han of the understanding. Who could think such a letter possible as
that in which she once sought to inform Elizabeth of the evil reports
about her which the Countess of Shrewsbury made, and recounted a mass
of scandalous anecdotes she had heard from her. The communication was
meant to ruin the countess: Mary did not remark that it must also draw
down the Queen's hatred on herself. No one would have dared even to
lay the letter before the Queen. Mary's was a passionate nature,
endowed with literary gifts: she let her pen run on without saying
anything she did not really think at the instant, but without
remembering in the least what lay beyond her momentary mood. Who will
hold women of this character strictly to what stands in their letters?
These are often as inconsiderate and contradictory as their words.

While Mary was writing the above-mentioned letters, she was completely
taken up with the proposals made to her. She guarded herself from
inserting anything that could hinder their being carried into effect:
by the eventual transfer of her son's claims to the foreign King, all
opposition on the part of zealous Catholics would be done away. Her
hopes and wishes hurried her away with them, so that she lost sight of
the danger in which she thus placed herself. And was she not a Queen,
raised above the law? Who would take it on himself to attack her?

Mary Stuart was then under the charge of a strict Puritan, Sir Amyas
Paulet, of whom she complained that he treated her as a criminal
prisoner and not as a queen. The government now allowed a certain
relaxation in the external circumstances of her custody, but not in
the strictness of the superintendence. There hardly exists another
instance of such a striking contrast between projects and facts. Mary
composes these letters full of far-ranging and dangerous schemes in
the deepest secrecy, as she thinks, and has them carefully re-written
in cipher: she has no doubt that they reach her friends safely by a
secret way: but arrangements are made so that every word she writes is
laid before the man whose business it is to trace out conspiracies,
Walsingham, the Secretary of State. He knows her ciphers, he even sees
the letters that come for her before she does: while she reads them
with haste and in hope of better fortune at hand, he is only waiting
for her answer to use it against her as a decisive proof of her guilt.

Walsingham now found himself in possession of all the threa