She again likewise saluting them, said, "My Lords! I am glad to see you! For, methinks, I have been kept a great while from you, desolately alone. Wherefore I would desire you to be a means to the King's and Queen's Majesties, that I may be delivered from prison, wherein I have been kept a long space, as to you, my Lords, is not unknown!"
When she had spoken, Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester kneeled down, and requested that "She would submit herself to the Queen's Grace; and in so doing he had no doubt but that Her Majesty would be good unto her."
She made answer that "rather than she would do so, she would lie in prison all the days of her life:" adding that "she craved no mercy at Her Majesty's hand, but rather desired the law, if ever she did offend her Majesty in thought, word, or deed. And besides this, in yielding," quoth she, "I should speak against myself, and confess myself to be an offender, which I never was towards Her Majesty; by occasion whereof, the King and Queen, might ever hereafter conceive an ill opinion of me: and, therefore, I say, my Lords! it were better for me to lie in prison for the truth, than to be abroad and suspected of my Prince."
And so they departed, promising to declare her message to the Queen.
On the next day [July 1555] the Bishop of Winchester came again unto Her Grace, and kneeling down, declared that "The Queen marvelled that she should so stoutly use herself, not confessing to have offended; so that it should seem the Queen's Majesty wrongfully to have imprisoned Her Grace."
"Nay," quoth my Lady Elizabeth, "it may please her to punish me, as she thinketh good."
"Well," quoth Gardiner, "Her Majesty willeth me to tell you, that you must tell another tale ere that you be set at liberty."
Her Grace answered that "She had as lief be in prison with honesty and truth, as to be abroad suspected of Her Majesty. And this that I have said, I will stand to. For I will never belie myself!"
The Lord of Winchester again kneeled down, and said, "Then your Grace hath the vantage of me and the other Lords, for your long and wrong imprisonment."
"What vantage I have," quoth she, "you know; taking GOD to record, I seek no vantage at your hands, for your so dealing with me. But GOD forgive you, and me also!"