The book of the ladies

At last she wedded a young English lord, of a great house, but not her equal [Henry Darnley, Earl of Lennox, her cousin]. The marriage was not happy for either the one or the other. I shall not here relate how the king her husband, having made her a very fine child, who reigns to-day, died, being killed by a fougade [small mine] exploded where he lodged. The history of that is written and printed, but not with truth as to the accusations raised against the queen of consenting to the deed. They are lies and insults; for never was that queen cruel; she was always kind and very gentle. Never in France did she any cruelty, nor would she take pleasure or have the heart to see poor criminals put to death by justice, like many grandees whom I have known; and when she was in her galley never would she allow a single convict to be beaten, were it ever so little; she begged her uncle, the grand-prior, as to this, and commanded it to the overseer herself, having great compassion for their misery, so that her heart was sick for it.

To end this topic, never did cruelty lodge in the heart of such great and tender beauty; they are liars who have said and written it; among others M. Buchanan,10 who ill returned the kindnesses the queen had done him both in France and Scotland in saving his life and relieving him from banishment. It would have been better had he employed his most excellent knowledge in speaking better of her, and not about the amours of Bothwell; even to transcribing sonnets she had made, which those who knew her poesy and her learning have always said were never written by her; nor did they judge less falsely that amour, for Bothwell was a most ugly man, with as bad a grace as could be seen.

But if this one [Buchanan] said no good, others have written a noble book upon her innocence, which I have seen, and which declared and proved it so that the poorest minds took hold of it and even her enemies paid heed; but they, wishing to ruin her, as they did in the end, were obstinate, and never ceased to persecute her until she was put into a strong castle, which they say is that of Saint-Andrew in Scotland. There, having lived nearly one year miserably captive, she was delivered by means of a most honourable and brave gentleman of that land and of good family, named M. de Beton, whom I knew and saw, and who related to me the whole story, as we were crossing the river before the Louvre, when he came to bring the news to the king. He was nephew to the Bishop of Glasco, ambassador to France, one of the most worthy men and prelates ever known, and who remained a faithful servant to his mistress to her last breath, and is so still, after her death.

So then, the queen, being at liberty, did not stay idle; in less than no time she gathered an army of those whom she thought her most faithful adherents, leading it herself, – at its head, mounted on a good horse, dressed in a simple petticoat of white taffetas, with a coif of crêpe on her head; at which I have seen many persons wonder, even the queen-mother, that so tender a princess, and so dainty as she was and had been all her life, should accustom herself at once to the hardships of war. But what would one not endure to reign absolutely and revenge one’s self upon a rebellious people, and reduce it to obedience?

Behold this queen, therefore, beautiful and generous, like a second Zenobia, at the head of her army, leading it on to face that of her enemies and to give battle. But alas! what misfortune! Just as she thought her side would engage the others, just as she was animating and exhorting them with her noble and valorous words, which might have moved the rocks, they raised their lances without fighting, and, first on one side and then upon another, threw down their arms, embraced, and were friends; and all, confederated and sworn together, plotted to seize the queen, and make her prisoner and take her to England. M. Coste, the steward of her household, a gentleman of Auvergne, related this to the queen-mother, having come from there, and met her at Saint-Maur, where he told it also to many of us.

After this she was taken to England, where she was lodged in a castle and so closely confined in captivity that she never left it for eighteen or twenty years until her death; to which she was sentenced too cruelly for the reasons, such as they were, that were given on her trial; but the principal, as I hold on good authority, was that the Queen of England never liked her, but was always and for a long time jealous of her beauty, which far surpassed her own. That is what jealousy is! – and for religion too! So it was that this princess, after her long imprisonment, was condemned to death and to have her head cut off; this judgment was pronounced upon her two months before she was executed. Some say that she knew nothing of it until they went to execute her. Others declare that it was told to her two months earlier, as the queen-mother, who was greatly distressed, was informed at Coignac, where she then was; and she was even told of this particular: no sooner was the judgment pronounced than Queen Marie’s chamber and bed were hung with black. The queen-mother thereon praised the firmness of the Queen of Scotland and said she had never seen or heard tell of any queen more steadfast in adversity. I was present when she said this, but I never thought the Queen of England would let her die, – not esteeming her so cruel as all that. Of her own nature she was not (though she was in this). I also thought that M. de Bellièvre, whom the king despatched to save her life, would have worked out something good; nevertheless, he gained nothing.

