to be true, but she denied having consented
to a personal attempt on Elizabeth's life. The court decided that this
made no essential difference. For the rebellion which Mary confessed
to having favoured could not be conceived of apart from danger to the
Queen of England's life as well as her government.[260] The court
pronounced that Mary was guilty of the acts for which the punishment
of death had been enacted in the Parliamentary statute.

We cannot regard this as a regular criminal procedure, for judicial
forms were but little observed; it was the decision of a commission
that the case had occurred in which the statute passed by Parliament
found its application. Parliament itself, then just summoned, had the
proceedings of the Commission laid before it and approved their
sentence.

But this did not bring the affair to an end. Queen Elizabeth deferred
the execution of the judgment. For in relation to such a matter she
occupied quite a different position from that of Parliament.

From more than one quarter she was reminded that, by carrying out the
sentence, she would violate the divine right of kings; since this
implied that subjects could not judge, or lay their hands on,
sovereigns. How unnatural if a queen like herself should set her hand
to degrade the diadem.[261]

In the Privy Council some were of opinion that, as Mary could not be
regarded as the author of the last plot, but only as privy to it,
closer imprisonment would be a sufficient punishment for her.
Elizabeth caught at this idea. The Parliament, she thought, might now
formally annul Mary's claim to the English throne, declare it to be
high treason to maintain it any longer, and high treason also to
attempt to liberate her from prison: this would deter her partisans
from an attempt then become hopeless, and also satisfy foreign
nations. But it was urged in reply, that now to repudiate Mary
Stuart's claim for the first time would be equivalent to recognising
its original validity; and an English law would make no impression
either on Mary or on her partisans. The remembrance of what had
happened in Scotland revived again; of Darnley's murder, which men
imputed to her without hesitation: she was compared to Johanna I of
Naples who had taken part in her husband's murder: it was said, Mary
has doubled her old guilt by attempts against the sacred person of the
Queen; after she had been forgiven, she has relapsed into the same
crime, she deserves death on