gn's safety had made him very diligent in
searching out, by every expedient, all designs against her sacred person
or her authority. For attaining that end, he would not only make use of
the assistance of Ballard or any other conspirator; he would also reward
them for betraying their companions. But if he had tampered in any
manner unbefitting his character and office, why did none of the
late criminals, either at their trial or execution accuse him of such
practices? Mary endeavored to pacify him, by saying that she spoke from
information; and she begged him to give thenceforth no more credit to
such as slandered her, than she should to such as accused him. The great
character, indeed, which Sir Francis Walsingham bears for probity and
honor, should remove from him all suspicion of such base arts as forgery
and subornation; arts which even the most corrupt ministers, in the most
corrupt times, would scruple to employ.

Having finished the trial, the commissioners, adjourned from Fotheringay
Castle, and met in the star chamber at London, where, after taking
the oaths of Mary's two secretaries, who voluntarily, without hope or
reward, vouched the authenticity of those letters before produced, they
pronounced sentence of death upon the queen of Scots, and confirmed
it by their seals and subscriptions. The same day, a declaration was
published by the commissioners and the judges "that the sentence did
nowise derogate from the title and honor of James, king of Scotland; but
that he was in the same place, degree, and right, as if the sentence had
never been pronounced."[*]

* Camden, p. 526.

The queen had now brought affairs with Mary to that situation which
she had long ardently desired; and had found a plausible reason for
executing vengeance on a competitor, whom, from the beginning of her
reign, she had ever equally dreaded and hated. But she was restrained
from instantly gratifying her resentment, by several important
considerations. She foresaw the invidious colors in which this example
of uncommon jurisdiction would be represented by the numerous partisans
of Mary, and the reproach to which she herself might be exposed with all
foreign princes, perhaps with all posterity. The rights of hospitality,
of kindred, and of royal majesty, seemed in one signal instance to be
all violated; and this sacrifice of generosity to interest, of clemency
to revenge, might appear equally unbecoming a sovereign and a woman.
Eli