drawn out the warrant for the execution, the Queen sent to the
secretary DAVISON to bring it to her, that she might sign it: which she
did. Next day, when Davison told her it was sealed, she angrily asked
him why such haste was necessary? Next day but one, she joked about it,
and swore a little. Again, next day but one, she seemed to complain that
it was not yet done, but still she would not be plain with those about
her. So, on the seventh, the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury, with the
Sheriff of Northamptonshire, came with the warrant to Fotheringay, to
tell the Queen of Scots to prepare for death.

When those messengers of ill omen were gone, Mary made a frugal supper,
drank to her servants, read over her will, went to bed, slept for some
hours, and then arose and passed the remainder of the night saying
prayers. In the morning she dressed herself in her best clothes; and, at
eight o'clock when the sheriff came for her to her chapel, took leave of
her servants who were there assembled praying with her, and went down-
stairs, carrying a Bible in one hand and a crucifix in the other. Two of
her women and four of her men were allowed to be present in the hall;
where a low scaffold, only two feet from the ground, was erected and
covered with black; and where the executioner from the Tower, and his
assistant, stood, dressed in black velvet. The hall was full of people.
While the sentence was being read she sat upon a stool; and, when it was
finished, she again denied her guilt, as she had done before. The Earl
of Kent and the Dean of Peterborough, in their Protestant zeal, made some
very unnecessary speeches to her; to which she replied that she died in
the Catholic religion, and they need not trouble themselves about that
matter. When her head and neck were uncovered by the executioners, she
said that she had not been used to be undressed by such hands, or before
so much company. Finally, one of her women fastened a cloth over her
face, and she laid her neck upon the block, and repeated more than once
in Latin, 'Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit!' Some say her
head was struck off in two blows, some say in three. However that be,
when it was held up, streaming with blood, the real hair beneath the
false hair she had long worn was seen to be as grey as that of a woman of
seventy, though she was at that time only in her forty-sixth year. All
her beauty was gone.

But she was beautiful enough to her littl