicted a deep wound 
 on the lower part of the skull. Any way, two strokes 
 or three, the butchery was done in a terribly bungling 
 manner. 
 
 " Then," continues the eye-witness in his account to 
 
 * Tennyson ("Queen Mary,") describing the execution of Lady Jane 
 Grey, says : 
 
 " And when her innocent eyes were bound, 
 vShe, with her poor blind hands feeling — ' where is it ? 
 Where is it ? " 
 
130 
 
 Burghley, " the executioner which cut off her head, hfted it 
 up, and bade ' God save the Queen ; ' then her dressing of 
 lawn fell from her head, which appeared as grey as if she had 
 been three score and ten years old, poled very short, her 
 face being, in a moment, so much altered from the form, 
 which she had when she was alive, as few could remember 
 her by her dead face : her hps stirred up and down almost a 
 quarter of an hour after her head was cut off." 
 
 "Then, said Mr. Dean, "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 likewise 
 said, " such end happen to all the Queen's and the Gospel's 
 enemies." 
 
 "Then one of the executioners, pulling off part of her 
 dress, espied her little dog, which was under her clothes, 
 which could not be gotten forth but by force, and afterwards 
 would not depart from her dead corpse, but came and laid 
 between her head and shoulders (a thing diligently noted :) 
 the dog being imbrued with her blood, was carried away and 
 washed, as all things else were that had any blood, except 
 those things that were burned. The executioners were sent 
 away with money for their fees, not having anything that be- 
 longed to her. Afterwards, everyone was commanded forth 
 of the hall, saving the sheriff and his men, who carried her 
 
up into a great chamber, made ready for the surgeons to 
 embalm her, — and there she was embalmed." 
 
 So ends the account of the tragedy by the eye-witness who 
 
 signed himself " R. W,," and despatched by him, three days 
 
 after the execution, to " The Right Honourable Sir William 
 
 Cecil, Knt., Lord Burleigh, Lord High Treasurer of 
 
 England." 
 
 ** See the last morning break ! with mournful state, 
 Forth comes the royal captive to her fate. 
 Death could not move her grief — the sighing breath 
 Of pitying bosoms gave the sting to death. 
 ' Be calm !' she said, * for Stuart soon shall be \ 
 
 Above the sphere of mortal majesty;' 
 Her little triumphs and her wrongs be o'er : — 
 Weep, no more, Melvin — faithful, — weep no more ! 
 A trembling hope her last sad words express; 
 Scotland admonish, ruthless England bless, 
 But, oh ! the pause that follow'd— and the groan 
 Struck ev'ry nerve, and froze the blood to stone ! " * 
 
 "Thus" says Sir Walter Scott, "died Mary, Queen of 
 Scots, aged a little above forty-four years. She was eminent 
 for beauty, for talents and accomplishments, nor is there 
 reason to doubt her natural goodness of heart, and courageous 
 manhness of disposition. Yet, she was, in every sense, one 
 of the most unhappy Princesses that ever lived, from the 
 moment when she came into the world, in an hour of defeat 
 
 * •' Antona's Banks " : (1797.) 
 
132 
 
 and danger, to that in which a bloody and violent death 
 closed a weary captivity of eighteen years. * * This may 
 be truly said, that, if a life of exile and misery, endured with 
 almost saintly patience, from the 15th of June, 1567, until 
 the day of her death upon the 8th of February, 1586, could 
 atone for crimes and errors of the class imputed to her, no 
 such penalty was ever more fully discharged than by Mary 
 Stuart." 
 
 Dr. Robertson, the historian, says "Mary's sufferings 
 exceed, both in degree and in duration, those tragical 
 distresses which fancy has feigned to excite sorrow and 
 commiseration : and, while we survey them, we are apt 
 altogether to forget her frailties ; we think of her faults with 
 less indignation, and approve of our tears as if they were shed 
 for SLj^erson who had attained much nearer to pure virtue." 
 yferantome wrote of her ; " No man ever beheld her person 
 without admiration and love, or will read her history without 
 sorrow." 
 
 Even the biassed Froude is compelled to say of her last 
 moments, "The self-possession was faultless, the courage 
 splendid. Never did any human creature meet death more 
 bravely." 
 
 Renauld de Beaulne, Archbishop of Bourges, and Patri- 
 arch of Acquitaine, in his funeral oration at the special 
 
133 
 
 service held in Mary's memory, in the Cathedral of Notre 
 Dame, Paris, in March, 1587, spoke, most eloquently, of her 
 endowments, whereof " it was not easy to find so many 
 centred in one human being; for, besides that marvellous 
 beauty which attracted the eyes of all the world, she had a 
 disposition so excellent, an understanding so clear, and 
 judgment so sound, as could be rarely paralleled by a person 
 of her sex and age. She possessed great courage, but it was 
 tempered by feminine gentleness and sweetness." He 
 described the splendours of her bridal day in that Cathedral 
 at the early age of fifteen,* and then said : "A little time has 
 flowed on, and it has all vanished like a cloud. Who could 
 have believed that such a change could have befallen her 
 who appeared then so triumphant, and that we should have 
 seen her a prisoner who had restored prisoners to liberty; 
 in poverty, who was accustomed to give so liberally to others ; 
 treated with contumely by those on whom she had conferred 
 
 * Thus referred to by Tennyson, in his Queen Mary., where the Queen 
 says to Noailles, 
 
 " Mary of Scotland — for I have not own'd 
 My sister, and I will not — after me 
 Is heir of England ; and my royal father, 
 To make the crown of England one with ours. 
 Had mark'd her for my brother Edward's bride ; 
 Ay, but your king stole her a babe from Scotland 
 In order to betroth her to your Dauphin. 
 See then : 
 
 Mary of Scotland, married to your Dauphin, 
 Would make our England, France," 
 
134 
 
 honours; and, finally, the axe of a base executioner mangling 
 the form of her who was doubly a Queen ; that form which 
 honoured the nuptial bed of a sovereign of France, falling 
 dishonoured on a scaffold, and that beauty which had been 
 one of the wonders of the world, faded in a dreary prison, 
 and at last effaced by a piteous death." 
 
 Miss Agnes Strickland says, "With the notorious excep- 
 tions of Queen Elizabeth, Catherine de Medicis and the 
 Countess of Shrewsbury, Mary had no female enemies. No 
 female witnesses from her household came forward to bear 
 testimony against her, when it was out of her power to pur- 
 chase secresy if they had been cognisant of her guilt. None 
 of the ladies of her court, whether of the reformed religion 
 or of the old faith — not even Lady Bothwell herself — lifted 
 up her voice to impute blame to her. Mary was attended by 
 noble Scotch gentlewomen in the days of her royal splendour ; 
 they clave to her in adversity, through good report and evil 
 report ; they shared her prisons, they waited upon her on the 
 scaffold, and forsook not her mangled remains till they had 
 seen them consigned to a long-denied tomb." 
 
 Mr. Robert Chambers, in his " History of Scotland," says 
 of the prisoner of Fotheringhay : " Her extraordinary mis- 
 fortunes, confinement, and its attendant bad health, together 
 with the influence of her religion, had reduced her mind to a 
 
135 
 
 degree of soberness and gravity very different from what it 
 displayed in the days when hfe was young and hope in its 
 prime. She now regarded death rather as a blessing than an 
 evil, for it promised her a passage from a labyrinth of miseries, 
 which she could never otherwise hope to leave behind her. 
 Thus, while Elizabeth cherished towards her those malignant 
 feelings which a wolf may be supposed to entertain towards 
 the prey he is about to rend asunder, Mary prayed with 
 sincerity and fervour for the happiness of her destroyer ; and 
 even, after having given up all hope of life, was able to write 
 to her in a strain of almost sisterly affection." 
 
 Such was the end of the tragedy of Fotheringhay. 
 
 The following poem on the Execution of Mary, Queen of 
 
 Scots, was written by my friend, the Rev. George Edmond 
 
 Maunsell, Rector of Thorpe Malsor, near Kettering : * 
 *' vShe heard unmoved the fatal message told, 
 Her cheek blanched not, nor ran the life-blood cold 
 Back to the sickening heart ; but as a queen 
 She bore her, whilst around her maids were seen 
 In all the frantic attitudes of woe. 
 
 * He died, Oct. 29, 1875, ^ged 60, at Marina, St. Leonard's-on-Sea. 
 A volume of his "Poems" was published, in 1861, by Smith, Elder, 
 and Co, 
 
136 
 
 One, bending downwards, rocks her to and fro ; 
 One stands as all aghast : no breath, no moan, 
 Betrays another's grief, but marble, stone, 
 She sits, while from the eyes like thunder rain 
 The tears plash down ; one, starting up amain, 
 Shrieks, bans and curses. Near, the Kentish chief 
 Turns down his wolfish eyes, as when a thief 
 Gripped in the act stands sullen, or some sprite 
 Of hated darkness, by the enchanter's might 
 Forced up to outer day, with evil glance 
 Glares from his downcast eyelids all askance. 
 
 '"Tis sudden," were the words Queen Mary spoke, 
 
 " Sudden, but not less welcome comes the stroke 
 
 That ends my sorrows ; yet I scarcely deemed 
 
 That she, my sister — she who surely seemed 
 
 Throned to love mercy, justice and defend 
 
 The suppliant and the stranger — thus should bend 
 
 Her thoughts to slay the stranger, the opprest. 
 
 Yet be it so — to me the change is blest, 
 
 Nor deem I worthy of eternal bliss. 
 
 The shrinking soul that, at such time as this. 
 
 Bears not the body up through that short strife 
 
 That bars the passage to eternal life. 
 
 But mine stands fix'd and firm — although, perchance, 
 
 In girlhood's days, in happy, blithesome France, 
 
 Some natuial dread had been, some tears had passed 
 
 To hear to-morrow's sun must be my last. 
 
 Now, all is o'er, mine own familiar friends 
 
 Against me draw the sword ; a dark cloud bends 
 
 O'er Scotland's royal race ; and all I pray, 
 
 Is that from Mary's blood some happier day 
 
 May dawn on Stuart's name. For England's Queen 
 
 I have unfeign'd forgiveness : none, I ween. 
 
 Deem gentlier of her deed. 'Tis sure no wrong 
 
137 
 
 To grant the freedom I have sighed for long. 
 Weep not ! to-morrow all shall see that I, 
 As Christian and as Queen know how to die ; 
 Nor deem them for myself, if trace of tears 
 On this wan cheek at early dawn appears ; 
 My spirit joyous stirs, and in this breast 
 Pants but to flee away and be at rest." 
 
 The fatal hour is come, that morning's red, 
 Whose eve shall see thee numbered with the dead. 
 Wronged Mary Stuart ! All death's hideous gear — 
 The axe, the block, the headsman — wait thee near. 
 Yet still, with heart unstirred, with look serene, 
 Moves onward to her death fair Scotland's queen. 
 Calm she unrobes her, calmly bends and prays 
 For England's queen — success, and length of days 
 For her who shortens hers. "Tell each true heart 
 (These her last words) " that firmly I depart 
 Fixed in the ancient faith : I know no wrong 
 That I have done to any ; but ere long 
 Before His throne, we, face to face, shall plead, 
 Who sees the secret thought clear as the deed. 
 There I repose my trust : His doom shall tell 
 Mine innocence or guilt — and now, farewell ! " 
 
 'Tis done ! one bigot voice is heard alone, 
 "Thus die Eliza's foes!" One sullen tone 
 Singly replies " Amen ! " The heaving breast. 
 The starting tear-drop, show how feel the rest. 
 
 O Mary Stuart ! gentlest of thy race. 
 
 Unmatched in form and loveliness of face ! 
 
 How can we deem thee guilty, yet survey 
 
 Thy last calm hours, when hope had passed away ! 
 
 Surely, no sullen apathy of crime 
 
 Bore up thy spirit in that awful time ; 
 
138 
 
 Not the dull consciousness of hidden guilt, 
 
 But, thy firm trust on Jesu's mercy built, 
 
 Bade thee, with Faith's strong eye, the future scan, 
 
 And hope that mercy here denied by man. 
 
 In the dark shadow of that gloomy vale. 
 
 Where e'en the mightiest spirits bend and quail, 
 
 There wast thou proved, there counted to be pure ; 
 
 Thence hast thou passed in innocence secure. 
 
 Safe from the smiter's hand, the oppressor's rod, 
 
 Wafted on seraph wings to meet thy God. 
 
PART IV. 
 
 FUNERAL OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. 
 
 The bloody work was done, and the butchery was over. 
 Elizabeth's victim was dead, though the lips in the severed 
 head still moved, and the body was warm and palpitating. 
 Jane Kennedy and Elizabeth Curie, regardless of the pools 
 of blood, sprang on the scaffold, and besought the exe- 
 cutioners " not to strip the corpse of their beloved mistress, 
 but to permit her faithful servants to fulfil her last request, 
 by covering it, as modesty required, and removing it to her 
 bedchamber, where themselves and her other ladies would 
 perform the last duties." 
 
 Needless to say, their prayer was not granted. They were 
 rudely repulsed, hustled out of the banquet-hall, and placed 
 under lock and key. The executioners, to secure their per- 
 quisites, began to rudely strip the body, but were not per- 
 mitted to take anything that had belonged to the murdered 
 Queen. They had to satisfy themselves with a money fee. 
 The portions of the dress over which her blood had gushed, 
 were thrust into the fire, together with the black cloth from 
 
140 
 
 the block and stool, so that none might dip handkerchiefs in 
 the royal blood, or preserve any fragments for relics. The 
 decapitated body was coarsely wrapped in the cloth that had 
 been stripped from the billiard-table, and was carried out of 
 the hall to an upper chamber. The hall was cleared of its 
 spectators ; and Lord Talbot, son of the Earl of Shrewsbury, 
 rode off at a gallop to take to the Queen, at Greenwich, the 
 joyful news that her victim was dead. The London bells 
 rang out merrily, and bonfires blazed, as soon as the tidings 
 were made known that the prisoner of Fotheringhay was now 
 a corpse. 
 
 Meanwhile, the decapitated head of Mary was carried, on 
 the black velvet cushion, to the large window of the banquet- 
 hall, where, for the space of an hour, it was exposed to the 
 view of the throng of visitors and soldiers in the courtyard. 
 One of the spectators, most probably, was Amyas Cawood 
 (brother or nephew of Margaret Cawood) who painted the 
 picture of the severed head of Mary Stuart, which came into 
 possession of Sir Walter Scott, and is in the collection at 
 Abbotsford. It is depicted as placed on a table, covered 
 with scarlet cloth, and bears the artist's name, with the in- 
 scription : "Maria Scotiae Regina, February 9th, 1587." 
 Miss Strickland describes the picture thus : — " This affecting 
 posthumous portrait bears an unmistakable analogy in features 
 
141 
 
 and contour to Mary's prison pictures ; but the nostrils are 
 sharpened and a httle elevated. A solemn stillness appears 
 to have composed the marbled brow, placid lips and sealed 
 eyelids, and the grey pallor of death supersedes the beautiful 
 tints of her natural complexion. One pearl appears among 
 the dark locks which have been replaced by the artist, and 
 the brow is adorned with a radiated diadem — the martyr's 
 crown. The delineation of the neck is considered anatomi- 
 cally true, and is a terrifically fine work of art ; yet, it is 
 impossible to contemplate the ineffable composure of the 
 features, 
 
 ' And mark the mild angelic air 
 The rapture of repose that's there,' 
 
 without feeling that it verifies its own authenticity, by bring- 
 ing Mary Stuart's countenance before us at the blessed season 
 * when the wicked had ceased from troubling, and the weary 
 was at rest.' " 
 
 Another portrait, probably from another eye-witness, of the 
 severed head of Mary Stuart, is in the Museum of the United 
 Service Club. A full length portrait of the Queen of Scots, 
 presumably the work of Amyas Cawood, is in the Scotch 
 College at Paris, whither it came from the Scotch College at 
 Douay, to which college it had been presented by Elizabeth 
 Curie. A steel engraving of this portrait is given in Miss 
 Strickland's last volume of " Mary Stuart " ; and a copy of 
 
142 
 
 the painting is in the Royal collection at Windsor. It repre- 
 sents the Queen of Scots as she appeared upon the scaffold ; 
 and, in the background, is a vignette representation of the 
 scene of the execution, after the first blundering stroke of 
 the axe had made a ghastly wound on the base of Mary's 
 skull. The hkenesses and costumes of those on the scaffold 
 are believed to be very exact. Thus, both in painting and 
 writing, there is much contemporaneous evidence of the 
 tragedy in the banquet-hall at Fotheringhay. 
 
 With reference to Mary's hair, close cut and grey, the Earl 
 of Shrewsbury said that it .had been so cut in his house for 
 the convenience of applying cataclasms to relieve her severe 
 headaches. These were neuralgic, and were, probably, the 
 chief cause of her hair turning prematurely grey. Lord Byron, 
 however, thought otherwise, for, in his note to " Manfred," 
 where he complains that he is 
 
 " Grey -haired with anguish," 
 he mentions, as instances, Marie Antoinette, and Mary, 
 Queen of Scots, turning rapidly grey " with cares and 
 sorrows " ; and that the hair of Mary's grandson, Charles I, 
 turned quite grey, in like manner, during his stay at Caris- 
 brooke. In another place, Byron says, 
 
 " But, there are forms which Time to touch forbears, 
 And turns aside his scythe to vulgar things, 
 Such as was Mary's, Queen of .Scots : true — tears 
 
143 
 
 And love destroy : and sapping sorrow wrings 
 Charms from the charmer, yet some never grow 
 Ugly." 
 
