Meanwhile, as we have said, the unfortunate servants were prisoners, and
the poor body was in that great hall waiting for a royal interment.
Things remained thus, Elizabeth said, to give her time to order a
splendid funeral for her good sister Mary, but in reality because the
queen dared not place in juxtaposition the secret and infamous death and
the public and royal burial; then, was not time needed for the first
reports which it pleased Elizabeth to spread to be credited before the
truth should be known by the mouths of the servants? For the queen hoped
that once this careless world had made up its mind about the death of
the Queen of Scots, it would not take any further trouble to change it.
Finally, it was only when the warders were as tired as the prisoners,
that Elizabeth, having received a report stating that the ill-embalmed
body could no longer be kept, at last ordered the funeral to take place.
Accordingly, after the 1st of August, tailors and dressmakers arrived at
Fotheringay Castle, sent by Elizabeth, with cloth and black silk stuffs,
to clothe in mourning all Mary’s servants. But they refused, not having
waited for the Queen of England’s bounty, but having made their funeral
garments at their own expense, immediately after their mistress’s death.
The tailors and dressmakers, however, none the less set so actively to
work that on the 7th everything was finished.
Next day, at eight o’clock in the evening, a large chariot, drawn by
four horses in mourning trappings, and covered with black velvet like
the chariot, which was, besides, adorned with little streamers on which
were embroidered the arms of Scotland, those of the queen, and the arms
of Aragon, those of Darnley, stopped at the gate of Fotheringay Castle.
It was followed by the herald king, accompanied by twenty gentlemen on
horseback, with their servants and lackeys, all dressed in mourning,
who, having alighted, mounted with his whole train into the room where
the body lay, and had it brought down and put into the chariot with all
possible respect, each of the spectators standing with bared head and in
profound silence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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