MARY quEEN Of SCOTS

The short but turbulent 44-year life of Mary, Queen of Scots ended, after 19 years of imprisonment, on February 8, 1587. She was beheaded after being accused of plotting to kill Queen Elizabeth. Eye-witness Robert Wingfield reported the execution, which took two strokes of the axe, and the horrific aftermath. “Her face in a moment by so much altered from the form she had when she was alive, as few could remember her by her dead face. Her lips stirred up and down for a quarter of an hour after her head was cut off... “The Earl of Kent came to the dead body and standing over it said with a loud voice, ‘Such an end to all the Queen’s and the Gospel enemies’. “Then one of the executioners, pulling off her garters, espied her little dog, which was crept under her clothes, which could not be got forth by force, yet afterwards would not depart with the dead corpse, but came and lay between her head and her shoulders”.