 Mr. Froude — always eager to detract — says, "At once a 
 metamorphosis was witnessed, strange as was ever wrought 
 by wand of fabled enchanter. The coif fell off and the false 
 plaits. The laboured illusion vanished. The lady who had 
 knelt before the block was in the maturity of grace and 
 loveliness. The executioner, when he raised the head, as 
 usual, to show it to the crowd, exposed the withered features 
 of a grizzled, wrinkled old woman." It is self-evident, that 
 the " maturity of grace and loveliness " could not instantly 
 be transformed into the extreme opposite, even by the cruel 
 work of the axe. That her face was " in a moment, so much 
 altered from the form which she had when she was alive," 
 was only natural, and we can well believe the eye-witness of 
 the scene, when he made this report to Burghley. But, for 
 the sake of strong contrasts, Mr. Froude deviates from the 
 stern facts of the case — which, in any form, are sufficiently 
 odious and repugnant. 
 
 Sorrow, sickness, treachery and weary years of captivity 
 had, as a matter of course, left their traces on the face and 
 form of Mary, Queen of Scots, of whom the historian. Dr. 
 William Robertson, says : " With regard to the Queen's 
 person, a circumstance not to be omitted in writing the 
 
144 
 
 history of a female reign, all contemporary authors agree in 
 ascribing to Mary the utmost beauty of countenance and 
 elegance of shape of which the human form is capable. Her 
 hair was black, though according to the fashion of that age 
 she frequently wore borrowed locks, and of different colours. 
 Her eyes were a dark grey,* her complexion was exquisitely 
 fine, and her hands and arms remarkably delicate, both as to 
 shape and colour. Her stature was of a height that rose to 
 the majestic. She danced, she walked, and rode with equal 
 grace. Her taste for music was just, and she both sung and 
 played upon the lute with uncommon skill." 
 
 With regard to the affecting episode of Mary Stuart's little 
 pet dog accompanying her on the scaffold, hidden by her 
 train, and refusing to leave the severed head of his mistress, 
 Miss Strickland says that the dog was a Skye terrier, and that 
 "some barbarous fanatic, desiring to force a verification of 
 Knox's favourite comparison between this unfortunate 
 Princess and Jezebel, tried to tempt the dog to lap the blood 
 of his royal mistress; but, with intelligence beyond that of. 
 
 * "And when you add to this, her womanhood 
 In its meridian, her bkie eyes or grey — 
 The last, if they have soul, are quite as good, 
 
 Or better, as the best examples say ; 
 Napoleon's, Mary's (Queen of Scotland) should 
 
 Lend to that colour a transcendent ray ; 
 And Pallas also sanctions the same hue, 
 
 Too wise to look through optics black or blue." 
 
 J^ord Byron, 
 
145 
 his species, the sagacious creature refused ; nor, could he be 
 induced ever again to partake of food, but pined himself to 
 death." This she gives on the authority of Teulet's "La 
 Morte de la Royne d'Escosse." The dog is shewn, under- 
 neath Mary's dress, in the engraving of " Queen Mary on the 
 scaffold blessing her ladies," from the picture by Gourlay 
 Steell, A.R.S.A., in the seventh volume of Miss Strickland's 
 " Lives of the Queens of Scotland." The incident was also 
 used to advantage by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton : — 
 
 "And not one human eye: — yet see, what stirs the funeral pall? 
 What sound — a sound of sorrow — wails low moaning through the 
 
 hall? 
 Close by the world-forsaken form, one thing a vigil keeps, 
 At every sound without, more near to that still'd heart it creeps : 
 It gazes on those glazed eyes — it hearkens for a breath — 
 It does not know, poor fool, why Love should not be true to 
 
 Death. 
 It still can fawn, as fond a slave, upon that powerless hand ; 
 It still can hear from voiceless lips, a voice that can command. 
 To that alone, through all the earth, no matter what had been, 
 The pomp or fate, the guilt or doom — the Dead was still a 
 
 Queen." 
 
 After the headless body of the murdered Queen, wrapped 
 in the cloth from the biUiard-table, had been carried from the 
 scaffold in the banquet-hall, to an upper chamber in 
 Fotheringhay Castle, it was there embalmed, either on the 
 same, or the next, day, by a physician from Stamford, assisted 
 by the Fotheringhay apothecary, in the presence of Paulet 
 
146 
 
 and the Sheriff. As Mary's ahiioner had been denied 
 admittance to the scaffold, so her surgeons were denied 
 admittance to her corpse. Nor were her faithful maidens 
 allowed to see the body of their mistress ; for, as soon as it 
 had been embalmed, it was placed in a leaden coffin. 
 
 For six months, that leaden coffin remained in that upper 
 chamber at Fotheringhay ; and, for six months, the servants 
 of the murdered Queen were kept close prisoners ; during 
 which time, as Sir Walter Scott says, " Queen Elizabeth, in 
 the same spirit of hypocrisy which had characterised all her 
 proceedings toward Mary, .no sooner knew that the deed was 
 done, than she hastened to deny her own share in it. She 
 pretended that Davison had acted positively against her 
 command in laying the warrant before the Privy Council; and 
 that she might seem the more serious in her charge, she 
 caused him to be fined a large sum of money, "^ and deprived 
 him of his offices, and of her favour for ever. She sent a 
 special messenger to King James to apologize for "this 
 unhappy accident," as she chose to term the execution of 
 Queen Mary." 
 
 She asserted, that "she was neither consenting to, nor 
 
 * ;^io,ooo: see Charles Knight's "Old England," p. 55. See also 
 Lingard's " History," where there is a singular misprint, at p. 474, — not 
 corrected in the table of Errata — that Davison was released ' ' from 
 confinement in 1689." It should be 1589. 
 
147 
 
 cognisant of, the barbarous deed that had been perpetrated 
 on her unfortunate kinswoman at Fotheringhay." In short, 
 it was an " unhappy accident." When the Earl of Sinclair, 
 appeared, clad " in complete steel," before Mary's son, James 
 enquired if he had not seen the order for a general mourning. 
 "Yes," was the high-spirited reply: "this is the proper 
 mourning for the Queen of Scotland." 
 
 For six months the headless body of the Queen of Scots, 
 lay, in its leaden casket, in that chamber in Fotheringhay 
 Castle : when, at last, yielding to the remonstrances of Mary's 
 son, and the appeals of her faithful servants, Elizabeth 
 granted permission for the body of her victim to receive 
 Christian burial. More than this, she ordered that the 
 obsequies should be conducted with state ceremonials, and 
 that Peterborough Cathedral should be the scene of the 
 funeral. The first of August, 1587, was the day fixed upon 
 for the ceremony. 
 
 Some days before that date, Mr. Fortescue, Master of the 
 Grand Wardrobe, Garter King-of-Arms, was sent down, with 
 Mr. Dorrel, and Mr. Cox, and other officials, to make the 
 needful arrangements both at Peterborough and Fothering- 
 hay. Other officials, with a milliner, were also sent to 
 Fotheringhay, with black cloth and requisite material for 
 mourning-cloaks and head dresses, for Sir Andrew Melville, 
 
148 
 
 Burgoigne, and the ladies who had attended on the Queen of 
 Scots not only at Fotheringhay, but also at Chartley, from 
 whence they had been brought to Fotheringhay and there 
 detained during the past six months. These preparations, 
 however, were unavailing, for all the attendants of the late 
 Queen declared that they would only wear the mourning that 
 they already had in use. 
 
 On the evening of Sunday, July 30th, the Garter King-of- 
 Arms, with five heralds, and forty horsemen, arrived at the 
 Castle, bringing with them a funeral car, drawn by four 
 caparisoned horses. The car was covered with black velvet, 
 on which were escutcheons bearing the arms of Scotland, 
 with little pennons round about it. The leaden coffin, placed 
 in an outer coffin, was carried down the stairs, and lifted on 
 to the car, by torch-light, by the bareheaded heralds, habited 
 in their coats and tabards. Then, at ten o'clock, the 
 procession started for Peterborough, by torch-light, and a 
 mourning train of men and women, who had been faithful to 
 the Queen of Scots in the days of captivity, followed her 
 murdered remains as they were borne away, in mock state, 
 from Fotheringhay Castle, her last prison, and the scene of 
 her sham trial and cruel death. 
 
 It must have been a weird scene, in the dead of the night, 
 to any one who chanced to see that torch-light procession 
 
149 
 
 making its slow way along the country roads. The villages 
 of Elton, Chesterton, Alwalton, Orton Waterville, Orton 
 Longueville (a seat of the premier Scottish Marquis — the 
 Marquis of Huntly), and Woodstone, would have to be 
 passed, before the bridge over the Nene to Peterborough was 
 reached. The distance was about ten miles, or rather more ; 
 and it was between one and two o'clock, in the early morning 
 of Monday, July 31st, that the procession halted before the 
 west door of Peterborough Cathedral. The body was there 
 received by the Bishop, (Richard Rowland) the Dean and 
 Chapter, and Clarencieux, King-of-Arms, and was borne to 
 the vault, not without difficulty, for it weighed nearly nine 
 hundred weight, and the embalming had been done in such a 
 defective way, that it was feared the leaden coffin might 
 burst. 
 
 The place selected for the vault was in the south aisle, near 
 to the tomb of John, the last Abbot and first Bishop of 
 Peterborough, and immediately opposite to that of the ill- 
 treated Queen, Katharine of Arragon, the ftrst wife of Mary's 
 uncle. King Henry VIII. Queen Katharine's hearse of 
 black and silver was still standing over her grave, which had 
 been dug by Robert Scarlett,"^ the Sexton, who also dug the 
 
 * He died July 2, 1591, aged 98, having buried two Queens, and two 
 generations of the inhabitants. A very interesting portrait — exhibited at 
 
150 
 
 grave for Mary Stuart. Except for any silent prayers from 
 the real mourners, Mary's faithful attendants, the coffin was 
 placed in the vault without any ceremony — the state 
 ceremonial being reserved for the following day. The vault 
 was immediately covered, a small opening only being left to 
 receive the broken staves at the time of burial. The cost for 
 breaking the ground and making the grave was ten pounds, 
 and twenty pounds was spent on black hangings of baize, 
 ornamented with metal escutcheons, that were hung in the 
 Choir, and on every second pillar of the Nave. 
 
 the Portrait Gallery, South Kensington, in 1866 — hangs on the west wall 
 of the nave of Peterborough Cathedral, and its removal to some more 
 appropriate building is much to be desired. Underneath the portrait are 
 the following lines : — 
 
 "You see old Scarlett's picture stand on hie, 
 But, at your feet here doth his body lye. 
 His gravestone doth his age and death-time shew, 
 His office by heis token you may know. 
 Second to none for strength and sturdy lymm, 
 A scare-babe mighty voice, with visage grim ; 
 He had intered two queenes within this place 
 And this townes householders in his life's space 
 Twice over, but at length his own time came, 
 What he for others did, for him the same 
 Was done : no doubt his soule doth live for aye, 
 In heaven, though here his body clad in clay." 
 He is represented as wearing a red skull-cap, brownish red jacket and 
 trunk hose, blue stockings, and red-heeled black shoes tied with blue 
 ribands. His spade is in his right hand ; a bundle of five keys in his 
 left ; and his dog- whip stuck through his girdle. The present painting 
 was reproduced from the original in 1747. (vSee Murray's Eastern 
 Cathedrals, p. 71 ; Rev. O. W. Davys' Giiide to Peterhoroicgh Cathedral , 
 p. 72 ; Rev. W. D. Sweeting's Parish Churches in and around Peter- 
 borough, p. 62 ; Rev. G. A. Poole's Diocesan History of Peterhorojtgli, 
 p. 148; Chambers' Book of Days ^ Vol. H, p. 17.) 
 
151 
 
 On the Monday afternoon, the ceremonial state mourners 
 reached Peterborough from London, and were sumptuously 
 entertained in the Bishop's Palace. The Countess of Bedford 
 was the representative of Queen Elizabeth, as chief mourner ; 
 which, of course (says Miss Strickland) " must be regarded 
 as a public acknowledgment that Mary was innocent of all 
 the crimes laid to her charge, especially that of practising 
 against the life of Elizabeth." 
 
 A great supper was given to these state mourners in the 
 Bishop's banqueting-hall, which was hung with black — the 
 Countess of Bedford being seated on a throne of state, 
 beneath a purple velvet canopy. Sir Andrew Melville and 
 Burgoigne were brought into the hall to see these prepara- 
 tions, and were told that " her Majesty wished no expense 
 to be spared," and " if they thought that there was anything 
 that required altering or amending." To which they coldly 
 replied, "It is not for us to find fault, the whole being 
 dependent on the pleasure of the Queen, your mistress, who 
 is, doubtless, discreet enough to make proper preparations." 
 
 Early on the morning of Tuesday, August the first, the 
 Bishop's Palace was astir. Soon after eight o'clock, the 
 Countess of Bedford, attended by the lords and ladies, was 
 escorted, by the Bishops of Peterborough and Lincoln, from 
 her own chamber to the presence-chamber, where, under a 
 
^52 
 
 cloth of estate, the staves of office were given to the Lord 
 Chamberlain and the other officers. Then, with her train 
 borne by Lady St. John, and, with the Earls of Rutland and 
 Lincoln on either side, Elizabeth's representative walked in 
 procession to the Bishop's banquet-hall, there to find, accord- 
 ing to custom, a representation of the murdered Queen lying 
 upon a bier. 
 
 The sham body was then borne by six cloaked gentlemen, 
 with eight gentlemen carrying bannerols, and four knights 
 bearing a canopy, and was carried from the Palace to the 
 Cathedral. The order of the procession is given at length 
 in Gunton's "History of Peterborough Minster," but is 
 too long to be quoted here. Suffice it to say, that many 
 hundreds of officials, titled persons, gentlewomen, poor men, 
 and poor women were there ; and that the helm and crest, 
 and target and coat-of-arms, and other heraldic emblems, 
 were borne in the procession, as at a royal funeral. 
 
 It was received, at the Cathedral, by the two bishops, the 
 dean and the clergy, and carried to the southern entrance to 
 the choir. There, over the vault, wherein the real body was 
 laid, the sham body was placed under a gorgeously decorated 
 hearse, twenty feet square by twenty-seven feet high, with 
 escutcheons and fringe of gold. Over the sham coffin, a pall 
 of black velvet was thrown, and a gold and jewelled crown 
 
153 
 
 was placed on a purple velvet cushion. Among the mourners 
 were " seventeen Scots in cloaks ; and a Scottish priest," who 
 is said to have been De Prean, Mary Stuart's almoner. He 
 had a gold cross pendent at his breast. Burgoigne, and all 
 the Scots, except Sir Andrew Melville and the two Mowbrays, 
 then withdrew from the Cathedral, not wishing to join in a 
 service to which they were aliens ; and this conduct offended 
 many of the English present, who endeavoured, vainly, to 
 force them to remain. 
 
 Then, the Bishop of Lincoln, Dr. William Wickham, 
 preached a sermon from the fifth and three following verses 
 of the 39th Psalm, "Lord, let me know mine end," &c. 
 When, in his prayer, he gave thanks for those who were 
 translated out of this vale of misery, he used these words, 
 "Let us give thanks for the happy dissolution of the high and 
 mighty Princess, Mary, late Queen of Scotland, and dowager 
 of France, of whose life and death, at this time, I have not 
 much to say, because I was not acquainted with the one, 
 neither was I present at the other. I will not enter into 
 judgment further ; but, because it hath been signified unto me 
 that she trusted to be saved by the blood of Christ, we must 
 hope well for her salvation ; for, as Father Luther was wont 
 to say, ' many a one that liveth a Papist, dieth a Protestant.' " 
 Which extraordinary prayer, he then followed up by an 
 
154 
 
 ordinary discourse on the general doctrine of the vanity of all 
 flesh. But, even this prudent discourse was adjudged by the 
 fanatical Puritans to contain expressions that were too 
 favourable to "the popish Princess;" and Martin Marprelate"* 
 charged the Bishop of Lincoln with praying that his soul, and 
 the souls of all the rest there present, might be with the soul 
 of that unrepentant papist departed. 
 
 At the close of the sermon, a long piece of velvet and a 
 cushion were laid at the Bishop's feet, for the Countess of 
 Bedford to kneel upon. She was conducted to it by the 
 King of the Heralds and four officers with white staves, the 
 Earls of Rudand and Lincoln being on either side of her, and 
 her train being borne by Lady St. John. She knelt awhile 
 before the Bishop, and then returned to her former seat. 
 The coat armour was then brought from the hearse, and 
 taken by the two Earls to the Bishop, and then laid on the 
 altar. The sword, helmet, target, crown and crest were 
 treated in the same manner ; and two red banners were also 
 
 * This was the assumed name of John Ap Henry, a Welsh fanatic, and 
 a furious denouncer of the Crown and Church. His scurrilous pamphlets 
 were provided by himself at his own press, which he set up at various 
 places. At the date of the Queen of Scots' funeral, he was living at 
 Fawsley, in Northamptonshire, where he worked his printing-press in a 
 private upper room, approached by a winding-stair. He was brought 
 before the Star Chamber Court and heavily fined ; but, this did not deter 
 him from speaking seditiously against Queen Elizabeth, for which crime 
 he was executed. May 29, 1593. (See Maskell's History of the Mar- 
 Prelate Controversy. ) 
 
155 
 
 laid on the altar, and the eight bannerets were placed in the 
 hearse. The Countess, her train borne by Sir John Manners, 
 then advanced a second time to the Bishop, " and offered ; " 
 followed by the ladies and gentlemen two-and-two, and the 
 officers with white staves. The Bishop of Lincoln was then 
 conducted from the pulpit; and the greater part of the 
 mourners then left the Cathedral. Towards the door of the 
 choir, the Scottish women stood, parted on either side ; and, 
 as the English ladies passed, they kissed them all. 
 
