MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS DEATH MASK
Death masks and effigies were part and parcel of a royal funeral.
The earliest surviving examples belonging to an English King are those of Edward III, the progenitor of both the Houses of York and Lancaster.
Both mask and effigy now lie in the Westminster Abbey collection, along with that of the first Tudor King, Henry VII.
Mary Queen of Scots was a descendant of both men.
Although she was exEcuted for treason, a death mask was still taken of the Queen’s face.
Mary’s death, however, was not a clean one.
The first blow of the axe glanced off the back of the queen’s skull, missing her neck.
The second blow was more successful, although Mary’s head remained attached to the neck by a piece of sinew.
This was crudely severed with one final blow.
However, none of this trauma showed on the queen’s face, which was preserved with four death masks, with two likely candidates surviving to this day.
‘The Lennoxlove mask’ remains in possession of the Dukes of Hamilton, descendants of distant relatives of Mary.
It was to the first Marquis of Hamilton that Mary left her sapphire ring.
This, plus a box that reputedly held the notorious casket letters act as provenance for the mask, which has been kept at the Hamilton family of Lennoxlove, East Lothian for the last 250 years.
The second mask, known as the Jedburgh mask was initially discovered in Peterborough, where Mary was first buried until her reburial in Westminster Abbey.
It is now part of a Museum to Mary in a house in Jedburgh, Scotland, where she once stayed when she was ill.
Both masks look very different.
The Lennoxlove mask is the smallest of the pair and unadorned apart from eyebrows and lashes, while the Jedburgh mask has been garishly painted, so it looks as if the Queen has been made up.
