ary, and to combat all the objections urged against this act of
justice. They said, that the treatment of that princess in England had
been, on her first reception, such as sound reason and policy required;
and if she had been governed by principles of equity, she would not have
refused willingly to acquiesce in it: that the obvious inconveniencies,
either of allowing her to retire into France, or of restoring her by
force to her throne, in opposition to the reformers and the English
party in Scotland, had obliged the queen to detain her in England, till
time should offer some opportunity of serving her, without danger to
the kingdom, or to the Protestant religion that her usage there had been
such as became her rank; her own servants, in considerable numbers, had
been permitted to attend her, exercise had been allowed her for health,
and all access of company for amusement; and these indulgences would,
in time, have been carried further, if by her subsequent conduct she had
appeared worthy of them: that after she had instigated the rebellion of
Northumberland, the conspiracy of Norfolk, the bull of excommunication
of Pope Pius, an invasion from Flanders; after she had seduced the
queen's friends, and incited every enemy, foreign and domestic, against
her; it became necessary to treat her as a most dangerous rival, and
to render her confinement more strict and rigorous: that the queen,
notwithstanding these repeated provocations, had, in her favor, rejected
the importunity of her parliaments, and the advice of her sagest
ministers;[*] and was still, in hopes of her amendment, determined to
delay coming to the last extremities against her: that Mary, even in
this forlorn condition, retained so high and unconquerable a spirit,
that she acted as competitor to the crown, and allowed her partisans
every where, and in their very letters addressed to herself, to treat
her as queen of England: that she had carried her animosity so far as to
encourage, in repeated instances, the atrocious design of assassinating
the queen; and this crime was unquestionably proved upon her by her own
letters, by the evidence of her secretaries, and by the dying confession
of her accomplices; that she was but a titular queen, and at present
possessed nowhere any right of sovereignty; much less in England, where,
the moment she set foot in the kingdom, she voluntarily became subject
to the laws, and to Elizabeth, the only true sovereign; that even
al