Queen Of This Realm

Fotheringhay

OFTEN WHEN I LOOK BACK OVER MY LIFE AGAIN AND AGAIN I acknowledge the debt I owe to my ministers. Mine seemed to have been a period which nurtured great men. I venture to think I may have influenced this in some way. Although they respected my intellect they could never forget that I was a woman and that very fact brought out in them a protective instinct. These men would have served a king well but with a difference. I was a woman and for that reason I had a little more power than a man would have had. They were always conscious of my femininity—my fierce loves and hates, a certain predictable unpredictability—which sounds a contradiction, but which is not really so. They knew how my temper would rise; they knew it could quickly subside; they knew that while I ranted and raged I never lost sight of what was best for Elizabeth—and that meant for England. They served me with an extra devotion. They were all, in a certain measure, in love with me, and I do not say that in any frivolous or coquettish way. It was not a sexual love—or perhaps I should say lustful. It was a deep abiding affection.

Even my pretty men—Hatton, Heneage, Robert—were statesmen; there were my adventurers like Drake and Raleigh, and they were not adventurers only. But perhaps the most important of all were my serious ministers, headed by Burghley and Walsingham. I believe my reign would have been different without those two. They enjoyed special privileges, both of them; I allowed them to criticize my actions for I knew that they could serve me best through complete frankness—and indeed neither Burghley nor Walsingham would have served me otherwise. They were both men of absolute honesty; and they helped me to shape my destiny.

Sir Francis Walsingham was a stern Protestant—a small man of slim figure who almost always dressed in plain black garments. He lived for his work, which was to protect me and England and to bring about peace and prosperity. No one loved his country more than Walsingham, and it was a passion he and I shared.

He was outspoken and would not alter his opinions because he thought they were unpopular. That was what I liked about him. Even at the height of our disagreements, when I would rage at him, he refused to change.

I could have sent him to the Tower, I could have threatened him with death and Walsingham would have said: “Your Majesty must do with me as you wish, but I know you are wrong in this.”

As if I would harm a hair of his dark head! I loved the man for his integrity, his obsession with his work, and his complete dedication to my safety. He was my beloved Moor and it was always with the utmost pleasure that I looked upon that dark-skinned face with the brilliant all-seeing dark eyes.

Walsingham had a special place among my advisers. For a number of years now he had been building up a very efficient spy organization. It was a task ideally suited to him for he was a man who liked to work in secret; and at the very heart of his plans was the necessity to keep me on the throne and safeguard the future of a Protestant England.

He had agents all over Europe as well as in our own taverns and such places in England; and he had a constant finger on the pulse of feeling everywhere. Nothing was too unimportant for his attention; and although he received the considerable sum of four thousand pounds a year, this was not enough for his needs and he used a great deal of his own fortune to augment the cost.

His great obsession was to prevent the return of Catholicism to England. He saw acute danger from two people: Philip of Spain and Mary of Scotland. His spy service was especially active in Spain. He had agents in Madrid, Corunna and San Lucar taking in Cadiz and Seville; and also in Lisbon. He was watching Philip's preparations in his shipyards and he reported that Spain was building an impressive armada. He had several agents in France—another country which had always to be watched. He also had them in Germany and the Low Countries. Consequently I always knew what was going on long before I received official news; I realized how important this was.

But I believed he considered Mary of Scotland, the rheumatic-racked prisoner in the drafty castles of England, a greater menace even than the great King brooding in his gloomy Escorial.

Once he said to me: “As long as that devilish woman lives, Your Majesty cannot feel safe in the possession of your crown, nor can your faithful servants be assured of their lives.”

I had chided him. He exaggerated, I said. I knew Mary had aspirations to a crown and that one possibly mine, but she was a wretched creature more often ill than in good health, and she was my prisoner.

He would not have it. He assured me that Philip was looking very seriously to Mary of Scotland as a figurehead for the Catholic army.

“Hasn't he always?” I asked.

“Not as seriously as of late. Conflict with Spain may come, Your Majesty. It is in Philip's mind. Why should he have his shipyards working at full speed? It is coming, and Mary of Scotland should not be here to make a rallying point for the Catholics in this country.”

What Walsingham wanted was Mary's death. He was not a bloodthirsty man. His desire was purely a matter of plain reasoning. She was a menace and some means should be found for disposing of her.

