the cause of much bloodshed and death, for foreign kings and princes would resent it some day, and take vengeance for it upon England."

Much more followed to the same effect, and you will therefore not be surprised to learn that the diarist continues:-"Listening to all which, Sir Amias got tired, and asked her to calm herself, and not to vex herself any more; no harm had been done to her; nothing had been done without good reason, and he was powerless to remedy it; the longer she sat there, the more harm she was likely to do herself, and she had better go on. Whereupon it was pointed out by myself and her people that Her Majesty should have patience; she had had many afflictions in her time, which she had borne patiently, and must bear up stoutly and constantly, and with a royal heart support this one. It was of no use for them to counsel force when they were powerless to resist. She was in the hands of her enemies, but we did not think it well for her to remain longer where she was, as she could not stay all night, and the longer she staid, the worse it would be when she did go; not knowing how far she had to go, or where she was being taken, she would be tired, and would be in the road all night, which would give opportunity to her enemies to do her more injury, and execute more readily any evil desires they might have; and that what she did now, she did under constraint."

Mary appears to have been in constant fear that some means would be taken to put her to death in a surreptitious way-a fear which, as I have already shown, was not by any means an unreasonable one. She knew well that her constant scheming would some day meet its just reward, but she had a well-founded opinion that Elizabeth's Council would suffer much before they would venture to bring her to a public scaffold. However, she was finally induced to move,

after having bullied Sir Amias, who had also to submit to a great deal of hectoring from her attendants. Sir Amias seemed especially to be touched by Mary calling him a gaoler, for he replied, "that the Queen mistook him; he was not a gaoler, but a gentleman, though a poor one; he was noble, faithful, and good, and he repeated what he had before told her, that gaolers were required only for criminals, and if he were a gaoler, it was because the Queen was guarded as a criminal." After much more conversation, Mary went a little distance off to pray by herself, and though it was supposed to be private, our diarist gives a record of what was undoubtedly a very proper prayer under the circumstances, but he does not say how he obtained a verbatim record of it. Eventually she was safely escorted to Tixall, the seat of Sir Walter Aston, in obedience to the command of Elizabeth, in order that she might be separated from her secretaries, and that her desks and papers might be removed for examination; for as Elizabeth said in her letter to Sir Amias, "both the Queen secretaries, Nau and Curle, had been

and her two

assisting in

a most unprincely and unnatural sort;" in other words, engaged in a plot against her.

Mary remained at Tixall but nine days. Miss Strickland says seventeen,* and Lingard twenty days, but this diary proves them to have been in error, for she returned to Chartley on the 25th, to find that all her papers and jewels had been taken away. She was received with heartiness by such of her attendants as were left, but she found that even nine days' absence had been productive of important matters in her small Court. Her two secretaries, Nau and Curle, had been taken away prisoners; Mrs. Curle, upon whose lap, sitting on the ground in the park, Mary had sat so long *Lives of the Queens of Scotland, &c., vii, 408.

t History of England, viii, 213.

on the day of her removal to Tixall, had been confined of a daughter, and the discovery had been made that Nau had been secretly betrothed to Bess Pierrepoint, a granddaughter of the Countess of Shrewsbury, Mary's first "gaoler." Bess, who had been acting as attendant on the Queen, having, as Mary says,* been "brought up my bedfellow and at board ever sithence she had four years of age, so carefully and virtuously as if she had been my own daughter." As Mary had been arranging another marriage for Bess, and M. Nau had solemnly promised he would never marry, Mary was naturally vexed, but as the guilty couple were imprisoned at different places, she had to nurse her wrath.

That Sir Amias was willing to act as kindly as his orders would permit, is evident from the diary, which says that Mary visited Mrs. Curle frequently up to the 17th September, when she was quite recovered, after which he was under the necessity of forbidding it. He said "he had only permitted the visits from charity and pity for the young lady, who was inexperienced and incapable of managing her affairs, this being her first baby."

A few days afterwards, Sir Amias sent word to Mary to say he and Mr. Bagot wished to see her, as they "had five or six words to say to her." Though she was unwell, and unwilling to see them, they were so persistent that at last they obtained admission to her bed-room, and after, very much to their annoyance, having ordered all the attendants out of the room, permitting our diarist alone to remain near the door, they told her that it had come to the knowledge of the Queen that it was her money "which was doing much harm; that by it she had bribed many persons, both in England and beyond the sea, who had become traitors to their country." They finally required that she should give it all up to them. Mary at once denied that she had any money, or that she State Papers, xviii, No. 74.

had ever bribed anyone. Sir Amias was able, however, to contradict this-their examination during Mary's absence having revealed the state of her coffers-and then she said that "she had never sought any one, but if any one had given her pleasure, or offered her service, she had not wished. to be ungrateful, and had recompensed them for their expenses." After a long discussion, and under threats that her chests should be broken open, Mary at last consented, and the casket was unlocked. Mary, who had before said she had no money, now said "she had kept it for a last resource; that when she died it would serve to pay for her funeral and her servants' wages, and to send them back to their own countries after her death." After begging for some of it under several pretexts, even descending so low as to ask for "but ten crowns for play and amusement," she had to see it all go, and her tormentors then went through the same form with respect to the money which was in the possession of Mrs. Curle, the wife of her secretary. At the same time several of her attendants were dismissed, and others, whom it was probably thought might be dangerous, were confined to their rooms.

"A few days later Sir Amias desired to speak to the Queen, if she would hear him quietly, and not abuse him. Accompanied by Mr. Bagot, they spoke particularly about the troubles of the time; that since England had existed there had never been so great a trouble, nor had there been an enterprise or treason so great as this, nor so horrible; whether she was guilty of, or consenting to it, God knew; but they had taken some who had deposed to important things, and, amongst others, Babington, who, with six men, had undertaken to kill the Queen of England, and proposed to carry off Her Majesty (of Scotland) out of the house; to set fire at night to the farms near the house, that the servants of Sir Amias might go to the assistance of the

tenants; and then a barricade of some carts was to be erected to prevent their return, whilst they killed Sir Amias and his companions, and carried away her and some of her attendants, having at two or three miles' distance appointed a number of horses to meet her, and take her where she would be in safety far from there," and so forth. Of course, Mary made the usual protestations that she knew nothing of it, and had never known Babington-a statement which she was shortly after obliged to qualify by saying she had not seen him for some years.

On the 15th September it was proposed to Mary that she should remove to another house belonging to the Queen, and thirty miles nearer to London, and on the 20th she set out for Fotheringay, which she was never to leave alive. The diarist gives some interesting details of the journey, which have not been made public before. Mary never knew from day to day where she was going, her route being kept a strict secret, but each morning, as she started, she was told whether it would be a long or a short journey, and sometimes how many miles. Mary rode in a carriage, with her back to the horses. She chose this position in order "that she might better see those that followed her, whom she thus faced. If she had sat otherwise she would only have been able to see their backs, and she thought if they intended her any harm, she would be able to see the blow coming." Sir Thomas Gorges and Mr. Stallenge were sent by the Government to take precautions that no rescue should be attempted by the way, and the cavalcade, comprising Mary and her attendants, Sir Amias, who was compelled by his infirmities also to take coach, with his wife and family, and a guard of two hundred horsemen, made easy journeys from day to day, staying at Burton on the night of the 21st, at Hill Hall, about seven miles off, on one of the windows of which is a Latin inscription, written with a diamond,* recording the fact Miss Strickland. Op. cit. 419.