Mary’s French physician, Monsieur Bourgoing, recorded in his journal that once she had been blindfolded and her prayers said she had lifted her head “thinking she would be decapitated with a two-handed sword (according to the privilege reserved in France for Princes and gentlemen).” Henry VIII had granted such a privilege to Anne Boleyn and, when Elizabeth’s life had been under threat in the aftermath of the Wyatt revolt against Mary I, she had expressed the hope that if it came to it, she would be executed in the same manner.
But Mary, who had been Queen of France, was led to the block and butchered with an axe, “like those with which they cut wood,” Bourgoing noted with disgust. It took the nervous executioner three strokes to take off Mary’s head and when his companion raised it up, with the shout “God save the Queen,” he found himself, in a moment of grim farce, holding a chestnut wig, as her gray head rolled on the floor.
Mary’s weeping servants had stayed after the official witnesses left the room and watched the executioners strip the stockings from Mary’s corpse (it was usual for the executioners to sell any clothes from the corpses of their victims, even their hair could be cut from their heads).
As the men pulled and ripped, Mary’s little dog, a Skye terrier, dashed out from under her skirts. “The poor creature, covered with blood, rushed up and down the body, howling plaintively,” Bourgoing recalled. Confused, it had lapped at the pools of blood on the floor before being taken away.
Source:
Lisle, Leanda De. "A Babe Crowned in His Cradle" After Elizabeth: The Rise of James of Scotland and the Struggle for the Throne of England. New York: Ballantine, 2005. 53-54. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Maxwell Scott, Fotheringay, appendix.
Spottiswoode, Church and State, vol. 4, p. 120n.
The above is drawn mainly from Bourgoing, pp. 417-23, here translated from the French, M. R. Chantelauze, “Marie Stuart son Procès et son Execution,” Journal of Bourgoing (Paris 1876).
Further Reading:
Elizabeth I of England / The Virgin Queen / Gloriana / Good Queen Bess
Wyatt’s Rebellion / Wyatt’s Revolt
What a way to go! Not the most dignified of deaths.