He was a little reproachful for he had given me good grounds—legitimate ones—for bringing her to the block. What other monarch would have allowed her to live after the Ridolfi Plot which had resulted in the execution of Norfolk? I had had adequate reasons for destroying her and yet I had let her go free. Why? demanded Walsingham.

Did he not know that I had an aversion to shedding blood? I know men had died in my reign and I had done nothing to stop the executions. I had allowed a good and honest man like John Stubbs to lose his right hand; Edmund Campion had been barbarously killed. Mary was different. Mary was a queen and a kinswoman. I had never set eyes on her and yet she had played a dominating part in my life. I would be haunted by remorse forever if I signed her death warrant. I knew she was a menace to me; I knew that she was trying to plot my death. Why then could I not agree to hers when those about me, who had my well-being so much at heart, were urging me that it was the only wise action to take—the only safe one?

I knew that Walsingham was working hard to put before me the proofs of Mary's duplicity and intentions to murder me, and to present them in such a manner that I could no longer reasonably delay signing her death warrant.

A few years before, Walsingham had uncovered a plot which was being formulated in Paris. This was no Ridolfi affair—it was far more serious. Powerful forces were involved in it, including the Pope, Philip of Spain and the Guises as well as some leading Catholics in England—among these that pernicious little Jesuit Father Parson who had produced Leicester's Commonwealth.

Only Walsingham's superb spy system revealed what was going on and enabled him to arrest a Catholic gentleman named Francis Throckmorton. Walsingham had had him taken to the Tower where he was put to the rack and under torture confessed that he was involved in a plot with the Guises to invade England and set Mary on the throne.

Mary was concerned in these plots and had actually written to and received letters from the conspirators.

There was no reason, Walsingham pointed out, why she should not be brought to trial for treason. It would be an easy matter to prove that she was guilty and the penalty for treason was death.

Still I could not bring myself to it, and although Throckmorton was executed, Mary lived on.

I could understand Walsingham's exasperation and his determination to bring matters to such a pass that it would be difficult for me in all good sense to turn away from what must be the inevitable conclusion.

I wondered what Mary looked like now. She must be forty-four years of age—younger than I was. There were reports of her illnesses. She suffered cruelly from rheumatism, which was not surprising for some of those castles were not only cold but damp. She would not have had the aids to preserve her good looks which I had had, and although according to the poets she had started life rather specially endowed, I could imagine she was far from the sparkling beauty she had once been.

Still, she had that indefinable sexual allure which apparently had been hers since girlhood. There had been violent quarrels with the Shrewsburys when she had been in their care. I supposed there would always be trouble where a woman like Bess Hardwick was concerned, but Bess had accused Mary and her husband of being lovers, a charge which Shrewsbury had stoutly denied, and I must say, knowing Shrewsbury, I could hardly believe to be true. The Shrewsburys had parted, but I think that was owing more to a quarrel about property than Mary. Shrewsbury seemed greatly relieved to be free both of his wife and the Queen. He mentioned in a letter to the Spanish Ambassador (and Walsingham reported this to me for he made a point of seeing all diplomatic correspondence that went out of the country) that he was overjoyed to be rid of those two devils, his wife and the Queen of Scots, which did not sound to me like the words of a passionate lover.

However, wherever Mary was there was trouble with men, so Shrewsbury was recalled. I sent Sir Ralph Sadler to take charge of her. He was over seventy and would be a stern jailer, so it would be amusing to see if rheumatic-racked, forty-four-year-old Mary Stuart could work her charms on him.

Although I did not know what was happening at the time, I learnt it in detail afterward and I realized that Walsingham could not be expected, after the Throckmorton affair, to allow matters to lie dormant. He was determined for the sake of my safety and the future of England to bring Mary Stuart to the scaffold. In a way I suppose he set up his own plot and this time he was going to make it absolutely foolproof.

He had working for him an able spy called Gilbert Gifford. Gifford was particularly useful because he was a Catholic and had been trained for the priesthood and could move with ease among Catholic communities, sure of their trust.

Walsingham set Gifford to work on a certain Thomas Morgan, a Welsh Catholic who had been involved in the Ridolfi conspiracy. For some reason he had been allowed to escape and had settled in Paris. He was taken into the employ of the Archbishop of Glasgow, who was Mary's Ambassador in Paris. From there he wrote to Mary in cipher and arranged for her letters to be sent to the Pope and to smuggle them to Catholics in England.

