What the real feelings or intentions of Elizabeth were,can never be known now;but I strongly suspect her of only wishing one thing more than Mary's death,and that was to keep free of the blame of it.On the first of February,one thousand five hundred and eighty-seven,Lord Burleigh having drawn out the warrant for the execution,the Queen sent to the secretary DAVISON to bring it to her,that she might sign it:which she did.Next day,when Davison told her it was sealed,she angrily asked him why such haste was necessary?Next day but one,she joked about it,and swore a little.Again,next day but one,she seemed to complain that it was not yet done,but still she would not be plain with those about her.So,on the seventh,the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury,with the Sheriff of Northamptonshire,came with the warrant to Fotheringay,to tell the Queen of Scots to prepare for death.
When those messengers of ill omen were gone,Mary made a frugal supper,drank to her servants,read over her will,went to bed,slept for some hours,and then arose and passed the remainder of the night saying prayers.In the morning she dressed herself in her best clothes;and,at eight o'clock when the sheriff came for her to her chapel,took leave of her servants who were there assembled praying with her,and went down-stairs,carrying a Bible in one hand and a crucifix in the other.Two of her women and four of her men were allowed to be present in the hall;where a low scaffold,only two feet from the ground,was erected and covered with black;and where the executioner from the Tower,and his assistant,stood,dressed in black velvet.The hall was full of people.While the sentence was being read she sat upon a stool;
And,when it was finished,she again denied her guilt,as she had done before.The Earl of Kent and the Dean of Peterborough,in their Protestant zeal,made some very unnecessary speeches to her;
To which she replied that she died in the Catholic religion,and they need not trouble themselves about that matter.When her head and neck were uncovered by the executioners,she said that she had not been used to be undressed by such hands,or before so much company.Finally,one of her women fastened a cloth over her face,and she laid her neck upon the block,and repeated more than once in Latin,'Into thy hands,O Lord,I commend my spirit!'Some say her head was struck off in two blows,some say in three.However that be,when it was held up,streaming with blood,the real hair beneath the false hair she had long worn was seen to be as grey as that of a woman of seventy,though she was at that time only in her forty-sixth year.All her beauty was gone.
But she was beautiful enough to her little dog,who cowered under her dress,frightened,when she went upon the scaffold,and who lay down beside her headless body when all her earthly sorrows were over.
THIRD PART
ON its being formally made known to Elizabeth that the sentence had been executed on the Queen of Scots,she showed the utmost grief and rage,drove her favourites from her with violent indignation,and sent Davison to the Tower;from which place he was only released in the end by paying an immense fine which completely ruined him.Elizabeth not only over-acted her part in making these pretences,but most basely reduced to poverty one of her faithful servants for no other fault than obeying her commands.
James,King of Scotland,Mary's son,made a show likewise of being very angry on the occasion;but he was a pensioner of England to the amount of five thousand pounds a year,and he had known very little of his mother,and he possibly regarded her as the murderer of his father,and he soon took it quietly.
Philip,King of Spain,however,threatened to do greater things than ever had been done yet,to set up the Catholic religion and punish Protestant England.Elizabeth,hearing that he and the Prince of Parma were making great preparations for this purpose,in order to be beforehand with them sent out ADMIRAL DRAKE (a famous navigator,who had sailed about the world,and had already brought great plunder from Spain)to the port of Cadiz,where he burnt a hundred vessels full of stores.This great loss obliged the Spaniards to put off the invasion for a year;but it was none the less formidable for that,amounting to one hundred and thirty ships,nineteen thousand soldiers,eight thousand sailors,two thousand slaves,and between two and three thousand great guns.
England was not idle in making ready to resist this great force.
All the men between sixteen years old and sixty,were trained and drilled;the national fleet of ships (in number only thirty-four at first)was enlarged by public contributions and by private ships,fitted out by noblemen;the city of London,of its own accord,furnished double the number of ships and men that it was required to provide;and,if ever the national spirit was up in England,it was up all through the country to resist the Spaniards.Some of the Queen's advisers were for seizing the principal English Catholics,and putting them to death;but the Queen-who,to her honour,used to say,that she would never believe any ill of her subjects,which a parent would not believe of her own children-rejected the advice,and only confined a few of those who were the most suspected,in the fens in Lincolnshire.The great body of Catholics deserved this confidence;for they behaved most loyally,nobly,and bravely.