But to come to this pitiful death, which no one can describe without great compassion. On the seventeenth of February of the year one thousand five hundred and eighty-seven, there came to the place where the queen was prisoner, a castle called Fodringhaye, the commissioners of the Queen of England, sent by her (I shall not give their names, as it would serve no end) about two or three o’clock in the afternoon; and in presence of Paulet, her guardian or jailer, read aloud their commission to the prisoner touching her execution, declaring to her that the next morning they should proceed to it, and admonishing her to be ready between seven and eight o’clock.

She, without in any way being surprised, thanked them for their good news, saying that nothing could be better for her than to come to the end of her misery; and that for long, ever since her detention in England, she had resolved and prepared herself to die; entreating, nevertheless, the commissioners to grant her a little time and leisure to make her will and put her affairs in order, – inasmuch as all depended upon their will, as their commission said. To which the Comte de Cherusbery [Earl of Shrewsbury] replied rather roughly: “No, no, madame, you must die. Hold yourself ready between seven and eight to-morrow morning. We shall not prolong the delay by a moment.” There was one, more courteous it seemed to her, who wished to use some demonstrations that might give her more firmness to endure such death. She answered him that she had no need of consolation, at least not as coming from him; but that if he wished to do a good office to her conscience he would send for her almoner to confess her; which would be an obligation that surpassed all others. As for her body, she said she did not think they would be so inhuman as to deny her the right of sepulture. To this he replied that she must not expect it; so that she was forced to write her confession, which was as follows: —

“I have to-day been combated for my religion and to make me receive the consolation of heretics. You will hear from Bourgoing and others that I have faithfully made protestation of my faith, in which I choose to die. I requested to have you here, to make my confession and to receive my sacrament; this has been cruelly refused to me, also the removal of my body, and the power to freely make my will, or to write aught, except through their hands. In default of that, I confess the grievousness of my sins in general, as I had expected to make to you in particulars; entreating you, in God’s name, to watch and pray with me this night for the forgiveness of my sins, and to send me absolution and pardon for all the offences which I have committed. I shall endeavour to see you in their presence, as they have granted me; and if it is permitted I shall ask pardon of you before them all. Advise me of the proper prayers to use this night and to-morrow morning, for the time is short and I have no leisure to write; I shall recommend you like the rest, and especially that your benefices may be preserved and secured to you, and I shall commend you to the king. I have no more leisure; advise me in writing of all you think good for my salvation.”

That done, and having thus provided for the salvation of her soul before all things else, she lost no time, though little remained to her (yet long enough to have shaken the firmest constancy, but in her they saw no fear of death, only much content to leave these earthly miseries), in writing to our king, to the queen-mother, whom she honoured much, to Monsieur and Madame de Guise, and other private persons, letters truly very piteous, but all aiming to let them know that to her latest hour she had not lost memory of friends; and also the contentment she received in seeing herself delivered from so many woes by which for one and twenty years she had been crushed; also she sent presents to all, of a value and price in keeping with a poor, unfortunate, and captive queen.

After this, she summoned her household, from the highest to the lowest, and opened her coffers to see how much money remained to her; this she divided to each according to the service she had had from them; and to her women she gave what remained to her of rings, arrows, headgear, and accoutrements; telling them that it was with much regret she had no more with which to reward them, but assuring them that her son would make up for her deficiency; and she begged her maître d’hôtel to say this to her said son; to whom she sent her blessing, praying him not to avenge her death, leaving all to God to order according to His holy will. Then she bade them farewell without a tear; on the contrary she consoled them, saying they must not weep to see her on the point of blessedness in exchange for all the sorrows she had had. After which she sent them from her chamber, except her women.