When Walsingham brought me news of his activities I agreed with him that it would be advisable to arrest this man and bring him to England where he could be dealt with, but it was not easy.

It was at this time that William Parry was in touch with Morgan. William Parry was a Catholic member of Parliament for Queensborough in Kent. He had always put forward the case for tolerance toward Catholics and I was at heart in agreement with this. I wanted tolerance for any form of worship, but at the same time the burning zeal of the Catholics could bring disaster to a country, particularly if they introduced that Inquisition which had caused as much misery as anything in the world.

When Parliament passed a bill against Jesuits, seminary priests and such like disobedient persons, Parry rose in the House and denounced it as “a measure savouring of treason, full of danger and despair to the English subjects.”

The House was amazed at such rebellion and Parry was arrested. I ordered him to be released for I did not care for men to be imprisoned for their religious opinions, and as long as they did not try to make trouble— which Parry had not—I was in favor of their having their liberty.

Walsingham's men discovered only six weeks after his release that Parry was plotting to murder me when I was riding in the park. He was arrested and executed but before he died he implicated Thomas Morgan in the plot to murder me, so I immediately asked the French to send Morgan to England. This they refused to do; but they did send him to the Bastille in deference to my wishes. But it was evidently not a very rigorous imprisonment and Morgan was allowed to receive visitors. This fact gave Walsingham an idea, and very soon Gifford was paying a friendly call on Morgan, for, as Walsingham said, since all our efforts to get this man extradited had failed, we could turn this to an advantage.

He had already intercepted letters between Morgan and the Queen of Scots, so clearly the French were not serious in their imprisonment of Morgan. Walsingham thought they might be preserving him to use against us, and Gifford as a trusted Catholic could carry letters between Mary and Morgan. Morgan rather naturally fell into the trap so cleverly prepared for him and had absolute faith in Gifford.

This was typical of Walsingham's work. Gifford had been primed and instructed continuously and he played his part well. He returned to England and was soon in touch with all the Catholic factions. He was entertained by them in their country houses; he learned their secrets, all of which were passed on to Walsingham.

Then he went to Chartley where Mary was at the time.

I had memories of Chartley. It was where I had gone after that splendid entertainment at Kenilworth. It had been the she-wolf's home at the time when she was married to Essex. Now of course she had the grander homes of Wanstead, Leicester House and Kenilworth. I ground my teeth with rage when I thought of her enjoying all that splendor.

But back to Gifford. Poor Sir Ralph Sadler had complained so bitterly of his health and his desire to be released from the task of guarding the Queen of Scots that I had at last relented and sent Sir Amyas Paulet in his place. Sir Amyas was a stern Protestant—a puritan in fact. He had been my Ambassador in Paris and Mary was most put out that such a man should be put in charge of her for, while in Paris, he had behaved in a most unfriendly manner toward her agents.

Indeed he had! I thought. He was working for me, the Queen of England, and not for the Queen of Scots! I wrote back to Mary and told her that Sir Amyas had done his duty well while he was in Paris and I was sure that he would to her.

But I knew she was far from pleased to be in the charge of such a stern man and one on whom, I commented to Hatton, she might turn her aging charms in vain.

It was interesting to see the letters which passed backward and forward, all of which Gifford brought to Walsingham; and I was amused that Mary was using her well-known powers of fascination on poor old Amyas, and to hear through her that Paulet was a man who thought little of anything but his own self-righteousness and was quite unprepared to accept bribes and to allow concessions in the hope of good things to come.

Gifford had had many talks with Mary. She told him that she feared Amyas Paulet might be suspicious of the letters she was sending and she did wonder whether he had means of intercepting them as it appeared—to her spies in England—that a great deal was known of secret matters. She would hesitate therefore to write anything of any great importance unless she was assured that it would reach its destination.

Then Walsingham had an idea. Let Mary believe that the letters were being smuggled out of the castle without Paulet's being able to get his hands on them; then she would be completely frank in what she wrote.

It seemed an excellent idea and Gifford went into the matter with a local Catholic brewer who professed himself willing to help. Full barrels of beer were delivered regularly to the castle and empty ones were taken away. Why should they not have a box in which Mary's letters could be placed and the box secreted in the empty barrel? This could be taken out of the castle without any suspicion. The answers could be sent in full barrels.