 Then the Dean read the funeral service at the vault, the 
 officers breaking their staves and casting them upon the 
 coffin. This ended the ceremony ; and the procession 
 returned to the Bishop's Palace, where a handsome banquet 
 was prepared to which the attendants of the murdered Queen 
 were invited. They refused to go, saying that "their hearts 
 were too sad to feast, and they preferred being by themselves, 
 as they could not restrain their tears from falling." Their 
 wish was granted; and they dined by themselves in a separate 
 room, no Englishmen being present but those who served 
 them, and who noticed that " they took no pleasure in their 
 banquet, and wept more abundantly every time they were 
 pressed to eat." 
 
 In the afternoon the nobility quitted Peterborough, where 
 the concourse of people was so great as to amount to several 
 
156 
 
 thousands. Thus ended the state ceremonial of the removal 
 of Mary's corpse from Fotheringhay to Peterborough. For 
 six months it had not found a grave at the castle prison ; and 
 its occupancy of the cathedral vault was only temporary. As 
 the Queen of Scots' body, in life, had been taken from one 
 prison to another, so was it with her body after death. 
 Five-and-twenty years passed away ; and the murdered form 
 then received another royal funeral. It was exhumed from 
 the vault in Peterborough Cathedral, and removed by her 
 son, King James, to Westminster Abbey, there to finally rest, 
 in the centre of the south aisle of Henry VIl's chapel. 
 
 The stately monument erected by her son to her memory, 
 shews her reposing beneath a regal canopy, her head resting 
 on cushions, and the Scottish lion at her feet. The face is 
 considered to be a genuine likeness, corresponding in feature, 
 contour, and expression, with the best authenticated portraits. 
 The face is lovely and intellectual ; the form, graceful and 
 majestic. " As long " says her French biographer, Caussin, 
 "as there shall be eyes and tears in this vale of misery, there 
 shall be tears distilled on those royal ashes, and the piety of 
 the living shall never cease, with full hands, to strew lilies, 
 violets and roses on her tomb." 
 
 The following touching poem on the funeral of Mary 
 Queen of Scots, in Peterborough Cathedral, was written by 
 
157 
 
 my old friend, John Plummer,* and may fitly close this 
 
 narrative. 
 
 "Aye, crown her naiv, poor murder'd Queen; 
 Ye titled mourners kneel, 
 And simulate the grief and pain 
 
 Your hearts could never feel 
 "When, in her prison wretchedness, 
 
 For liberty she sighed, 
 Or strove in vain, with tears and prayers, 
 To melt the Tudor's pride. 
 
 Let tapers blaze and pennons wave, 
 
 And wardens line the hall ; 
 Let shields display their antique charms 
 
 Above the sombre pall : 
 What boot they now, these honours rare. 
 
 This royal pomp and state? 
 Can they restore the dead to life, 
 
 Or close the scroll of fate ? 
 
 * Who, having successfully floated over a whole " sea of troubles," and 
 surmounted difficulties that would have appalled a less resolute and 
 industrious nature, after a hard, but noble, literary career in England, is 
 now reaping the fruits of his well-earned harvest of fortune, in a 
 distinguished position in Australia. In the beautiful home that he has 
 made for himself in the neighbourhood of Sydney, and which he has 
 named after a place (Thorpe Malsor) very dear to him in the old country, 
 he has had the satisfaction of seeing his sons following in their father's 
 footsteps ; and with the happy surroundings of wife and family, he finds 
 himself deservedly honoured and respected. When resident at Kettering, 
 Mr. Plummer wrote much concerning Fotheringhay and other places of 
 note in the neighbourhood. The poem of *' The Funeral of Mary, 
 Queen of Scots," was published in his Songs of Labour^ Northampton- 
 shire Rambles^ and other Poems, issued from the local press at Kettering, 
 in i860, in a volume gratefully dedicated to Lord Brougham, and 
 containing an autobiographical sketch of the author's life, and his early 
 struggles as a factory operative. John Plummer was my companion in a 
 visit to some of the places described in this book, and he told me, that 
 when he was in Scotland, he saw, offered for sale, many snuff-boxes that 
 were described as being made of wood brought from Fotheringhay. 
 
158 
 
 Can they recall the early days, 
 
 So joyous and so blest, 
 When France's gay and sunny soil. 
 
 Her feet in gladness prest? 
 Through all the splendour and the glare 
 
 Which mark the gorgeous scene, 
 Who can forget the headsman's axe— 
 
 The pale and murder'd Queen ? 
 
 And thou^ stern Queen, whose jealous hate 
 
 Thus ruthlessly could doom 
 The lovely rival of thy crown 
 
 So early to the tomb; 
 If ever sigh from broken heart 
 
 May dare against thee plead. 
 Beware ! lest thou, in life's last days. 
 
 Seek mercy in thy need. 
 
 For, more of Love, and more of Truth, 
 
 Thy helpless victim knew, 
 Than ever thou in all thy pride, 
 
 Around thy throne might view. 
 'Tis not the rank nor yet the gold 
 
 That can affection move, 
 A gentle mind and kindly heart 
 
 Alone we learn to love." 
 
PART v.— CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 The faithful attendants of Mary, Queen of Scots, were 
 rigorously treated, even after this mockery of a state funeral. 
 For six months, during the whole of the time that the un- 
 buried coffin of their murdered mistress was kept in the 
 upper room in Fotheringhay Castle, they had been detained 
 there as prisoners. And now that their attendance at the 
 funeral was over, they were escorted back from Peterborough 
 to Fotheringhay, and again made prisoners, being denied air 
 and exercise, and barely supplied with the necessaries of 
 life. This confinement extended for nearly three months, 
 when Mary's son sent Sir John Mowbray, Baron of 
 Barnbougal, and father of Barbara and Gillies, to the court of 
 Elizabeth to demand their release. The request was granted : 
 and the French attendants went to France, and the Scotch 
 to Scotland, with the exception of Gillies Mowbray, 
 Mrs. Curie and Ehzabeth Curie, who joined Sir John 
 Mowbray, in London. Afterwards, Mrs. Curie, with her 
 husband and Elizabeth, went to Antwerp, where they spent 
 the rest of their days, Elizabeth presenting to the Scotch 
 College of Douay, that full-length portrait of Mary Stuart on 
 the scaffold, of which I have already spoken. Jane Ken nedy 
 
i6o 
 
 married Sir Andrew Melville, and was drowned in crossing 
 in an open boat from Barntisland to Leith, when she was 
 proceeding to meet King James's bride, Anne of Denmark, 
 and bring her to Scotland, in the year 1589. 
 
 Shortly after the funeral of Mary, Queen of Scots, an 
 epitaph, written by Mr. Blackwood, in Latin, was placed 
 over her grave. Here is the translation of it : — " Mary, 
 Queen of Scots, a King's daughter, widow of the King of 
 the French, cousin and next heir to the Queen of England, 
 adorned with royal virtues and a royal mind — the royal 
 authority being often implored in vain — by the barbarous 
 cruelty and tyrannical sentence of the English, the ornament 
 of our age and the true royal light, is extinguished. And, by 
 the same nefarious judgment, both Mary, Queen of Scots, hath 
 suffered a natural death, and all other Princes (made 
 plebeian) suffer a civil death. A new and unheard of kind of 
 tomb is this, in which the living are included with the dead. 
 Know, with the sacred ashes of the divine Mary, here lies 
 prostrate and violate the majesty of all Kings and Princes. 
 And, because this silent, royal monument abundantly 
 admonishes Kings of their duty, traveller, I say no more." 
 
 Such very plain out-spoken words could not be permitted 
 to remain, and the tablet was soon removed ; but, by whose 
 orders, is not known. When Dugdale visited the grave, in 
 
i6i 
 
 1 64 1, he made a drawing of the Hehiiet and Escutcheon, 
 which were still pendant over the vault ; but, they were 
 destroyed during the great rebellion. 
 
 Referring to the murder at Fotheringhay,* Camden, as a 
 contemporary writer, was compelled to use discretion : and 
 he guardedly says, " As for that disastre which even heere 
 (Fotheringhay) befell unto another most mighty Prince Ma7y 
 Queene of Scots, I had leifer it should be enwrapped up in 
 silence, than once spoken of : Let it be forgotten quite, if it 
 be possible : if not, yet be it hidden, as it may in silence. 
 Under the best Princes some there are who being once 
 armed with authority, know how by secret slights to set a 
 goodly shew and fair pretense of conscience and Religion, 
 thereby to cloke their owne private designes : And there be 
 againe, that sincerely and from the heart tender true Religion, 
 their Princes security, yea and (which is the highest rule and 
 law of all) the publique safety. Neither can it bee denied, 
 
 * In a curious little book, " Metrical History of England for Young 
 Persons," (Ballantyne and Hughes, Edinburgh, 1844,) wherein it is 
 presumed that the chief facts in English History can be best taught 
 "young persons" in very doggerel rhymes, we are treated to the 
 following lines concerning Queen Elizabeth, and her real reason for 
 putting Mary Stuart to death : — 
 
 "Fear of Rome led 
 Her to behead 
 In Fotheringhay Tower, 
 The beauteous Queen 
 Of Scots who had been 
 Years prisoner in her power." 
 
l62 
 
 but that even the best Princes themselves are otherwiles 
 violently carried away, as good Pilotes with tempests, against 
 their wils whither they would not. But what they doe as 
 Princes and Kings, let us leave to God who onely hath power 
 over Kings." 
 
 So wrote the discreet historian, unwilling to speak the 
 truth concerning his Queen. " No scandal against Queen 
 Elizabeth, we hope ! " seems to have governed his mind and 
 his pen. He wrote " Pilotes," though he might have written 
 Pilates. But, that murderous tragedy in the banquet-hall at 
 Fotheringhay could never be "forgotten quite, if it be 
 possible." It is one of those deeds burnt into the brain, and 
 impossible to be forgotten, however much we might desire 
 for the scene to be closed in oblivion. 
 
 Mr. John Hosack, Barrister-at-law, in his vindication of 
 Mary, Queen of Scots, says,* "The history of Mary Stewart 
 has left so indehble a stain upon that both of England and 
 Scotland, that we need not be surprised to find a majority of 
 the writers of both countries agreed as representing her as the 
 victim of her own misconduct. Although it is natural to sym- 
 pathise with misfortune, national pride and religious prejudice 
 are sentiments far stronger ; and nothing could be more 
 
 * " Mary, Queen of Scots and her accusers." Second Edition, Black- 
 wood ; 1874. Vol. II, 488-496, 
 
i63 
 
 humiliating to both than the reflection that an innocent 
 woman had undergone a course of persecution to which all 
 similar examples of State iniquity are but as dust in the 
 balance. But, there are three English historians of the 
 seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries respectively, 
 who have arrived at this conclusion, and who, in point of 
 research and accuracy, are certainly unequalled by any of 
 their contemporaries." These are Camden, Carte, and 
 Lingard. The conclusion at which these historians have 
 arrived is strongly corroborated by a very important authority, 
 the late Mr. Markham J. Thorpe, who was employed of 
 recent years by the Master of the Rolls to peruse and arrange 
 the vast collection of letters and papers relating to the Queen 
 of Scots, contained in the Record Office. After examining 
 and arranging all these documents, he expressed himself as 
 follows : " the evidence they contain is all-important ; there 
 is abundance of insinuation, there is much assertion of guilt, 
 but proof nowhere^ so far as the compiler has been able to 
 seek it. * * * » 
 
 " Those historians who maintain that the Scottish Queen 
 was the victim, like so many of her ancestors, of her turbulent 
 and treacherous nobility, have a comparatively easy task to 
 perform : but those who have adopted what may be called 
 the popular view of the question, have an obvious difficulty 
 
164 
 
 in presenting to their readers an intelligible notion of her 
 character and conduct. The caricatures of Knox and Bu- 
 chanan have at least the merit of consistency. They deny her 
 the possession of a single virtue, and they accuse her of every 
 crime. But these extravagant creations have given place to 
 others still more extravagant. The favorite fashion at present 
 seems to be to paint her at once as the worst of criminals and 
 the most estimable of her sex. Kindly yet cruel — constant 
 in her attachments, yet treacherous and fickle, — generous 
 and confiding, yet perfidious alike in planning and remorse- 
 less in executing her deeds of vengeance, — Mary Stewart has 
 been presented to modern readers as a paragon of con- 
 tradiction, resembling nothing else in history or even in 
 fiction. 
 
 " In this estimate of the character of the Scottish queen, 
 Hume, the ablest and most indulgent, and Mr. Froude, the 
 most recent and most reckless of her modern adversaries, 
 seem to agree. "The most amiable of women" is an expression 
 that slips, as it were, involuntarily from the pen of Hume 
 when summing up the qualities of Mary. Mr. Froude, although 
 he denounces her as the worst and most abandoned of her sex, 
 and in language unprecedented among historians of any age, 
 nevertheless informs his readers that she was "warm and true 
 in her friendships," that she had "a noble nature," and that 
 
i65 
 
 she was " generous " in the extreme. It is difficult to 
 see what more could be said even by the most devoted of 
 her admirers. * * "fr ^ * 
 
 "Yet in the darkest hours of her existence, even when she 
 hailed the prospect of a scaffold as a blessed release from her 
 protracted sufferings, she never once expressed a doubt as to 
 the verdict that would be finally pronounced between her and 
 her enemies. "The theatre of the world," she reminded her 
 judges at Fotheringhay, "is wider than the realm of 
 England." She appealed from her persecutors to the whole 
 human race, and she has not appealed in vain. In regions 
 uninhabited and unknown when she uttered these words — on 
 the ice-bound shores of the Baltic, in the busy cities of the 
 Far West — the story of her life creates as deep an interest as 
 in the capitals of Europe ; and, so long as beauty and intellect, 
 a kindly spirit in prosperity and matchless heroism in 
 misfortune, attract the sympathies of men, this illustrious 
 victim of sectarian violence and barbarous statecraft will ever 
 occupy the most prominent place in the annals of her sex." 
 
 Carte, the French historian, says of the royal prisoner at 
 Fotheringhay, "The patience, the constancy, the firmness 
 with which she endured all the hardships and indignities put 
 upon her during her captivity, cannot be sufficiently admired ; 
 the Christian manner of her death was not unworthy of the 
 
i66 
 
 best of men ; and the intrepidity with which she met the 
 King of terrors, the genuine effect of innocence, was not 
 surpassed by any of the heroes of antiquity." 
 
 A Hfe and vindication of Mary Stuart was written by 
 Samuel Roberts, the philanthropist, and friend of James 
 Montgomery, the poet. When Sheffield Lodge or Manor 
 House — in which Mary had been imprisoned, was destroyed, 
 Mr. Roberts secured the stones of her bedroom window, and 
 placed them in a tower, erected to her memory, in his own 
 grounds at Park Grange. His daughter, Miss Mary Roberts, 
 wrote a volume of poems. " The Royal Exile," descriptive of 
 the Queen of Scots' imprisonment at Sheffield; and Mr. 
 Roberts, then in his eightieth year, penned the following 
 lines on Queen Mary's window : — 
 
 "Alone, here oft may Scotia's beauteous Queen, 
 Through tears, have gazed upon the lovely scene, 
 Victim of villainy, of woman's hate, 
 Of fiery zeal, of wiles and storms of state ; 
 Torn from her throne, her country, and her child, 
 And cast an exiled monarch on this wild. 
 She here was taught, what youthful beauty ne'er, 
 While seated on a throne, had deign'd to hear, 
 To say, submissive, at the closing scene, 
 
 ' Tis well, that I have thus afflicted been ! ' 
 Then, calmly, on the block, in faith, resign 
 Three heart-corrupting crowns, for one divine. 
 Reader ! — the ways of God are not like thine ! " 
 
 It was from such a prison window, that the banker-poet, 
 
167 
 
 Samuel Rogers, imagined the Queen of Scots to have gazed, 
 in his "Pleasures of Memory." 
 
 " So Scotia's Queen, as slowly dawned the day, 
 Rose on her couch, and gazed her soul away. 
 Her eyes had bless'd the beacon's glimmering height, 
 That faintly tipped the feathery surge with light ; 
 But now the morn with orient hues portrayed 
 Each castled cliff and brown monastic shade : 
 All touched the Talisman's resistless spring, 
 And, lo, what busy tribes were instant on the wing ! 
 Thus kindred objects, kindred thoughts inspire, 
 As summer-clouds flash forth electric fire." 
 
 "Sir," said Dr. Johnson to Boswell, in the Advocates 
 Library at Edinburgh, "never talk of your independency, 
 who could let your Queen remain twenty years in captivity, 
 and then be put to death, without even a pretence of justice^ 
 without your ever attempting to rescue her. And, such a 
 Queen, too ! as every man of any gallantry of spirit would 
 have sacrificed his life for ! " 
 
 Even Wesley, in his Journal (April, 1768) defends the 
 Queen of Scots and asserts her innocence. "But how then," 
 he continues, " can we account for the quite contrary story 
 which has been almost universally received? Most easily. 
 It was penned in French, English and Latin (by Queen 
 Elizabeth's order) by George Buchanan, who was secretary 
 to Murray, and in Queen Elizabeth's pay ; so, he was sure 
 to throw dirt enough. Nor was she at liberty to answer for 
 
i68 
 
 herself. But, what then was Queen Ehzabeth ? As just and 
 merciful as Nero, and as good Christian as Mahomet." This 
 is, probably, as severe a sentence on the English Queen as 
 was ever penned; and, coming from such a man, the 
 condemnation is all the more sweeping. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott said, "While Elizabeth fluctuated, not 
 between remorse and desire of committing the crime, but 
 concerning the mode in which it should be accomplished, 
 Mary prepared herself for death with all the dignity of a 
 Queen, and the firmness of a martyr." 
 
