de Trappes referred
him to M. de Chateauneuf, who answered Mr. Stafford directly that he had
not only forbidden him his house, but also all relations with any person
from the Embassy, that he must thus very well see that his request could
not be granted; he added that if he were not restrained by the
consideration he desired to keep for his brother, the Earl of Stafford,
his colleague, he would at once denounce his treason to Elizabeth. The
same day Stafford was arrested.
After this conference, M. de Trappes set out to rejoin his travelling
companions, who were some hours in advance of him, when, on reaching
Dover he was arrested in his turn and brought hack to prison in London.
Interrogated the same day, M. de Trappes frankly related what had
passed, appealing to M. de Chateauneuf as to the truth of what he said.
The day following there was a second interrogatory, and great was his
amazement when, on requesting that the one of the day before should be
shown him, he was merely shown, according to custom in English law,
counterfeit copies, in which were avowals compromising him as well as M.
de Chateauneuf: he objected and protested, refused to answer or to sign
anything further, and was taken back to the Tower with redoubled
precaution, the object of which was the appearance of an important
accusation.
Next day, M. de Chateauneuf was summoned before the queen, and there
confronted with Stafford, who impudently maintained that he had treated
of a plot with M. de Trappes and a certain prisoner for debt—a plot
which aimed at nothing less than endangering the Queen’s life. M. de
Chateauneuf defended himself with the warmth of indignation, but
Elizabeth had too great an interest in being unconvinced even to attend
to the evidence. She then said to M. de Chateauneuf that his character
of ambassador alone prevented her having him arrested like his
accomplice M. de Trappes; and immediately despatching, as she had
promised, an ambassador to King Henry III, she charged him not to excuse
her for the sentence which had just been pronounced and the death which
must soon follow, but to accuse M. de Chateauneuf of having taken part
in a plot of which the discovery alone had been able to decide her to
consent to the death of the Queen of Scotland, certain as she was by
experience, that so long as her enemy lived her existence would be
hourly threatened.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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