e the
prisoner's papers and to move her to Fotheringay Castle. The gaoler,
then, hypocritically relaxing his usual severity, suggested to Mary
Stuart that she should go riding, under the pretext that she had need of
an airing. The poor prisoner, who for three years had only seen the
country through her prison bars, joyfully accepted, and left Tutbury
between two guards, mounted, for greater security, on a horse whose feet
were hobbled. These two guards took her to Fotheringay Castle, her new
habitation, where she found the apartment she was to lodge in already
hung in black. Mary Stuart had entered alive into her tomb. As to
Babington and his accomplices, they had been already beheaded.

Meanwhile, her two secretaries, Curle and Nau, were arrested, and all her
papers were seized and sent to Elizabeth, who, on her part, ordered the
forty commissioners to assemble, and proceed without intermission to the
trial of the prisoner. They arrived at Fotheringay the 14th October
1586; and next day, being assembled in the great hall of the castle, they
began the examination.

At first Mary refused to appear before them, declaring that she did not
recognise the commissioners as judges, they not being her peers, and not
acknowledging the English law, which had never afforded her protection,
and which had constantly abandoned her to the rule of force. But seeing
that they proceeded none the less, and that every calumny was allowed, no
one being there to refute it, she resolved to appear before the
commissioners. We quote the two interrogatories to which Mary Stuart
submitted as they are set down in the report of M. de Bellievre to M. de
Villeroy. M. de Bellievre, as we shall see later, had been specially
sent by King Henry III to Elizabeth. [Intelligence for M. Villeroy of
what was done in England by M. de Bellievre about the affairs of the
Queen of Scotland, in the months of November and December 1586 and
January 1587.]

The said lady being seated at the end of the table in the said hall, and
the said commissioners about her--

The Queen of Scotland began to speak in these terms:

"I do not admit that any one of you here assembled is my peer or my judge
to examine me upon any charge. Thus what I do, and now tell you, is of
my own free will, taking God to witness that I am innocent and pure in
conscience of the accusations and slanders of which they wish to accuse
me. For I am a free princess and born a queen, obedient