It now being night, she retired to her oratory, where she prayed to God two hours on her bare knees upon the ground, for her women saw them; then she returned to her room and said to them: “I think it would be best, my friends, if I ate something and went to bed, so that to-morrow I may do nothing unworthy of me, and that my heart may not fail me.” What generosity and what courage! She did as she said; and taking only some toast with wine she went to bed, where she slept little, but spent the night chiefly in prayers and orisons.

She rose about two hours before dawn and dressed herself as properly as she could, and better than usual; taking a gown of black velvet, which she had reserved from her other accoutrements, saying to her women: “My friends, I would rather have left you this attire than that of yesterday, but I think I ought to go to death a little honourably and have upon me something more than common. Here is a handkerchief, which I also reserved, to bind my eyes when I go there; I give it to you, ma mie (speaking to one of her women), for I wish to receive that last office from you.”

After this, she retired to her oratory, having bid them adieu once more and kissed them, – giving them many particulars to tell the king, the queen, and her relations; not things that tended to vengeance, but the contrary. Then she took the sacrament by means of a consecrated wafer which the good Pope Pius V. had sent her to serve in some emergency, the which she had always most sacredly preserved and guarded.

Having said her prayers, which were very long, it now being fully morning she returned to her chamber, and sat beside the fire; still talking to her women and comforting them, instead of their comforting her; she said that the joys of the world were nothing; that she ought to serve as a warning to the greatest of the earth as well as to the smallest, for she, having been queen of the kingdoms of France and Scotland, one by nature, the other by fortune, after triumphing in the midst of all honours and grandeurs, was reduced to the hands of an executioner; innocent, however, which consoled her. She told them their best pattern was that she died in the Catholic religion, holy and good, which she would never abandon to her latest breath, having been baptized therein; and that she wanted no fame after her death, except that they would publish her firmness throughout all France when they returned there, as she begged of them; and further, though she knew they would have much heart-break to see her on the scaffold performing this tragedy, yet she wished them to witness her death; knowing well that none would be so faithful in making the report of what was now to happen.

As she ended these words some one knocked roughly on the door. Her women, knowing it was the hour they were coming to fetch her, wanted to make resistance; but she said to them: “My friends, it will do no good; open the door.”

First there entered a man with a white stick in his hand, who, without addressing any one, said twice over as he advanced: “I have come – I have come.” The queen, not doubting that he announced to her the moment of execution, took a little ivory cross in her hand.

Next came the above-named commissioners; and when they had entered, the queen said to them: “Well, messieurs, you have come to fetch me. I am ready and well resolved to die; and I think the queen, my good sister, does much for me; and you likewise who are seeking me. Let us go.” They, seeing such firmness accompanied by so extreme a beauty and great gentleness, were much astonished, for never had she seemed more beautiful, having a colour in her cheeks which embellished her.

Thus Boccaccio wrote of Sophonisba in her adversity, after the taking of her husband and the town, speaking to Massinissa: “You would have said,” he relates, “that her misfortune made her more beauteous; it assisted the sweetness of her face and made it more agreeable and desirable.”

The commissioners were greatly moved to some compassion. Still, as she left the room they would not let her women follow her, fearing that by their lamentations, sighs, and outcries they would disturb the execution. But the queen said to them: “What, gentlemen! would you treat me with such rigour as not to allow my women to accompany me to death? Grant me at least this favour.” Which they did, on her pledging her word she would impose silence upon them when the time came to admit them.

The place of execution was in the hall, where they had raised a broad scaffold, about twelve feet square and two high, covered with a shabby black cloth.

