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 Her
prayers being ended, the executioners, kneeling, desired her Grace
to forgive them her death: who answered, "I forgive you with all my
heart, for now, I hope, you shall make an end of all my troubles."
Then they, with her two women, helping her up, began to disrobe her
of her apparel: then she, laying her crucifix upon the stool, one
of the executioners too from her neck the Agnus Dei, which
she, laying hands off it, gave to one of her women, and told the executioner
he should be answered money for it. Then she suffered them, with her
two women, to disrobe her of her chain of pomander beads and all other
her apparel most willingly, and with joy rather than sorrow, helped
to make unready herself, putting on a pair of sleeves with her own
hands which they had pulled off, and that with some haste, as if she
had longed to be gone.
All this time
they were pulling off her apparel, she never changed her countenance,
but with smiling cheer she uttered these words, "that she never
had such grooms to make her unready, and that she never put off
her clothes before such a company."
Then she,
being stripped of all her apparel saving her petticoat and kirtle,
her two women beholding her made great lamentation, and crying and
crossing themselves prayed in Latin. She, turning herself to them,
embracing them, said these words in French, "Ne crie vous, j'ay
prome pour vous," and so crossing and kissing them, bad them pray
for her and rejoice and not weep, for that now they should see an
end of all their mistress's troubles.
Then she,
with a smiling countenance, turning to her men servants, as Melvin
and the rest, standing upon a bench nigh the scaffold, who sometime
weeping, sometime crying out aloud, and continually crossing themselves,
prayed in Latin, crossing them with her hand bade them farewell,
and wishing them to pray for her even until the last hour.
This done,
one of the women having a Corpus Christi cloth lapped up three-corner-ways,
kissing it, put it over the Queen of Scots' face, and pinned it
fast to the caule of her head. Then the two women departed from
her, and she kneeling down upon the cushion most resolutely, and
without any token or fear of death, she spake aloud this Psalm in
Latin, In Te Domine confido, non confundar in eternam, etc.
Then, groping for the block, she laid down her head, putting her
chin over the block with both her hands, which, holding her there
still, had been cut off had they not been espied. Then lying upon
the block most quietly, and stretching out her arms cried, In
manus tuas, Domine, etc., three or four times. Then she, lying
very still upon the block, one of the executioners holding her slightly
with one of his hands, she endured two strokes of the other executioner
with an axe, she making very small noise or none at all, and not
stirring any part of her from the place where she lay: and so the
executioner cut off her head, saving one little gristle, which being
cut asunder, he lift up her head to the view of all the assembly
and bade God Save the Queen. Then, her dress of lawn falling
from her head, it appeared as grey as one of threescore and ten
years old, polled very short, her face in a moment being so much
altered from the form she had when she was alive, as few could remember
her by her dead face. Her lips stirred up and down a quarter of
an hour after her head was cut off.
Then Mr. Dean
said with a loud voice, "So perish all the Queen's enemies," and
afterwards the Earl of Kent came to the dead body, and standing
over it, with a loud voice said, "Such end all the Queen's and the
Gospel's enemies."
Then one of
the executioners, pulling off her garters, espied her little dog
which was crept under her clothes, which could not be gotten forth
but by force, yet afterward would not depart from the dead corpse,
but came and lay between her head and shoulders, which being imbrued
with her blood was carried away and washed, as all things were that
had any blood was either burned or washed clean, and the executioners
sent away with money for their fees, not having any one thing that
belonged unto her. And so, every man being commanded out of the
hall, except the sheriff and his men, she was carried by them up
into a great chamber lying ready for the surgeons to embalm her.
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