confound her enemies.

This was enough for Elizabeth: she was now constituted umpire between
the queen of Scots and her subjects, and the future fate of both might
be said to lie in her hands; in the mean time she had gained a pretext
for treating as a culprit the party who had appealed to her tribunal. We
learn that lord Scrope and sir Francis Knolles had from the first
received secret instructions not only to watch the motions of Mary, but
to prevent her departure; her person had also been surrounded with
sentinels under the semblance of a guard of honor. But hitherto these
measures of precaution had probably remained concealed from their
object; they were now gradually replaced by others of a more open and
decided character, and it was not much longer permitted to the hapless
fugitive to doubt the dismal truth, that she was once more a prisoner.

Alarmed at her situation, and secretly conscious how ill her conduct
would stand the test of judicial inquiry, Mary no sooner learned that
Elizabeth had actually named commissioners to hear the pleadings on both
sides, and written to summon the regent to produce before them whatever
he could bring in justification of his conduct towards his sovereign,
than she hastened to retract her former unwary concession.

In a letter full of impotent indignation, assumed majesty and real
dismay, she now sought to explain away or evade her late appeal. She
repeated her demand of admission to the presence of Elizabeth, refused
to compromise her royal dignity by submitting to a trial in which her
own subjects were to appear as parties against her, and ended by
requiring that the queen would either furnish her with that assistance
which it behoved her more than any one to grant, or would suffer her to
seek the aid of other princes whose delicacy on this head would be less,
or their resentment of her wrongs greater. This last proposal might have
suggested to Elizabeth the safest, easiest, and most honorable mode of
extricating herself from the dilemma in which, by further intermeddling
in the concerns of Scotland, she was likely to become involved. Happy
would it have been for her credit and her peace of mind, had she
suffered her perplexing guest to depart and seek for partisans and
avengers elsewhere! But her pride of superiority and love of sway were
flattered by the idea of arbitrating in so great a cause; her secret
malignity enjoyed the humiliation of her enemy; and her characteristic