Against her better judgment, Mary was induced to fight the battle of Langside, and lost the field. And now the queen made the great mistake of her life. Instead of trusting to the loyalty of the Scotch borderers, she determined to throw herself on the hospitality of the Queen of England. In vain did her trusty counsellors and strongest supporters seek to dissuade her. The warm professions of friendship and attachment made to her by Elizabeth, when she was a prisoner at Lochleven, had completely captivated her; and, insisting on her project, she crossed the Solway, in an open boat, to the English shore. She was received by Mr. Lowther, deputy warden, with all the respect due to her rank and misfortunes. Although she did not yet know it, Mary was from this moment a prisoner. Here Mr. Hosack, in a few eloquent passages, sets forth the reasons why the forcible detention of Mary, independently of all considerations of morality and justice, was a political blunder of the first magnitude. As the inmate of an English prison, she proved a far more formidable enemy to Elizabeth than when she wore the crowns both of France and Scotland. Never did a political crime entail a heavier measure of retribution than the captivity and murder of the Queen of Scots entailed on England. Mary was first taken to the castle of Carlisle. Here Queen Elizabeth was represented by Lord Scrope, the warden of the marches, and Sir Francis Knollys, the queen's vice-chamberlain. These noblemen appear to have been more impressed with the mental and moral qualities of the Scottish queen than with her external graces. They describe her, after their first interview, as possessing "an eloquent tongue and a discreet head, with stout courage and a liberal heart;" and, in a subsequent letter, Knollys says, "Surely, she is a rare woman; for as no flattery can abuse her, so no plain speech seems to offend her, if she thinks the speaker an honest man." All this was written to Elizabeth, to whom, of course, it was gall and wormwood. A more remarkable passage of their letter is that in which, speaking in simple candor as English gentlemen and men of honor, they ask their royal mistress whether "it were not honorable for you, in the sight of your own subjects and of all foreign princes, to put her grace to the choice, whether she will depart freely back into her country without your highness's impeachment, or whether she will remain at your highness's devotion within your realm here, with her necessary servants only to attend her?" To a sovereign whose policy was synonymous with fraud, the unconscious sarcasm of this honorable advice must have been biting.