"Your prison, without any right or foundation, has already destroyed my body, of which you will shortly have the end, if it continues there a little longer; and my enemies will not have much time for glutting their cruelties on me; nothing remains of me but the soul, which all your power cannot make captive. Give it, then, room for aspiring a little more freely after its salvation, which alone it seeks for at this day, more than any grandeur of this world. It seems to me that it cannot be to you any great satisfaction, honour, and advantage, for mine enemies to trample my life under foot, till they have stifled me in your presence. Whereas, if in this extremity, however late it be, you release me out of their hands, you will bind me greatly to you, and bind all those who belong to me, particularly my poor child, whom you will, perhaps, make sure to yourself by it. "Two things I have principally to require at the close; the one that, near as I am to going out of this world, I may have with me, for my consolation, some honourable church-man, to remind me daily of the course which I have to finish, and teach me how to complete it according to my religion in which I am firmly resolved to live and die. "This is a last duty which cannot be denied to the most mean and miserable person that lives; it is a liberty which you grant to all foreign embassadours; as also all other Catholick kings give to your embassadours the exercise of their religion. And even I myself have not hitherto forced my own subjects to anything contrary to their religion, though I had all power and authority over them. And that I in this extremity should be deprived of such freedom, you cannot, with justice, require. What advantage will redound to you, when you shall deny it to me? I hope God will excuse me if, oppressed by you in this manner, I do not render to him any duty but what I shall be permitted to do in my heart. But you will set a very bad example to the other Princes of Christendom, to act towards their subjects with the same rigour that you shall show to me, a Sovereign Queen, and your nearest relation; which I am, and will be as long as I live, in despite of mine enemies." Here she enters upon a justification of her conduct in view of a charge which had been brought against her, namely, that contrary to her promise, and without the knowledge of Elizabeth, she had entered into certain political negotiations with her son in Scotland. She reviews the circumstances of the case, indicates her own and Elizabeth’s respective practices, and then refers to her cousin’s consideration "which of us has proceeded with the greatest sincerity." Finally she closes her lengthy letter with the following appeal:--