It was thus that we learned the full details of the Babington Plot.

First we heard of John Savage. He was a most ardent Catholic who had joined the Duke of Parma to fight for Catholicism in the Low Countries and believed that the only way to bring the Catholic Faith back to England was through my assassination. This was the ultimate goal. When he was in London he got into touch with John Ballard, a Jesuit, who was a member of a band of young men led by Anthony Babington which was plotting to bring about my death and those of my leading statesmen, as well as a rising of Catholics in England. This was to result in the release of Mary and to place her on the throne of England.

Ballard was in touch with people on the continent who were ready to support the rising once I was out of the way and Mary at the head of an army. Philip of Spain and the Pope would help; and certainly the French would, for the Guises wanted to see their kinswoman Queen of England.

There were two sets of conspirators—one under Savage and the other led by Anthony Babington. Gifford carefully brought the two together so that we had only one plot to deal with.

All through the June of that year they met in secret places—sometimes in taverns, sometimes in Giles's Field; and often in Babington's house in Barbican for Babington was a young man of some means who could afford to entertain his friends.

When he was young he had been in Sheffield Castle at the same time as Mary had been imprisoned there and he had acted as her page. As was to be expected, she charmed him and he must have made up his mind then that he was going to do everything he could to bring her out of prison and to my throne.

Foolish young man!

He proved himself to be even more foolish. It is a pity that the young can make such misguided mistakes and then have to pay for them in such deadly manner.

Walsingham was beside himself with glee—but that is not the way to describe it. He could never really be gleeful; but he was going about with an air of immense satisfaction. He told me that he would soon have something very important to report to me.

He now had letters which had come to him—by way of the brewer's barrels—in which Babington mentioned plans for killing me. He had the encouragement of Spain and the promise of help from them. My assassination and that of my most important ministers was now clearly stated as the first objective, and two who must most certainly be eliminated were Burghley and Walsingham. Their deaths—with of course that of myself— would be the signal for the Catholics to rise.

Walsingham went on playing the game, while he kept the conspirators under strict surveillance. There were thirteen of them including Savage and Ballard. They thought they were fourteen for they imagined that Gifford was one of them.

Walsingham made it clear to me that Mary Stuart was as deeply involved in this plot as she possibly could be, and when it was exposed—as it would be at the right moment—there could really be no escape for her this time.

Ballard was arrested first. He was committed to the Tower and racked. Walsingham wanted a confession from him, which he got, but the man would not betray any of the others. Not that it mattered. Walsingham knew them all and was ready to bring them in when he considered the time to be ripe.

His great aim was to implicate Mary and he wanted a complete search made of her apartments, so it was arranged that Paulet should tell her that he was a little concerned for her health and she was to leave Chartley for Tixall, the home of Sir Walter Ashton, who would be delighted to entertain her and there she might enjoy a little hunting. She knew that she would be well guarded at Tixall but she must have welcomed the change which would be good for her health.

While she was absent a thorough search was made of all her possessions at Chartley. Documents were found and many letters which would have incriminated her completely if Walsingham had not had enough evidence from the correspondence he had seen—but of course that was sufficient to send her to the scaffold.

Meanwhile Babington had become suspicious that they were being watched. Ballard had disappeared. He had a strong feeling that the plot might have been discovered and he applied to Walsingham for a passport to France where he wanted to go in order to spy on the Queen's enemies, he said. He stated that he knew these existed and that as he was a good Catholic, he would have an entry into Catholic strongholds.

Walsingham was intrigued by such a request. He wondered then if Gifford was suspected since here was Babington offering himself for the same role in which Gifford had been employed.

He did not reply immediately. He was a great believer in devious methods and he suggested to some of his servants that they try to strike up an acquaintance with Babington, invite him to dine, ply him with drink and see if they could get him to betray anything.

One of them subsequently made friends with Babington in a tavern and the invitation was given.

But here Walsingham's plan went a little awry. Babington did not get drunk though some of his hosts did, and it must have occurred to Babington that his application for a passport and this invitation to dine were connected in some way. He took the opportunity of being in Walsingham's house to explore his private sanctum and, looking through the papers on the great man's desk, he saw his own name on one of them and something written beside it which he could not understand.

