But were this the case, why did Elizabeth not clear her own reputation from the stain of this infamous deed by denouncing her unscrupulous ministers who had dared thus tamper with her royal name and royal authority? Miss Strickland claims that she could not, giving the reason in these words: “The position in which her ministers had placed Elizabeth, was the more painful because, unless she could have brought them to a public trial, convicted them of the treasonable crime of procuring her royal signature to be forged, she could not explain the offence of which they had been guilty. The impossibility of proclaiming the whole truth, rendered her passionate protestations of her own innocence not only unsatisfactory, but apparently false and equivocating. While she denied the deed, she was in a manner compelled to act as if it were her own, being unable to inflict condign punishment on the subtle junta who had combined to make unauthorized use of her name for the immolation of the heiress-presumptive of the crown.” But if Elizabeth was innocent of the death of Mary, Queen of Scots, it seems evident that with her imperious nature, she would have most daringly and publicly resented and punished such audacious villany. Had she in reality desired the death of Mary, and yet refused to sign the warrant, and had her name been forged upon it, this would have given her the very opportunity to clear her own name from infamy and the condemnation of the powers of Europe, which she well knew this execution would call forth; and yet the very end she dared to _wish for_, if not to _command_, would have been accomplished, and the blame would rest upon others rather than herself. That Elizabeth desired the death of Mary all her previous conduct would prove; and if that death was accomplished at last through the crimes of others, unknown to the queen of England, surely she could not have had a better opportunity for proving her own innocence than the denunciation of the treacherous ministers who had committed the crime. That she denounced them it is true; but the strength and manner of those denunciations were more in keeping with the supposition that she was hypocritically screening her own aid and connivance in the treachery, than that they had dared commit so criminal a villany as the forging of her own royal name, and the commission of so grave an offence upon the strength of that forged signature.