For three decades, Maria Stuart competed with one of the most powerful women in history, Elizabeth Tudor. Ultimately, she lost and had to pay the highest price. The execution turned into a macabre spectacle that shocked even its most die-hard opponents.
On Wednesday morning, February 8, 1587, a crowd of English and Scottish nobles gathered in the walls of Fotheringhay Castle, approximately 120 kilometers from London. They came to see the execution of Maria Stuart. The entire event was meticulously planned, but almost everything went wrong as expected.
Maria Stuart's last victory
The first problems appeared right after the execution warrant was read. Well, as John Guy writes in his book "Mary, Queen of Scots. The True Story of Maria Stuart ” , famous for his oratory talents Dr. Richard Fletcher, one of Queen Elizabeth's favorite preachers, had:
deliver the conventional "admonition" sharply criticizing Mary's treacherous affiliation with the Catholic Church. […] But his "admonition" turned out to be a misfire. The sermon he was trying to deliver - as that is exactly what must be used here - was the greatest faux pas in his career, because when it was time to speak, Fletcher began to stutter nervously .
The effect was that impatient Maria ostentatiously interrupted him and did not let him finish his speech. Later it was only worse. The Queen said a prayer in Latin and then in English. During it, she "began to ask the saints to pray for her soul and that God in His great mercy and goodness would remove His plagues from this island of fools ”.
Even at the foot of the scaffold she was not going to be a meek victim. She played her role masterfully:as John Guy rightly points out, "by humiliating Fletcher, Maria won a propaganda victory that had a wide resonance throughout Catholic Europe."
Mary, Queen of Scots, led for execution. Image by John Pott Laslett.
A macabre spectacle
Now is the time for the execution. Before the queen put her head under the executioner's ax, however, her black outer garments were removed. When this happened, it was found that she was wearing a velvety gown with a rust-colored underneath, reminiscent of dried blood.
In the liturgy of the Catholic Church, it was a color reserved for martyrs. "This sight was so melodramatic and so repulsive to the counts that they omitted any mention of it in the official report to the Privy Council," emphasizes the author of "Mary, Queen of Scots."
After this demonstration, Maria knelt down and rested her head on the stump. She was blindfolded. She was probably hoping for a quick and painless death. However, the nervous executioner did not live up to the task. As we read in John Guy's book:
He should have beheaded the condemned man in one fell swoop, but the tension was too great even for the most experienced specialist in England, and ended up taking a wrong shot the first time. He hit the spot where there was a blindfold knot, so the blade of the ax stuck into the back of the head instead of the neck .
Maria made very little noise according to one description, but according to another she screamed in pain: Lord Jesus, accept my soul ! The second blow cut her neck, but not all of it, and the executioner had to split the rest of the tendons, using the ax like a cleaver. Finally, however, he raised the head of the dead woman and cried: God save the queen!
It wasn't the end of the day's gruesome scenes. There was one more surprise waiting for the audience:
while the hangman was holding the severed head, the maroon curls and white cap suddenly fell off it. The illusion of monarchical authority was completely dispelled. The man realized that he was only holding a handful of hair, and the head itself fell to the floor and rolled like a misshapen ball towards the spectators, who noticed that she was very gray and almost bald. […] The congregation was speechless, and finally the Earl of Shrewsbury lost his nerve and cried. […]
The end of the show was too macabre and the catharsis depressing. Even in London theaters, where the "tragedies of revenge" have just become fashionable ( revenge plays ), nothing like it has ever been seen.
Due to the executioner's mistake, the execution of Maria turned into a macabre spectacle.
Maria's execution resulted in one more victim. As the executioner's assistants stripped the body to burn the monarch's clothes , one of them noted that:
Queen's favorite Skye Terrier dog made it onto the podium, hidden in the folds of her petticoat. When he was spotted, started running around and howling pitifully, and finally settled himself into a growing pool of blood that had formed between the severed head and the torso of his mistress . Since he could not be made to jump off the scaffold, he was forcibly taken away and washed. He did not want to take food afterwards, and according to the version of one of Maria's servants, he died shortly afterwards.
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You can read about the rivalry between Maria Stuart and Elizabeth Tudor, who led the Queen of Szot to the scaffold , in this article.
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- John Guy, Mary, Queen of Scots. The true story of Maria Stuart , Wydawnictwo NieZwykłe 2019