 The Rev. G. R. Gleig- said, " Never was a piece of acting 
 more clumsily performed, because no one was deceived by it. 
 Elizabeth intended from the first that Mary should die ; and 
 her sole regret was, that there should not be found among 
 her loving subjects, persons willing to sacrifice both honour 
 and life, in order that her character might be screened from 
 the ignominy of participating in the execution." 
 
 "It is but too clear," says Mr. Charles Knight, "that 
 Elizabeth wished the unhappy prisoner made away with 
 secretly, in order, no doubt, that she might deny all 
 participation in her death afterwards. * * * in spite 
 of the continual failure of her endeavours before the 
 execution, to ensure a scapegoat who should bear the odium 
 of Mary's death, Elizabeth was not the less determined to 
 
169 
 
 have a victim afterwards, who might at least seem to have 
 been the most guilty party. Of course, the very man who 
 had kept her from the perpetration of the murder she had 
 really wished, was the very man to suffer now for the 
 execution that she had to profess she had not wished — not 
 intended to have taken place. So, poor Davison, instead of 
 being let off, hke Burghley and the others, with a show of 
 royal displeasure, was utterly ruined by a fine of ten thousand 
 pounds, and his committal to the Tower for the whole of the 
 remainder of the reign." 
 
 I conclude this catena of criticism with the following general 
 remarks from the accomphshed and sympathetic pen of 
 Miss Agnes Strickland. 
 
 " The name of Mary Stuart has thrown that of every other 
 Queen of Scotland into the shade. She appears to represent 
 in her single person the female royalty of that land, having 
 absorbed the interest pertaining to all the other princesses 
 who, previously to her brief reign, presided over the courts of 
 Dunfermhne, Stirling and Holyrood. Mary Stuart is, 
 exclusively, the Queen of Scots — Queen, not only of the 
 realm, but of the people ; and, with all her faults, real or 
 imputed, she remains to this day the peculiar object of 
 national enthusiasm in Scotland. Her memory haunts the 
 desolate palaces where every peasant is eager to recount 
 
 M 
 
traditionary lore connected with her personal history. Not a 
 castellated mansion of the sixteenth century but boasts of 
 some quaint-looking room, which is emphatically pointed out 
 as Queen Mary's chamber. Every old family possesses a 
 painting, for which the distinction of an original portrait of 
 Queen Mary is claimed. Tresses of every shade ot golden, 
 auburn and chestnut, are preserved and fondly exhibited as 
 "well-attested portions of her hair." Persons who denounce 
 the relic veneration of the Romish Church as idolatrous, en- 
 shrine a glove, a fan, a superannuated watch, or any other 
 trinket supposed to have belonged to Queen Mary, among 
 their choicest treasures, to be handed down as heir-looms in 
 their families. The variety of articles thus preserved and 
 hallowed for her sake, is almost incredible. Queen Mary's 
 mirrors and cabinets appear interminable; and as to the 
 antique chairs of carved oak and ebony with which their 
 present possessors have endowed her, they are numerous 
 enough to supply seats for all her descendants, who, be it 
 remembered, are to be found on almost every throne in 
 Europe. More books have been written about Mary Stuart 
 than all the queens m the world put together ; but * * * 
 it is only now in the fulness of time, that a succinct narrative 
 of personal facts and characteristic traits could be arranged, 
 containing particulars of every period of her life, from the 
 
171 
 
 hour of her birth to the dark closing of the tragedy in the hall 
 of Fotheringhay Castle." 
 
 Dr. Lingard, quoting from the narrative of "the young, fair 
 Mrs. Southwell, sworn Maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth," 
 states that for several days before her death, on March 24, 
 1603, Elizabeth lay on the floor of her chamber for many 
 days and nights, positively refusing, though entreated by hcF 
 attendants to return to her bed. If they had seen, she told 
 them, what she had seen there, they would not have asked 
 her to go back to bed. Cecil told her that she must do so, 
 to satisfy her people. " Must ! " she cried ; " is 7jiust a word 
 to be addressed to princes ? " To the Lord Admiral she said 
 " I am tied with an iron collar about my neck." And so, for 
 some days, till she breathed her last, still lying on the 
 cushions on the floor. Who can doubt, but that among the 
 visions that haunted her bed, was the murdered form of the 
 royal prisoner of Fotheringhay ? 
 
^pptitiri):. 
 
ORIGINAL LETTERS 
 
 OF 
 
 MISS AGNES STRICKLAND. 
 
 In connection with the subject of " Fotheringhay, and Mary, 
 Queen of Scots," I will add some extracts from letters written 
 to me by Miss Agnes Strickland, from her family residence, 
 Reyden Hall, near Wangford, Suffolk, — chiefly in the year 
 1853, — when she was writing her life of Mary, Queen of 
 Scots, which occupies five volumes of her "Queens of 
 Scotland," published, at intervals, by William Blackwood and 
 Sons, 1852-6. I especially value my copy of the work, as 
 being " the gift of the authoress," for whom I made various 
 water-colour drawings of Fotheringhay, Oundle and Coning- 
 ton. She thus acknowledges their safe reception : — 
 
 " I hasten to acknowledge the safe receipt of your beautiful 
 and curious antiquarian drawings, which came to hand un- 
 scathed by post-bag pressures and collisions with hard or heavy 
 substances ; a special piece of good fortune; for, I have had 
 
175 
 
 so many nice drawings spoiled in that way. I must now 
 thank you very heartily for them ; and, above all, for the good 
 will to Queen Mary and her biographer, which inspired you 
 with the generous impulse of devoting so much of your time 
 and charming talent for sketching historical antiquities, to our 
 service. I am very glad that you have not been at the trouble 
 of mounting them ; as I keep a book, " in velvet bound, and 
 broidered o'er," for the reception of everything I can catch 
 illustrative of my royal mistress, Mary Stuart; and these 
 drawings of yours will be most valuable additions, and are 
 more acceptable unmounted, because mounted drawings are 
 apt to strain the binding. 
 
 •' I should be very sorry to put the broad R — or Arrow 
 mark of Crown appropriation — on your interesting com- 
 munication touching the Fotheringhay chair of State, 
 especially as it will be a year or more ere I come to that 
 dismal climax of my history. So, pray use your own pleasure 
 on the subject of Notes and Queries. 
 
 " Conington Castle is a very picturesque drawing, and I 
 am enchanted with that of the old Inn at Oundle, which 
 reminds me of the New Inn at Gloucester, built in 
 Edward Ill's reign, for the accommodation of the pilgrims 
 who came to pay their devotions at his murdered father's 
 tomb in the fair Cathedral." 
 
176 
 
 Three weeks after this, Miss Agnes Strickland wrote to me 
 the following very interesting letter : — 
 
 " Before I sit down to my diurnal labour, in preparing the 
 portion of Mary Stuart's life and reign, which, at present, 
 engages my whole thoughts, and almost makes me forget 
 Agnes Strickland, I have entered into a covenant with 
 myself to perform your requisition ; and having extricated 
 your last very interesting letter from its temporary fastenings 
 in my Mary Stuart correspondence book, I am happy to be 
 able to comply with your wish by return of post. 
 
 I know, too well, the impossibility of replacing from 
 memory lost papers of graphic descriptions, where a mistake 
 would be almost fatal to the reputation for correctness, which 
 every antiquary and historian is anxious to preserve. I feel 
 too much indebted to you for the beautiful drawings, and the 
 trouble you have taken in illustrating them with your minute 
 descriptions, to think of the abstraction of a few minutes from 
 my own business to oblige you, and only hope you will 
 kindly return the manuscript to me when you have quite 
 finished with it. 
 
 Many thanks for the funeral march,* which, I think, must 
 be the same I heard in Scotland ; but, as I have given up 
 * See page 122. 
 
177 
 
 practice, for want of time, and got rid of our old rattle-trap 
 piano, in order to make room for bookcases and cabinets, I 
 shall not be able to ascertain that point to a certainty, till I 
 call upon a musical friend a few miles off, and get her to play 
 it over two or three times to me. My impression is that this 
 march must have been composed for her grand funeral in 
 Peterborough Cathedral, in which case, its performance 
 would have been duly authorised. But, in none of the 
 records of her execution, have I ever seen mentioned that 
 there was any kind of music. Still, I am far from discrediting 
 the tradition. I think some little search into the old music 
 scores of Peterborough Cathedral, might tend to throw 
 light on the composition of this beautiful and affecting air. 
 
 I shall feel greatly obliged by your courtesy in making the 
 transcript from Gunter's " History of Peterborough ; " and, 
 perhaps, if not asking too great a favour, you would kindly 
 write on one side of the paper only. 
 
 In respect to portraits of Mary Stuart, there is a curious 
 one in the old Episcopal Palace at Gloucester,* with an 
 inscription of later date asserting that it is a likeness of Queen 
 Elizabeth, whom it resembles in nothing but the costume, 
 
 * There was one in the Episcopal Palace at Ely, where, in 1850, the 
 Bishop (Dr. Turton) shewed it to me, and told me that he always took it 
 with him in the carriage when he went up to London, and brought it 
 back again with him. C. Bede. 
 
178 
 
 and superabundance of jewels. If you ever go to Gloucester, 
 and mention my name to Mrs. Hughes, sister-in-law to the 
 Bishop of Gloucester, also a friend of mine, I am sure she 
 would allow you to see it; and, if you possess the same 
 charming talent for copying portraits as you do for original 
 dehneations of architectural antiquities, you might find it well 
 worthy of your pencil. I should have had a reduced copy in 
 water-colours made for my book, if there had been an artist 
 at hand capable of producing a faithful delineation of the 
 really beautiful features. I suspect that the wrong name was 
 purposely added in the days of Charles I, to preserve the 
 picture from being cut, or otherwise injured, by the puritan 
 destructives of that barbarous period, who hated and 
 persecuted the memory of Mary Stuart. I believe I was the 
 first to detect the fraud — if so it may be termed — which 
 assigned to Ehzabeth features and contour of face, which she 
 could not have purchased at the cost of her royal diadem — 
 the darkly delicate complexion, chestnut hair, and eyes of 
 almond form, the dark expressive and lengthened curve of 
 Mary Stuart's majestic eyebrows, long aquiline nose, and 
 pouting lips, round chin, and perfectly oval face. 
 
 The painting, though sadly out of repair, is really good, 
 and has a depth of shade which Mary's correct artistical taste 
 approved, and Elizabeth forbade, by an order of Privy 
 
179 
 
 Council, ever to be used in the attempts made by any artist 
 to delineate her august countenance ; although it would have 
 been a loyal service to have toned down her light red hair, 
 and faintly curved eyebrows ; to have given some depth to 
 her round, telescopic, pale, blue eyes ; and to have relieved 
 the baldness of her forehead and pear-shaped visage ; to say 
 nothing of the improvement that it would have been to her 
 thin retreating lips, to have added a few marking touches 
 to the chin. 
 
 However, I must conclude in haste, having scribbled more 
 than prudence warrants at present, from, dear Sir, 
 
 Reyden Hall, Your sincerely obliged 
 
 Wangford, Agnes Strickland. 
 
 Suffolk. 
 February 2, 1853. 
 
 In October of the same year, (1853,) she wrote to me 
 asking my acceptance of "the newly published volume of 
 my life of Mary Stuart," and again mentioned the Gloucester 
 portrait. 
 
 "I have succeeded in obtaining a sketch for engraving 
 from the fine old portrait of her at Gloucester Palace, wrongly 
 lettered Elizabeth, and I mean to use it as the frontispiece for 
 the next volume. 
 
 " During a tour, made by me last summer, I visited Tut- 
 bury Castle, a very extensive ruin, and observed a plant of 
 
i8o 
 
 the royal thistle of Scotland growing on the sloping bank of 
 the moat, much degenerated in height and size from the 
 parent plants in Scotland. At Derby, my attention was 
 attracted by a noble Elizabethan mansion in Babington lane, 
 called Babington Hall, where the royal prisoner slept one 
 night ; but I had not time to gratify my desire of examining 
 the interior of the mansion. I understand the Inn where she 
 slept at Coventry is still in existence, and hope to visit both 
 the last-named places next year.* 
 
 " You will rejoice to hear that I have discovered papers in 
 the State Paper Office, which must fully establish her 
 innocence of the foul charges with which her enemies have 
 maligned her. Any fresh illustrations of antiquities from your 
 able pencil, illustrative of her English localities, will be 
 acceptable to, dear Sir, Yours very sincerely 
 
 Agnes Strickland. 
 
 * She, subsequently, found that " this ancient hostelry — the Black Bull 
 Inn, in Smithford Street, near the gateway of the Greyfriars, just within 
 the entrance of the town — was demolished at the close of the last century, 
 and the present barracks were erected on the site. The officers' rooms 
 occupy the site of the apartments where Queen Mary and her ladies were 
 confined from the 25th of November till December 9th, 1569. Coventry 
 was, at that period, surrounded by massive walls, fortified with thirty 
 towers and gates." But, the Castle was in a ruinous state, not having 
 been repaired or inhabited since the Wars of the Roses ; therefore, Lords 
 vShrewsbury and Huntingdon, after vainly endeavouring to obtain more 
 suitable quarters, were compelled to house themselves and their prisoners 
 at the Black Bull Inn. Queen Elizabeth wrote angrily to the two Earls, 
 " that they had carried the Scottish Queen to an Inn, which is very in- 
 convenient even for the name's sake." She, and her attendants, were 
 accordingly removed from the Inn to the mansion called the Mayoress's 
 Parlour, adjoining St. Mary's Hall ; and their apartments are still 
 preserved. 
 
Writing to me, in the following month, November 8th, 
 from Edinburgh, she says, 
 
 "You ask me "what I think of you" in regard to the 
 postponement of the promised sketch of Fotheringhay. To 
 which I reply, "that I suppose your time has been more 
 profitably employed; and that I shall be very happy to 
 express my grateful sense of your unmerited liberality, in 
 devoting any specimen of your charming talent to my service 
 and that of Mary Stuart." Come when it may, and in what- 
 ever shape, it will be acceptable. "The smallest contributions 
 gratefully received." 
 
 " I am leaving Edinburgh to-morrow for Lennox Lene, 
 
 near Haddington, on a short visit to my charming friends the 
 
 Dowager Lady Blantyre, and her daughter. Miss Stuart. 
 
 Like Pilgrim, I shall carry my burden at my back, in the 
 
 shape of the proofs of the last three chapters of Mary Stuart's 
 
 life — or rather, for I have not got her to Fotheringhay Castle 
 
 yet, of her reign. This Vol. V, Queens of Scotland, ends 
 
 with her abduction ; and she will come out as bright as truth 
 
 can make her. I feel that truth is anything but acceptable to 
 
 vulgar minds, and that a very vigorous concert of braying will 
 
 be sent forth from the Exeter Hall-ites : but, in that case, I 
 
 hope my reviewers will get well Funch-td. by those who wield 
 
 the pencil and the pen with equal skill." * 
 
 * She was aware that I was then contributing to Punch both with pen 
 and pencil. 
 
182 
 
 She added a " P.S. A lady's mind ! please when you send 
 the promised drawing, direct it to the old address, Reyden 
 Hall, Wangford, Suffolk." 
 
 I failed to send the sketch at the appointed time; and, 
 writing to me, in the ensuing Christmas, she said, 
 
 " Pray use your own time and convenience in regard to the 
 drawings and local information with which you so kindly 
 promise to favour me, I have another volume of Mary Stuart 
 to complete before I enter the fatal ground of Fotheringhay ; 
 so, there is not the slightest cause for haste ; and, even if it 
 were otherwise, I should be sorry, indeed, for any earthly 
 consideration to interfere with your duties to your con- 
 gregation, at this season, when the benificence of her 
 ministers and members, is wont to serve the cause of our own 
 Apostolic Church better than ten thousand per-cent of railing 
 at the errors of other religious communities can ever do. 
 Amor vincit onines" 
 
 In another letter, she refers again to Punch, and says, " I 
 shall not petition you to give a sly punch to my assailants, 
 unless they are more vituperant than becomes fair foes ; but, 
 just to keep the No-Popery-howlers in order, when they 
 falsely, and injuriously, raise a cry of " papist," for want of 
 anything else to say against me and my royal heroine. As for 
 poor Mary, I believe it was the villainy of Moray, and the ill 
 
i83 
 
 manners of Knox, that kept her from being the Queen of a 
 reformation established on better grounds than that of 
 spoliation of churches and church-lands. As for me, her 
 humble biographer, I have ever been a sincere member of 
 the Church of England — a church that enjoins true witness, 
 by exhorting us from her altar not to bear false, — an article 
 of the decalogue little regarded by Mary's foes or mine. 
 
 " I shall be charmed to receive any sketch, or sketches, 
 from your able pencil, illustrative of Fotheringhay. I have 
 a pretty drawing of the keys and the arch from Arch- 
 deacon Bonney's illustrated copy of his history of Fother- 
 inghay. 
 
