cession to that of England, if her son should not become a catholic. She replied, that it was natural for her to make efforts to obtain her liberty; that she had no kingdom to bestow, - or, if she had, she was not accountable to any for the disposal of it.

The whole weight of the evidence against the queen of Scots depended upon the oaths of her secretaries, Naue and Curle, both close prisoners in the hands of her accusers. Their depositions only were produced. They declared that the letters of their mistress were written from her dictation in French by the former, and translated into English by the latter; and that the letters to which they referred had been received by her. She replied, that her secretaries might write what she never dictated; demanded that they should be confronted with her; and declared her confidence that it either would appear they had made no such declaration, or they would not persist in it to her face. The commissioners refused to produce the witnesses.*

It is requisite to state how the correspondence was alleged to have taken place. When Gifford the seminary priest, who was in the pay of Walsingham, came over from France, he undertook to bring letters from the British fugitives to the queen of Scots. To try his means, or his fidelity, they entrusted him only with blanks made up as letters; but, upon finding that these

* Hume vindicates the refusal to produce the secretaries on three several grounds. 1st, The usage of the ministers and crown lawyers of Elizabeth's reign to refuse every indulgence beyond the strict letter of the law and settled practice of the courts. 2d, The probable absence of the secretaries from Fotheringay. 3d, "Queen Elizabeth," says he, "was willing to have allowed Curle and Naue to be produced on the trial; and writes to that purpose to Burleigh and Walsingham, in her letter of the 7th October, in Forbes's MSS. Collection. She only says, that she thinks it needless." The abusive practices of ministers and crown lawyers in a despotic reign are a strange vindication of injustice. The witnesses may have been absent from Fotheringay: but the court could have adjourned over for a day, in order to allow time for their arrival from London in Northamptonshire. Queen Elizabeth told her ministers she was willing to have them produced, but thought it needless. It assuredly does not require Hume's knowledge of the character of Elizabeth, and of human nature, to perceive that this artful suggestion of her thinking it needless was equivalent to a command that it should not be done. Nothing is more observable in her whole reign than the systematic endeavour to shift the odium of her own acts upon her ministers and tools. Whether the production of the two witnesses was beyond the strict letter of the law, is a question of legal construction, which it would be vain to discuss here.

had reached their destination, they confided to him important communications. Gifford, as might be expected, placed all in the hands of Walsingham. That minister sent him into Staffordshire, where the queen of Scots was then imprisoned, with a letter to her gaoler, Paulet. Walsingham desired that Paulet would connive at Gifford's bribing one of his servants to allow the letters to pass to his prisoner. Paulet would not permit his servants to be tampered with even in seeming, but allowed the spy to bribe the services of a brewer who supplied the castle. By means of this brewer the letters were conveyed, and the answers returned through a hole in the castle wall, stopped with a loose stone. All had passed through the hands of Walsingham, who unsealed, deciphered, copied, and resealed them so artfully that no suspicion was excited. One letter only of the queen to Babington, in which she renewed her correspondence with him, and his answer, are stated to have passed through the medium of "an unknown boy."

It may be observed, by way of recapitulation, that the documentary evidence consisted only of copies or dictation; that the hole in the castle wall, and " the unknown boy," are scarcely within the range of credit; that the confessions of the conspirators, produced (in copy) after their execution, are of little weight; and that of the two secretaries, whose depositions only were produced, whilst their persons were in the close custody of the producers, one (Curle) afterwards reproached Walsingham with the non-fulfilment of promises *, the other (Naue) declared, in his vindication, addressed to the son of the queen of Scots, that he had revealed nothing, and had resolutely opposed the chief articles of accusation against his mistress, which appeared not by the record of the proceedings. †

and

It is clear, from other evidence, that the queen of Scots was aware, not only of the projected invasion and rebellion, but of the design against the life of Letter of Walsingham to Curle, in Cott. MSS. Calig. ix. 294., cited by Chalmers, in Life of Mary, Queen of Scots.

+ Camá. An.

1

queen Elizabeth; but it is extremely doubtful whether she had that identical participation for which she was condemned. There are few judiciary proceedings, passing over the question of jurisdiction, so suspicious, and, it may be said, so tainted, as the case and proceedings against the queen of Scots.

*

The evidence having been gone through, she requested an adjournment, with the aid of counsel. It was refused. She next repeated her request, to be allowed to defend herself in full parliament, and was again refused. Her third request, of a personal interview with the queen, was equally vain, and would, no doubt, have proved fruitless, had it been acceded to. She rose with perfect composure, conversed apart with Burleigh, Hatton, Walsingham, and Warwick, and retired. The court adjourned to the 25th of October, at the Star-chamber in Westminster.

