Why Mary Queen Of Scots Was E*ecuted By A*e

It was one of the most infamous executions of the Tudor period and Elizabeth the first ordered the execution of her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. Mary had been locked up inside many different prisons and castles for almost two decades and her involvement in the Babington plot, which aimed to bring about the death of Queen Elizabeth herself, secured her fate.

It was a shocking episode in English history. A Queen of England was executing another anointed Queen. A Queen from a country which was considered a long-standing enemy. But inside of Fotheringhay Castle on the 8th of February, 1587, Mary Queen of Scots was led into the great hall where an executioner stood on the scaffold armed with the method that would take her head clean off her shoulders.

The executioner, a man named Bull, stood there with his axe in front of the wooden block. But why specifically was Mary Queen of Scots executed by axe? Mary Queen of Scots was condemned in this way because beheading with axe was the conventional English method of executing a person who was said to have been of noble or high birth or status, especially someone who was actually a royal prisoner.

When Mary was executed inside Fotheringhay, she was not treated as an ordinary convicted criminal. She as mentioned was an anointed Queen. The former sovereign of Scotland, a cousin of Elizabeth the first, and a woman with royal blood. In Tudor England, social status can influence the manner of execution. Ordinary people convicted of serious offenses might be hanged while men convicted of high treason could face the much more horrific punishment of hanging, drawing, and quartering.

For members of the nobility though, execution by axe was actually considered a relatively honorable and somewhat, well, privileged death. Mary therefore, by receiving the axe, was given the form of execution, which was considered kind for someone of her status. But why the axe rather than the sword? Well, England’s normal instrument of judicial beheading was just the axe, the large heavy axe.

This is important because sometimes people think that all royal executions were carried out with an executioner’s sword, and in England this really wasn’t the case. English executioners traditionally used a heavy axe against a wooden block, which the condemned would place their neck and head upon. Famous prisoners and victims, including Thomas Cromwell, Catherine Howard, Edward Seymour, and Robert Devereux.

They were all executed by beheading with an axe. There was one exception though in the Tudor period, and this one really has stuck. Anne Boleyn. Henry VIII arranged for Anne, his second wife, to be executed by an expert swordsman who was brought over the English Channel from Calais. The sword could potentially sever the neck without requiring the condemned person to place their head upon a block, and witnesses regarded this as a very efficient method.

Mary, Queen of Scots, wasn’t given any special arrangements at all. Her execution followed the standard English procedure, the block, the axe, and the executioner. Elizabeth I though did not personally choose the axe for Mary. She didn’t sit down and decide specifically that Mary should die by it. The decision Elizabeth I had to ponder greatly was whether to actually execute Mary at all or not.

She took some time to decide that, and later she felt she was pushed into it. Mary, as mentioned, had been implicated in conspiracies to actually assassinate Elizabeth I and take the crown of England for herself. But the Privy Council really pushed for Mary’s execution once and for all as they saw her as a very bad troublemaker for the English queen.

But once a woman of Mary, Queen of Scots’ status was sentenced to death, using an axe was somewhat of the English way of doing things. It was also supposed to provide a relatively quick death. It was somewhat practical. A powerful downward blow from a sufficiently heavy sharp axe could sever the neck very quickly.

When performed successfully, death or irreversible loss of consciousness would follow immediately after. The problem though was that this all depended on how skillful the executioner was and whether he was any good or not. The condemned person had to remain correctly positioned. The executioner needed to strike the correct point on the neck with some considerable force.

A badly aimed blow might strike the skull, shoulder, or upper back instead. This is exactly what made Mary Queen of Scots’ execution particularly gnarly. Mary’s execution went very badly wrong. Mary entered the great hall at Fotheringhay on the 8th of February, 1587. A scaffold had been made in the middle of the room, and this was covered in black cloth.

Mary wore dark outer clothing, but when her attendants removed these garments, she revealed clothing described in eyewitness accounts as being of crimson or reddish-brown color, associated with the traditional colors of a Catholic martyr. It was clear that she thought she was being killed as a martyr, a woman of her faith.

She prayed and said farewell to her ladies and attendants, and then prepared herself for death. Mary was blindfolded, and she then knelt and positioned herself on the block. She may have fumbled around on the block as she couldn’t see where it was, and then got herself into position. At this point, the executioner raised his axe for the first swing, and it then crashed down.

But the first blow from the axe failed to remove her head. The initial strike landed very badly. It struck her shoulders, and some claim that Mary even moved her head and may have screamed out. But then a second blow was required, and the executioner delivered this more, well, successfully. But there was still a problem.

Mary’s head had not been completely separated from her body, and the executioner then had to cut through the remaining bits of sinew. Ugh. So, although the axe was theoretically capable of producing a rapid death, Mary’s execution demonstrated that the axe was only as effective as the man who was wielding it. Mary, though, was never going to receive the same sort of treatment that Anne Boleyn had.

Let’s remember, Elizabeth I was actually Anne Boleyn’s daughter, and Mary was being punished in the conventional English treatment, symbolizing that she was being condemned in the English manner by the English crown who had signed off on her death warrant. They were punishing one of their long-standing enemies, a Scots.

But there were other possible execution methods for her, technically. One was that she could have been hanged in public. Many women at the time who were condemned for serious crimes were hanged. However, this was seen as the punishment for a commoner, and it was also relatively public, as mentioned. Despite being witnessed by a few hundred people, the execution of Mary did take place at Fotheringhay behind closed doors.

She could also, technically, have been possibly burned at the stake, but the axe, as mentioned, reflected Mary’s status as a noble. To modern eyes, execution by axe seems incredibly brutal. Within the culture of the 16th century in England, Mary’s sentence was somewhat of a privileged form of capital punishment. Some would say it was kind.

Probably not, though. She was not sent to the gallows and was not subjected to the same punishments that commoners received. Instead, Mary was allowed a death associated traditionally with aristocracy. Because the execution took place in England, the conventional instrument for this was beheading using the executioner’s axe.

So, that is why Mary Queen of Scots died beneath the blade of the axe at Fotheringhay. Not because the weapon had some special symbolic connection to Mary, but because it was ultimately the established English instrument for carrying out a privileged punishment of taking someone’s head off, if there was ever such a thing.

The irony is that the method intended to deliver a swift and dignified death, but that’s something that Mary Queen of Scots certainly didn’t get.