 " I wish you would perpetrate a few historical caricatures 
 in the way of Kirkpatrick Sharpe's Queen Elizabeth dancing 
 to the sound of a small fiddle in her seventieth year. I think 
 the righteous Regent Moray, and the other covetous 
 professors of holiness, makmg their selections from Mary 
 Stuart's rich wardrobe and jewel-house for selves and wives, 
 would be a nice subject. The pearls, the richest in the 
 world, were packed up and sent to Queen Elizabeth for her 
 to purchase at one third of their value. These should be in 
 a tray by themselves, with a ticket "For the Queen of 
 England." Moray's Countess, a little mean-looking vixen, 
 whose picture is decorated with one of Mary's regal frontlets, 
 
1 84 
 
 should be putting it on and coaxing her husband for it. 
 Knox looking on, in horror at their vanities. 
 
 "Two of the Maries were threatened and buUied by 
 Morton and Lennox, to give up " certain rich gowns, jewels 
 and furs," which they had in their keeping ; and were, finally, 
 forced to surrender them to those robbers. There might be 
 one scene especially representing their restoration. But, wait 
 till you get my next volume, and turn the idea in your 
 mind." 
 
 In acknowledgment of a royal thistle, and some fragments 
 of stone from the foundations of the banquet-hall of Fother- 
 inghay, Miss Agnes Strickland wrote to me, 
 
 "Many thanks for your friendly exertions to put me in 
 possession of a genuine root of the Scotch royal thistle from 
 the ruins of Fotheringhay Castle ; but I must be contented 
 with a few of the seeds, since the plant is only a biennial, and 
 will not bear transplanting. Perhaps when you have an 
 opportunity of sending to London, you would kindly address 
 your parcel of relics to me at Avenue Lodge, Portchester 
 Gardens, where my sister has a nice cottage and garden; and, 
 for the present, we could add the Fotheringhay stones to her 
 little rock there, and her maid would take charge of them 
 for me." 
 
i85 
 
 In another letter, she returns to the subject of the royal 
 thistle, and says, 
 
 "I am charmed with the legend of the thistle of 
 Fotheringhay, and always find a great charm in local 
 traditions, which, if not always true, are at least the shadows 
 of truth. No shadow can appear without a substance causing 
 it. Mary was a horticulturist and a poet. I should imagine 
 she sowed the seeds of the royal thistle of Scotland in the 
 gardens of her English prisons. I should like to ascertain 
 whether they are to be found at Tutbury." 
 
 Subsequently, she informed me that they were to be found 
 there : and that, if Mary herself did not sow the seeds, her 
 admirers may have done so. 
 
 "I have the pleasure of sending you the first volume of 
 my life of Mary, which you have richly deserved ; and I 
 shall be happy to send you the other volumes, as a small 
 acknowledgment for your beautiful drawings. You will see 
 my opinion about the colour of Mary's hair in my description 
 of the frontispiece. It is dark in the Gloucester portrait, 
 misnamed " Elizabeth." I imagine that portrait, from the 
 costume, must have been one of the few painted while she 
 was Darnley's wife. You will observe that her widow portraits 
 are all in black and white, with a lawn cap. This at 
 Gloucester is in regal costume." 
 
i86 
 
 In another letter she thanks me for my sketch and 
 description of the chair preserved in Conington Church, and 
 says, 
 
 " I know your chivalry in the cause of the beautiful and 
 illustrious victim. I should like you to make a pictorial 
 sketch of the reading of the death-warrant on the scaffold, 
 which she sat calmly to hear, with the headsman, the axe, and 
 the block before her, the two Earls standing by, and her 
 weeping maids, Jane Kennedy and Elizabeth Curie, behind 
 her.* What a subject it would make ! I have some thought 
 of having it for the vignette of my last volume. 
 
 "The Dean and Chapter of Peterborough have King 
 James I's autograph letter for the removal of her body to 
 Westminster Abbey. I should be glad of a transcript of it for 
 my book. 
 
 " I am working very hard, and hope to get it to press in 
 March ; but, the labour is intense, and begins to tell on my 
 health and spirits." 
 
 I obtained the copy of the letter of James I, and sent it to 
 Miss Strickland. She wrote, 
 
 " Many thanks for your friendly services in obtaining for 
 
 * They do not appear to have been on the scaffold till a little later, 
 when they endeavoured to assist their royal mistress in her last 
 preparations, C. B, 
 
me the copy of the letter for the removal of Queen Mary's 
 remains from Peterborough Cathedral. I now want to trace 
 the particulars of the removal, the names of the persons 
 employed, and the manner and order of the procession to 
 London, and reception in Westminster Abbey : and the 
 ceremonial of her body being consigned to the vault in the 
 royal south aisle Chapel of the Abbey ; and the date. These 
 particulars would be most interesting, because entirely un- 
 known to historians of the present day ; but I cannot find 
 any clue to them." 
 
 I was able to help her to some of these points ; and she 
 wrote, 
 
 " I am very much obliged to you for your great kindness 
 in taking so much trouble in working out the points I want to 
 ascertain. I suppose, from your pretty little map, the royal 
 remains would proceed through Stilton and Hatfield, towards 
 London, by the old North Road. * * * 
 
 "On the subject of the removal of Queen Mary's body. I 
 feel very much indebted to you for taking so much trouble 
 for me. I continue very much occupied on this volume ; but 
 hope, by the end of this month (February) to send the larger 
 portion of the MSS. to press ; but, the particulars touching 
 the removal of the body, will not come in this ; only I like 
 to be prepared for them, With repeated acknowledgments 
 
i88 
 
 for all your friendly acts of attention. Believe me to be, 
 
 dear Mr. B — , 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 Agnes Strickland. 
 
 A few days after this, (February 21, 1856,) she wrote to me 
 as follows, — 
 
 " I can do no less than acknowledge the safe arrival of your 
 exquisite sketches of Fotheringhay, by return of post, and, 
 after thanking you, most sincerely, for so precious an addition 
 to my material for the last chapter of my biography of Mary 
 Stuart, express my admiration of these beautiful and spirited 
 sketches, which I have placed, with equal pride and pleasure, 
 in my royal Stuart Album, among other mementoes of the 
 murdered Mary which I am collecting. 
 
 "Your descriptions of those local features are very in- 
 teresting and graphically done, convincing me more and more 
 that your talents ought to be devoted to a higher branch of 
 literature than comedy. Your style is so clear and pleasant, 
 and rises with the subject. I am charmed with the interest 
 excited on the subject of the chair at Conington. I think you 
 might get up, with these beautiful sketches and a few others, 
 a charming Httle volume on Fotheringhay and its recollections 
 and local features, which would sell well along that line and to 
 travellers to Peterborough. I once travelled that route before 
 
the line was opened, in a carriage from Bloxholme, in 
 Lincolnshire, where I had been spending a few weeks with 
 Lady Mary Christopher, and remember the Church, the 
 mound of the Castle, and the windings of the river Nene, 
 being particularly interested for Mary's sake ; but, as it was a 
 cold November day, we did not quit the carriage, till we 
 arrived at Peterborough, where I made my first pilgrimage to 
 Mary's grave. 
 
 " I have seen the old thin history of Fotheringhay, which, 
 however, contains nothing important.* 
 
 "I have often tried to get the particulars of Mary's 
 re-interment at Westminster ; but, though the fact is always 
 mentioned, I have never been so fortunate as to obtain any 
 of the details, in the numerous histories of Westminster 
 Abbey I have consulted. However, there is nothing like 
 returning to the charge, which I shall do before I send my 
 last chapter to the press, f 
 
 " Mrs. Monk, the wife of the Bishop of Gloucester, told 
 me, "the blind King of Hanover, when he visited the Abbey, 
 expressed the greatest desire to visit Mary's tomb, and made 
 particular enquiries, passing his hand over everything she 
 described to him, and tracing the profile with his finger, 
 
 * Archdeacon Bonney would not have been pleased with this criticism 
 on his work ! C. B. 
 
 t She was unable to obtain the particulars. 
 
190 
 
 which, he said, "must have been very beautiful." After 
 having lingered there some little time, with an air of the 
 deepest interest, he said, as he turned away, " I think I shall 
 remember all about Mary Stuart's tomb ! " wishing, at the 
 same time, that he could have seen it. 
 
 " This, I think, argued sensibihty and good feeling on his 
 part." 
 
 This anecdote is particularly interesting. In reply to 
 something that I told Miss Strickland, relative to Mary's 
 escape from Lochleven, as narrated to me by a descendant of 
 the Douglas, she replied, 
 
 " George Douglas was, probably, about Queen Mary's age. 
 His father. Sir Robert Douglas, was killed at the battle of 
 Pinkie, 1547, when Mary was in her fifth year: so that he 
 must, in 1567, have been turned of twenty, and might have 
 been much older. Willie Douglas was the boy of sixteen who 
 effected her deliverance. Sir Walter Scott, m his romance 
 of "The Abbot," confounds these characters; but, they were 
 very distinct personages. George was a strong protestant. 
 
 " I am progressing with the forthcoming volume of " Mary 
 Stuart," and hope it may be out in May : but, it is desperate 
 hard work." 
 
 In another letter on various matters, she says of her work, 
 
191 
 
 " When I am occupied with Mary Stuart, I have little leisure 
 for anything besides." In another, she again refers to 
 Archdeacon Bonney's work ; " Thanks for the extracts 
 touching Fotheringhay. Archdeacon Bonney lent me his 
 illustrated and interleaved copy : but, I was disappointed, 
 expecting more than I found. I had a delicious tour in Scot- 
 land, and returned to finish the old year, and begin the new, 
 with my dear mother. I am now, as you suspect, deeply occu- 
 pied with the conclusion of my life of Mary Stuart. Half the 
 volume is in type ; but I have still four chapters to arrange." 
 
 In another letter, she mentioned her discovery of deeds, 
 shewing that the word "Perio" was in use earlier than Mary 
 Stuart's time : but, I have already referred to that point, in 
 my history of Fotheringhay, and I was able to state it, on 
 Miss Strickland's authority, in my papers, published in The 
 Leisure Hour, November, 1865. I sent a copy of the 
 magazine to Miss Strickland, who, dating from "Park Lane 
 Cottage, Southwold, Suffolk, November 18, 1865," thus 
 acknowledged it: "I have much pleasure in reading your very 
 interesting papers on Fotheringhay, in "The Leisure Hour," 
 which I shall cut out, and lay by among my collections for a 
 new edition of that volume of Mary. Not that I shall be able 
 to use more than a few sentences of your valuable local 
 mformation." 
 
192 
 
 I think that this is all that I need quote from Miss Agnes 
 Strickland's very interesting letters to me, on the subject of 
 this volume. She was an excellent and vivacious corres- 
 pondent ; and her letters to me were on a great variety of 
 themes ; private and family matters ; her own works, " The 
 Queens of England," "The Bachelor Kings of England," 
 her historical novel, " How will it end ? " &c. ; the clique of 
 critics who always "wrote her down," and against whom she 
 inveighs in somewhat strong terms; my own Hterary pro- 
 ductions, "Verdant Green," &c., with my West Highland 
 books, " Glencreggan," "West Highland Stories," and "Tour 
 in Tartanland," in which Mary Stuart was several times 
 mentioned : the value of copyrights — dealings with publishers, 
 with her own personal experiences thereupon. Her eldest 
 sister, EHzabeth, also wrote to me on this subject. She is 
 unknown to fame, but greatly assisted her sister in the 
 researches required in the history of " The Queens of Eng- 
 land" — the work by which Miss Agnes Strickland will, 
 probably, be best known ; although the five volumes of her 
 " Life " of Mary Stuart, with two supplementary volumes of 
 "Letters," must be regarded as her second best historical 
 work, and a remarkable and able vindication of the character 
 of the beauteous and fascinating Queen of Scots. 
 
 Sir Archibald Alison's high panegyric on Miss Agnes 
 
.193 
 
 Strickland, is, that she is " a lady who stands at the head of 
 her whole sex, in all ages, in historical literature." Another 
 critic said of her, "Intellectually, she is one of the three 
 exceptional women of the Victorian age. If Mary Somerville 
 was the Urania, and if Elizabeth Barrett Browning was the 
 Erato, Agnes Strickland is certainly the Clio of our gener- 
 ation." The Essayist in Blackwood's Magazine summed up 
 her merits as a historian, thus — " Miss Strickland's talents as 
 a writer, and turn of mind as an individual, in a peculiar 
 manner fit her for painting a historical gallery of the most 
 illustrious or dignified female characters in that land of' 
 chivalry and song (Scotland). In her delineations of indi- 
 vidual character. Miss Strickland evidently takes the greatest 
 pains to be impartial ; and the multitude of new documents 
 and facts which she has brought on both sides of the question, 
 in regard to her heroines, is a sufficient proof that this most 
 laudable principle is a ruling one in her mind." 
 
 Her "Lives of the Queens of Scotland" were in eight 
 volumes, the pubHcation of which extended over a period of 
 ten years (1850 — 9), and the Life of Mary, Queen of Scots, 
 occupied five of these eight volumes. In it, she brought 
 forward many new facts, having had access to hitherto-un- 
 published documents in the Register House, Edinburgh, the 
 State Paper Offices of London and Paris, the collections of 
 
194 
 
 the Earl of Moray, Prince Labanoff, and other ancient 
 famihes, — various foreign libraries, and many sources of 
 private information, in the correspondence of the times, 
 preserved among the archives of noble families, both in 
 England and Scotland. She also waded through the quartos 
 of the Bannatyne and Maitland, the Abbotsford and Spalding 
 Clubs, and the published works of continental writers ; every 
 page of her work teeming with authorities and quotations. 
 
 She was born, in 1806, at the family residence, Reydon 
 Hall, in Suffolk ; and died in 1874. She was the third of live 
 daughters, all of whom distinguished themselves by the pen, 
 as, indeed, did their only brother. Major Strickland, author 
 of " Twenty-seven years in Canada West." The eldest sister, 
 Elizabeth — as I have already said — helped Agnes largely in 
 her historical works. Jane, the second, began, when very 
 young, to write in the annuals and religious magazines, and 
 was author of " Rome, Regal and Republican." The fourth 
 sister, Catharine Parr, is better known as Mrs. Traill, author 
 of " The Backwoods of America," and " A Guide to Female 
 Emigrants " ; and the fifth daughter, Susannah, Mrs. Moodie, 
 is well-known by her popular work, "Roughing it in the 
 Bush," and is author of two novels, "Flora Lindsay," and 
 " Mark Huddlestone." 
 
 At the age of twelve, Agnes Strickland was writing a lengthy 
 
195 
 
 rhymed chronicle on the Wars of the Roses ; and, at the age 
 of fifteen she had pubHshed her first book — a collection of 
 historical poems, called " Worcester Field ; or The Cavalier," 
 which was highly eulogised by the poet, Thomas Campbell. 
 She then contributed to various magazines ; and, at the age 
 of twenty-one, issued another volume of verse, called " The 
 Seven Ages of Woman." Other volumes followed, both in 
 prose and verse ; but, it was not until the year 1840, that the 
 first volume of her "Queens of England" was pubHshed. 
 From that day, till her death, her labours were chiefly in the 
 study of English and Scottish History, of which her Life of 
 Mary, Queen of Scots, is one of her most conspicuous achieve- 
 ments. 
 
 Her friendship was very pleasant to me, and may fitly be 
 recorded here, as my introduction to her was through the 
 medium of Fotheringhay and Mary, Queen of Scots. 
 
PORTRAITS OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. 
 If many parts of the earlier life of Mary, Queen of Scots, 
 present a puzzled problem to the historian, and, as Sir Walter 
 Scott says, " an unexplained riddle to posterity," her numer- 
 ous portraits present a like bewilderment to those who would 
 wish to see what this acknowledged peerless queen of beauty 
 was like. The portraits of Mary Stuart are very numerous, 
 and not only greatly vary, but, in some cases, are anything 
 but pleasing. 
 
 I think that to Sir Walter Scott must be given the palm of 
 those writers who have attempted a description of her face 
 and form. In the 21st chapter of his novel, "The Abbot," 
 he introduces her to the reader, as a prisoner at Lochleven 
 Castle, in the following glowing terms : — 
 
 " Her face, her form, have been so deeply impressed upon 
 the imagination, that, even at the distance of nearly three 
 centuries, it is unnecessary to remind the most ignorant and 
 uninformed reader of the striking traits which characterize 
 that remarkable countenance, which seems at once to combine 
 our ideas of the majestic, pleasing and the brilliant, leaving us 
 
,197 
 
 to doubt whether they express most happily the queen, the 
 beauty, or the accompHshed woman. Who is there, that, at 
 the very mention of Mary Stuart's name, has not her counten- 
 ance before him, famihar as that of the mistress of his youth, 
 or the favourite daughter of his advanced age ? Even those 
 who feel themselves compelled to believe all, or much, of 
 what her enemies laid to her charge, cannot think without a 
 sigh upon a countenance expressive of anything rather than 
 the foul crimes with which she was charged when living, and 
 which still continue to shade, if not to blacken, her memory. 
 That brow, so truly open and regal, — those eyebrows, so 
 regularly graceful, which yet were saved from the charge of 
 regular insipidity by the beautiful effect of the hazel eyes 
 which they overarched, and which seem to utter a thousand 
 histories, — the nose, with all its Grecian precision of outhne, 
 — the mouth, so well-proportioned, so sweetly formed, as if 
 designed to speak nothing but what was delightful to hear, — 
 the dimpled chin, — the stately swan-like neck — form a count- 
 enance, the like of which we know not to have existed in any 
 other character moving in that class of life, where the actresses 
 as well as the actors command general and undivided atten- 
 tion. 
 
