At two o’clock in the morning on the 8th of February 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots wrote to Henri III of France from Fotheringhay Castle.
She had been told after dinner the previous evening that she would be executed at eight o’clock in the morning.
Letters connected with the Babington Plot were produced as evidence against her, and she had been tried at Fotheringhay in October 1586. Elizabeth I signed the warrant for her execution on the 1st of February 1587.
She asked Henri to see that money owed to her servants was paid. She wanted prayers and masses said for her and wrote about the difficulties she faced in arranging her affairs. Her papers had been taken from her and she complained that she had been prevented from seeing her chaplain.
In the letter, Mary wrote that she believed her Catholic faith and her claim to the English throne lay behind her condemnation.
The execution took place later that morning in the Great Hall at Fotheringhay Castle. Mary was forty-four years old.
She had first come to England in 1568 after fleeing Scotland following her defeat at the Battle of Langside. She had hoped Elizabeth might help restore her to the Scottish throne, but she would spend almost nineteen years in English custody.
Mary was buried at Peterborough Cathedral. Her son, James VI of Scotland, succeeded Elizabeth in 1603 and became James I of England. In 1612, he ordered his mother’s remains to be brought from Peterborough and reburied in Westminster Abbey.
I had read about Mary’s execution before, but I had never really looked closely at the letter she wrote that night. Knowing how close she was to the execution changes it for me. She was still writing about wages owed to her servants, prayers and her wish for her body to be taken to France, with only hours remaining.
Have you ever read Mary’s final letter?
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