[Footnote 161: "Then being ready to the block ... Mr. Doctor willed her to die in the true faith of Christ. Quoth she, 'I believe firmly to be saved by the Passion and Blood of Jesus Christ, and therein also I believe according to the faith of the ancient Catholic Church of Rome, and therefor I shed my blood.'"--Contemporary MSS.; see also _Marie Stuart_, by Kervyn de Lettenhove, ii. 377.] [Illustration: _Walker & Boutall, Ph. Sc._ _Execution of Mary Queen of Scots, from the background of the Blairs Portrait. (enlarged.)_] The executioner lifted the axe, but stopped at a sign from his assistant, who had perceived that the Queen, to enable herself to breathe, had placed her hands under her chin. The assistant moved them and held them behind her back. Mary continued to pray aloud, and in the deep silence that reigned in the hall she could be heard repeating the verse, "In manus tuas Domine commendo." These were her last words. The executioner, affected perhaps by sympathy and by the general emotion visible among the bystanders, struck with an ill-assured aim, and only wounded the Queen severely, but she neither moved nor made a sound.[162] At the third blow the soul of Mary Stuart passed to its eternal reward. [Footnote 162: "After the which stroke she spoke these words, 'Lord Jesus, receive my soul.'"--Contemporary MSS.] And here we would fain end our narrative, letting our thoughts dwell only on the sorrow that filled the hearts of the Queen's desolate servants and the sympathy evinced by others present at her execution,[163] for, as a contemporary writer tells us, "it was remarked that the Earl of Shrewsbury and many others were bedewed with tears;" but other and cruel incidents claim our attention. [Footnote 163: "La plus part la tenoient innocente et, si l'execution eust été publique, il y eust eu rumeur bien grande, et elle eust été secourue et délivrée."--_Les derniers propos de la Royne d'Escosse._] As soon as the Queen was dead the executioner "forthwith took the head, and raising it and showing it to the people, he said, according to custom, 'God save the Queen.'... To these words the people answered, 'Amen.' 'Yes,' said the Earl of Kent, with a loud voice and with great forwardness, 'Amen, Amen. May it please God that all the Queen's enemies be brought into the like condition.' The Dean of Peterbro spoke to the same effect."[164] "The gates of the castle were kept closed, so that no one could pass out until a messenger had been despatched first to the court (and this was about one o'clock of the same day) with a letter and the certificate of the execution."[165] This messenger was Henry Talbot, third son of Lord Shrewsbury, from whose report we have already quoted. [Footnote 164: "And after, the body lying there headless, bleeding, my Lord Kent, standing by it, said with a loud voice, 'This be the end and reward of all that hate the Gospel and Her Majesty's Government.'"--See Ashmole MSS., Appendix, p. 263.]