 " It is in vain to say that the portraits which exist of this 
 most r^m^rkable woman are not like each other; for, amidst 
 
198 
 
 their discrepancy, each possesses general features which the 
 eye at once acknowledges as peculiar to the vision which our 
 imagination has raised while we read her history for the first 
 time, and which has been impressed upon it by the numerous 
 prints and pictures which we have seen. Indeed, we cannot 
 look on the worst of them, however deficient in point of 
 execution, without saying that it is meant for Queen Mary ; 
 and no small instance is it of the power of beauty, that her 
 charms should have remained the subject not merely of 
 admiration, but of warm and chivalrous interest, after such a 
 length of time. We know that by far the most acute of those 
 who, in latter days, have adopted the unfavourable view of 
 Mary's character, longed, like the executioner before his 
 dreadful task was performed, to kiss the fair hand of her on 
 whom he was about to perform so horrible a duty." 
 
 Chalmers, in hopeless perplexity, made his draughtsman 
 produce a composite portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots, taking 
 the hair from one picture, the nose from another, the eyes 
 from another, and so on. It has been observed, that the 
 portraits bearing Mary's name, may be assigned to four 
 divisions : — first, those of pure imagination ; secondly, the 
 portraits painted in France ; thirdly, the portrait painted in 
 Sheffield, in 1578, by P. Oudry, of which there are numerous 
 dupHcates, and a copy of which was painted, by Mytens, for 
 
199 
 
 James I ; and, fourthly, the pictures painted after the 
 execution, of which, three at least are in existence, the original 
 being that given by Elizabeth Curie to Blair's College, and 
 already described in these pages. All the pictures of Mary, 
 possessing any claim to authenticity may be traced to one of 
 these three sources ; and, in all the pictures, the same features 
 may be seen. As a matter of course, where some artists 
 succeeded, others failed; and some of the picture-painters 
 had an intense incapacity to do justice to their lovely sitter. 
 But, the same characteristics are to be found in the majority 
 of the portraits ; while some that are dubbed as portraits of 
 the Queen of Scots, are, no doubt, representations of some 
 other lady of that period. 
 
 As an instance of this, I may mention the following fact: — 
 Mr. Gordon, of Sloane Street, being in Florence, watched a 
 clever young French artist, M.Averani, copying the Venus 
 Vesita, of Titian, in the Pitti Palace, said to be the only 
 miniature painted by that great man. It was painted on a 
 gold ground, and had a good deal of the character of Mary 
 Stuart. Mr. Gordon purchased it for six sequins, and brought 
 it to England. Afterwards, when Mr. Gordon sold his Sloane 
 Street Collection, previous to settling in Scotland, the copy of 
 the Titian, was bought for fifty-five guineas. Soon after, the 
 purchaser exhibited it at 14, Pall Mall, charging half-a-crown 
 
200 
 
 admission, as "an original portrait of Mary, Queen of 
 Scotland, the undoubted work of Titian, value one thousand 
 guineas." The exhibitor cleared between three and four 
 hundred pounds by the transaction, besides selling the 
 miniature to a nobleman for nearly eight hundred pounds. 
 
 Some of the portraits of Mary, Queen of Scots, have 
 already been mentioned in these pages. A collection of her 
 portraits was exhibited at Edinburgh, July, 1856, in 
 connection with the meeting of the Archoeological Institute of 
 Great Britain and Ireland ; another collection, including the 
 Blairs College picture, was afterwards exhibited at Aberdeen ; 
 and another collection at the National Portrait Exhibition, at 
 South Kensington, in May, 1866. In addition to the copy 
 of the Blairs College portrait, Miss Agnes Strickland gives 
 steel engravings of the portrait of Mary when Queen- 
 Dauphiness, from the original presented by herself to the 
 Earl of Cassillis — of Mary, in her 25th year, from the picture 
 presented by herself to Sir Henry Curwen, of Workington 
 Hall, Cumberland — and of Mary, in her widow's weeds, from 
 the picture presented by herself to her deliverer, Willie 
 Douglas, and now in the collection of the Earl of Morton, 
 at Dalmahoy. 
 
 The portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots — of which a photo- 
 graph is given in this volume — is here published for the first 
 
201 
 
 time. It is a highly finished miniature, on copper, and was 
 given to me by Mr. Cecil, as a friendly acknowledgment for 
 the additions that I made to his Mary Stuart collection, now 
 in the possession of the nation, and spoken of in a previous 
 page. Mr. Cecil purchased the picture in France when he 
 was making his collection, and it was believed by himself and 
 other experts to be a contemporary portrait. He gave it to 
 me in the year 1853, and it has been in my possession ever 
 since. Many who have seen it hanging in my drawing-room, 
 have been well qualified to give an opinion as to its merits 
 and age ; and they have pronounced it to be, what Mr. Cecil 
 believed it to be, a contemporary portrait. 
 
 The following Sonnet on " Fotheringhay : 1885," has been 
 
 specially written for this volume : — 
 
 A lofty mound, with aged thorns encrowned, 
 
 With grass o'ergrown, and decked with golden flowers ; 
 
 A hoary fragment of the ruined towers, 
 
 On the green slope, a flaggy moat around ; 
 
 Sole, sad, memorials of the once renowned, 
 
 And stately castle, form a quiet scene ; 
 
 WTiile floweth idly by the placid Nene, 
 
 Appropriate emblem of the peace profound. 
 
 Here Memory comes, and musing o'er the past, 
 
 vSees through the vista of three hundred years, 
 
 Scots' hopeless Queen, captive, with scarce a friend. 
 
 Her fate foreboding, gray too soon through tears : — 
 
 Those bitter bonds of suffering loosed at last, 
 
 By that fell, cruel, stroke, that tragic end. 
 
 —N. E. Dixon, 
 
i^otes. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 Page 95. — One of the Peers who was absent from the Trial, though 
 he was present at the Execution, was the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was 
 excused from attending on account of indisposition. He would appear 
 to have been on his way to Fotheringhay ; for, he lay at Stilton, 
 probably, at the " Bell," on the Great North Road, where he was 
 visited by Lord Burghley, who gave him an account of the Trial. 
 
 Page 103. — The letter written by Lord Burghley to Secretary 
 
 Davison was as follows : 
 
 "Fotheringhay, October 15, 1586. 
 
 Mr. Secretary, — Yesternight, upon receipt of your letter dated on 
 
 Thursday, I writ what was thought to be this day's work. This Queen 
 
 of the Castle was content to appear again afore us in public to be heard, 
 
 but in truth, not to be heard for her defence, for she could say nothing 
 
 but negatively, ' that the points of the letters that concerned the practise 
 
 against the queen's majesty's person, were never written by her, nor of 
 
 her knowledge ; the rest for invasion, for escaping by force, she said she 
 
 would neither deny nor affirm.' But, her intention was, by long artificial 
 
 speeches, to move pity, to lay all the blame upon the queen's majesty, or 
 
 rather upon the council, that all the troubles past did ensue, avowing her 
 
 reasonable oflfers and our refusals ; and in these her speeches, I did so 
 
 encounter her with reasons out of my knowledge and experience, as she 
 
 had not that advantage she looked for ; as I am sure the auditory did 
 
 find her case not pitiable, her allegations untrue, by which means great 
 
 debate fell yesternight very long, and this day renewed, with great 
 
 stomaching. 
 
206 
 
 And we find all persons here in the commission fully satisfied, as by 
 her majesty's order, judgement will be given at our next meeting, but 
 the record will not be provided in five or six days, and that was one 
 cause why, if we should have proceeded to judgement, we should have 
 tarried five or six days more ; and surely the country could not bear it, by 
 the waste of bread specially, our company being there, and within six 
 miles, above 2000 horsemen, but by reason of her majesty's letter, we of 
 her council, that is, the Lord Chancellor, Mr. Rich, Mr. Secretary and 
 myself only, did procure this prorogation, for the other two causes. 
 
 And so, knowing that by my Lord of Cumberland, her majesty shall, 
 
 sooner than this letter can come, understand the course of the proceeding, 
 
 I will end. 
 
 Your assured loving friend, 
 
 W. BURGHLEY." 
 
 Page 108. — The letter written by the Queen of Scots to Queen 
 Elizabeth was in French. The following is a full translation : 
 
 *' Fotheringhay, December 19th, 1586. 
 
 Madame, — Having, with difficulty, obtained leave from those to 
 whom you have committed me, to open to you all I have on my heart, 
 as much for exonerating myself from any ill-will, or desire of committing 
 cruelty, or any act of enmity against those with whom I am connected in 
 blood ; as also, kindly to communicate to you what I thought would 
 serve you, as much for your weal and preservation, as for the maintenance 
 of the peace and repose of this isle, which can only be injured if you 
 reject my advice. You will credit, or disbelieve my discourse, as seems 
 best to you. 
 
 I am resolved to strengthen myself in Christ Jesus alone, who, to 
 those invoking Him with a true heart, never fails in His justice and 
 consolation, especially to those who are bereft of all human aid ; such 
 are under His holy protection : to Him be the glory ! He has equalled 
 
207 
 
 my expectation, having given me heart and strength, in spe contra spem^ 
 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. 
 
 Now since I have been on your part informed of the sentence of your 
 last meeting of Parliament, Lord Buckhurst and Beale having admonished 
 me to prepare for the end of my long and weary pilgrimage, I beg to 
 return you thanks on my part for these happy tidings, and to entreat you 
 to vouchsafe to me certain points for the discharge of my conscience. 
 But since Sir A. Paulet has informed me (though falsely) that you had 
 indulged me by having restored to me my almoner and the money that 
 they had taken from me, and that the remainder would follow ; for all 
 this I would willingly return you thanks, and supplicate still further as a 
 last request, which I have thought for many reasons I ought to ask of 
 you alone, that you will accord this ultimate grace, for which I should 
 not like to be indebted to any other, since I have no hope of finding 
 aught but cruelty, from the puritans, who are at this time, God knows 
 wherefore, the first in authority and the most bitter against me. 
 
 I will accuse no one ; may I pardon, with a sincere heart, every one, 
 even as I desire every one may grant forgiveness to me, God the first. 
 But I know that you, more than any one, ought to feel at heart the 
 honour or dishonour of your own blood, and that, moreover, of a queen 
 and the daughter of a king. 
 
 Then, madame, for the sake of that Jesus to whose name all powers 
 bow, I require you to ordain, that when my enemies have slaked their 
 black thirst for my innocent blood, you will permit my poor desolated 
 servants altogether to carry away my corpse, to bury it in holy ground, 
 with the other Queens of France, my predecessors, especially near the 
 late Queen, my mother ; having this in recollection, that, in Scotland, 
 
208 
 
 the bodies of the Kings, my predecessors, have been outraged, and the 
 churches profaned and abolished ; and that as I shall suffer in this 
 country, I shall not be given place near the Kings your predecessors, 
 who are mine as well as yours ; for, according to our religion, we think 
 much of being interred in holy earth. As they tell me that you will in 
 nothing force my conscience nor my religion, and have even conceded 
 me a priest, refuse me not this my last request, that you will permit free 
 sepulchre to this body when the soul is separated, which when united 
 could never obtain liberty to live in repose, such as you would procure 
 for yourself — against which repose, before God I speak, I never aimed a 
 blow ; but God will let you see the truth of all after my death. 
 
 And, because I dread the tyranny of those to whose power you have 
 abandoned me, I entreat you not to permit that execution be done on me 
 without your own knowledge ; "not for fear of the torment, which I am 
 most ready to suffer, but on account of the reports which will be raised 
 concerning my death unsuspected, and without other witnesses than those 
 who would inflict it, who, I am persuaded, would be of very different 
 qualities from those parties whom I require (being my servants) to stay 
 spectators and with witnesses of my end, in the faith of our Sacrament, 
 of my Saviour, and in obedience to His Church. And, after all is over, 
 that they together may carry away my poor corpse (as secretly as you 
 please) and speedily withdraw, without taking with them any of my 
 goods, except those which, in dying, I may leave to them, which are 
 little enough for their long and good services. 
 
 One jewel that I received of you, I shall return to you with my last 
 words, or sooner if you please. 
 
 Once more I supplicate you to permit me to send a jewel and a last 
 adieu to my son, with my dying benediction, for of my blessing he has 
 been deprived, since you sent me his refusal to enter into the treaty 
 whence I was excluded by his wicked council ; this last point I refer to 
 
209 
 
 your favourable consideration and conscience, as the others ; but I ask 
 them, in the name of Jesus Christ, and in respect of our consanguinity, 
 and for the sake of King Henry VII, your grandfather and mine, and by 
 the honour and dignity we both held, and of our sex in common, do I 
 implore you to grant these requests. 
 
 As to the rest, I think you know, that, in your name, they have taken 
 down my dais ; but afterwards they owned to me that it was not by your 
 commandment, but by the intimation of some of your privy council ; I 
 thank God that this wickedness came not from you, and that it serves 
 rather to vent their malice than to afflict me, having made up my mind 
 to die. It is on account of this, and some other things, that they 
 debarred me from writing to you ; and, after they had done all in their 
 power to degrade me from my rank, they told me ' that I was but a 
 mere dead woman, incapable of dignity.' God be praised for all ! 
 
 I would wish that all my papers were brought to you without reserve, 
 that, at last it may be manifest to you, that the sole care of your safety 
 was not confined to those who are so prompt to persecute me ; if you 
 will accord this, my last request, I would wish that you would write for 
 them, otherwise they do with them as they choose. And, moreover, I 
 wish that to this, my last request, you will let me know your last reply. 
 
 To conclude, I pray God, the just Judge, of His mercy, that He will 
 enlighten you with His Holy Spirit, and that He will give me His grace 
 to die in the perfect charity I am disposed to do, and to pardon all those 
 who have caused, or co-operated in, my death. Such will be my last 
 prayer, to my end, which I esteem myself happy will precede the persecu- 
 tion which, I foresee, menaces this isle, where God is no longer seriously 
 feared and revered, but vanity and worldy policy rule and govern all — 
 yet, will I accuse no one, nor give way to presumption — yet, while 
 abandoning this world and preparing myself for a better, I must remind 
 you, that one day you will have to answer for your charge, and for all 
 
2IO 
 
 those whom you doom, and that I desire that my blood and my country 
 may be remembered in that time. For why ? From the first days of our 
 capacity to comprehend our duties, we ought to bend our minds to make 
 the things of this world yield to those of eternity. 
 
 From Fotheringhay this 19th December, 1586, 
 Your sister and cousin, 
 
 Prisoner wrongfully, 
 
 Marie (Royne).* 
 Page iio. — Queen Elizabeth's conduct and language at this period 
 are thus descril:)ed by the French historian, F. A. Mignet (translation by 
 A. R. Scoble, Vol. II, p. 344-8.) "Elizabeth did not yield to the 
 solicitations of Burghley, Leicester and Walsingham, but she became 
 thoughtful and gloomy. She neglected her usual amusements, indulged 
 in solitude, a^id frequently muttered terrible words. She was heard to 
 pronounce a Latin sentence, which served to indicate her anxiety: — "Aut 
 fer aut feri ; ne feriare feri." — " Strike, or be struck; if you would not be 
 struck, strike." She would have been glad if anyone would have 
 relieved her, by secret assassination, of the responsibility of a legal 
 execution. She hinted to her ministers that they should put Mary to 
 death, and spare her the cruel task of giving the order ; and she 
 reproached them with having promised largely when they took the 
 famous oath of the Association, and yet doing nothing for her defence. 
 But the responsibility which she hesitated to take upon herself, her 
 ministers refused to incur. They knew her too well not to feel assured 
 that she would disown them the very day after they had ministered to her 
 passion; and that she would even punish them, so as to throw upon 
 
 * In the days of her prosperity she merely signed her name " Marie " ; 
 but, after her captivity, she was careful to add R. or Royne (for Regina), 
 for the purpose of asserting that royalty, of which she declared she had 
 been deprived by violence and hard restraint, at Lochleven. (See the 
 Egerton Papers, and Miss Strickland's "Letters of Mary, Queen of 
 Scots.") 
 
211 
 
 them all the odium of an execution, of which she desired the advantage 
 without the blame. They turned, therefore, a deaf ear to her hints, and 
 the Queen was compelled to act directly herself. 
 
 On the 1st of February, Secretary Davison, for whom she had sent 
 by Lord Admiral Howard, presented himself before her, at ten o'clock 
 in the morning, with the warrant for Mary's execution, which had beer 
 previously drawn up by the High Treasurer, Burghley. She took it into 
 her hands, read it, asked for a pen, and signed it firmly, desiring 
 Davison to cause the Lord Chancellor to affix to it the Seal of State. 
 She recommended it to be kept as much as possible secret, and added, 
 with an air of pleasantry, "Show it, nevertheless, to Walsingham: I fear 
 the blow will kill him on the spot." vShe forbade a public execution, 
 directing that it should take place in the great hall of Fotheringhay, and 
 not in the court of the castle, and she dismissed Davison with an 
 injunction that she was not again to be addressed on the subject, having 
 done all that the law and reason could require of her. 
 