She entered this hall without any change of countenance but with majesty and grace, as though she were entering a ballroom, where in other days she had so excellently shone.

As she neared the scaffold she called to her maître d’hôtel and said, “Help me to mount; it is the last service I shall receive from you;” and she repeated to him what she had already told him in her chamber he was to tell her son. Then, being on the scaffold, she asked for her almoner, begging the officers who were there to permit him to come to her, which they flatly refused, – the Earl of Kent saying to her that he pitied her greatly for thus clinging to superstitions of a past age, and that she ought to bear the cross of Christ in her heart and not in her hand. To which she made answer that it was difficult to bear so beautiful an image in the hand without the heart being touched by emotion and memory; and that the most becoming thing in a Christian person was to carry a real sign of the redemption to the death before her. Then, seeing that she could not have her almoner, she asked that her women might come as they had promised her; which was done. One of them, on entering the hall, seeing her mistress on the scaffold among her executioners, could not keep from crying out and moaning and losing her control; but the queen instantly laying her finger on her lips, she restrained herself.

Her Majesty then began to make her protestations, namely: that never had she plotted against the State, nor against the life of the queen, her good sister, – except in trying to regain her liberty, as all captives may. But she saw plainly that the cause of her death was religion, and she esteemed herself very happy to finish her life for that cause. She begged the queen, her good sister, to have pity upon her poor servants whom she held captive, because of the affection they had shown in seeking the liberty of their mistress, inasmuch as she was now to die for all.

They then brought to her a minister to exhort her [the Dean of Peterborough], but she said to him in English, “Ah! my friend, give yourself patience;” declaring that she would not hold converse with him nor hear any talk of his sect, for she had prepared herself to die without counsel, and that persons like him could not give her consolation or contentment of mind.

Notwithstanding this, seeing that he continued his prayers in his jargon, she never ceased to say her own in Latin, raising her voice above that of the minister. After which she said again that she esteemed herself very happy to shed the last drop of her blood for her religion, rather than live longer and wait till nature had completed the full course of her life; and that she hoped in Him whose cross she held in her hand, before whose feet she was prostrate, that this temporal death, borne for Him, would be for her the passage, the entrance to, and the beginning of life eternal with the angels and the blessèd, who would receive her blood and present it before God, in abolition of her sins; and them she prayed to be her intercessors for the obtaining of pardon and mercy.

Such were her prayers, being on her knees on the scaffold, which she made with a fervent heart; adding others for the pope, the kings of France, and even for the Queen of England, praying God to illuminate her with his Holy Spirit; praying also for her son and for the islands of Britain and Scotland that they might be converted.

That done, she called her women to help her to remove her black veil, her headdress, and other ornaments; and as the executioner tried to touch her she said, “Ah! my friend, do not touch me!” But she could not prevent his doing so, for after they had lowered her robe to the waist, that villain pulled her roughly by the arm and took off her doublet [pourpoint] and the body of her petticoat [corps de cotte] with its low collar, so that her neck and her beautiful bosom, more white than alabaster, were bare and uncovered.

She arranged herself as quickly as she could, saying she was not accustomed to strip before others, especially so large a company (it is said there were four or five hundred persons present), nor to employ the services of such a valet.

The executioner then knelt down and asked her pardon; on which she said that she pardoned him, and all who were the authors of her death with as much good-will as she prayed that God would show in forgiving her sins.

Then she told her woman to whom she had given the handkerchief to bring it to her.

She wore a cross of gold, in which was a piece of the true cross, with the image of Our Saviour upon it; this she wished to give to one of her ladies, but the executioner prevented her, although Her Majesty begged him, saying that the lady would pay him three times its value.

Then, all being ready, she kissed her ladies, and bade them retire with her benediction, making the sign of the cross upon them. And seeing that one of them could not restrain her sobs she imposed silence, saying she was bound by a promise that they would cause no trouble by their tears and moans; and she commanded them to withdraw quietly, and pray to God for her, and bear faithful testimony to her death in the ancient and sacred Catholic religion.

