“A startling light is thrown by a careful collation of the above letters of Randolph to Leicester and Throckmorton on the agency, as well as the incentives, employed in the successive Edinburgh assassinations of Mary Stuart’s faithful and incorruptible minister, David Rizzio, in March, 1566, and that of her husband in February, 1567, which led to the deposition of that unfortunate princess and the transfer of the government of Scotland to the sworn creatures of the English sovereign, a _great_ but _diabolical stroke of policy_. The cool revelation of our unscrupulous ambassador, that the faithful minister who would not barter his royal mistress’s interests for English gold, ‘would have his throat cut within ten days,’ is sufficient proof of his iniquitous coalition in the murderous confederacy against the first victim of the English cabinet. His hostile expressions regarding Mary’s husband, with whom he was at that very moment enleagued in the secret intrigues for obtaining the signatures of Murray and the banished lords to the bond for the murder of Rizzio, are no less worthy of observation, together with his earnest deprecation of Mary and her husband ever succeeding to the throne of England, and the emphatic desire he expressed to Throckmorton that ‘_something may be done to preclude the possibility of such a contingency_.’ “This subtle diplomatist first excited and then worked on the natural fears of better men than either himself, Leicester, or Throckmorton, to wink at, if not to sanction, the systematic train of political villany to which David Rizzio, Henry Stuart, and Mary Stuart were the successive victims. After the consummation of these astute schemes of wickedness—when Rizzio and Darnley were festering in their untimely graves, and the more pitiable survivor, Mary Stuart, languishing in her damp, noisome prison-room in Tutbury Castle, her infant son set up as a puppet king, to color the usurpation of the murderers of his father and her defamers, and her realm convulsed with civil strife—‘then,’ observes Sir James Melville, ‘as Nero stood upon a high part of Rome to see the town burning, which he had caused to be set on fire, so Master Randolph delighted to see such fire kindled in Scotland, and by his writings to some in the court of England, glorified himself to have brought it to pass in such sort that it could not be easily _slokened_ (slaked) again.’” In proof of the importance of this link in the chain of evidence, we will quote Mr. Froude’s own words: “As the vindication of the conduct of the English government proceeds on the assumption of her guilt, so the determination of her innocence will equally be the absolute condemnation of Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s advisers.” There is only one other point in this evidence for and against the guilt of Mary Stuart, which will be cited. Regarding the famous confessions of Paris, Mr. Froude says:—