Mary was removed to Fotheringay for trial on the 6th October, and on the following day Paulet and Mildmay delivered to her Elizabeth’s letter, informing her of the charges against her, and the tribunal to which she was to be submitted. She indignantly refused to acknowledge Elizabeth’s right to place her, an anointed sovereign, upon her trial; but she denied all knowledge and complicity in the murder plot. This was the safest attitude she could have assumed, although the proofs against her already in the hands of Elizabeth were overwhelming;[520] and the arguments of Burghley and Lord Chancellor Bromley failed to alter Mary’s determination. This was embarrassing, and in the face of it Elizabeth wrote to Burghley[521] instructing him that, although the examination might proceed, no judgment was to be delivered until she had conferred with him. At the same time she wrote to Mary a letter of mingled threats and hope, with the object of changing her attitude towards the tribunal. This, added to the persuasions of Hatton, succeeded in the object,[522] and Mary, unfortunately for her, retreated from her unassailable position.
On the 14th, two days afterwards, the tribunal sat in the great hall of Fotheringay Castle, and Mary, almost crippled with rheumatism, painfully hobbled to her place, supported by her Steward, Sir Andrew Melvil. On the right of the Lord Chancellor sat Lord Burghley. That the proceedings against Mary, in which he had from the first taken an active part, were in his opinion necessary for the safety of England, is clear from his many letters upon the subject; but it is equally evident that if he could decently have avoided personal identification with them he would have been better pleased. His letters to Popham, the Attorney-General, show that he wished to be absent from the trial; but as he wrote at the time to Sir Edward Stafford, the English Ambassador in France, “I was never more toiled than I have been of late, and yet am, with services that here do multiply daily; and whosoever scapeth I am never spared. God give me grace.”
Much of the obloquy that has been unjustly cast upon him in the matter of Mary Stuart arises from his inveterate habit of putting everything in writing, which other men did not do. For instance, the draft of the whole case, or, as he puts it, “the indignities and wrongs done and offered by the Queen of Scots to the Queen,” is in his handwriting,[523] and the letters to the Queen detailing the progress of events at Fotheringay are sent from him, whilst Elizabeth’s instructions through Davison are all addressed to Walsingham and Burghley. But it must be remembered that he was the Queen’s most trusted and experienced Councillor, and the existence of records written by or to him does not show that he was more eager than the rest for the sacrifice of the Scottish Queen.
Mary defended herself with consummate ability before a tribunal almost entirely prejudiced against her. She was deprived of legal aid, without her papers, and in ill health; and, according to modern notions, the procedure against her was unjust in the extreme. Once she turned upon Walsingham and denounced him as the contriver of her ruin, but soon regained her composure; and in her argument with Burghley, with respect to the avowals of Babington and her Secretaries, reached a point of touching eloquence which might have moved the hearts, though it did not convince the intellects, of her august judges.[524] But her condemnation was a foregone conclusion; and although the sentence was not pronounced until the return of the Commission to Westminster (October 25), Mary left the hall of Fotheringay practically a condemned felon on the 15th.
But it was one thing to condemn and another thing to execute. Here Elizabeth’s scruples again assailed her. The two Houses of Parliament addressed her on the 12th November, begging that for the sake of the realm and her own safety the sentence might be carried into effect. At no point of her career was the profound duplicity of Elizabeth more resorted to than now. She had evidently determined that Mary must die, which is of itself not surprising; but she was equally determined that, if she could help it, no blame should personally attach to her for having disregarded the privileges of a crowned head. After much pretended sorrow and repudiation of any desire for revenge, but at the same time setting forth a careful recapitulation of Mary’s offences, she complained of Parliament for passing the Act which made it necessary for her to pronounce sentence of death on a kinswoman, and said she must take time for prayer and contemplation before she could give an answer to the petition. A few days afterwards she besought the Houses to consider again whether some other course could not be adopted instead of executing Mary, but she was assured by them that there was “no other sound and assured means” than that which they had formerly recommended (18th November). Her next address to the Houses was still more hypocritical. After infinite talk of her mercy, her goodness, and her hatred of bloodshed, even for her own safety, she ended enigmatically: “Therefore if I should say I would not do what you request, it might be peradventure more than I thought, and to say I would do it might perhaps breed peril of what you labour to preserve, being more than in your own wisdoms and discretions would seem convenient.”[525]
Several days before this, Mary’s sentence had been communicated to her by Lord Buckhurst and Beale. She was dignified and courageous, rejoiced that she was to die, as she said, for the Catholic faith, and again affirmed that she had taken no part in the plot for the murder of Elizabeth, which was doubtless true so far as active participation or direction was concerned. Her letters written immediately afterwards to Mendoza[526] and the Duke of Guise[527] are conceived in the same spirit, and appear to entertain no expectation of mercy. The Spaniards, however, were more hopeful, and ascribed to Burghley a deep scheme for selling Mary’s life to France, in exchange for concessions to English interests.
