There was a great nobleman in England, named the Duke of Norfolk, who had vast estates, and was regarded as the greatest subject in the realm. He was a Catholic. Among the other countless schemes and plots to which Mary's presence in England gave rise, he formed a plan of marrying her, and, through her claim to the crown and by the help of the Catholics, to overturn the government of Elizabeth. He entered into negotiations with Mary, and she consented to become his wife, without, however, as she says, being a party to his political schemes. His plots were discovered; he was imprisoned, tried, and beheaded. Mary was accused of sharing the guilt of his treason. She denied this. She was not very vigorously proceeded against, but she suffered in the event of the affair another sad disappointment of her hopes of liberty, and her confinement became more strict and absolute than ever.
Still she had quite a numerous retinue of attendants. Many of her former friends were allowed to continue with her. Jane Kennedy, who had escaped with her from Loch Leven, remained in her service. She was removed from castle to castle, at Elizabeth's orders, to diminish the probability of the forming and maturing of plans of escape. She amused herself sometimes in embroidery and similar pursuits, and sometimes she pined and languished under the pressure of her sorrows and woes. Sixteen or eighteen years passed away in this manner. She was almost forgotten. Very exciting public events were taking place in England and in Scotland, and the name of the poor captive queen at length seemed to pass from men's minds, except so far as it was whispered secretly in plots and intrigues.
CHAPTER XII. THE END.
1586-1587
Plots and intrigues.-How far Mary was involved.-Babington's conspiracy.-Secret correspondence.-Seizure of Mary's papers.-Her son James.-Elizabeth resolves to bring Mary to trial.-Fotheringay Castle.-Great interest in the trial.-Preparations for it.-The throne.-Mary refuses to plead.-The commission.-The great hall.-Mary pronounced guilty.-Elizabeth's pretended sorrow.-Signing the warrant.-Shuffling of Elizabeth.-Mary's letter to Elizabeth.-Interposition of Mary's friends.-Elizabeth signs the warrant.-It is read to Mary.-Mary hears the sentence with composure.-Protests her innocence.-Mary refused a priest.-Mary alone with her friends.-Affecting scene.-Supper.-Mary's farewell to her attendants.-Mary's last letters.-Her directions as to the disposal of her body.-Arrangements for the execution.-The scaffold.-Proceeding to the hall.-Interview with Melville.-Mary's last message.-She desires the presence of her attendants.-Mary's dress and appearance.-Symbols of religion.-Mary's firmness in her faith.-Her last prayer.-The execution.-Heart-rending scene.-Disposition of the body.-Elizabeth's affected surprise.-Her conduct.-The end of Mary's ambition realized.-Accession of James I.-Tomb of Mary at Westminster Abbey.-Mary's love and ambition.-She triumphs in the end.
Mary did not always discourage the plots and intrigues with which her name was connected. She, of course, longed for deliverance from the thraldom in which Elizabeth held her, and was ready to embrace any opportunity which promised release. She thus seems to have listened from time to time to the overtures which were made to her, and involved herself, in Elizabeth's opinion, more or less, in the responsibility which attached to them. Elizabeth did not, however, in such cases, do any thing more than to increase somewhat the rigors of her imprisonment. She was afraid to proceed to extremities with her, partly, perhaps, for fear that she might, by doing so, awaken the hostility of France, whose king was Mary's cousin, or of Scotland, whose monarch was her son.
At length, however, in the year 1586, about eighteen years from the commencement of Mary's captivity, a plot was formed in which she became so seriously involved as to subject herself to the charge of aiding and abetting in the high treason of which the leaders of the plot were proved to be guilty. This plot is known in history by the name of Babington's conspiracy. Babington was a young gentleman of fortune, who lived in the heart of England. He was inspired with a strong degree of interest in Mary's fate, and wished to rescue her from her captivity. He joined himself with a large party of influential individuals of the Catholic faith. The conspirators opened negotiations with the courts of France and Spain for aid. They planned an insurrection, the assassination of Elizabeth, the rescue of Mary, and a general revolution. They maintained a correspondence with Mary. This correspondence was managed very secretly, the letters being placed by a confidential messenger in a certain hole in the castle wall where Queen Mary was confined.
One day, when Mary was going out to ride, just as she was entering her carriage, officers suddenly arrived from London. They told her that the plot in which she had been engaged had been discovered; that fourteen of the principal conspirators had been hung, seven on each of two successive days, and that they had come to arrest some of her attendants and to seize her papers. They accordingly went into her apartments, opened all her desks, trunks, and cabinets, seized her papers, and took them to London. Mary sat down in the scene of desolation and disorder which they left, and wept bitterly.
The papers which were seized were taken to London, and Elizabeth's government began seriously to agitate the question of bringing Mary herself to trial. One would have thought that, in her forlorn and desolate condition, she would have looked to her son for sympathy and aid. But rival claimants to a crown can have little kind feeling to each other, even if they are mother and son. James, as he gradually approached toward maturity, took sides against his mother. In fact, all Scotland was divided, and was for many years in a state of civil war: those who advocated Mary's right to the crown on one side, and James's adherents on the other. They were called king's men and queen's men. James was, of course, brought up in hostility to his mother, and he wrote to her, about a year before Babington's conspiracy, in terms so hostile and so devoid of filial love, that his ingratitude stung her to the heart. "Was it for this," she said, "that I made so many sacrifices, and endured so many trials on his account in his early years? I have made it the whole business of my life to protect and secure his rights, and to open before him a prospect of future power and glory: and this is the return."
The English government, under Elizabeth's direction, concluded to bring Mary to a public trial. They removed her, accordingly, to the Castle of Fotheringay. Fotheringay is in Northamptonshire, which is in the very heart of England, Northampton, the shire town, being about sixty miles northwest of London. Fotheringay Castle was on the banks of the River Nen, or Avon, which flows northeast from Northampton to the sea. A few miles below the castle is the ancient town of Peterborough, where there was a monastery and a great cathedral church. The monastery had been built a thousand years before.
They removed Mary to Fotheringay Castle for her trial, and lawyers, counselors, commissioners, and officers of state began to assemble there from all quarters. The castle was a spacious structure. It was surrounded with two moats, and with double walls, and was strongly fortified. It contained numerous and spacious apartments, and it had especially one large hall which was well adapted to the purposes of this great trial. The preparations for the solemn ordeal through which Mary was now to pass, brought her forth from the obscurity in which she had so long been lost to the eyes of mankind, and made her the universal object of interest and attention in England, Scotland, and France. The people of all these nations looked on with great interest at the spectacle of one queen tried solemnly on a charge of high treason against another. The stories of her beauty, her graces, her misfortunes, which had slumbered for eighteen years, were all now revived, and every body felt a warm interest in the poor captive, worn down by long confinement, and trembling in the hands of what they feared would be a merciless and terrible power.