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had not her assent been taken for granted; but on this supposition, nobody would have ventured to hurt a hair of the head of the Queen of Scotland. However from Davison's own pamphlet in his defence, it is unquestionable that he acted with folly, presumption, and neglect of duty. He was deservedly deprived of his office and imprisoned. Elizabeth was justly incensed with the other Counsellors concerned, and like many of the judges who at that time gave their opinions of the affair, we must even now observe, it is unpardonable that those who were so near to the Queen, nay, in the same palace with her, attached more weight to equivocal verbal expressions, than to a positive prohibition, and determined such a matter of themselves without enquiry.(33) Some years afterwards, when Essex, at the time that he had much influence, endeavoured to get Davison restored to his office, the Queen answered naturally enough, that his presumption had been so great, and her honour so deeply wounded by it, that she could never forget it.

To King James, Elizabeth wrote: "I wish you could know, without feeling it, the grief which oppresses my mind for the unhappy event which has taken place without my intention. May you believe my innocence! which God, and many persons know. If I had done it I would avow it, for I am not so base-minded as to be deterred by fear of any living being to do what is right, or to deny

what I have done.

A sovereign ought, above all

things, not to dissemble, and so I will never hide my actions, but shew them as they are. I therefore assure you, I would not lay what has been done upon other shoulders, as I know that it was deserved, if I had commanded it; but neither will I take upon myself what I never thought of." She wrote in similar terms to the King of Denmark, and probably to all the other sovereigns: "Davison, we call God to witness that the fact is so, gave the warrant out of his hands without our knowledge, and thus the execution took place without our will, without our having any notion of it. Though it cannot be denied that Mary was very guilty, and that the sentence might be executed with entire justice, yet we never met with anything more grievous in our life." Lastly, to throw light on this important subject, we may quote the remarkable report of the French Ambassador Chateauneuf to King Henry III., dated the 13th of May, 1587, it is as follows:

"I did not intend to write any thing respecting the Queen of Scotland, but Queen Elizabeth took me by the hand, led me to a corner of the room, and said, since I last saw you, the greatest vexation and the greatest misfortune of my whole life has befallen me, I mean the death of my cousin." She swore by God, and with many oaths, that she was innocent of it. It was true the warrant had

been signed by her, but only with a view to satisfy her subjects, and for the same reason, she had not listened to the intercessions of the French and Scotch Ambassadors. But in truth, continued she, "I never entertained the design of having her executed. Only if a foreign army had landed in England, or a great insurrection in favour of Mary had broken out, in such a case I confess, I might, perhaps, have ordered her death; but never in any other. My Counsellors, among whom are four now here present, played me a trick, for which I cannot yet console myself. As true as God lives, if they had not served me so long, if they had not acted on a conviction that it was for the good of their country and their Queen, they should have lost their heads. Do not think that I am so wicked as to throw the blame upon a petty secretary, if such were not the fact. But this death will, for many reasons, be a weight upon my heart as long as I live."

Such, as we are convinced, after mature examination, was the course of the great tragedy; but as our account varies in several points from that usually received, some explanations may not be out of place here.

Firstly: Elizabeth by no means had, from the beginning, a fixed plan, respecting what was to be done with Mary. She felt equally the dangers of the imprisonment and the release of her rival; and the opposition of the Scotch, the sentiments of

France and Spain, the matrimonial and ambitious plans of Mary, must not be overlooked in forming an opinion of the measures that were adopted.

Secondly: even Mary's friends allow that she corresponded with Babington, Ballard, &c.; that she encouraged insurrection, and that the French court had warned her not to engage in the conspiracy. (4) If, therefore, the proceedings against her were not in every respect exempt from censure, or if the forms at that time prescribed appear in many points objectionable, we can by no means hence infer the entire innocence of Mary; and the notion that Walsingham forged all the letters, is an unproved assumption. (35) Mary's declarations are certainly not without weight, (36) but if we consider of what falsehoods she was guilty in the dispute with Murray; that she might consider it as a duty imposed on her by her religion not to betray her Catholic friends; and what proofs appear against her, from the more complete transactions, we must take it for granted, that there were some reservations here. (7) And it being confessed that there was a plan to place Mary on the throne of England, to bring foreign troops into the country, and to depose Elizabeth by force, was not an attack upon her life necessarily included? But, if any person should answer this in the affirmative, and yet maintain Mary's innocence, there still remains one circumstance which we think to be very important

and quite inexplicable. Nau, who, as Mary's advocates say, gave entirely false evidence against her, and was the cause of her death, did not only live free and unmolested under the reign of her son James, but even drew the King's attention to himself by representations and petitions. Now, if his testimony had been held to be false, and the letters forged, if it had been believed that anything could be proved against him, the friends both of Elizabeth and Mary would have equally urged enquiry and punishment. (38)

Thirdly: we find neither arguments nor proofs for the opinion, that Elizabeth had, for a series of years, pursued an unvarying system of hypocrisy against Mary, and at the last had feigned astonishment and grief. She always called Mary her enemy, always had in view the security of her own person and of her kingdom; and to found serious accusations on the circumstance that Elizabeth, in her letters, calls Mary her good sister, is as strange as it would be to accuse Kings at war with each other of hypocrisy, because, according to their official style, they call each other brothers. (9) Above all, it appears to us very natural that Elizabeth should have hesitated in the decisive question on the life and death of Mary; that she resolved and retracted, wished and yet hesitated, that before the execution she felt apprehension and aversion, after it grief and consternation: to account for an op

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