At this moment the earl of Kent stepped forward, and roughly bade her dismiss her women also, “for the present matter tasked other ministers than such as these.” For a moment she condescended to plead that they might be suffered to attend her to the last; but when she was again refused, her ancient spirit flashed out in every tone, as she cried, trumpet-like and clear, “Proud lord, beware! I too am cousin to your queen--I too am sprung from the high-blood of England’s royalty--I too am an anointed queen. I say thou shalt obey, and these shall follow their mistress to the death, or with foul violence shall they force me thither. Beware! beware, I say, how thou shalt answer doing me this dishonor!” Her words prevailed. Without a shudder she descended, entered the fatal hall, looked with an air of smiling condescension, almost of pity, on the spectators crowded almost to suffocation, and, mounting the scaffold, stood in proud and abstracted unconcern, while, in the measured sounds of a proclamation, the warrant for her death was read beside her elbow. The bishop of Peterborough then drew nigh, and, in a loud voice and inflated style, harassed her ears with an oration, which, whatever might have been its merits, was at that time but a barbarous and useless outrage. “Trouble not yourself,” she broke in at length, disgusted with his intemperate eloquence, “trouble not yourself any more about this matter, for I was born in this religion, I have lived in this religion, and in this religion I am resolved to die.” Turning suddenly aside, as if determined to hear no further, she knelt apart, fervently prayed, and repeatedly kissed the sculptured image which she bore of Him who died to save. As she arose from her orisons, the earl of Kent, her constant and unrelenting persecutor, with heartless cruelty burst into loud revilings against “that popish trumpery” which she adored. “Suffer me now,” she said, gazing on him with an expression of beautiful resignation, that might have disarmed the malice of a fiend, “suffer me now to depart in peace. I have come hither, not to dispute on points of doctrine, but to die.” Without another word she began to disrobe herself; but once, as her maidens hung weeping about her person, she laid her finger on her lips, and repeated emphatically the word “Remember.” And once again, as the executioner would have lent his aid to remove her upper garments, “Good friend,” she said, with a smile of ineffable sweetness, “we will dispense with thine assistance. The queen of Scotland is not wont to be disrobed before so many eyes, nor yet by varlets such as thou.”