“You shall not escape so,” said the queen. “Is it not treason, my lords, to accuse a prince of cruelty? I think there be acts of parliament against such whisperers.” Several of their lordships said that there were such laws. “But wherein can I be accused of this?” asked Knox. “Read this part of your own bill,” said the queen, who showed herself an acute prosecutor. She then ordered the following sentence to be read from his letter:――“This fearful summons is directed against them, [the two persons who were indicted,] to make no doubt a preparative on a few, that a door may be opened to execute cruelty upon a greater multitude.”――“Lo!” exclaimed the queen, exultingly; “what say you to that?” The eyes of the assembly were fixed on the Reformer, and {103} all were anxious to know what answer he would make to this charge. “Is it lawful for me, madam, to answer for myself? or, shall I be condemned unheard?”――“Say what you can; for I think you have enough to do,” said the queen. “I will first then desire of your grace, madam, and of this most honourable audience, whether your grace knows not, that the obstinate papists are deadly enemies to all such as profess the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that they most earnestly desire the extermination of them, and of the true doctrine that is taught within this realm?” Mary was silent; but the lords, with one voice, exclaimed, “God forbid, that ever the lives of the faithful, or yet the staying of the doctrine, stood in the power of the papists! for just experience has taught us what cruelty lies in their hearts.”――“I must proceed, then,” said the Reformer. “Seeing that I perceive that all will grant, that it was a barbarous thing to destroy such a multitude as profess the gospel of Christ within this realm, which oftener than once or twice they have attempted to do by force,――they, by God and by his providence being disappointed, have invented more crafty and dangerous practices, to wit, to make the prince a party under colour of law; and so what they could not do by open force, they shall perform by crafty deceit. For who thinks, my lords, that the insatiable cruelty of the papists (within this realm I mean) shall end in the murdering of these two brethren, now unjustly summoned, and more unjustly to {104} be accused?――And therefore, madam, cast up, when you list, the acts of your parliament, I have offended nothing against them; for I accuse not, in my letter, your grace, nor yet your nature, of cruelty. But I affirm yet again, that the pestilent papists, who have inflamed your grace against those poor men at this present, are the sons of the devil, and therefore must obey the desires of their father, who has been a liar and manslayer from the beginning.”――“You forget yourself! you are not now in the pulpit,” said the chancellor. “I am in the place where I am demanded of conscience to speak the truth; and therefore the truth I speak, impugn it whoso list.” He added, again addressing the queen, that