of their religion; as, on the contrary, her life would have been
the death of it. Mention being made of Babington, she constantly denied
his conspiracy to have been at all known to her; and the revenge of her
wrongs she resigned into the hands of the Almighty.

* It appears, by some letters published by Strype, vol. iii.
book ii c., that Elizabeth had not expressly communicated
her intention to any of her ministers, not even to Burleigh:
they were such experienced courtiers, that they knew they
could not gratify her more than by serving her without
waiting till she desired them.

** Camden, p. 534. Jebb, vol. ii. p. 301. MS. in the
Advocates Library, p. 2, from the Cott. Lib. Cal. c. 9.

*** Jebb, vol. ii. p. 302.

When the earls had left her, she ordered supper to be hastened, that
she might have the more leisure after it to finish the few affairs
which remained to her in this world, and to prepare for her passage to
another. It was necessary for her, she said, to take some sustenance,
lest a failure of her bodily strength should depress her spirits on the
morrow, and lest her behavior should thereby betray a weakness unworthy
of herself.[*] She supped sparingly, as her manner usually was; and
her wonted cheerfulness did not even desert her on this occasion. She
comforted her servants under the affliction which overwhelmed them,
and which was too violent for them to conceal it from her. Turning to
Burgoin, her physician, she asked him, whether he did not remark the
great and invincible force of truth. "They pretend," said she, "that I
must die, because I conspired against their queen's life: but the earl
of Kent avowed, that there was no other cause of my death, than
the apprehensions which, if I should live, they entertain for their
religion. My constancy in the faith is my real crime: the rest is only
a color, invented by interested and designing men." Towards the end of
supper, she called in all her servants, and drank to them: they pledged
her, in order, on their knees; and craved her pardon for any past
neglect of their duty: she deigned, in return, to ask their pardon for
her offences towards them; and a plentiful effusion of tears attended
this last solemn farewell, and exchange of mutual forgiveness.[**]

* Jebb, vol. ii. p. 489.

** Jebb, vol. ii. p. 302, 626. Camden, p. 534.

Mary's care of her servants was the sole remaining affair which employed