A few days ago I wrote about a stamp from Saudi Arabia and somehow ended up telling a story about mass beheadings. So I thought it best to continue the theme today with the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots.

Mary Stuart was executed on 8 February 1587 at Fotheringhay Castle, after a trial whose outcome forever troubled Queen Elizabeth I. There are many accounts of the story of the death of Mary Queen of Scots and they vary wildly.

It is said she was quite cheerful as she was was disrobed by her servants in front of the crowd. She comforted them as they cried for her saying, :rejoice rather than weep for that the end of Mary Stuart’s troubles is now come … tell my friends that I die a true woman to my religion, and like a true Scottish woman and a true French woman.’ She had, afterall, been imprisoned for year by this point.

She gave her cross to them and laid her head on the block. After praying, the executioner swung his axe down and apparently missed her neck and hit her in the back of the head where she is said to exclaim :”Sweet Jesus”. A second stroke hit deeper and his next stroke hit true and ended her life. As was the custom, he gripped her by her hair to hold up to the crowd for all to see but she was wearing a wig and the head unceremoniously fell to the floor.

Then there’s her dog.

Then one of the executioners, pulling off her garters, espied her little dog which was crept under her clothes, which could not be gotten forth but by force, yet afterward would not depart from the dead corpse, but came and lay between her head and her shoulders, which being imbrued with her blood was carried away and washed, as all things else were that had any blood was either burned or washed clean, and the executioners sent away with money for their fees, not having any one thing that belonged unto her. And so, every man being commanded out of the hall, except the sheriff and his men, she was carried by them up into a great chamber lying ready for the surgeons to embalm her.

• Hanson, Marilee. “The Execution & Death Of Mary, Queen of Scots, 1587”