which contained a scheme of the whole conspiracy, the captive queen had not only invited foreign powers to the invasion of England, but had also encouraged Babington and his associates to assassinate their sovereign. During the reading of these letters Mary was calm; but when, in the last letter, mention was made of the unfortunate Earl of Arundel, the son of the Duke of Norfolk, she burst into tears, and said, "Alas! what has the noble House of Howard endured for my sake!" But, presently drying her tears, she replied to this part of the evidence, declaring that she knew not Babington, nor ever received any such letters from him, nor wrote any such to him, that they who pretended that she had written to Babington ought to produce her letters in her own hand-writing, and that if Babington wrote letters to her they ought to prove that she received them. There was, indeed, she said, a packet of letters put into her hand about the time alleged, but they had been written almost a year before, and she knew not who sent them. She said that many persons, compassionating her hard fate, had secretly made her offers of service, but that she neither excited nor encouraged any of these, though she, a close prisoner, cut off from the world, and for long periods from all knowledge of what was passing in it, could not hinder their enterprises. She was not answerable for the deeds of others. She had, indeed, used her best endeavours for the recovery of her liberty, as nature itself dictated and allowed; and to this end she had solicited the assistance of her friends. Others might have attempted dangerous designs without her knowledge; and it was an easy matter to counterfeit ciphers and characters. Although she denied prompting an invasion of England, she was less emphatic on that point than on the accusation of being privy to the plot against Elizabeth's life: here she vowed repeatedly that she would never make shipwreck of her soul by engaging in such a bloody crime. In reply to a letter said to have been written by her to provoke an invasion, she declared that she suspected Walsingham as the author of that letter: and Walsingham, in fact, had

handled every letter in his own way. But the bronzed secretary stood up in his place, and solemnly called God to witness that he had done nothing in malice,-nothing unworthy of an honest man and no doubt he thought that an honest man might do more than he had ever done for the sake of the queen and the Protestant settlement. The greatest weight of evidence was made to lie in the confession of Babington, and the extorted depositions of her own servants, Naue and Curle. In regard to Babington, she objected, that, if her adversaries had wished to discover the truth, they would have kept him for a witness, instead of putting him to death,that his confession, if really made in the manner now set forth, was of no value, as it might have been dictated by the hope of mercy as to the secretaries, she replied that Naue was a simple and timid man, and that Curle was the follower of Naue; their depositions might have proceeded from their anxiety to save their own lives. Naue, she said, had formerly committed the offence of writing certain things in her name without her authority. She demanded to be confronted with her two secretaries: the commissioners refused to produce them. Then Mary urged that the majesty and safety of princes must fall to the ground if they were to depend in this manner upon the writing and testimony of secretaries-that she was sure, if Naue and Curle were there present, they would clear her of all blame in this case, that if they had not taken away all her notes and papers, she might answer more particularly to what was objected. There was another and a strong objection to the testimony of Naue and Curle, even if their depositions were free and ungarbled: they had both been sworn, as secretaries, to keep her secrets if they had accused her truly they had prejured themselves to her; if falsely, they perjured themselves to the Queen of England.† The prosecutors

* Some of the letters were widely different now from what they had been when produced on Babington's trial at London. + Curle afterwards reproached Walsingham with breaking his promise, and not giving him the proper reward. Naue, in 1605, wrote an apology, which would certainly have

read the heads of several letters addressed to the lately expelled Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, and to Sir Francis Englefield, Charles Paget, and other Englishmen abroad, among whom was one Morgan who had all along been in the pay of Walsingham. We have no doubt, in our own minds, that the captive queen, in her despair, wrote letters of this kind, approving of a plan of invasion, and offering to contribute to its success, by inducing her friends in Scotland to take up arms, to seize the person of James, and to prevent Elizabeth's friends from sending Scottish troops to her assistance; and it is quite certain, from the perfect machinery he had at work, that Walsingham might obtain possession both of her despatches and of the letters written to her from abroad. It was not, however, considered decent to explain the nature of this machinery, and it was alleged that the original drafts of these despatches and the foreign letters were all found amongst her papers at Chartley,-a most improbable circumstance, considering the situation of Mary, liable every moment to intrusion and seizure. And yet some of these letters from abroad, garbled as they might have been, went rather to disprove than to prove Mary's actual participation in the plots against Elizabeth's life. In regard to the whole of them, Mary said that they bore no relation to the destruction of the queen; and, if foreigners endeavoured to set her at liberty, that was not to be imputed to her as a crime: she had at several times let the queen know that she would seek to procure