One of the women having bandaged her eyes with the handkerchief, she threw herself instantly on her knees with great courage and without the slightest demonstration or sign that she feared death.

Her firmness was such that all present, even her enemies, were moved; there were not four persons present who could keep from weeping; they thought the sight amazing, and condemned themselves in their consciences for such injustice.

And because the minister of Satan importuned her, trying to kill her soul as well as her body, and troubling her prayers, she raised her voice to surmount his, and said in Latin the psalm: In te, Domine, speravi; non confundar in æternum; which she recited throughout. Having ended it, she laid her head upon the block, and, as she repeated once more the words, In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum, the executioner struck her a strong blow with the axe, that drove her headgear into her head, which did not fall until the third blow, – to make her martyrdom the greater and more glorious, though it is not the pain but the cause that makes the martyr.

This done, he took the head in his hand, and showing it to all present said: “God save the queen, Elizabeth! Thus perish the enemies of the gospel!” So saying, he uncoifed her in derision to show her hair, now white; which, however, she had never shrunk from showing, twisting and curling it as when her hair was beautiful, so fair and golden; for it was not age had changed it at thirty-five years old (being now but forty); it was the griefs, the woes, the sadness she had borne in her kingdom and in her prison.

This hapless tragedy ended, her poor ladies, anxious for the honour of their mistress, addressed themselves to Paulet, her jailer, begging him that the executioner should not touch the body, but that they might be allowed to disrobe it after all the spectators had withdrawn, so that no indignity might be done to it, promising to return all the clothing, and whatever else he might ask or claim; but that cursèd man sent them roughly away and ordered them to leave the hall.

Then the executioner unclothed her and handled her at his discretion, and when he had done what he wished the body was carried to a chamber adjoining that of her serving-men, and carefully locked in, for fear they should enter and endeavour to perform any good and pious office. And to their grief and distress was added this: that they could see her through a hole, half covered by a piece of green drugget torn from her billiard table. What brutal indifference! What animosity and indignity! – not even to have bought her a black cloth a little more worthy of her!

The poor body was left there long in that state until it began to corrupt so that they were forced to salt and embalm it, – but slightly, to save cost; after which they put it in a leaden coffin, where it was kept for seven months and then carried to profane ground around the temple of Petersbrouch [Peterborough Cathedral]. True it is that this church is dedicated to the name of Saint Peter, and that Queen Catherine of Spain is buried there as a Catholic; but the place is now profane, as are all the churches in England in these days.

There are some who have said and written, even the English who have made a book on this death and its causes, that the spoils of the late queen were taken from the executioner by paying him the value in money of her clothes and her royal ornaments. The cloth with which the scaffold was covered, even the boards of it were partly burned and partly washed, for fear that in times to come they might serve superstition; that is to say, for fear that any careful Catholic might some day buy and preserve them with respect, honour, and reverence (a fear which may possibly serve as a prophecy and augury), as the ancient Fathers had a practice of keeping relics and of taking care with devotion of the monuments of martyrs. In these days heretics do nothing of the kind. Quia omnia quæ martyrum erant, cremabant, as Eusebius says, et cineres in Rhodanum spargebant, ut cum corporibus interiret eorum quoque memoria. Nevertheless, the memory of this queen, in spite of all things, will live forever in glory and in triumph.

Here, then, is the tale of her death, which I hold from the report of two damoiselles there present, very honourable certainly, very faithful to their mistress, and obedient to her commands in thus bearing testimony to her firmness and to her religion. They returned to France after losing her, for they were French; one was a daughter of Mme. de Raré, whom I knew in France as one of the ladies of the late queen. I think that these two honourable damoiselles would have caused the most barbarous of men to weep at hearing so piteous a tale; which they made the more lamentable by tears, and by their tender, doleful, and noble language.