Davison demanded that his own examination, which with that of Burleigh formed the whole evidence against him, should be read entire, instead of being picked and garbled by the crown lawyers; but this piece of justice the queen's counsel refused him, on the ground that they contained matter unfit to be divulged. He was found guilty, and sentenced to a fine of ten thousand marks and imprisonment during the queen's pleasure, by judges who at the same time expressed a high opinion both of his abilities and his integrity, and who certainly regarded his offence as nothing more than an error of judgement or want of due caution. Elizabeth ordered a copy of his sentence to be immediately transmitted to the king of Scots, as triumphant evidence of that perfect innocence in the tragical accident of his mother's death, of which she had already made solemn protestation. James complied so far with obvious motives of policy as to accept her excuses without much inquiry; but impartial posterity will not be disposed to dismiss so easily an important and curious investigation which it possesses abundant means of pursuing. The record of Burleigh's examination is still extant, and so likewise is Davison's apology; a piece which was composed by himself at the time and addressed to Walsingham, who could best judge of its accuracy; and which after being communicated to Camden, who has inserted an extract from it in his Annals, has at length been found entire among the original papers of sir Amias Paulet. From this authentic source we derive the following very extraordinary particulars.
It was by the lord-admiral that the queen first sent a message to Davison requiring him to bring the warrant for her signature; after subscribing it, she asked him if he were not heartily sorry it were done? to which he replied by a moderate and cautious approval of the act. She bade him tell the chancellor when he carried the warrant to be sealed, that he must "use it as secretly as might be." She then signed other papers which he had brought; dispatching them all "with the best disposition and willingness that could be." Afterwards she recurred to the subject; mentioned that she had delayed the act so long that the world might see "that she had not been violently or maliciously drawn unto it;" but that she had all along perceived the necessity of it to her own security. She then said, that she would have it done as secretly as might be, and not in the open court or green of the castle, but in the hall. Just as Davison was gathering up his papers to depart, "she fell into some complaint of sir Amias Paulet and others that might have eased her of this burthen;" and she desired that he would yet "deal with secretary Walsingham to write jointly to sir Amias and sir Drue Drury to sound them in this matter; "aiming still at this, that it might be so done as the blame might be removed from herself." This nefarious commission Davison strangely consented to execute, though he declares that he had always before refused to meddle therein "upon sundry of her majesty's motions,"—as a thing which he utterly disapproved; and though he was fully persuaded that the wisdom and integrity of sir Amias would render the application fruitless. The queen repeated her injunctions of secrecy in the matter, and he departed.
He went to Walsingham, told him that the warrant was signed for executing the sentence against the queen of Scots; agreed with him at the same time about the letter to be written to sir Amias for her private assassination;—then got the warrant sealed, then dispatched the letter.
The next morning, the queen sent him word to forbear going to the chancellor till she had spoken with him again. He went directly to acquaint her that he had already seen him. She asked, "what needed such haste?" He pleaded her commands, and the danger of delay. The queen particularized some other form in which she thought it would be safer and better for her to have the thing done. Davison answered, that the just and honorable way would, he thought, be the safest and the best, if she meant to have it done at all. The queen made no reply, but went to dinner.—It appears from another statement of Davison's case, also drawn up by himself, that it was on this very day, without waiting either for Paulet's answer or for more explicit orders from her majesty, that he had the incredible rashness to deliver up the warrant to Burleigh, and to concur in the subsequent proceedings of the council; though aware that the members were utterly ignorant of the queen's application to Paulet.
A day or two after, her majesty called him to her in the privy chamber, and told him smiling, that she had been troubled with him in a dream which she had had the night before, that the queen of Scots was put to death; and which so disturbed her, that she thought she could have run him through with a sword. He answered at first jestingly, but, on recollection, asked her with great earnestness, whether she did not intend that the matter should go forward? She answered vehemently and with an oath, that she did; but again harped upon the old string;—that this mode would cast all the blame upon herself, and a better might be contrived. The same afternoon she inquired if he had received an answer from sir Amias; which at the time he had not, but he brought it to her the next morning. It contained an absolute refusal to be concerned in any action inconsistent with justice and honor. At this the queen was much offended; she complained of what she called the "dainty perjury" of him and others, who contrary to their oath of association cast the burthen upon herself. Soon after, she again blamed "the niceness of these precise fellows;" but said she would have the thing done without them, and mentioned one Wingfield who would undertake it. Davison remonstrated against this design; and also represented the dangerous dilemma in which Paulet and Drury would have been placed by complying with her wishes; since, if she avowed their act, she took it upon herself, "with her infinite dishonor;" if she disavowed it, they were ruined. It is absolutely inconceivable how a man who understood so well the perils which these persons had skilfully avoided, should have remained so blind to those which menaced himself; yet Davison, by his own account, still suffered the queen to go on devising new schemes for the taking off of Mary, without either acquainting her that the privy-council had already sent off Beal with the warrant, or interfering with them to procure, if possible, the recall of this messenger of death. Even on his next interview with her, which he believes to have been on Tuesday, the very day before the execution of the sentence, when her majesty, after speaking of the daily peril in which she lived, swore a great oath, that it was a shame for them all that the thing was not yet done, and spoke to him to write a letter to Paulet for the dispatch of the business; he contented himself with observing generally, that the warrant was, he thought, sufficient; and though the queen still inclined to think the letter requisite, he left her without even dropping a hint that it was scarcely within the limits of possibility that it should arrive before the sentence had been put in execution.
