The executioner taking up the head, according to custom, and exposing it
to the gaze of the people, cried out, "God save the Queen." "So perish
all the Queen’s enemies," added the Dean of Peterborough; "such be the
end of all the Queen’s and the Gospel’s enemies," remarked the Earl of
Kent. But even that hostile assembly was melted to tears, and scarcely
a voice was heard to answer, "Amen."
The body of the Scottish Queen, notwithstanding her dying request that
it be consigned to the care of her servants and by them borne away to
France and laid beside that of her mother, was detained for six months
in Fotheringay Castle. It was then removed, by order of Elizabeth, to
the Cathedral of Peterborough, a few miles distant, and laid in a vault
opposite the tomb of another noble victim of Tudor tyranny, the
blameless Catherine of Arragon. Twenty-five years later her son, King
James, who had in the meantime succeeded to the throne of England, in
partial reparation for his former neglects, removed her remains to
Westminster Abbey, and caused a beautiful monument, with a marble effigy
of the Queen in a recumbent position, to be erected over them, in the
south aisle of Henry the Seventh’s chapel.
No more need be added to this brief review of Mary Stewart’s history.
The opinions set forth and defended in the above pages will not be
received by all, for the leading events of her life will continue to be
interpreted very generally according to theories conceived by party
zeal, before the historical evidence bearing on them has been examined.
I do not pretend that I myself have approached the study of her life
without prejudice. Say what we will, where party spirit has run high,
our feelings are always enlisted before our judgment has been moved.
This, however, should be borne in mind: the prejudices of a writer
cannot destroy the force of the evidence with which he supports his
contention; and, whithersoever my sympathies may tend, I have
endeavoured to give my reasons--the intelligent reader will judge of
their value--why I refuse to believe that Mary was the paramour of
Bothwell and a party to the murder of her husband, and why I maintain
that her conviction, on the charge of having sanctioned the projected
murder of Queen Elizabeth, was unjust.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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