The Tragedy of Fotheringay: Founded on the journal of D. Bourgoing, physician to Mary Queen of Scots, and on unpublished ms. documentsMaxwell-Scott, Mary Monica
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The Tragedy of Fotheringay: Founded on the journal of D. Bourgoing, physician to Mary Queen of Scots, and on unpublished ms. documents
Maxwell-Scott, Mary Monica
Mary, Queen of Scots, 1542-1587 -- Death and burial
Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well, for that we
think it appertains to the duty we owe to our dearest
mother that like honour should be done to her body and
like monument be extant of her, as others, hers, and our
progenitors have been used to be done, and ourselves
have already performed to our dear sister the late Queen
Elizabeth, we have commanded a memorial of her to be made
in our Church of Westminster, the place where the kings and
queens of this realm are usually interred: and for that
we think it inconvenient that the monument and her body
should be in several places; we have ordered that her said
body, remaining now interred in that our cathedral church
of Peterborough, shall be removed to Westminster, to the
Reverend father in God, our right trusty and well-beloved
servant the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, bearer
therof; to whom we require you (or to such as he shall
assign) to deliver the corps of our said dearest mother,
the same being taken up in as decent and respectful manner
as is fitting. And for that there is a Pall now upon the
hearse over her grave which will be requisite to be used
to cover her said body in the removing therof, which may
perhaps be deemed as a fee that should belong to the
Church; we have appointed the said reverend father to pay
you a reasonable redemption for the same, which being done
by him, we require you that he may have the pall to be used
for the purpose aforesaid.[203] Given under our signet at
our honour of Hampton Court, the eight and twentieth day
of September in the tenth year of our reign of England,
France, and Ireland, and of Scotland the six and fortieth.
[Footnote 203: The same as sent nine years before. Oh, royal economy!]
Here follows a memorandum to this effect:--
These Letters were delivered to the Right Reverend father
in God, the Lord Bishop of Peterborough, and to me, Henry
Williamson, one of the Prebends of the said Cathedral
Church, in the absence of the Dean and the rest of our
Prebends, and the contents therof were executed the fourth
day of October, in the year aforesaid,
(signed) W.K.
Although no doubt the removal of the body was effected with great
solemnity and state, no detailed record of the ceremony has been
discovered. The beautiful tomb in Westminster is too well known to
need description. In it we see, as remarks one of Mary's latest
historians, if not a memorial of filial piety, at least a mark of
James's taste for art.[204] The effigy of the Queen seems to have
been taken from a contemporary portrait, possibly from the fine
picture still in the possession of the Earl of Morton, but neither
this fact nor the name of the sculptor can now be known.
[Footnote 204: Chantelauze, p. 433.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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