Of this unaccountable imprudence the utmost advantage was taken against him by his cruel and crafty mistress; whose chief concern it had all along been to discover by what artifice she might throw the greatest possible portion of the blame from herself upon others. Davison underwent a long imprisonment; the fine, though it reduced him to beggary, was rigorously exacted; some scanty supplies for the relief of his immediate necessities, while in prison, were all that her majesty would vouchsafe him; and neither the zealous attestations of Burleigh in the beginning to his merit and abilities and the importance of his public services, nor the subsequent earnest pleadings of her own beloved Essex for his restoration, could ever prevail with Elizabeth to lay aside the appearances of perpetual resentment which she thought good to preserve against him. She would neither reinstate him in office nor ever more admit him to her presence; unable perhaps to bear the pain of beholding a countenance which carried with it an everlasting reproach to her conscience.
From the formidable responsibilities of this unprecedented action, the wary Walsingham had withdrawn himself by favor of an opportune fit of sickness, which disabled him from taking part in any thing but the application to sir Amias Paulet, by which he could incur, as he well knew, no hazard. A still more crafty politician, Leicester, after throwing out in the privy-council hints of her majesty's wishes, which served to accelerate the decisive steps there taken, had artfully contrived to escape from all further participation in their proceedings. Both ministers, in secret letters to Scotland, washed their hands of the blood of Mary. But Leicester, not content with these defensive measures, sought to improve the opportunity to the destruction of a rival whom he had never ceased to hate and envy. To his insidious arts the temporary disgrace of Burleigh is probably to be imputed; and it seems to have been from the apprehension of his malignant misconstructions that the lord treasurer refused to put on paper the particulars of his defence, and never ceased to implore admission to plead his cause before his sovereign in person. His perseverance at length prevailed: the queen saw him; heard his justification, and restored him to her wonted grace; after which the tacit compromise between the minister and the favorite was restored;—that compromise by which, during eight-and-twenty years, each had vindicated to himself an equality of political power, personal influence, and royal favor, with the secret enemy whom he vainly wished, or hoped, or plotted, to displace.
To relate again those melancholy details of Mary's closing scene, on which the historians of England and of Scotland, as well as the numerous biographers of this ill-fated princess, have exhausted all the arts of eloquence, would be equally needless and presumptuous. It is, however, important to remark, that she died rather with the triumphant air of a martyr to her religion, the character which she falsely assumed, than with the meekness of a victim or the penitence of a culprit. She bade Melvil tell her son that she had done nothing injurious to his rights or honor; though she was actually in treaty to disinherit him, and had also consented to a nefarious plot for carrying him off prisoner to Rome; and she denied with obstinacy to the last the charge of conspiring the death of Elizabeth, though by her will, written the day before her death, she rewarded as faithful servants the two secretaries who had borne this testimony against her. A spirit of self-justification so haughty and so unprincipled, a perseverance in deliberate falsehood so resolute and so shameless, ought under no circumstances and in no personage, not even in a captive beauty and an injured queen, to be confounded, by any writer studious of the moral tendencies of history and capable of sound discrimination, with genuine religion, true fortitude, or the dignity which renders misfortune respectable.
Let due censure be passed on the infringement of morality committed by Elizabeth, in detaining as a captive that rival kinswoman, and pretender to her crown, whom the dread of still more formidable dangers had compelled to seek refuge in her dominions: let it be admitted, that the exercise of criminal jurisdiction over a person thus lawlessly detained in a foreign country was another sacrifice of the just to the expedient, which none but a profligate politician will venture to defend; and let the efforts of Mary to procure her own liberty, though with the destruction of her enemy and at the cost of a civil war to England, be held, if religion will permit, justifiable or venial;—but let not our resentment of the wrongs, or compassion for the long misfortunes, of this unhappy woman betray us into a blind concurrence in eulogiums lavished, by prejudice or weakness, on a character blemished by many foibles, stained by some enormous crimes, and never under the guidance of the genuine principles of moral rectitude.