Elizabeth's Spymaster Read Online Free

Burghley snapped back: The queen, my mistress, knows no other queen in her realm but herself.’ He told Mary that Elizabeth had
punished those who contested your pretensions to the English crown. In her goodness, she saved you from being judged guilty of high treason at the time of your projected marriage with the duke of Norfolk and she has protected you from the fury of your own subjects. 28
    Mary merely smiled sadly, and the meeting, which had lasted two hours, broke up in mutual anger and frustration.
    The government’s game plan was to firmly deny Mary her royal status. They had no choice. If they had allowed Mary’s claims of being a queen, the indictment would have failed, as it was universally acknowledged that a queen was not required to take cognisance of any plots against a neighbouring sovereign. 29
    That afternoon, Burghley returned to Mary’s privy chamber with another committee of commissioners. She referred to one passage in the third paragraph of Elizabeth’s letter to her and demanded to know the meaning of the word ‘protection’. She told them: ‘I came into England to seek assistance and I was immediately imprisoned. Is that protection?’ Burghley neatly side-stepped the question. He had read the letter but declared that neither he nor his colleagues were so presumptuous as to dare to interpret the meaning of their royal mistress’s words. Mary responded with cold, penetrating logic:
You are too much in the confidence of your mistress not to be aware of her wishes and intentions.
If you are armed with such authority by your commission as you describe, you surely have the power to interpret a letter from the queen. 30
    This letter, she added adroitly, ‘was written by Walsingham. He confessed to me that he was my enemy and I well know what he has done against me and my son.’ Her sharp rejoinder wrong-footed the commissioners.It sent them into a huddle, to discuss whether the spy master really was in London when the letter was written. But why debate the matter? Such talk was completely irrelevant. They held the power to legally try her. Further discussion was therefore nugatory. But still they whispered amongst themselves.
    By now, it was getting dark outside the walls of Fotheringay. Eventually, Elizabeth’s Vice-Chamberlain Sir Christopher Hatton tried a conciliatory approach. He told Mary:
You are accused (but not condemned) to have conspired [in the] destruction of our lady and queen anointed.
You say you are a queen, so be it.
But in such a crime, the royal dignity is not exempted from answering, neither by the civil nor canon law, nor by the law of nations, nor of nature. For if such offences might be committed without punishment, all justice would stagger, yes, fall to the ground.
If you be innocent, you wrong your reputation in avoiding a trial.
    After these fine lawyer’s words, he slipped up in his anxiety to crush her arguments: ‘You protest yourself to be innocent, but Queen Elizabeth thinks otherwise and that neither without grief and sorrow for the same.’ These words gave the lie to the honesty and impartiality of the proceedings. It was an admission that she had been judged and convicted before the trial had even begun. The shadow of the executioner’s axe had fallen across the room.
    Hatton hurried on hastily, realising his error. His royal mistress had appointed ‘most honourable, prudent and upright’ commissioners to hear Mary’s case, who would, he added disingenuously, ‘rejoice with all their hearts if you clear yourself of this crime’. ‘Believe me,’ Hatton went on, even ‘the queen herself will be much affected with joy. [She told] me at my [departing] from her, that never anything [made] her more grieved [than] that you were charged with such a crime’. Put aside any notion of the privileges of royalty, he urged Mary: ‘Appear in judgment and show your innocence, lest by avoiding trial, you draw upon yourself suspicion and lay upon your reputation an