had not enjoyed the protection of
the laws, and consequently ought not in equity to be regarded as
amenable to their sentence. Weighty as these objections may appear, the
commissioners refused to admit them, and declared that they would
proceed to judge her by default. This menace she at first disregarded;
but soon after, overcome by the artful representations of Hatton on the
inferences which must inevitably be drawn from her refusal to justify
herself for the satisfaction of a princess who had declared that she
desired nothing so much as the establishment of her innocence, she
changed her mind and consented to plead. None of her papers were
restored, no counsel was assigned her; and her request that her two
secretaries, whose evidence was princicipally relied on by the
prosecutors, might be confronted with her, was denied. But all these
were hardships customarily inflicted on prisoners accused of high
treason and it does not appear that, with respect to its forms and
modes of proceedings, Mary had cause to complain that her trial was
other than a regular and legal one.

On her first appearance she renewed her protestation against the
competence of the tribunal. Bromley lord-chancellor answered her,
showing the jurisdiction of the English law over all persons within the
country; and the commissioners ordered both the objection and the reply
to be registered, as if to save the point of law; but it does not appear
that it was ever referred for decision to any other authority.

Intercepted letters, authenticated by the testimony of her secretaries,
formed the chief evidence against Mary. From these the crown lawyers
showed, and she did not attempt to deny, that she had suffered her
correspondents to address her as queen of England; that she had
endeavoured by means of English fugitives to incite the Spaniards to
invade the country; and that she had been negotiating at Rome the terms
of a transfer of all her claims, present and future, to the king of
Spain, disinheriting by this unnatural act her own schismatic son. The
further charge of having concurred in the late plot for the
assassination of Elizabeth, she strongly denied and attempted to
disprove; but it stood on equally good evidence with all the rest; and
in spite of some suggestions of which her modern partisans have
endeavoured to give her the benefit, there appears no solid foundation
on which an impartial inquirer can rest any doubt of the fact.

The deportme