ds of the
conspiracy; as soon as that letter to Babington was in his hands, he
delayed no longer to arrest the guilty persons: they confessed, were
condemned and executed. By further odious means--the prisoner being
removed from her apartments on some pretence and the rooms then
searched--possession was obtained of other papers which witnessed
against her. Then the question could be laid before the Privy Council
whether she should now be brought to trial and sentenced in due form.

Who had given the English Parliament any right to make laws which
should be binding on a foreign queen, and in virtue of which, if she
transgressed them, she could be punished with death? In fact these
doubts were raised at the time.[259] Against them it was alleged that
Mary, who had been forced to abdicate by her subjects and deprived of
her dignity, could not be regarded any longer as a queen: while a
deposed sovereign is bound by the laws of the land in which he
resides. If she was still a queen, yet she was subject to the feudal
supremacy of England, and because of her claim to its crown also
subject to its sovereignty--two arguments that contradict each other,
one of a feudal, the other of a popular character and closely
connected with the idea of popular sovereignty. Whether the one or the
other convinced any person, we do not hear; it was moreover not a
matter for argument any longer.

For how could anything else be expected but that the judicial
proceedings prepared several years before would now be put in force? A
law had been passed calculated for this case, if it should occur. The
case had occurred, and was proved by legal evidence. It was necessary
for the satisfaction of the country and Parliament--and Walsingham
laid particular stress on this--that the matter should be examined
with full publicity.

The commission provided for in the Act of Parliament was named: it
consisted of the chief statesmen and lawyers of the country. In
Fotheringhay, whither the prisoner had now been brought, the splendid
ancestral seat of the princes of the house of York, at which many of
them were buried, they met together in the Hall on the 14th October.
Mary let herself be induced to plead by the consideration that she
would be held guilty, if she did not make any defence: it being
understood that it was with the reserve that she did not by this give
up any of the rights of a free sovereign. Most of the charges against
her she gradually admitted