But it was enough. He was on his guard. Walsingham knew something and as there were very dangerous things to know, Babington decided to flee. He slipped out of Walsingham's house and went to that of a Catholic friend in Harrow where he changed his complexion by staining it with walnut juice, cut his hair and decided to lie low with his friend until the hunt—if hunt there was—was over.

His capture was not long delayed. Walsingham had too detailed an account of his friends to be at much disadvantage; and very soon, with the rest of the conspirators, Babington was in the Tower.

There could be no other verdict than guilty. Walsingham had so much evidence against them; and right at the heart of the conspiracy to assassinate me and my ministers and to bring the armies from Spain and set up the Catholic Faith under a new Queen, was Mary Stuart herself.

Walsingham was triumphant.

“There can be no way out for her this time,” I said, when her fellow conspirators were all sentenced to the traitor's death of hanging, drawing and quartering.

Crowds assembled in a field at the upper end of Holborn where the execution was to take place and first Ballard was subjected to the most horrible of deaths while Babington looked on. When Ballard had uttered his last cry of agony and his mutilated body was still, it was the turn of Babington.

He suffered horribly and when the news was brought to me I felt ill and I immediately said that the rest of the conspirators should not be cut until after death. They should merely suffer hanging.

I was glad I had done that. I did not want my people looking on such horror and remembering that the order of death came from me.

So Walsingham brought to an end the Babington Plot, which he had set in motion in a desperate attempt to bring Mary of Scotland to the scaffold.

Mary remained. She was as guilty as Babington himself. What should be done with her?

“She must never again be given the opportunity to threaten Your Majesty,” said Burghley.

“We might not be so fortunate next time,” pointed out Walsingham. “She could succeed. Your Majesty must see that the situation is too grave to be lightly set aside.”

I did see it. But I deplored what they were urging me to do.

Five days after Babington and Ballard died so cruelly in the Holborn field, Mary of Scotland was lodged at Fotheringhay.

I WISHED THAT I could have gone to Fotheringhay to be present at her trial. But I could not do that. As we had never met in all the years she had been in England, it was hardly the time for it now. I told both Walsingham and Burghley who were present that I wanted a detailed account of all that was said, and this was promised me.

The trial was held in the great chamber at Fotheringhay Castle. Walsingham had arranged that a throne should be set on a dais. This was for me, and although I should not be sitting in it, its presence meant that those who conducted the trial did so on authority from me.

A chair covered in red velvet had been put out for the prisoner but when she came in she went straight to the throne thinking it had been provided for her. When it was explained to her that the throne was for the Queen of England, she said: “I am the Queen by right of birth and so it should be my place.”

What a foolish woman she was! She would put her judges against her before the trial started.

“How did she look?” I asked Burghley.

He said: “She looked like a queen.”

“Beautiful?” I insisted.

“I suppose one would say that.”

Maddening man! How could she have looked beautiful?

She was forty-four and suffering acutely from rheumatism. She had spent—was it twenty years?—in cold damp castles.

“How was she dressed?” I demanded.

He could answer that. “In black velvet.”

“And on her head?”

“Oh…a white headdress… rather like a shell.”

I knew it. I had seen a drawing of it.

The charges against her were read out. She had been involved in a plot to assassinate the Queen of England and to destroy her realm, to take her crown and bring the Catholic Faith to these shores. What had she to say?

Mary had replied haughtily that she had come to England to ask my aid, and not as a prisoner. She was a queen and answered to none but God. “I will say,” she added, “that I am not guilty of that of which I am accused.”

The facts were then laid before her—the whole story of the planning of the Babington Plot. She denied that she had been involved, but was told that her letters, which had been placed in a box in beer barrels, had been intercepted and she was proved guilty.

Burghley then reminded her that she was also guilty of carrying the arms of England on her shield and calling herself the Queen of England, to which she replied that she had had no choice in that, for her father-in-law Henri Deux of France had commanded it and she had no alternative but to obey him.

“But,” said Burghley, “you continued to state your claim to the throne after you left France.”

“I have no intention of denying my rights,” she retorted.

How tiresome she was! How reckless! But then she always had been. If she had been as wise after the murder of Darnley as I was after the death of Amy Robsart she might still be on the throne of Scotland and not fighting for her life in the hall of Fotheringhay Castle.

