On the 14th of October, the trial was opened in a large room in Fotheringay Castle. Seated on benches placed in the middle of the room and along both walls were all the Peers of England who could conveniently be brought together, as well as the various officers of the court. Once upon a time, in the brave days of knight-errantry, no injured lady need have feared to present herself and plead her cause before the assembled chivalry of "Merry England," but 'old times were changed, old manners gone.' At 9 o'clock in the forenoon, the Queen entered, supported by Melville and Bourgoin her physician. She had been personally acquainted with but very few of those who sat there to pass judgment upon her. Many of them had been known to her by name, a few had been attached to her cause, and she looked about in the hope of meeting an eye that would reveal the presence of a friend. But she was disappointed. No one in that hostile assembly, however he might feel in his heart, would venture now to betray any sign of sympathy. Three faces must have impressed her more than all the rest as suggesting, in three different periods, the history of her troubled career. There she saw Sir Ralph Sadler, the English Ambassador who, forty-four years before, had stood over her cradle in the nursery at Linlithgow and pronounced her a "right fair and goodly child;" there she saw Sir William Cecil (now Lord Burleigh), who had been her ablest and most industrious enemy through all the years of her short reign, and who had contributed more perhaps that any other individual to produce the Scottish anarchy in which she had lost her crown; and there she met, for the first time, the gaze of the crafty and vigilant Sir Francis Walsingham, whose mephistophelian devices had led her to the precipice over which she now hung, without an arm to save her.
CHAPTER XII.
THE EVIDENCE AGAINST THE QUEEN OF SCOTS.
Replying to the accusations brought against her, Mary did not deny that, having given up hope of being liberated by Elizabeth, she had treated with foreign powers for her deliverance; but she protested that she had never consented to the assassination of Elizabeth, and that she would rather remain all her life in prison than stain her conscience with that crime. Nor can I see that any evidence had been produced to prove that she did. Her intercepted letter in reply to Babington, in which she was said to have sanctioned the projected murder of Elizabeth, was not exhibited at the trial. Here we find the same shuffling as in the case of the Casket Letters. If her accusers had decisive proof of her guilt, why did they not give her a fair trial, and employ those means which would make her guilt evident? Babington, instead of being kept as a witness, was put to death. Her two secretaries, who had been terrified into testifying to something,--what exactly they did testify we cannot be certain,--were kept out of the way, and never confronted with their mistress. Her letter on which the case depended had been written in cipher; yet the original in cipher was shown neither to her secretaries nor to herself, but only what was passed off as a translation of it into French. But what need of this traffic in second-hand documents, if the original, which would settle all dispute, could be safely exposed to the light of investigation? Neither the strained dialectics of a Hume, nor the brilliant rhetoric of a Froude, can avail against the force of argument springing from Walsingham's determination not to exhibit the original documents. Mary had been charged with being party to a plot for the murder of Elizabeth, and her correspondence with Babington was made the basis of evidence against her. Hence common justice demanded that the correspondence should be taken, as far as possible, at first hand. Yet, Walsingham and Philipps, although they had in their possession, at least, a minute in Mary's own hand of her last answer to Babington and the same cast into the form of a letter in French by Nau, made use of what they alleged was a copy of that incriminating answer. Mary denied that she had ever dictated the words of Philipps' decipher in reference to the murder of Elizabeth. Philipps, the associate of Walsingham, and the bitter enemy of Mary, went sponsor for the correctness of the decipher. The trial therefore was reduced to a contest between the veracity of Mary and the veracity of Philipps. It is hardly to be doubted that, guilty or not guilty, Mary would have disowned the authorship of the compromising clauses. But if her denial was worthless as evidence of her innocence, the assertion of a forger in the employ of her enemies was likewise worthless as evidence of her guilt. Why, then, were not the original papers laid before the commissioners, that she might be reduced to silence by the evidence of her own and of her secretary's handwriting? Shall we be asked to believe that Walsingham, if he had all he needed in the original, would have had recourse to a copy? Indeed, Mary's letter, as it has reached us through Philipps and Walsingham, presents an incoherence of parts which, even if every other reason were wanting, would render its genuineness extremely doubtful. The argument founded on this incoherence has been frequently used, but its strength remains unimpaired. Mary orders that nothing shall be done towards releasing her from prison until Elizabeth is murdered. Four horsemen are to be kept in readiness to immediately inform her that this has been accomplished. Then she is to be set at liberty, but care must be taken that the army prepared to receive her, or the stronghold destined to shelter her, be such as will render her person secure, for (she writes) "it were sufficient excuse given to that queen in catching me again, to enclose me in some hold, out of which I should never escape, if she did use me no worse." This precaution against the revenge of Elizabeth is quite natural, and just what we should expect from Mary in her letter to Babington; but it would be inconceivable and absurd if Mary had already made provision that Elizabeth should first of all be murdered. Had Philipps forged the entire letter, he would not have committed this blunder, but even an expert may reveal his identity when he attempts to interpolate a lengthy document.
It will avail but little to insist that there remains what Froude calls the "positive proof of two very credible witnesses" in support of the charge against the Scottish queen. These "very credible witnesses" were Mary's secretaries, Nau and Curle; and the "positive proof" was their subscription to a "copy"--that ever recurring "copy"--of Mary's deciphered answer to Babington's last letter, which had been wrung from them in circumstances little calculated to enhance its value.
Since their forced separation from Mary at Chartley, they had been carefully guarded and accurately learned the nature of the evidence which they were expected to give. On the 20th. September, Babington and six of his associates were made a ghastly and terrifying spectacle to every weak-hearted friend of Mary's. "They were all hanged but for a moment, according to the letter of the sentence, taken down while the susceptibility of agony was unimpaired, and cut in pieces afterwards, with due precautions for the protraction of pain."[#]
[#] Froude, "History of England," Vol. XII., Chap. 69.
The third day following, while this ominous lesson of vengeance was fresh in every mind, the two secretaries were forced to ratify by their oath the testimony which they had already given (Sept. 5th) to the correctness of the "copy." The testimony which they now ratified had been appended to the copy in these words:--"Telle ou semblable me semble avoir esté la reponse escripte en francoys par monsieur Nau, laquelle J'ay traduict et mis en chiffre.--Gilbert Curle." "Je pense de vray que c'est la lettre escripte par sa Majesté à Babington, come il me souvient.--Nau." "This letter or one like it appears to me to have been the answer written in French by monsieur Nau, which I translated and put into cipher.--Gilbert Curle."
"I think in truth that this is the letter written by Her Majesty to Babington, as far as I can remember.--Nau."
These equivocal testimonies contain the force of all the evidence produced against Mary. It is unnecessary to point out the impossibility of resting a conviction upon them. That is clear to every intelligent reader acquainted with the circumstances in which they were obtained and with the history of the prosecution as already summarily indicated, up to this point. The phrases "this or one like it," "as well as I can remember," insignificant as they might seem if employed in the absence of compulsion, will in their present connection strike every reflecting mind as the feeble devices of men striving to hold a safe course between the Scylla and the Charibdis of perjury and the rack.