more weight if Mary's son James, to whom it was addressed, had not been King of England, with ample powers both to punish and reward. "The sentence," says Camden, "which depended wholly upon the credit of her secretaries, and they not being brought face to face, according to the act of parliament, begot much talk and various discourses among the people." "I have seen," he adds, "Naue's apology to King James, in 1605, wherein he solemnly excused himself that he was neither the author nor the revealer of the design, and that he had stoutly opposed the principal articles of accusation against his mistress, which appeareth not by the proceedings."

her release from that hard captivity in which she had been kept for nearly twenty years. The commissioners insisted that it was fully proved, by some short passages in letters she had written to Mendoza, that there was a design on her part to convey her right in the English succession to the King of Spain. To this charge she replied, that being a close prisoner, oppressed with cares and deprived of all hope of liberty, and daily declining through sickness and sorrow, she had been advised by some to settle the succession upon the Spaniard, or upon some English Catholic; and that she had given offence to some of her friends by refusing to approve of any such scheme. "But," she added, "when all my hopes of England became desperate, I resolved not to reject foreign help." She again desired that her papers and her secretaries Naue and Curle might be produced, and this was again refused: she requested an adjournment, with the aid of counsel, and this was refused. She again demanded to be heard in full parliament, or that she might speak with the queen in council in person. The commissioners, who had received fresh instructions from Elizabeth, would grant nothing; but the chief of them, including Burghley, Walsingham, and Hatton, took her apart from the rest—she rising up, "with great presence of countenance," says Camden-and spoke to her for some time. During this secret conference Mary was observed to be much agitated. The commissioners then adjourned the assembly to the 25th of October, then to meet, not in presence of the prisoner, nor in Fotheringay Castle, but in the Star Chamber at Westminster.

On the appointed day the commissioners, with the exception of the Earls of Warwick and Shrewsbury, assembled in the Star Chamber, to which other lords were summoned. They now brought before them Naue and Curle, who affirmed upon oath, and, as it was expressed, "only in respect of the truth, frankly and voluntarily, without any torture, constraint, or threatening," that the letters, and copies of letters, before mentioned, were genuine and true; and that all was true which they had before confessed and subscribed. This over, without any fur

ther ceremony the_court_pronounced sentence against Mary, daughter of James V., commonly called Queen of Scotland; "for that since the conclusion of the session of parliament, viz., since the 1st day of June, in the twenty-seventh year of her majesty's reign, and before the date of the commission, divers matters have been compassed and imagined within this realm of England by Anthony Babington and others, with the privity of the said Mary, pretending a title to the crown of this realm of England, tending to the hurt, death, and destruction of the royal person of our lady the queen: and also for that the aforesaid Mary, pretending a title to the crown, hath herself compassed and imagined within this realm divers matters tending to the hurt, death, and destruction of the royal person of our sovereign lady the queen, contrary to the form of the statute in the commission aforesaid specified."

Mary clearly foresaw that the departure of the commissioners from Fotheringay would be followed by the arrival of the executioner; and she told Sir Amyas Pawlet that history made mention how the realm of England was used to shed royal blood. But though Elizabeth had procured a sentence, she paused at the prospect of the block, being resolved, as was usual with her, to make the weight of blood seem to fall upon others. And there were others, including the highest names in the kingdom, and among the representatives of the people, who seemed quite ready to take the burden upon their own consciences. On the 29th of October, four days after the passing of the sentence, the parliament assembled, and on the 12th of November both houses, addressing the queen, implored her to give orders for the immediate execution of the Queen of Scots. Mr. Serjeant Puckering, the speaker, in the name of the commons, pointed out the very dangerous consequences of sparing any longer the life of that wicked woman. He then quoted examples from the Bible of rulers who had incurred the vengeance of the

Burghley Papers. - Hardwick Papers.- Camden. Howell, State Trials.-Jebb, Life of Mary.-Original letters cited by Chalmers, Ellis. Raumer, and Wright.