herself, on the 26th of September, lodged within the fatal walls of Fotheringay Castle. At Fotheringay she continued ignorant of the storm already gathered above her head. The council of Elizabeth meantime had been deliberating what should be her doom. Some would have her committed to closer confinement, which, with her bodily infirmities, would soon destroy her; others would have her despatched by poison. The recommendation of poison is ascribed to Leicester*, and the practice was generally supposed familiar to him. This minion of Elizabeth, who combined the want of capacity, courage, and every virtue, with an utter profligacy of life, affected puritanism, and employed in his letters the scriptural vocabulary and tone of that ṣect. Finding Walsingham averse to the use of poison, he sent a divine to satisfy him of its Christian lawfulness.† Both the slow torture of close confinement, and the quick despatch by poison, were abandoned ; and it was resolved to proceed against her by criminal trial. A new question is stated to have arisen in the council -whether she should be arraigned under the 25th Edward III., or the 27th Elizabeth. The latter, as might be expected, was preferred. It is strange that any doubt should have arisen, when the statute was passed for the very purpose of forfeiting her life. The final resolution was to proceed against her by commission, under the 27th of Elizabeth, by the style and title of Mary Stuart, daughter and heir of James VI. king of Scots, and commonly called queen of Scots and dowager of France. Paulet meanwhile, "in case he heard any noise or disturbance in her lodgings, or in the place where she was, had orders to kill her, without waiting for any further power or command; and, in fact, upon the chimney of her room taking fire, and his imagining it had been done by design to serve for a signal, he actually appointed four of his servants (who afterwards confessed it) to kill her in her antechamber + Ibid. * Camd. An. if she made the least offer to escape, or to get out of the house of Fotheringay.” * The joy of Elizabeth, when her victim was safely lodged at the last stage of her captivity and life, knew no bounds. "Amias, my most faithful servant, God reward thee!" is the opening of her letter to the obdurate gaoler. Forty-two commissioners + were appointed by her to proceed to Fotheringay. Thirty of these arrived on the 11th of October. Next day they sent Mildmay, Powlet, and Barker- the last a public notary—to place in the hands of the queen of Scots a letter from Elizabeth, charging her with being accessory to the conspiracy of Babington, and informing her of the commission issued for her trial. She read the letter with composure, and replied to those who presented it with firmness and dignity, "That it grieved her to find her most dear sister misinformed of her; that she was kept in prison until she was wholly deprived of the use of her limbs, though she had offered the most reasonable conditions for her liberty; that she was forewarned of her danger, but did not expect death from one so nearly allied to her in blood; that it seemed strange to her the queen should command her to appear personally, when she was an absolute [independent] queen; that she would never do that which would prejudice her own majesty, and the majesty of other princes, and of her son; that her mind was not dejected, nor would she sink under calamity; that the laws of England were unknown to her, she was destitute of counsel, her papers were taken away, and no man dared step forth as her advocate; that she had excited no man against the queen; but that she denied not having recommended herself and her cause to foreign princes." The messengers returned with her answer; and came back next day to ask, in the name of the commissioners, whether she persisted in it. She replied that she did, and wished only to add,—“ That whereas Blackwood, cited by Carte (Gen. Hist. book xix.) as a grave, learned, and respectable author, who had great opportunities of knowing the truth of these matters. Their names will be found in Camden and the State Trials. the queen had written she was subject to the laws of England, because she lived under their protection, she would answer that she came to England to crave aid, and had ever since been detained in prison, and had not the protection of the laws; nay, more, that she never could understand from any man what manner of laws those were." There is in the last observation equal justice and finesse. She had scarcely known any other law in England than the despotic hatred of Elizabeth. She In the evening of the same day, "there came to her certain selected persons from among the commissioners, with men learned in the civil and canon law."