The arrangements for the invasion of England by a great fleet from Spain were now so far advanced as to be impossible of concealment, and the English Government were actively adopting measures of defence and reprisal. Under the transparent pretext of aiding Don Antonio, English armed ships were hounding Spanish commerce from the seas and harrying Spanish settlements; the English troops under Leicester, and the Scots under the Master of Gray, were fighting Spaniards in Holland, and the English militant Protestant party had now supplanted Burghley’s policy on all sides. But still the cautious old statesman patiently worked in his own way to minimise the dangers with which his political opponents had already surrounded the Queen. There were two things only that he could do, namely, once more to endeavour to disarm Spain by making a show of friendship, and to sow discord between France and Spain; and both these things he did. One of Ralegh’s privateers had captured Philip’s governor of Patagonia, the famous explorer and navigator, Sarmiento; and almost simultaneously with the passing of Mary’s sentence, Ralegh was invited to bring his prisoner to Cecil House for a private conference. Sarmiento was flattered and made much of, and received his free release on condition of his taking to Spain messages from Burghley and Ralegh suggesting a friendly arrangement between the countries. Ralegh, indeed, went so far as to offer—whether sincerely or not does not affect the question—two of his ships for Philip’s service, and for many weeks sympathetic messages found their way secretly from the Lord Treasurer and Sir Walter to Spain and Flanders.[528]
At the same time Sir Henry Wotton was sent to Paris with certified copies of Mary’s will in favour of Philip, and of her correspondence with Mendoza. “He is instructed to point out how much she depended upon your Majesty, and how shy she was of France.”[529] This was exactly the course most likely to alienate Henry III. from Spain and his sister-in-law; and although he tardily sent Pomponne de Bellièvre to remonstrate with Elizabeth, the Spaniards and Guisans, at all events, never believed in the sincerity of his protests.[530] Mendoza writes: “Elizabeth has given orders that directly Bellièvre arrives in England the rumour is to be spread that the Queen of Scots is killed, in order to discover how he takes it. Bellièvre, however, is forewarned of it, and has his instructions what to say when he hears it. It is a plan of Cecil’s arising out of a desire (as I wrote to your Majesty) to sell to the French on the best terms they can what they do not dream of carrying out. The English and French will have no difficulty in agreeing on the point, because the King and his mother are very well pleased that the Queen of Scots should be kept alive, though a prisoner, in order to prevent the succession of your Majesty to the English throne; whilst the English see plainly that the many advantages accruing to them from keeping the Queen of Scots a prisoner would change into as many dangers if they made away with her.”[531]
On the 6th December public proclamation of Mary’s sentence was made in London amidst signs of extravagant rejoicing on the part of the populace. The next day Bellièvre delivered a long speech to the Queen, in which he made no attempt to deny Mary’s guilt, but appealed to Elizabeth’s magnanimity, and proposed guarantees from France to insure Mary’s future harmlessness. The Queen repeated bitterly her grievances against Mary, and replied that the life of Mary was incompatible with her own safety; and Lord Burghley, in a subsequent interview with the Frenchman, repeated more emphatically the same idea. Shortly afterwards, at the renewed request of Bellièvre and Chateauneuf, Elizabeth ungraciously consented to grant a respite of twelve days to Mary to enable the Ambassadors to communicate with their master. But Henry III. himself was now in a hopeless condition. “Such is the confusion of the court, the vacillation of the King, and the jealousy, hatred, and suspicion of the courtiers, that decisions are adopted and abandoned at random.… The King is trying to draw closer to the Queen of England, which is the principal object of Bellièvre’s mission.”[532] The only reply, therefore, sent to Bellièvre and Chateauneuf from France was a pedantic and wordy appeal to Elizabeth’s mercy, which must have convinced her that she need fear nothing from the French.[533]
Notwithstanding the first movement of indignation on the part of James also, it soon became clear that selfish reasons would confine his action to protest. This is not altogether to be wondered at. He had been informed that Mary had disinherited him, and told De Courcelles, the French Ambassador, that he knew “she had no more good-will towards him than towards the Queen of England.” The Master of Gray, at his side, too, was the humble servant of England, and the traitor, Archibald Douglas, represented him in the English court. On pressure from France, however, James sent Sir William Keith, another English partisan, to intercede for his mother, or at least to induce Elizabeth to delay the execution until a fitting embassy from him might be sent. Elizabeth hectored and stormed at James’s threatening letters; but when she became calmer she granted the twelve days’ respite already referred to. The Master of Gray and Sir Robert Melvil subsequently arrived at the English court and were equally unsuccessful.[534] Melvil undoubtedly did his best, and Elizabeth threatened his life in consequence; but the Master of Gray’s advocacy went no further than he knew would please the English Government.