block, she recited that psalm, 'In Thee, O Lord, do I trust; let me never be confounded.' Then stretching forth her body, and repeating many times, 'Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit,' her head was stricken off at two strokes, the dean crying out, 'So let Queen Elizabeth's enemies perish!' the Earl of Kent answering 'Amen,' and the multitude sighing and sorrowing. Nichols tells us that the executioner at two strokes separated her head from her body, saving a sinew, which a third stroke parted also. When the fatal blow was struck, 'her face was in a moment so much altered that few could remember her by her dead face; her lips stirred up and down a quarter of an hour after her head was cut off' (Ellis). The executioner that went about to pluck off her stockings found her little dog had crept under her coat, which, being put from thence, went and laid himself down betwixt her head and the body, and being besmeared with her blood, was caused to be washed. In her last moments, the Scottish queen exhibited a religious dignity, resignation, and apparent serenity of conscience, that tend greatly to counteract the popular impression regarding her guilt. We are at a loss to believe that one who had not lived well could die so well. Heretofore the strange conduct of Elizabeth towards her unfortunate cousin had not tended to exculpate her from authorizing the Fotheringhay tragedy. But it now appears that she really did not give the final order for the act, but that the whole was managed, without her consent, by Burleigh, Walsingham, and Davison; the signature to the warrant being forged, at Walsingham's command, by his secretary Thomas Harrison (Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England, vii. 465); so that the queen's conduct to these men afterwards was not hypocritical, as hitherto believed. A fortnight and a day elapsed before King James, while hunting at Calder, was certified of the event. It put him into a very great displeasure and grief,' and well might; and he much lamented and mourned her many days.' Walpole says of her portrait: 'At the Duke of Devonshire's, at Hardwicke, there is a valuable though poorly painted picture of James v. and Mary of Guise, his second queen it is remarkable from the great resemblance of Mary Queen of Scots to her father-I mean in Lord Morton's picture of her, and in the image on her tomb at Westminster, which agree together, and which I take to be genuine likenesses.' In a very old trial of her, which Walpole bought from Lord Oxford's collection, it is said. 'she was a large, lame woman.' (See note at page 39, ante.) The beauty, accomplishments, and hard fortune of this extraordinary princess, who was a captive eighteen years, have given such an interest to the place in which she suffered, that the stranger is apt to imagine he shall find some relic on the spot to gratify his curiosity. He will regret that the ground on which it stood, with the surrounding moats, and small fragments of the walls near the river and on the east of the mound, are the only marks of this block, she recited that psalm, 'In Thee, O Lord, do I trust; let me never be confounded.' Then stretching forth her body, and repeating many times, Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit,' her head was stricken off at two strokes, the dean crying out, So let Queen Elizabeth's enemies perish!' the Earl of Kent answering 'Amen,' and the multitude sighing and sorrowing. Nichols tells us that the executioner at two strokes separated her head from her body, saving a sinew, which a third stroke parted also. When the fatal blow was struck, 'her face was in a moment so much altered that few could remember her by her dead face; her lips stirred up and down a quarter of an hour after her head was cut off' (Ellis). The executioner that went about to pluck off her stockings found her little dog had crept under her coat, which, being put from thence, went and laid himself down betwixt her head and the body, and being besmeared with her blood, was caused to be washed. In her last moments, the Scottish queen exhibited a religious dignity, resignation, and apparent serenity of conscience, that tend greatly to counteract the popular impression regarding her guilt. We are at a loss to believe that one who had not lived well could die so well. Heretofore the strange conduct of Elizabeth towards her unfortunate cousin had not tended to exculpate her from authorizing the Fotheringhay tragedy. But it now appears that she really did not give the final order for the act, but that the whole was managed, without her consent, by Burleigh, Walsingham, and Davison; the signature to the warrant being forged, at Walsingham's command, by his secretary Thomas Harrison (Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England, vii. 465); so that the queen's conduct to these men afterwards was not hypocritical, as hitherto believed. A fortnight and a day elapsed before King James, while hunting at Calder, was certified of the event. It put him into a very great displeasure and grief,' and well might; and he much lamented and mourned her many days.' : Walpole says of her portrait: 'At the Duke of Devonshire's, at Hardwicke, there is a valuable though poorly painted picture of James v. and Mary of Guise, his second queen it is remarkable from the great resemblance of Mary Queen of Scots to her father-I mean in Lord Morton's picture of her, and in the image on her tomb at Westminster, which agree together, and which I take to be genuine likenesses.' In a very old trial of her, which Walpole bought from Lord Oxford's collection, it is said 'she was a large, lame woman.' (See note at page 39, ante.) The beauty, accomplishments, and hard fortune of this extraordinary princess, who was a captive eighteen years, have given such an interest to the place in which she suffered, that the stranger is apt to imagine he shall find. some relic on the spot to gratify his curiosity. He will regret that the ground on which it stood, with the surrounding moats, and small fragments of the walls near the river and on the east of the mound, are the only marks of this once strong and memorable castle.' When Walpole visited the spot in 1763, he wrote: The castle is totally ruined. The mount on which the keep stood, two doorcases, and a piece of the moat, are all the remains. Near it are a front and two projections of an ancient house, which, by the arms about it, I suppose was part of the palace of Richard and Cicely, Duke and Duchess of York. . . . You may imagine we were civil enough to the Queen of Scots, to feel a pity for her while we stood on the very spot where she was put to death.' During the rest of the reign of Elizabeth the castle is passed over unnoticed, and was probably uninhabited; but in the first year of James I. it was granted to Charles Lord Mountjoy, created afterwards Earl of Devonshire; Sir Edward Blount, Knt.; and Joseph Garth, Esq. Upon the death of the Earl, four years after, the two other proprietors conveyed the castle and lordship to his natural son, Mountjoy, who was afterwards created Earl of Newport. In 1625, the last year of the reign of James I., the castle was surveyed, and is described as 'very strong, built of stone, and moated about with a double moat.' The great barn and part adjoining were in 1821 tenanted by a farmer. On the east side of what was then the dwelling-house was a Gothic doorway, the only fragment of original architecture on the premises. Historic Notices, by the Rev. H. K. Bonney; a book wrought with the most trustworthy materials, including an unpublished record of Dugdale. |