repeated, founded upon the same alleged proof, in one of the Acts of the Parliament called by Murray. The only legitimate conclusion therefore to be drawn from his unwillingness to bring forward these letters at York, and make good, by their means the sole charge against the Queen which could justify his usurpation of her authority, is, that he was afraid to expose such fabrications to the eye of day, until he should have received Elizabeth's assurance that she would treat them with becoming consideration, and assign to them an air of importance, even though forgery, with brazen audacity, was stamped upon their face.[163] As soon as Elizabeth heard of the letters, and reflected on the turn which they might give to the case, she determined on taking the whole of the proceedings under her own immediate superintendence, and with this view removed the conference from York to Westminster. To the Commissioners previously appointed, she there added the Earls of Arundel and Leicester, Lord Clinton, Sir Nicolas Bacon, and Sir William Cecil. Mary at first expressed satisfaction at this new arrangement, but several circumstances soon occurred which proved, that no favour was intended to her by the change. That which galled her most, was the marked attention paid to the Earl of Murray. Though Elizabeth refused Mary a personal interview, she admitted her rebellious brother to that honour, and thus glaringly deviated from the impartiality which ought to have been observed by an umpire. Accordingly, the Queen of Scots commanded her Commissioners, the Bishop of Ross and Lord Herries, to complain of this injustice. Not to be received into Elizabeth's presence, she could regard in no other light but as an assumption of superiority,--a parade of rigid righteousness,--and an affected dread of contamination, which, whilst it was meant to imply the purity of the maiden Queen, aimed at exciting suspicion of the purity of another. Continuing to believe that her Scottish rebels had been called before the English Commissioners at her instance, Mary had consented that her representatives should proceed from York to Westminster, to make her complaints as a free Sovereign. In her instructions to the Bishop of Ross, and those associated with him, she expressly told them, that the conference was appointed "only for making a pacification between her and her rebellious subjects, and restoring her to her realm and authority." She never lost sight of the fact, that she did not appeal to Elizabeth as a suppliant, but as an equal; and she always took care to preserve high and dignified ground. But to depart from this, and before the tribunal of Hampton Court, in which such men as Cecil were able to procure any decision they chose, to undertake to answer every calumnious charge which might be brought against her, never entered into her imagination. "It is not unknown to us," she wrote to her Commissioners from Bolton, "how