The ominous significance of these events had their full effect on the
English Queen. Aroused to a sense of her danger, she signed the
Scottish Queen's death warrant, and Mary, after nineteen years'
imprisonment, was beheaded at Fotheringay Castle.[1]
[1] Fotheringay Castle, Northamptonshire, demolished by James I.
As soon as the news of her execution was brought to Elizabeth, she
became alarmed at the political consequences the act might have in
Europe. With her usual duplicity she bitterly upbraided the minister
who had advised it, and throwing Davidson, her secretary, into the
Tower, fined him 10,000 pounds, the payment of which reduced him to
beggary.
Not satisfied with this, Elizabeth even had the effrontery to write a
letter of condolence to Mary's son, James VI, declaring that his
mother had been beheaded by mistake! Yet facts prove that Elizabeth
had not only determined to put Mary to death, but that she had urged
those who held Mary prisoner to kill her privately.[2]
[2] See "Elizabeth" in the "National Dictionary of (British)
Biography."