Tea at Trianon: Remembering Mary Stuart

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, February 8, 2013

Remembering Mary Stuart

On the anniversary of her death. To quote:

Babington and his fellows were now arrested, tried and executed, then Mary’s trial began (14 and 15 October). A death sentence was the object desired, and it was of course obtained. Mary freely confessed that she had always sought and always would seek means of escape. As to plots against the life of Elizabeth, she protested “her innocence, and that she had not procured or encouraged any hurt against her Majesty”, which was perfectly true. As to the allegation of bare knowledge of treason without having manifested it, the prosecution would not restrict itself to so moderate a charge. Mary, moreover, always contended that the Queen of Scotland did not incur responsibilities for the plottings of English subjects, even if she had known of them. Indeed, in those days of royal privilege, her rank would, in most men’s minds, have excused her in any case. But Lord Burghley, seeing how much turned on this point of privilege, refused her all signs of royalty, and she was condemned as “Mary Stuart, commonly called Queen of Scotland”. (Read entire post.)