sion of lord Mountjoy,

"that if the Spaniards come not this year, they will be late the next, as no foreign succour can revive the dead." Now, if one half, one third, or even one fourth survived, foreign succour might avail them, whence obviously the destruction of the whole was meditated, or nearly so.

It is hard to determine which most to admire, the heroic constancy and patience with which the Irish endured extremities of hardship, allowed by their enemies to exceed any thing in the records of history, or the inhuman ferocity with which the royal tygress and her assassins prosecuted their destruction. Had she lived much longer, 'tis rather doubtful, whether she would cease the work of extermination until the best and greatest part of Ireland was made an absolute desart; for she mortally hated the Irish, first, by national antipathy, but chiefly, because, instead of yielding to her arbitrary tyranny, spiritual and temporal, with the fawning pliancy of her English slaves, they stoutly stood in defence of civil and religious liberty. This desperate excess of cruelty lord Bacon testifies, when he disapproves of it. "That too much letting blood in the decline of a discase was against reason, and the extirpation of antient generation not commendable." But the mighty arm of God, who willed a remnant to be saved, prostrated the monster before her bloody purpose was entirely accomplished. A memorable example in the list of persecuting tyrants, she lay on the floor, afflicted with burning heat and unquenchable

thirst, gnawed with anguish and sorrow, corroded by the stings of a guilty conscience, without the remedy of contrition, the consolation of hope. After lingering ten days and nights, in inconsolable melancholy and frantic despair, a terror to all the beholders, she terminated the career of her crimes, smarting under the "judgment without mercy, because she shewed no mercy."

It may not be displeasing to the reader, nor is it quite foreign to the purpose of giving just traits, characteristic of the hostile sects and parties, to contrast with the frightful end of this persecuting tyrant, the horrors of which were endeavoured to be concealed, the affecting and magnanimous scene, exhibited by Mary queen of Scots in her last moments, while preparing for the scaffold, and at her public execution. The foundress, and propagating zealot of the new sect in England, deriving from her new fangled doctrines and liturgy no hope or consolation, but perishing in the horrors of despair, in her own palace, surrounded by the satellites of her power, and her slavish courtiers, and no less servile bishops, her own creatures, from whose functions and prayers she expected no relief. The other displaying before and at her lawless execution, the piety, resignation and courage of a primitive martyr. May it not be fair to infer, that the undutifulness of James to such a mother, entailed divine vengeance on his posterity, being one great source of the misfortunes that befel the Stuart family.

VOL. II.

"Feb. 7. 1587.-The earls of Shrewsbury and Kent, came to Fotheringay-castle; and being introduced to Mary, informed her of their commission, and desired her to prepare for death next morning at eight o'clock. She seemed nowise terrified, though somewhat surprized, with the intelligence. She said, with a chearful and even a smiling countenance, that she did not think the queen her sister, would have consented to her death, or have executed the sentence against a person, not subject to the laws and jurisdiction of England. " But as

such is her will," said she, death, which puts an end to all my miseries, shall be to me most welcome; nor can I esteem that soul worthy the felicities of heaven, which cannot support the body under the horrors of the last passage to these blissful mansions."* She then requested the two noblemen, that they would permit some of her servants, and particularly her confessor, to attend her: but they told her, that compliance with this last demand was contrary to their conscience, and that Dr. Fletcher, dean of Peterborow, a man of great learning, should be present, to instruct her in the principles of true religion. Her refusal to have any conference with this divine inflamed the earl of Kent's zeal; and he bluntly

* It appears by some letters published by Strype, vol. iii. book ii. c. 1. that Elizabeth had not expressly communicated her intention to any of her ministers, not even to Burleigh: they were such experienced courtiers, that they knew they could not gratify her more than by serving her without waiting till she desired them.

told her, that her death would be the life of their religion; as, on the contrary, her life would have been the death of it. Mention being made of Babington, she constantly denied his conspiracy to have been at all known to her; and the revenge of her wrong, she resigned into the hands of the Almighty.

"When the earls had left her, she ordered sup per to be hastened, that she might have the more leisure, after it, to finish the few affairs which remained to her in this world, and to prepare for her passage to another. It was necessary for her, she said, to take some sustenance, lest a failure of her bodily strength should depress her spirits on the morrow, and lest her behaviour should thereby betray a weakness unworthy of herself. She supped sparingly, as her manner usually was; and her wonted chearfulness did not even desert her on this occasion. She comforted her servants under the affliction, which overwhelmed them, and which was too violent for them to conceal it from her. Turning to Burgoin, her physician, she asked him, whether he did not remark the great and invincible force of truth. " They pretend," said she, "that I must die, because I conspired against their queen's life: but the earl of Kent, avowed that there was no other cause of my death, but the apprehensions, which, if I should live, they entertain for their religion. My constancy in the faith is my real crime: the rest is only a colour, invented by interested and designing men." Towards the end of the supper, she called in all her servants, and drank to them:

they pledged her, in order, on their knees; and craved her pardon for any past neglect of their duty: she deigned, in return, to ask their pardon for her offences towards them: and a plentiful effusion of tears attended this last solemn farewel, and exchange of mutual forgiveness.

"Mary's care of her servants was the sole remaining affair, which employed her concern. She perused her will, in which she had provided for them by legacies: she ordered the inventory of her goods, cloaths, and jewels to be brought her; and she wrote down the names of those to whom she bequeathed each particular: to some she distributed money with her own hands; and she adapted the recompence to their different degrees of rank and merit. She wrote also letters of recommendation for her servants to the French king and to her cousin, the duke of Guise, whom she made the chief executor of her testament. At her wonted time she went to bed, slept some hours, and then rising, spent the rest of the night in prayer. Having foreseen the difficulty of exercising the rites of her religion, she had the precaution to obtain a consecrated host from the hands of pope Pius; and she had reserved the use of it for this last period of her life. By this expedient she supplied, as much as she could, the want of a priest and confessor, who was refused her.

"Towards the morning she dressed herself in a rich habit of silk and velvet, the only one which she had reserved to herself. She told her maids, that she would willingly have left them