AT NINE O’CLOCK on the morning of Wednesday, February 8, 1587, Mary, queen of Scots, dressed in a black satin gown trimmed in velvet and carrying a crucifix and a prayer book, walked calmly to the scaffold in the great hall of Fotheringhay. She was accompanied by the sheriff and other officials and six of the women closest to her. A large crowd of spectators watched in silence. With great dignity she mounted the steps to the scaffold, knelt, and began to pray.
When her prayers were finished, the executioners asked her forgiveness. “I do forgive you,” Mary told them, “with my whole heart, for you are about to bring an end to all my troubles.” Mary stood, and her weeping women removed her black gown, revealing a red petticoat and bodice, the color of martyrs. One of the women covered Mary’s eyes with a blindfold. Mary knelt on the white satin cushion, placed her head on the block, and began to pray in Latin. The executioner raised his ax.
It took three blows to do the deed. Afterward, the executioner seized a handful of auburn hair and raised the severed head, crying, “God save the queen!” But suddenly the hair separated from the skull, and the head fell to the scaffold floor and rolled away while the executioner stared at the wig he was left holding. The crowd gasped. Mary’s own hair had turned quite gray during her long captivity. She had chosen to wear a wig to her beheading.
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Sixteen years later, Queen Elizabeth died, on March 24, 1603. Although Elizabeth had never officially named him her successor, Mary’s son, King James VI of Scotland, was immediately proclaimed King James of England and Ireland. It is said that he eventually regretted his hardhearted treatment of his mother. To atone for it, he arranged for her entombment in Westminster Abbey and honored her with a memorial effigy, larger and more magnificent than the one he also commissioned for Elizabeth.
It is interesting to note that every British monarch from King James’s son Charles I to the present-day ruler is descended in a direct line from Mary, queen of Scots. Biographers and historians still debate the innocence or guilt of Mary in the death of her second husband, Henry Stuart. A few still hold that the so-called Casket Letters, offered as evidence against her, are damning. Others insist that the letters are out-and-out forgeries. Nearly everyone agrees that much of the Scottish queen’s wildness remains shrouded in mystery.