 Just as he was on the point of withdrawing, Elizabeth detained him, 
 and complained of Amias Paulet and Ihose who might have relieved her 
 of this burden. She added, that she might still be freed of it, if he and 
 Walsingham would write to Sir Amias to sound him on the subject. 
 Whether from want of conscientiousness, or from excess of obedience, 
 Davison did not reject this frightful proposal, but communicated it 
 immediately to Walsingham, while he exhibited the Act signed by the 
 Queen. That very day they wrote to Fotheringhay, and, in that age, 
 when assassination was not disavowed by any sect, and was repugnant to 
 no political party, two ministers of a powerful sovereign, dared, in her 
 name, to instigate the keepers of a prisoner to put her to death clandes- 
 tinely. Here is the insidious and abominable letter which they jointly 
 addressed to Paulet and Drury ; — 
 
 "After our cordial greetings, we perceive, from some words lately 
 
212 
 
 spoken hy her Majesty, that she remarks in you a want of diligence and 
 zeal in not having discovered of yourselves (without other instigation) 
 some mode of putting that Queen to death, considering the great danger 
 to which her Majesty is exposed, so long as the said Queen is in life. 
 Not to speak of the want of affection to her, her Majesty remarks further, 
 that you do not consider your own safety, or rather the preservation of 
 religion, of the public weal, and of the prosperity of your country, as 
 reason and policy require you to do. Your conscience would be peaceful 
 before God, and your reputation clear before the world, since you have 
 taken the solemn oath of the Association, and since, moreover, the facts 
 charged against that Queen have been already proved. Her Majesty, 
 therefore, feels great displeasure at men who profess attachment to her, 
 as you do, thus failing in their duty, and seeking to throw on her the 
 weight of this affair, well knowing, as you do, her repugnance to the 
 shedding of blood, particularly that of a person of her sex and of her 
 rank, and so near a relative. 
 
 We perceive that these considerations trouble her Majesty greatly, 
 who, we can assure you, has repeatedly declared that if she did not feel a 
 greater concern for the dangers which her faithful subjects and her good 
 servants run, than for those which threaten herself, she would never 
 consent that this Queen's blood should be shed. We think it very 
 necessary to inform you of these sentiments expressed not long since by 
 her Majesty, and to submit them to your good judgment, and so we 
 recommend you to the Almighty's protection." 
 
 This letter, which Davison begged Paulet to burn after having read 
 it, arrived at Fotheringhay, on the second of February, towards evening. 
 One hour afterwards, Paulet, who was a sombre fanatic, and a brutal 
 gaoler, but not a dastardly murderer, replied to Walsingham in terms of 
 deep concern and repressed indignation. 
 
 *' Having received your letter of yesterday at five o'clock in the after- 
 
213 
 
 noon of this day, I could not fail to send you an answer with all possible 
 despatch, as you direct. I send it to you in all the bitterness which my 
 heart feels as being so unfortunate as to see the day when, by the 
 injunctions of my most gracious Sovereign, I am required to commit an 
 act which God and the laws forbid. My property, my place, and my 
 life are at her Majesty's disposal, and I am ready to surrender them 
 to-morrow, it such is her good pleasure, acknowledging that I hold them 
 from her sole and gracious favour ; I do not wish to enjoy them but with 
 the good-will of her Highness. But God preserve me from making such 
 a pitiable shipwreck of my conscience, or leaving so foul a stain on my 
 posterity, as to shed blood without the authority of the law, and without 
 a public Act. I hope her Majesty, with her accustomed clemency, will 
 take my loyal answer in good part, as proceeding from one who never 
 will be inferior to any Christian subject living in honour, love and 
 obedience towards his Sovereign, and thus I commit you to the mercy of 
 the Almighty. Your most assured poor friend, 
 
 A. POWLET. 
 From Fotheringhay, the 2nd of February, 1586-7. 
 
 P.S. Your letters coming in the plural number, seem to be meant to 
 Sir Drue Drury as to myself, and yet because he is not named in them, 
 neither the letters directed unto him, he forbeareth to make any 
 particular answer, but subscribeth in heart to my opinion. 
 
 D. Drury."* 
 
 Davison, in his narrative, says that when the Queen read the letter, 
 "she fell into some terms of offence complaining of the dainty perjury of 
 Sir Amyas, who, contrary to his oath of Association, would lay the whole 
 burden of this death upon her. Then she took a turn or two on her 
 gallery, whither Davison followed her, she renewing her former speech, 
 
 * This is not given by Mignet, but will be found in Miss Strickland's 
 Letters^ Vol. II, p. 232. 
 
214 
 
 blaming the niceness of "that precise fellow, Paulet," — for, so she called 
 him now, instead of her former caressing epithets of "Amyas, my most 
 careful and faithful servant." " For," she added, " in words he would 
 do much, but in deeds perform nothing ; " and concluded, " She would 
 have it done without them ; " naming one Wingfield, who, she assured 
 Secretary Davison, "with some others, would undertake it" — namely, 
 the private assassination of the Queen of Scots. She did not, however, 
 find it so easy in England to obtain agents for private murder. " For," 
 says Davison, " the next time I had access to her, she swore it was a 
 shame to them all (her ministers and privy council) that it was not done." 
 
 Page 115. — The Will of Mary, Queen of Scots. 
 
 " In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I, 
 Mary, by the Grace of God, -Queen of Scotland and Dowager of France, 
 being on the point of death, and not having any means of making my 
 will, have myself committed these articles to writing, and I will and 
 desire, that they have the same force, as if they were made in due form. 
 
 In the first place, I declare that I die in the Catholic, Apostolic, and 
 Romish faith. First, I desire that a complete service be performed for 
 my soul in the church of St. Denis, in France, and another in St. Peter's, 
 at Rheims, where all my servants are to attend, in such manner as they 
 may be ordered to do by those to whom I have given directions, and 
 who are named therein. 
 
 Further, that an annual obit be founded for prayers for my soul, in 
 perpetuity, in such place, and after such manner, as shall be deemed 
 most convenient. 
 
 To furnish funds for this, I will that my houses at Fountainebleau be 
 sold, hoping that the King will render me assistance, as I have requested 
 him to do in my memorandum. 
 
 I will that my estate of Trespagny be kept by my cousin De Guise, 
 for one of his daughters, if she should come to be married. In these 
 
215 
 
 quarters, I relinquish half of the arrears due to me, or a part, on condition 
 that the other be paid, in order to be expended, by my executors, in 
 perpetual alms. 
 
 To carry this into effect the better, the documents shall be looked 
 out, and delivered according to the assignment for accomplishing this. 
 
 I will also that the money which may arise from my lawsuit with 
 Secondat be distributed as follows : 
 
 First, in the discharge of my debts and orders hereafter mentioned, 
 and which are not yet paid : in the first place, the two thousand crowns 
 to Curie, which I desire to be paid without any hesitation, they being a 
 marriage portion, upon which neither Nau nor any other person has any 
 claim, whatever obligation he may hold, inasmuch as it is only fictitious, 
 and the money is mine, and not borrowed, which since I did but show 
 him, and afterwards withdrew it, and it was taken from me with the rest 
 at Chartley ; the which I give him, provided he can recover it, agreeably 
 to my promise, in payment of the four thousand francs promised at my 
 death, one thousand is a marriage portion for an own sister, and he 
 having asked me for the rest for his expenses in prison. As to the pay- 
 ment of a similar sum to Nau, it is not obligator}-, and therefore it has 
 always been my intention that it should be paid last, and then only in 
 case he should make it appear that he has not acted contrary to the 
 condition on which I gave it him, and to which my servants were 
 witnesses. 
 
 As regards the twelve hundred crowns, which he has placed to my 
 account, as having been borrowed by him for my use, six hundred of 
 Beauregard, three hundred from Gervais, and the remainder from I know 
 not whom, he must repay them out of his own money, and I must be 
 quit, and my order annulled, as I have not received any part of it, con- 
 sequently it must be still in his possession, unless he has paid it away. 
 Be this as it may, it is necessary that this sum should revert to me. 
 
2l6 
 
 I having received nothing ; and, in case it has not been paid away, 
 I must have recourse to his property, I further direct, that Pasquier 
 shall account for the moneys that he has expended and received by order 
 of Nau, from the hands of the servants of Monsieur de Chasteauneuf, the 
 French ambassador. 
 
 Further, I will that my accounts be audited, and my treasurer paid. 
 Further, that the wages and sums due to my household, as well for 
 the last as for the present year, be paid them before all other things, 
 both wages and pensions, excepting the pensions of Nau and Curie, until 
 it be ascertained what there is remaining, or whether they have merited 
 any pensioning from me, unless the wife of Curie be in necessity, or be 
 ill-treated on my account : the wages of Nau after the same manner. 
 
 I will that the two thousand four hundred francs which I have given 
 to Jeanne Kennedy be paid to her in money, as it was stated in my first 
 deed of gift, which done, the pension of Volly Douglas shall revert to 
 me, which I give Fontenay for services and expenses, for which he has 
 had no compensation. 
 
 I will that the four thousand francs of that banker's be applied for 
 and repaid, I have forgotten his name, but the Bishop of Glascou will 
 readily recollect it ; and, if the first order be not honoured, I desire that 
 another may be given on the first money from Secondat. 
 
 The ten thousand francs which the ambassador has received for me, 
 I will that they be distributed among my servants who are now going 
 away, viz. : 
 
 First, two thousand francs to my physician. 
 
 two thousand francs to Elizabeth Curie. 
 
 two thousand francs to Sebastien Paiges. 
 
 two thousand francs to Mairie Paiges, my god-daughter. 
 
 to Beauregard a thousand francs. 
 
 a thousantl to Gervais. 
 
217 
 
 Further, that, out of the rest of my revenue, with the remainder of 
 Secondat's and all other casualties, I will that five thousand francs be 
 given to the Foundling Hospital of Rheims. 
 
 To my scholars, two thousand francs. 
 
 To four mendicants, such sum as my executors may think fit, accord- 
 ing to the means in their hands. 
 
 Five hundred francs to the hospitals. 
 
 To Martin, escuyer de cuisine, I give a thousand francs. 
 
 A thousand francs to Annibal, whom I recommend to my cousin De 
 Guise, his godfather, to place in some situation, for his life, in his servica. 
 
 I leave five hundred francs to Nicolas, and five hundred francs for 
 his daughters, when they marry. 
 
 I leave five hundred francs to Robert Hamilton, and beg my son to 
 take him, and Monsieur de Glascou, or the Bishop of Rosse. 
 
 I leave to Didier his registership, subject to the approbation of the 
 King. 
 
 I give five thousand francs to Jean Landon, and beg my cousin of 
 Guise, or of Mayne, to take him into their service, and Messieurs de 
 Glascou and de Rosse to see him provided for. I will that his father be 
 paid his wages, and leave him five hundred francs. 
 
 I will that one thousand francs be paid to Gourgeon, for money and 
 other things with which he supplied me in my necessity. 
 
 I will that if Bourgoin should perform the journey agreeably to the 
 vow, which he made for me to Saint Nicolas, that fifteen hundred francs 
 be paid to him for that purpose. 
 
 I leave, according to my slender means, six thousand francs to the 
 Bishop of Glascou, and three thousand to him of Rosse. 
 
 And I leave the gift of casualties and the reserved seignorial rights to 
 my godson, the son of Monsieur de Ruisseu. 
 
2l8 
 
 I give three hundred francs to Laurenz. 
 
 Also three hundred francs to Suzanne. 
 
 And leave ten thousand francs among the four persons who have been 
 my sureties, and to Varmy the solicitor. 
 
 I will that the money arising from the furniture, which I have ordered 
 to be sold in London, shall go to defray the travelling expenses of my 
 servants in France. 
 
 My coach I leave to carry my ladies, and the horses, which they can 
 sell, or do what they like with. 
 
 There remains about three hundred crowns due to Bourgoing for the 
 wages of past years, which I desire may be paid him. 
 
 I leave two thousand francs to Melville, my steward. 
 
 I appoint my cousin, the Duke of Guise, the principal executor of my 
 will. 
 
 After him, the Archbishop of Glascou, the Bishop of Rosse, and 
 Monsieur de Ruisseu, my chancellor. 
 
 I desire that De Prean may, without obstacle, hold his two prebends. 
 
 I recommend Marie Paiges, my god-daughter, to my cousin, Madame 
 de Guise, and beg her to take her into her service, and my aunt de Saint 
 Pierre to get Moubray some good situation, or retain her in her service, 
 for the honour of God. 
 
 Done this day, 7th February, 1587. 
 
 Mary, Queen. 
 
 Memorandum of the last request which I make to the King. 
 
 To cause to be paid to me, all that is due to me, of my pensions, as 
 also of money advanced by the late Queen, my mother, in Scotland, for 
 the service of the King, my father-in-law, in those parts : that at least 
 an annual obit may be founded for my soul, and that the alms and the 
 little endowments promised by me may be carried into effect. 
 
219 
 
 Further, that he may be pleased to grant me the benefit of my dowry 
 for one year after my death, to recompense my servants. 
 
 Further, that he may be pleased to allow them their wages and 
 pensions during their lives, as was done to the officers of Queen Alienor. 
 Further, I entreat him to take my physician into his service, according to 
 his promise to consider him as recommended. 
 
 Further, that my almoner may be replaced in his profession, and, for 
 my sake, have some trifling benefice conferred upon him, so that he may 
 pray to God for my soul during the rest of his life. 
 
 Further, that Didier, an old officer of my household, whom I have 
 recompensed by a registership, may be permitted to enjoy it for his life, 
 being already far advanced in years. 
 
 Written on the morning of my death, this Wednesday, 8th of 
 
 February, 1587. 
 
 Marie R." 
 
 These were the last lines written by Mary, Queen of Scots. 
 
 Page 129. — According to the narrative of Pierre le Pesant Sieur du 
 Bois Guilbert, "shekrjelt upright sometime, expecting her head to be 
 taken off with the stroke of a sword, as they do in France. But, the 
 executioner and his servant, having waited some time, placed her head 
 on the block. The executioner then gave her a stroke with an axe of the 
 same shape of those which they cleave wood withal, without doing any 
 further harm than wounding her skull, so awkward was he ; then, 
 redoubling a second and third stroke, he at last cut off her head." 
 Mignet says — " She imagined that she would have been struck in the 
 mode usual in France, in an upright posture, and with the sword. The 
 two masters of the works, perceiving her mistake, informed her of it, and 
 assisted her to lay her head on the block, which she did without ceasing 
 to pray. There was a universal feeling of compassion at the sight of this 
 lamentable misfortune, this heroic courage, and this admirable sweetness. 
 
220 
 
 The executioner himself was moved, and aimed with an unsteady hand. 
 The axe, instead of falling on the neck, struck the back of the head and 
 wounded her ; yet, she made no movement, nor uttered a complaint. 
 It was only on repeating the blow, that the executioner struck off her 
 head." (II. 367.) 
 
 Page 131. — The "R. W." is believed to be Richard Wigmore, 
 secret agent of Lord Burghley. 
 
 Page 139. — "The two Earls did not leave to the executioner, 
 according to custom, the golden cross around her neck, the chaplets 
 suspended to her girdle, nor the clothes she wore at her death, lest those 
 dear and venerated spoils should be redeemed by her servants and 
 transformed into relics. They therefore burned them." (Mignet.) 
 
 Page 145. — -'The body of the Queen of Scots, after removing the 
 entrails, which were secretly buried, was embalmed but with little 
 respect, wrapped up in wax-cloth, enclosed in a leaden coffin, and 
 left aside until Elizabeth should fix the place where it was to be 
 laid." (Mignet). " Her Majesty's body was embalmed carelessly, and 
 put, with the head, into a lead coffin, and that into another of wood, and 
 they left it in the said great chamber until the first day of the month of 
 August, without anybody being allowed to approach it all that time ; the 
 English perceiving that some of her people went to see it through the 
 key -hole and pray to God, caused it to be stopped up." (Jebb.) The 
 Mr. Blackwood who is mentioned on page 160, writes concerning this 
 circumstance — " The corpes was carryed into a chamber next adjoining, 
 fearinge the saide maides should come to do any charitable good office. 
 It did increase greatly their desire so to do after they did see their 
 mistress' corpes thorowe a little hole of the chamber wall, which was 
 covered with cloath, but the wofull corpes was keepte a longe time in 
 this chamber till it began to corrupt and smell strongly, so that in the end 
 they were constrained to salt it, and to embalm lightly to save charges, 
 
221 
 
 and after to wrap it up in a cake of leade, keeping it seven months there 
 before it was put into prophane earth in the church of Peterborough. It 
 is very true that this church is dedicated under the name of Monsieur 
 Saint Peter, and Queen Catherine of Spain was interred therein after the 
 Catholique fashion, but it is now prophaned like all the churches of 
 Englande." 
 
 Page 147. — A reason for the tardy state funeral of the murdered 
 Queen of Scots is given by the Rev. G. Ayliffe Poole, in his Diocesan 
 History of Peterborough : — " Her body was kept seven months unburied, 
 probably, in hopes that her son, James, King of Scotland, would relieve 
 Elizabeth of the cost of her obsequies." (p. 148.) 
 
 Page 156. — The tombs of Mary, Queen of Scots and Katharine of 
 Arragon, in Peterborough Cathedral, with all their adornments and 
 surroundings, were utterly destroyed by the Puritans, in their desecration 
 of the building. When it was represented to King Henry VHI, that no 
 worthy monument had been erected over the grave of his first wife, he 
 replied that "she should have such a monument as no other wife ever 
 had ! " and he ordered that the Abbey Church should be the Cathedral 
 of a new See. Which was a very cheap method for obtaining a royal 
 memorial. 
 
 King James paid ;^3, 500 for the monuments in Westminster Abbey 
 to his mother, to Queen Elizabeth, and his two daughters, Mary and 
 Sophia. The following description of the monument to Mary, Queen of 
 Scots, is given by Brayley, ( Londiniana^ Vol. IV., p. 6.) "This monu- 
 ment, which stands in the south aisle, is an elaborate and costly archi- 
 tectural pile ; like that of Queen Elizabeth in the north aisle, it is 
 principally a composition from the Corinthian order, and of similar 
 design : but its dimensions and elevation are much greater, the 
 armorial crests which surmount the upper entablature reaching 
 almost to the vaulting. It is constructed of different coloured marbles. 
 
