CHAPTER XV.

AN INTERVAL OF SUSPENSE.

The end did not come so quickly as Mary had expected. Although the sentence had been publicly proclaimed throughout the kingdom, Elizabeth hesitated to sign the death-warrant. She saw that the execution of the Scottish queen might be fraught with dangerous consequences to herself and the realm, and it was not her policy to make a perilous advance without having provided the means for a safe retreat. If she could only find some servant who, "upon the winking of authority could understand a law," her purpose would be better served. Mary would be secretly removed, and a scapegoat would be at hand to bear the sin, and, if needs be, the punishment due to it. On February the 1st, she signed the death-warrant, which had been placed before her among a number of other papers, and impressed upon Assistant Secretary Davison that she did not wish to be troubled further with that matter. Indeed she continued to complain of the lack of zeal in those who had joined the Association for her defence. She had done all, she said, that could be required of her by law or reason, and those who were interested in her welfare should relieve her of further responsibility. "Would it not be better for me," she remarked, "to risk personal danger than to take the life of a relation. But if a loyal subject were to save me from the embarrassment of dealing the blow, the resentment of Scotland and France might be disarmed." The prudence of those "loyal subjects" who preferred to leave the responsibility on her own shoulders, was amply vindicated immediately after the execution, when, in the futile endeavour to deceive the French and Spanish ambassadors, she visited Burleigh and other Ministers with temporary suspension from office, and cast Davison into the Tower, where she left him to languish for the remainder of her lifetime, because forsooth they had executed the death-warrant without her knowledge. Walsingham and Davison felt constrained, however, to write Sir Amias Paulet and Sir Drew Drury, whom the Queen thought should be ready to do her will, to point out to them the service their royal Mistress expected from them. "We find," they wrote, "by speech lately uttered by Her Majesty that she doth note in you a lack of that care and zeal of her service that she looked for at your hands, in that you have not in all this time of yourselves (without other provocation) found out some way to shorten the life of the Queen, considering the great peril she (Elizabeth) is subject unto hourly, so long as the said Queen shall live........

"And therefore she (Elizabeth) taketh it most unkindly towards her, that men professing that love towards her that you do, should in any kind or sort, for lack of the discharge of your duties, cast the burthen upon her, knowing, as you do, her indisposition to shed blood, especially of one of that sex and quality, and so near to her in blood as the said Queen is." Closing, they commit Paulet and Drury "to the _protection_ of the Almighty"--which was very thoughtful, seeing how persuasively they had just been soliciting them to an act of assassination. Paulet, in spite of his fierce hatred of Mary, unequivocally refused to entertain the suggestion and expressed his regret that he had lived to see the unhappy day in which he was "required by direction from her most gracious sovereign, to do an act which God and the law forbiddeth." Then, with exquisite propriety of terminology, he commits Walsingham and Davison, not to the "_protection_"--the time when they most needed protection he probably thought was past--but to "the _mercy_ of the Almighty."

In the meantime the preparations for the execution were advancing. Elizabeth having signed the death-warrant, Davison handed it over to the Chancellor; at the instance of the Lord Treasurer, Burleigh, the Council convened, and, without waiting further instructions from the Queen, appointed the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury to execute the warrant.

While her fate was being sealed at Westminster, the doomed captive in Fotheringay was expecting, from day to day, to receive the final blow. Though frequently confined to bed by rheumatism in her limbs, she maintained a cheerfulness and composure that greatly annoyed the irascible Paulet. On December the 15th, he complains to Walsingham that "this lady continues to show her perverse and obstinate character." "She shows," he adds, "no sign of repentance and no submission. She does not acknowledge her fault, does not ask for forgiveness and shows no sign of wishing to live."

On the 19th of December, she penned a letter of which the following is a portion, to Queen Elizabeth:--

"Madame, in honour of Jesus (whose name all powers obey), I require you to promise that when my enemies shall have satisfied their dark desire for my innocent blood, you will permit that my poor sorrowful servants may altogether bear my body to be buried in holy ground and near those of my predecessors who are in France, especially the late queen, my mother; and this because in Scotland the bodies of the kings, my ancestors, have been insulted, and the churches pulled down and profaned, and because, suffering death in this country, I cannot have a place beside your predecessors, who are also mine; and what is more important, because in our religion we must prize being buried in holy ground. And as I am told you wish in nothing to force my conscience or my religion, and have even conceded me a priest, I hope that you will not refuse this my last request, but will at least allow free sepulture to the body from which the soul will be separated, as being united, they never knew how to obtain liberty to live in peace, or to procure the same for you, for which before God I do not in any way blame you--but may God show you the entire truth after my death.

"And because I fear the secret tyranny of some of those into whose power you have abandoned me, I beg you not to permit me to be executed without your knowledge--not from fear of the pain, which I am ready to suffer, but on account of the rumours which would be spread concerning my death if it was not seen by reliable witnesses; how it was done, I am persuaded, in the case of others of different rank. It is for this reason that in another place I require that my attendants remain to be spectators and witnesses of my end in the faith of my Saviour, and in the obedience of His Church, and afterwards they shall all together quickly withdraw, taking my body with them as secretly as you wish, and so that the furniture and other things which I may be able to leave them in dying, be not taken from them, which will be, indeed a very small reward for their good service. Would you wish me to return a jewel, which you gave me, to you with my last words, or would it please you to receive it sooner? I implore of you anew to permit me to send a jewel and a last adieu to my son, together with my blessing, of which he has been deprived, owing to that you informed me of his refusal to enter into a treaty in which I was included,--by the unhappy advice of whom? The last point I leave to your conscience and favourable consideration. For the others I demand of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, and in consideration of our relationship, in remembrance of King Henry VII., your grandfather and mine[#] and in honour of the dignity we have both held, and of our common sex, that my request be granted.

[#] Henry VII. was Elizabeth's grandfather and Mary's great-grandfather.

"For the rest I think you will certainly have heard that they pulled down my dais, by your order, as they said, and that afterwards they told me that it was not done by your command but by that of some of the Council. I praise God that such cruelty, which could only show malice and affect me after I had made up my mind to die, came not from you. I fear it has been like this in many other things, and that this is the reason why they would not permit me to write to you until they had, as far as they could, taken from me all external mark of dignity and power, telling me I was simply a dead woman, stripped of all dignity.

"God be praised for all. I wish that all my papers, without any exception, had been shown to you, so that it might have been said that it was not solely the care of your safety which animated all those who are so prompt in pursuing me. If you grant me this, my last request, give orders that I shall see what you write regarding it, as otherwise they will make me believe what they like; and I desire to know your final reply to my final request.

"In conclusion, I pray the God of mercy, the just Judge, that He will deign to enlighten you by His Holy Spirit, and that He will give me the grace to die in perfect charity, as I am preparing myself to do, pardoning all those who are the cause of my death, or who have co-operated in it, and this shall be my prayer till the end. I consider it happy for me that it should come before the persecution which I foresee threatens this island--if God is not more truly feared and revered, and vanity and worldly policy not more wisely curbed. Do not accuse me of presumption if, on the eve of leaving this world, and preparing myself for a better, I remind you that one day you will have to answer for your charge as well as those who are sent before, and that, making no account of my blood or my country, I desire to think of the time when, from the earliest dawn of reason, we were taught to place our soul's welfare before all temporal matters, which should cede to those of eternity.

"Your Sister and Cousin wrongfully imprisoned, MARIE, QUEEN."

She wrote again to Elizabeth nearly a month later, but Paulet refused to dispatch her letter.