Four years after her return to Scotland, when Randolph, the Ambassador of Elizabeth, who had been sent to her on business concerning her contemplated marriage, suggested that she should change her religion and thereby gain more favor from the English Queen, Mary indignantly answered:-- "What would you that I should make merchandise of my religion! ... It cannot be so." Her words, in reply to those who, not long before her execution, strove to prevail on her to renounce her former "follies and abominations," throw light, if that were necessary, on what her religious convictions had all along been. To Lord Buckhurst, who had informed her that sentence of death had been passed upon her, and had urged her to accept the spiritual ministration of the Anglican Bishop of Peterborough, she said:-- "I have never had the intention of changing my religion for any earthly kingdom, or grandeur, or good, whatever, or of denying Jesus Christ, or his name, nor will I now." And again, the day before her execution, in answer to similar demands, she said, amongst other things:-- "I have not only heard, or read, the words of the most learned men of the Catholic religion, but also of the Protestant religion. I have spoken with them and have heard them preach, but I have been unable to find anything in them that could turn me from my first belief." So much for Mary’s own evidence. It is, to say the least, faulty reasoning, to adduce the Queen’s march against the Earl of Huntly as proof that she wished, either from policy or from conviction, to support the Protestant cause. In view of the firm and unequivocal stand she had hitherto taken in defence of her religion, the presumption that she was now prepared to sacrifice its interests, is unwarranted, and, furthermore, is unnecessary, as other good and sufficient reasons for her action can readily be found.