men-servants as Melville and the rest, standing upon the bench near the scaffold, crossing them with her hand, bade them farewell, and bade them pray for her until the last hour. Then embracing her women, she blessed them, making the sign of the cross on their foreheads." [Footnote 151: Teulet, iv. 153.] [Footnote 152: "She prayed that the Queen's Majesty might long reign peaceably, might prosper and serve God, ... and that the God of heaven would of His goodness avert His plagues from this silly island; ... that He would receive her soul into His heavenly hand."--Contemporary MSS., f. 175 b.] [Footnote 153: See Tanner MSS., Appendix, 253.] [Footnote 154: "Her meditations ended, she arose and kissed her two gentlewomen, and bowed her body towards her men, and charged them to commend her to her sweet son, to whom she sent her blessing, with promise to pray for him in heaven, and lastly to salute her friends wheresoever."--Contemporary MSS.] [Footnote 155: "She laying her crucifix upon the stool, one of the executioners took from her neck the Agnus Dei, which she, laying hands of it, gave it to one of her women, and told the executioners that they should be answered in money for it."--See Tanner MSS., Appendix, p. 254.] [Footnote 156: "Then came one Bulle, the hangman of London."--Contemporary MSS.] [Footnote 157: Ashmole MSS. 830, f. 13: "Ne cry point pour moi; ja promys pour vous."] [Footnote 158: Chantelauze, p. 416.] [Footnote 159: "And with joy rather than with sorrow helped to make unready herself, putting on a pair of sleeves with her own hands which they had pulled off, and that with some haste, as if she had longed to be gone."--See Ashmole MSS., Appendix, p. 261.] "Adieu for the last time," she said in French. "Adieu, au revoir;" and when Jane Kennedy had bandaged her eyes, she desired them to go down from the scaffold. The executioners fell on their knees at the Queen's feet, begging her, as was the custom, to forgive them her death. "I forgive you with all my heart," she replied, "for in this hour I hope you will bring to an end all my troubles." The Queen, who was seated on her stool, unbound, and still holding her crucifix, raised her head and stretched out her neck, thinking she was to be beheaded with a sword, according to the privilege granted in France to royal persons.[160] "My God," she said fervently, "I have hoped in Thee; I give back my soul into Thy hands." The executioners, seeing her mistake, assisted her to rise and conducted her to the block, where they made her kneel down, and as she knelt upright, still thinking she was to be beheaded with the sword, they made her lie flat with her head on the low block, only a few inches high.[161] As the Queen repeated the words "In te Domine-speravi," Lord Shrewsbury raised his wand to give the fatal signal. [Footnote 160: "The executioners had prepared cords to bind her, but she put them aside."--_Vera relazione_, Milan, 1587.]