*. The chancellor (Bromley) and treasurer (Burleigh) recommended to her, "with fair words," to answer the charges; and, upon her refusal, declared that they had authority to proceed against her as if absent. rejoined, that she would die a thousand deaths rather than admit herself a subject; but that she was willing to answer before a full parliament-not before commission_ ers who had already forejudged her,— bade the commissioners look to their consciences, and reminded them that the theatre of the world was much wider than the kingdom of England. The list of the names of her judges was submitted to her: she looked over it, and made no objection; but protested against the law, as made expressly to entrap and destroy her. “ We will, nevertheless," said Burleigh, " proceed against you tomorrow as absent and contumax."-She replied, "Search your consciences, look to your honour, and God reward you and yours for your judgment upon me.”—“ If,” said Hatton, "you are innocent, you have nothing to fear; but, by avoiding a trial, you stain your reputation with an eternal blot.' This artful speech, amplified and repeated, shook her resolution; and she consented to appear the next day (October 14.), " out of a desire to clear her innocence, provided her protest against all subjection were received and allowed." This was refused; but her protest, and the chancellor's refusal to * State Trials, vol. i. Proceedings against Mary Queen of Scots. receive it, as derogatory to the law of England, were recorded in writing. It is impossible to read without admiration, in the minute records of the trial, the self-possessed, prompt, clear, and sagacious replies and remarks by which this forlorn woman defended herself against the most expert lawyers and politicians of the age; who, instead of examining her as judges, pressed her with the unscrupulous ingenuity of enemies. Their spirit may be collected from the fact that Burleigh, one of her judges, published at the very moment, "A Note of the Indignities and Wrongs done and offered by the Queen of Scots to the Queen's Majesty;" beginning with her assumption of the royal arms in France, when she was the wife of the dauphin, son of Henry II.,—and ending with Babington's conspiracy. No pettifogging advocate could employ falsehood and sophistry with more license than this statesman, acting in the sacred character of a judge.* The commissioners assembled in the presence-chamber of the castle on the 14th of October. At the upper end of the chamber stood a canopied vacant chair, for the queen of England; and opposite to it a chair to be occupied by the queen of Scots. After a preliminary debate between the commissioners and the prisoner, in which she repeated her objections to the jurisdiction and to the statute, and urged her rights as an independent queen, the circumstances under which she had come into England, and the treatment which she had received, -all stated by her with unabated self-possession,-the queen's sergeant, Gandy, opened the case against her, with a history of the conspiracy of Babington. The essence of the accusation consisted in an alleged correspondence with Babington and persons in foreign countries, proving her participation in a plot to produce invasion and rebellion, and to assassinate the queen. In support of the charge, the queen's counsel urged Babington's confession of a correspondence between them, and * See Murdin, State Papers, 584. produced copies of three letters, one professing to be from Mary to Babington, renewing their correspondence; the second from Babington to Mary, minutely detailing the conspiracy; the third from Mary to Babington, in which she approved and co-operated by her advice in the plot. The name of the earl of Arundel being read from the last letter, she burst into tears, and said, "Alas! what has the noble house of Howard endured for my sake!"- but wiping her eyes, and collecting herself, she resumed her tone of composure and firmness. Her defence was, in substance, that many persons unknown to her had made her offers of service; that she neither excited nor encouraged any; that she, a prisoner, could neither know nor hinder what they were about; that a packet of letters, which had been kept from her almost a whole year, was put into her hands at that period, but by whom she knew not; that she knew not Babington, and had not corresponded with him; that her letters, if she wrote them, should be produced in her own hand; that if Babington wrote her a letter, it should be proved that she received it; that if Babington, or any other, affirmed it, they plainly lied, and she was not answerable for the acts of others." In reply to a letter produced as hers, in which she was represented as encouraging invasion, she said it might have been written from the possession of her alphabet of ciphers; and that from the recent attempt of an impostor in France, calling himself her son's base brother, she suspected Walsingham. The secretary rose in his place, and solemnly called God to witness that he had not done any thing unworthy of an honest man, and was wholly free from malice. She seemed satisfied with his disavowal; and desired of him, in return, to give no more credit to those who slandered her than she did to such as accused him. Letters were read to show that she had incited foreign powers to invade England; and that she entertained the design to make conveyance to the king of Spain of the crown of Scotland, and suc |