She was allowed to state her case and defend herself. From what I heard I think she was a very tired and disillusioned woman. I think she was not prepared to fight very hard for her life. She said sadly that she had been humiliated, treated as a prisoner ever since she arrived in England; and she longed to be free. She declared that she had had no part in the plot to murder me. It was true that she was a Catholic and her religion meant more to her than anything else on Earth. She may have written to foreign princes. She was a sick and weary woman. All she longed for was to be free and live in peace. She insisted that she had never desired my death.

The court broke up with Walsingham's declaration that he would bring the findings to me. She was guilty but it was for me to pass sentence.

This was what I dreaded. I wanted her dead but I did not want to have any part in her removal.

But the court at Fotheringhay had proved her guilty. The letters were as damning as they could be. She deserved to die, and yet…

When the court had adjourned at Fotheringhay it was announced that it should meet again in the Star Chamber at Westminster and there sentence should be passed. It was the 25th of October and I remember that day every year when it comes round. The day Mary Stuart was sentenced to death.

They were all urging me. Walsingham was triumphant. We could remove one of the greatest menaces to our throne for it had been clearly proved that this woman had plotted against my life, which was treason. She had been in touch with foreign courts; she wanted to bring about the ruin of the Protestant Church and set up the Catholic in its place. What greater treason could there be! The execution should take place without delay. It was unwise to dally. It would be better for the Queen of Scots herself if we acted promptly for she must know she was guilty and what the inevitable consequences must be.

I knew they were right. I knew that for the sake of my safety and that of my country she must die—and yet, I should be the one, in the generations to come, who would be accused of killing her.

If only she would die! If only I did not have to put my name to that death warrant!

I hesitated but they would give me no peace. Even Robert wrote from the Netherlands. He was thinking of me all the time, he wrote. He knew what a quandary I found myself in. Did he not understand my innermost feelings? But Mary of Scotland was a threat to me and to every Englishman who did not hold the Catholic Faith. I must sign that death warrant.

“Your Majesty must sign it,” insisted Walsingham, Burghley, Bacon… all of them.

And still I hesitated.

My secretary William Davison came to me and told me that he was being entreated by Amyas Paulet to beg me to sign the death warrant without delay. It was difficult for him to carry on in such a state of tension. Every day they were expecting the order to arrive, each day the Queen of Scots prepared herself, and still the days passed and there was no decision.

“Davison,” I said, “I am loath to sign this warrant for reasons you know well. I should have thought there might be some means of saving me from this unpleasant duty.”

Davison looked taken aback. I felt impatient with him. He was not one of my favorite men. He lacked the grace of the charmers, and although he was able, he did not have the cold clear brain of the clever ones.

It was irritating to have to explain. Burghley would have caught my meaning at once.

“We have heard much of the sufferings of the Queen of Scots. She is not a young woman. Paulet is in charge up there. Could he not be persuaded to help us out of this delicate matter?”

Davison stammered: “You mean … remove the Queen … by … by secret methods…”

“I believe I have made myself clear,” I said. “Write to Paulet… very discreetly. I am sure he will see the wisdom of this.”

But I had reckoned without Paulet's self-righteousness. His miserable conscience came between him and his duty.

He was almost indignant. He could not perform an act which God and the law forbade.

“God forbid,” he wrote, “that I should make so foul a shipwreck of my conscience or leave so great a blot to my poor posterity, to shed blood without law or warrant.”

I knew I could not delay indefinitely. I had to stop trying to placate outsiders. I should have no criticism from the people who really mattered—my own Protestant subjects, who wanted the death of Mary Stuart as much as I did.

So I signed the death warrant and at eight o'clock on that February morning Mary Stuart entered the hall at Fotheringhay Castle and went to the block.

As soon as I knew she was dead I was thrown into a panic of remorse.

I had signed her death warrant. In generations to come I should be known as the one responsible for the death of Mary Stuart. It was no use trying to placate my conscience, to tell myself that she had planned my death. I could not forget that I had signed the paper without which she would have been alive. I could not ease my mind except by pretending that I had not meant it. I looked about me for someone to blame. I sent for Davison but I was told that he was suffering from an attack of palsy and was not at Court.

I knew that he was subject to these attacks and I had no doubt that this matter of the death warrant had brought on this one. I worked myself into a passion of dislike against this man, and when Christopher Hatton came to me, I burst out that I was distressed because of the death of my kinswoman.

