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The following is a report sent to Queen Elizabeth's ministers after Mary's
execution, which should be read out at the end of the lesson:
Her prayers being ended, the executioners asked her Grace to forgive them her
death. She answered, 'I forgive you with all my heart, for I hope you shall make
an end of my troubles'. Then they began to take off her outer clothes.
This done, one of the women put a holy cloth over the Queen of Scots' face, and
pinned it fast to her hair covering. Then the Queen knelt down on the cushion
and, without any token, sign or fear of death, she spoke aloud a psalm in Latin.
Then, groping for the block, she laid down her head. Lying most quietly upon the
block and stretching out her arms, she cried in Latin, 'Into your hands, O
Lord', three or four times.
One of the executioners held her slightly with one of his hands and she endured
two strokes of the axe, making very small noise or none at all.
He lifted up the head to the view of all and bade, 'God save the Queen'. Then,
her head-dress failing off, her hair was as grey as someone of threescore and
ten years old and cropped short.
Then one of the executioners noticed her little dog which had hidden under her
clothes. Afterwards it would not leave the corpse, but came and lay between her
head and her shoulders.
Mary was dead. Her execution was a gruesome affair as the executioner was unable
to sever her neck with one blow, and was forced to use a grinding motion on her
to complete the task. When the head was held up to the crowd it slipped out of
its wig onto the floor!
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