On that day the commissioners accordingly re-assembled, with the exception of Warwick and Shrewsbury, and pronounced sentence of death against the queen of Scots," as accessory to Babington's plot, and as having compassed divers matters tending to the hurt, death, and destruction of the person of queen Elizabeth, contrary to the statute in the commission specified." The commissioners and judges at the same time published

*See letters to Mary, Queen of Scots, from Charles Paget and Thomas Morgan, in Murdin's State Papers. Morgan, in a letter to her dated July 4th, says, "There is one Ballard, a priest of much travel in that country, and well disposed to your service, which he is like to offer your majesty; for the which, if he do so, you may thank him with few lines. Yet I must tell your majesty, for the discharge of my own duty and service to your majesty, that the said Ballard followeth some matters of consequence there, the issue of which is uncertain. Wherefore, as long as these labours of his and matters be in hand, it is not for your majesty's service to hold any intelligence with him at all, for fear lest he or his partners be discovered, and they, by pains or other accidents, discover your majesty afterwards to have had intelligence with them; and I have specially warned the said Ballard not to deal at any hand with your majesty as long as he followeth the affairs that he and others have in hand." -Murdin State Papers, 527. This passage proves that Mary was aware of the design against Elizabeth; but, at the same time, goes strongly to negative the case brought forward against her by Walsingham and Cecil. Is it credible that, with this systematic design of the conspirators to hold no communication with Mary which might compromise her, Babington should yet write her gratuitously (for she could not co-operate) a minute account of the conspiracy, which proved so con venient to her accusers and enemies?

a declaration, that the sentence did not derogate from James, king of Scots, in his title and honour, and he was in the same place, degree, and right as if the said sentence had never been pronounced.*

Mary had a presentiment of her fate before the sen tence was yet proclaimed. Paulet writes to Walsingham, that in a conversation with him, after asking the names of several commissioners, whom she distinguished by the places in which they had sat during the trial, she remarked casually, that "history made mention how the realm of England was used to shed royal blood," and then dropped the conversation. †

Elizabeth had now her prey completely in her talons. She endeavoured to mask her purpose by a show of reluctance and regret; but her dissimulation sometimes gave way to the fierceness of her instinct. Her ministers entreated her for the sake of religion, the state, and her precious life, to sign the warrant. She put them off with expressions of hesitation and regret. Both houses of parliament, summoned extraordinarily, made the same prayer. The house of commons, through their speaker supported it with examples from the Bible, of rulers who had incurred God's vengeance by sparing the lives of their enemies. These very men had been loud in their execrations of the popish impiety and cruelty which had made religion a motive for the massacre of St. Bartholomew: yet they themselves would now steep the Scriptures in blood! Elizabeth replied in a tone of hypocrisy, as detestable as the ferocity of her petitioners, that she had an extreme repugnance to take the life of the criminal; and that she wished the two houses could discover some other mode of disposing of her, consistent with the safety of religion and the state, and threw out to them, at the same time, the deadly suggestion that she had discovered another plot to assassinate her within a month. The two houses re-considered their petition, could find no other mode than death, repeated their prayer for blood,

*Camd. An.

+ Ibid. and MSS. State Paper Office.

and were again put off with an answer which may be called oracular for its ambiguity and imposture. "If," said she, "I should say I will not comply with your prayer, I might say more than I mean; and if I should say I will do it, I might plunge myself into dangers as great as those from which you would protect me." In compliance with their request, however, she published the sentence by proclamation. The inhabitants of London illuminated their houses for joy, and the church bells rang merry peals for twenty-four hours!*

She re

Lord Buckhurst and Beale, clerk of the council, were sent to notify her fate to the queen of Scots. ceived the message with not merely firmness but cheerfulness, because she said her troubles were about to end. Sir Amias Paulet divested her of every ensign of royalty, and stripped her chair of its canopy of state. This too she bore with tranquillity. She made a last and vain, but not weak, appeal to Elizabeth. In a letter dated the 19th of December, she assures her who, after depriving her during nineteen years of liberty, was about to deprive her of life, "that she cherished no resentment towards her; that she did not deprecate death; that she asked only to be put to death, not in private, but publicly before her servants and other witnesses; that her remains might be conveyed for interment to France; that her faithful attendants who had shared her fate should be permitted to enjoy her bequests to them, and proceed in safety whither they pleased." Elizabeth returned no answer; but it is doubtful whether the letter reached her.

The king of France, meantime, had sent over Bellièvre as special envoy to intercede with Elizabeth for Mary's life. It has been stated that the envoy had secret instructions from Henry, out of hatred to her relatives the Guises, to solicit, not her life, but her death. The vain display of pedant erudition and historic example which he employed in his address to Elizabeth would bring

Advis et mémoire de ce qui à été fait, par M. de Bellièvre, &c. See