Hatton was too much of a courtier to express surprise. He had been one of those—as indeed had every one of my councilors—who had urged me to sign the death warrant. He must have been a little taken aback but being Hatton of the graceful manners he waited for me to say what was in my mind.

“That fool Davison…He knew I did not wish him to send the warrant to Paulet… yet he did so…”

Hatton looked grave. I could see the words forming in his mind: Then why did you sign it? But he did not say them, of course. Wise, tactful Hatton!

“He hurried it off,” I declared, “although I had told him to hold it back until he had permission to release it.”

That was not strictly true. I had told myself that it was what I wanted and that Davison had known it. Had he? He was not a mind-reader. He had not the subtlety of Burghley and Walsingham.

“The Queen of Scots has been executed and it is Davison's fault. I want him in the Tower.”

Hatton said: “He is a sick man. It may be that he has misconstrued Your Majesty's orders, but…”

“I want him in the Tower,” I insisted.

Hatton knew better than to argue with me.

Looking back, I am ashamed. It is a great weakness to take a certain action and then try to defend it by blaming others. As always, I had done what my common sense urged me to do. It was just that I felt so deeply about this woman. I had been so envious of her; she had had so much… and yet so little. The Tudor claim to the throne was not built on a very strong foundation. There were many who said that Queen Katharine had never been married to Owen Tudor; there were many who would say that my father had never truly been married to my mother and that I was a bastard. These matters rankled. The Stuart claim was legitimate, based on royalty. Then there was that legendary beauty of hers which attracted all men. I had my admirers, but I had always known in the secret places of my mind that the glitter of a crown and absolute power can be an irresistible magnet. Yes, I had envied her in so many ways… and pitied her. I often thought of what her childhood and girlhood had been at the elegant Court of France and compared it with mine when I had lived through those formative years under the shadow of the axe; hers so cushioned; mine so harsh; and then myself on the throne triumphant and Mary an uneasy Queen and a captive for twenty years. I had no reason to envy her and yet I could not altogether erase that feeling from my mind. I had thought of her so much and the fact that I should never see her somehow added to the mystic bond between us.

She had been such a fool. In fact it seemed to me that she had rarely shown any wisdom at all. She had plunged headlong into disaster; she had had lovers but what had any of them brought her but misery—except perhaps little Franois who had adored her, but that was in the early days when she was the darling of the French Court.

It was true that she had obsessed me in life and now she was doing so in death and in such a manner that to give myself some ease of mind I was accusing a sick and innocent man of something he had never committed. He had never swerved from his duty, yet here I was raging against him, insisting that the poor palsy-stricken creature be taken to the Tower.

Burghley was horrified. He came to me and said it would be well to release Davison without delay.

“Davison has failed in his duty,” I insisted.

“Your Majesty signed the death warrant, which was the right and proper action to take. Davison merely delivered it to Paulet.”

“He knew that I did not wish it to be delivered.”

“Did Your Majesty tell him this?”

“It was understood, and since when has my Lord Burghley become the Queen's judge?”

He was silent but very disturbed.

“I beg Your Majesty to release Davison,” he said quietly.

I could not do it. I derived some comfort from blaming my secretary and I needed comfort. I could not sleep at night. I dreamed of her headless body. I saw her eyes fixed on me accusingly.

Davison in the Tower offered me some comfort and I clung to that.

He was charged with misprision and contempt, and tried in the Star Chamber. He said that I had signed the death warrant and told him that I could not be troubled anymore with it, which he had taken to mean that I did not want it set before me a second time. He said that there was nothing else he could say and that he had acted sincerely and honestly.

They fined him ten thousand marks and sent him back to the Tower to await my pleasure.

One thing he did not do—which he might have—was to disclose the fact that I had made him write to Paulet suggesting that the Queen of Scots might be quietly removed. I had behaved badly to that man; but while I could convince myself that I had never meant the execution of Mary to be carried out, I could placate my conscience. Like most people who have done some person an injury, I disliked that person more than I had before I wronged him. I built up the case against him in my mind. It was weak; and I hated weakness in myself more than in others. But this was a matter so disturbing to me that I had to ease my conscience even with untruths.

Davison was my scapegoat; but he stopped my nightmares about Mary Queen of Scots. In my fantasy I exonerated myself from having played the chief part in her execution. It helped me considerably.