The basement is raised on a two-fold step or plinth, and has four 
 projecting pedestals on each side near the ends : on these stand eight 
 columns, supporting the entablature and canopy, beneath which, upon a 
 sarcophagus, ornamented with lions' heads, is a recumbent statue of the 
 Queen, very finely executed. Her head reposes on two embroidered 
 cushions ; and her hands are raised in prayer, but several of her fingers 
 have been broken off. She wears a close coif, with a narrow edging, and 
 a laced ruff and a tucker, both plaited. Her features are small, but 
 peculiarly sweet and delicate. Her mantle, which is lined with ermine 
 and fastened over the breast with a jewelled broach, is folded gracefully 
 over her knees and legs. The borders of her stomacher are wrought with 
 chain-work ; and her vest has a row of small buttons down the middle, 
 with knots on each side. Her shoes are high-heeled, and round at the 
 toes ; at her feet is the Scottish lion sitting, crowned, supporting the 
 emblems of sovereignty. 
 
 The columns which sustain this canopy are fancifully diversified as to 
 materials : the shafts of four of them being of black marble, and their 
 bases and capitals of white marble, and the shafts, bases, &c., of four 
 others, directly the reverse. Beneath the lower entablatures are circles 
 surrounded by small cherubs, and upon them, over the cornice, are 
 shields of arms and small obelisks. The underpart of the semicircular 
 canopy is divided into several ranges of small pannelling thickly 
 ornamented with roses and thistles, in complete relief. In the spandrils 
 at the sides are angels, draped, holding chaplets ; on the summit are 
 large shields, with the royal arms and supporters of Scotland ; and at the 
 angles are four unicorns, now broken and somewhat displaced, support- 
 ing smaller shields charged with badges. The inscriptions, which are 
 in Latin, include four verses often lines each, and record the unfortunate 
 Queen's royal descent and relations, the extraordinary endowments, both 
 of body and mind, the troubles of her life, her constancy in religion, and 
 her resolution in death." 
 
223 
 
 Page i6i, — The device of the royal crown and lion with fleur-de-lys, 
 that is placed on the cover of this volume, I have copied from the upper 
 part of '• The Helmet and Escutcheon " placed over the grave of Mary, 
 Queen of Scots, in Peterborough Cathedral, at the time of her state 
 funeral, in 1587, and remaining pendant over the grave in 1641, when 
 the spot was visited by Dugdale, who made the drawing from which this 
 device is taken. 
 
Inirej:. 
 
 Abbot, The, Scott's novel, 190, 196. 
 
 Agincourt, Battle of, 9, 48, 55, 56. 
 
 Alison, Sir Archibald, 192. 
 
 Albans, St., battle of, 58. 
 
 Albums, Mary Stuart, 64, 65, 188, 201. 
 
 Andrews, Thomas, High Sheriff, 118, 121. 
 
 Annibal, 217. 
 
 Antona's Banks, poem, 13, 16, 60, 75, 131. 
 
 Archaeological Institute, 21. 
 
 Arragon, Queen Catherine of, 11, 149, 221. 
 
 Arundell, Countess of, 128. 
 
 Avon, river, 16. 
 
 Babingfon, 99, 100. 
 
 Balliol, 7, 14. 
 
 Barkes, Notary, 96. 
 
 Beale, Clerk of Council, 37, iii, 118, 122, 123, 207. 
 
 Bedford, Countess of, 151, 154. 
 
 Beaulne, Renauld de, 132, 133. 
 
 Beauregard, 215, 216. 
 
 Bell, T., poem by, 18, 40, 67. 
 
 Bells at Fotheringhay, 51. 
 
 Billiard-table, 84. 
 
 Blackwood, Mr., 160, 220, 221. 
 
 Blackwood's Magazine, 193. 
 
 Bonney, Archdeacon, 16, 17, 18, 38, 47, 63, 124, 183, 189, 191 
 
 Brayley, 221. 
 
 Brant ome, 132. 
 
 Bramble, poet, 35. 
 
 Bridge's " Northamptonshire," 63. 
 
 Bromley, Lord Chancellor, 97, 98. 
 
226 
 
 Bruce family, 27. 
 
 Buchanan, George, 167. 
 
 Buekhurst, Lord, 108, 207. 
 
 Burghley, Lord, ^(>, 97, loi, 103, 131, 171, 205, 206, 210, 211. 
 
 Burgoigne, physician, 97, 114, 118, 148, 151, 216, 217, 218. 
 
 Byron, Lord, 142, 144. 
 
 Camden, 34, 38, 49, 60, 112, i6l, 163. 
 
 Caparn, Mr., Oundle, 65. 
 
 Carte, 163, 165. 
 
 Carter, artist, 66. 
 
 Caussin, 156. 
 
 Cawood Amyas, 140, 141. 
 
 Cawood Margaret, 140. 
 
 Cecil (see Burghley, Lord). 
 
 Cecil, Joseph, Esq., 64, 65, 66, 201, 
 
 Chalmers, 201. 
 
 Chambers, Robert, 134. 
 
 Chartley, 43, 81, 148, 215. 
 
 Chasteauneuf, M. de, 216. 
 
 Chatillon, sad, 8, 9. 
 
 Cis, proud, 9, 10, 11, 54, 55, 58, 59. 
 
 Cliftor, Lord, 10. 
 
 Collins' Baronetage, 27. 
 
 Colvin, Professor, 66. 
 
 Commissioners at the Trial, 95, 96, 98. 
 
 Conington Castle, 32, 39, 175; Chair at, 36, 37, 38, 175, 186, 188 
 
 Church, 27, 29, 36. 
 Cotton, Sir John, 30, 35. 
 
 Cotton, Sir Robert Bruce, 26 to 32, 34 to 36, 64. 
 Courtney, Edward, Earl of Devonshire, 12. 
 Coventry, 180. 
 Creuso, Mr., 10. 
 Cromwell's soldiers, 44, 221. 
 Croyland, 10, 45. 
 
 Curie, Elizabeth, 120, 127, 139, 141, 159, 186, 199, 216. 
 Curie, Secretary, 100, 117, 215, 216. 
 
 Darnley, Henry, 71. 
 David I., 27. 
 
227 
 
 Davison, Secretary, 85, 95, loi, 103, 146, 169, 205, 211 to 214. 
 
 Denton, Hunts. , 27 to 30. 
 
 Derby, 180. 
 
 Didier, 217, 219, 
 
 Dixon, N. E., Sonnet by, 201. 
 
 Dog, Queen Mary's, 130, 144, 145. 
 
 Douay, Scotch College at, 141, 159. 
 
 Douglas, George and Willie, 190, 203. 
 
 Douglas, Volly, 216. 
 
 Dress, Queen Mary's, on scaffold, 116, 117. 
 
 Drury, Sir Drue, 108, no, in, 121, 213. 
 
 Dugdale, 49, 160, 223. 
 
 Dunbarton, 76. 
 
 Dyer's poems, 35. 
 
 Edward, Duke of York, 9, 48. 
 
 Edward III, 9. 
 
 Edward IV, 10, 41 to 44, 49, 57, 58, 61. 
 
 Edward V, 10. 
 
 Edward VI, 49. 
 
 Egerton, 112, 210. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, wife of Henry VII, ii. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 10, 14, 15, 32, 33, 44, 55, 134, 146 ; her motives, 
 161, 168, 210 ; orders the trial, 95, and sentence 107, 108, 
 no, 140, 211 ; death of, 171 ; Mary's last letter to, 206 to 
 210, 
 
 Elton, 45, 72. 
 
 Falcon and fetter-lock, 45, 50, 52. 
 
 Fetter-lock, keep of Castle, 20, 60. 
 
 Fineshade Abbey, 39. 
 
 Fitzwilliam, Sir William, 81, 120. 
 
 Fletcher, Dr. , Dean of Peterborough, 124, 125, 130. 
 
 Fontenay, 216. 
 
 Forget-me-not, 73, 74, 88. 
 
 Fortescue, Mr., 147. 
 
 Fotheringhay : — Castle, 7, 8, 9 to 14, 16, 17, 19 to 21, 27, 31, 32, 40, 
 60, 63, 69, 72, Tz^ 75> 81 ; Church, 9, 10, 45, 46, 48 to 59, 
 69, 81 ; Monuments, 14, 33, 45 : Bridge, 16, 43, 62, 63, 81 ; 
 Banquet-hall, 32, 34, 37, 39, 69, 72 ; Village, 41, 61. 
 
22! 
 
 Freshfield, Dr., 109. 
 
 Froude, 38, 98, 112, 120, 123, 126, 128, 132, 143, 164. 
 
 Fuller, the historian, 21, 28, 55. 
 
 Funeral March at Fotheringhay, 122, 176, 177. 
 
 Gawdy, Queen's Serjeant, 99. 
 
 Gervais, 215, 216. 
 
 Glasgow, Bishop of, 216, 218. 
 
 Gleig, Rev. G. R., 168. 
 
 Gloucester, Duke of, (Richard III) 11, 45, 54. 
 
 Gloucester, Bishop's Palace at, 177 to 179, 185, 189. 
 
 Godwin, H. 17. 
 
 Gorges, Sir Thomas, 81. 
 
 Grantham, 57. 
 
 Gray, the poet, 9, 54. 
 
 Guise, De, 214, 217. 
 
 Hanover, blind King of, 189. 
 
 Hamilton, Lord Claude, 114. 
 
 Hatton, Sir Christopher, 97 
 
 Hawthorns, 67, 74, 75, 88. 
 
 Heathcote, J. M. Esq, 34. 
 
 Heathcote, Sir John, 35. 
 
 Heathcote, Sir Gilbert, 35. 
 
 Henry IH, of France, 118. 
 
 Henry VI, 49. 
 
 Henry VII, 11, 209. 
 
 Henry VIII, 11, 221. 
 
 Heron, d']. 
 
 Hill, D. O., artist, 67. 
 
 Holland, Philemon, 60. 
 
 Hosack, Mr. John, 104, 129, 162. 
 
 Howard, Lord Admiral, 211. 
 
 Howard, William, a Freemason, 49. 
 
 Hume, 164. 
 
 James I, 16 to 19, 26, 27, 146, 147, 156, 160, 186, 221 ; the curse of, 
 
 20, 25. 
 Jebb, 112, 220. 
 Johnson, Dr., 167. 
 
229 
 
 Kent, Earl of, ^7, ill to 113, 118, 119, 121, 126, 130. 
 Kennedy, Jane, 114, 115, 120, 127, 128, 139, 159, 186, 216. 
 Knight, Charles, 63, 168. 
 Knox, John, 144, 164, 183. 
 
 Langley, Edmund, 9, 48, 60, 75. 
 
 Leicester, 210. 
 
 Leland, 16, 41, 46, 49. 
 
 Lennox Lene, 181. 
 
 Lingard, Dr., 105, 120, 129, 146, 163, 171. 
 
 Lincoln, Bishop of, 152, 153. 
 
 London, rejoicings in, 109, 140. 
 
 Lytton, Sir E. Bulwer, 145. 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, 104. 
 
 Market-stead, Fotheringhay, 43. 
 
 Marprelate, Martin, 154. 
 
 Martin, 217, 
 
 Mary, Queen of Scots, 7, 11, 12, 19, 21, 26, 37, 42, 43, 64, 77, 78, 
 
 84, 85 to 91 ; Trial, 95 to 106; after the trial, 107 to 115 ; 
 
 Execution, 116 to 138, 219, 220; Funeral, 139 to 158; 
 
 Tomb, 187, 189, 220, 221, 222; Will, 214 to 219; Portraits, 
 
 38, 140, 141, 142, 144, 159, 177, 185, 196 to 201. 
 Mary Stuart albums, 64, 65, 188, 201. 
 Maunsell, Rev. G. E., 135. 
 May-pole at Fotheringhay, 43. 
 Medicis, Catherine de, 134. 
 
 Melville, Sir Andrew, 98, no, 120, 147, 151, 159, 218. 
 Mendoza, loi to 103, 
 Mignet, F.A., 210, 219, 220. 
 Mildmay, Sir Walter, 96. 
 Moray, Regent, 182, 183. 
 Morgan, loi. 
 
 Mountjoy, Earl of Devonshire, 19. 
 Mountjoy, Earl of Newport, 19, 22, 27. 
 Mowbray, Sir John, 159, 218. 
 Music at the execution, 122, 176, 177. 
 My tens, artist, 198. 
 
 Nau, Secretary, 100, 107, 215, 216. 
 
 Nene, river, 16, 20, 41, 44, 62, 68, 73, 83, 87, 149, 189, 201. 
 
230 
 
 Newark, 57. 
 
 New Inn, Fotheringhay, 41, 42, 61, 62, 70. 
 Nichols, historian, 15, 16, 22, 38, 61, 82. 
 Nichols, J. G. Esq., 23. 
 Northumberland, Duke of, 10, 49. 
 Nottingham, David, Earl of, 23, 44. 
 
 Oudry, artist, 198. 
 
 Oundle, 62, 65 ; Talbot Inn, 39, 175. 
 
 Overstone, Lord, 23, 24, 62. 
 
 Paiges, S. and M., 216, 218. 
 
 Paul's St., Cathedral, 56. 
 
 Paulet, Sir Amyas, 42, 43, 81, 84, 96, 108, no, in, 113, 118, 121, 
 
 122, 145, 207, 211, 212, 213. 
 Pasquier, 216. 
 Peacham, Henry, 10. 
 Pembroke Hall, Cambridge,' 9. 
 Perio Lane, 81, 82, 191. 
 Peterborough Cathedral, 82, 147, 149, 152, 221, 223; Bishop of, 149; 
 
 Dean of, 124, 125, 149, 155. 
 Pictorial Musings, 67. 
 Plantagenet, 8, 10, 41. 
 Plantagenet, Richard, 9, 55. 
 Plummer, John, 157, 158. 
 Poole, Rev. G. A., 221. 
 Pope, the poet, 35. 
 Portraits of Mary, Queen of Scots, 38, 140, 141, 142, 144, 159, 177, 
 
 185, 196 to 201. 
 Pott, L. J., artist, 98. 
 
 Prayers of Mary, Queen of Scots, 115, I17, 126, 129. 
 Prean, De, almoner, 114, 153, 218. 
 
 Racine, 65. 
 Relick Sunday, 43. 
 Richard III, ii, 45, 54. 
 Rings, Mary's, 71, 102. 
 Roberts, S, 166. 
 Robertson, Dr., 132, 143. 
 Rogers, Samuel, 167. 
 
231 
 
 Rosse, Bishop of, 217, 218. 
 Ruisseu, Monsieur de, 218. 
 Rutland, Edmund, Earl of, 10, 49, 56. 
 
 Scaffold, the, 121. 
 
 Scarlett, Robert, sexton, 149, 150. 
 
 Schiller, 65. 
 
 Scots, Queen of, — see " Mary." 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 102, 106, 131, 140, 146, 168, 190, 196, 197, 198. 
 
 Shakspeare, ii. 
 
 Sharpe, Kirkpatrick, 183. 
 
 Shrewsbury, Earl of, 37, in, 112, 113, 118, 121, 123, 142, 205; 
 
 Countess of, 134. 
 Simon de St. Liz, 8, 27. 
 Sims, Richard, Esq., 65, 66. 
 Sinclair, Earl of, 147. 
 
 Sissily, Duchess of York, 9, 10, 11, 54, 55, 58, 59. 
 Skipwith, Sir John, 57. 
 Southwell, Mrs., 171. 
 Stamford, 57. 
 Steell Gourlay, artist, 145. 
 Stilton, 205. 
 Strickland, Miss Agnes, 9, 64, 71, 76, 77, 82, 117, 122, 129, 134, 169, 
 
 192 to 195 ; Letters, 174 to 191 ; Miss Elizabeth, 192, 194; Miss 
 
 Mary, 114. 
 Stukeley, Dr., 35, 50. 
 
 Talbot, Lord, 140. 
 
 Tennyson, Lord, 'jd^ 129. 133. 
 
 Thistle, Scotch, 75, 76, 77, 88, 180, 184, 185. 
 
 Thorpe, Markham J., 163. 
 
 Trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, 95 to 106. 
 
 Tutbury Castle, 179, 185. 
 
 Valence, Mary of, 8. 
 
 Varmy, Solicitor, 218. 
 
 W., R., 131, 220. 
 
 Wakefield Green, battle of, 9, 55, 56. 
 
 Walsingham, 85, 99, 109, iio, 210, 211. 
 
 Warton's Poetry, 52. 
 
 Warmington, 70, 72. 
 
232 
 
 Wells, Admiral, 31. 
 
 Wesley, John, Rev., 167. 
 
 Westminster Abbey, 56, 156, 187, 189, 221. 
 
 Wigmore, R., 131, 220. 
 
 Windsor Castle, 142. 
 
 Wingfield, 214. 
 
 Woodville, Elizabeth, 58. 
 
 Woolston, Guy, 59. 
 
 Wordsworth, W., poet, 12, 76, 89. 
 
 Wyatt's conspiracy, 12. 
 
 Wyatt, Robert, 70, 71, 72. 
 
 York, house of, 11, 33, 41, 45> 54- 
 
 York, Cecily, Duchess of, 10, 54. 
 
 York, Edward, Duke of, 48, 55 
 
 York, Richard, Duke of, 9, 42, 43, 48, 49, 56, 61, 
 
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■ OUNDLE : 
 ALFRED KING, PRmTER. 
 1886. 
 
 |(^ 
 
1^ 
 

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