“On the next day, the bishop of Winchester came again unto her grace, and kneeling down, declared that the queen marvelled that she would so stoutly use herself, not confessing that she had offended: so that it should seem that the queen’s majesty had wrongfully imprisoned her grace. ‘Nay,’ quoth the lady Elizabeth, ‘it may please her to punish me as she thinketh good.’ ‘Well,’ quoth Gardiner, ‘her majesty willeth me to tell you, that you must tell another tale, or that you be set at liberty.’ Her grace answered, that she had as lieve be in prison with honesty and truth, as to be abroad suspected of her majesty: ‘and this that I have said, I will,’ said she, ‘stand unto: for I will never belie myself’. Winchester again kneeled down, and said, ‘Then your grace hath the vantage of me, and other the lords, for your wrong and long imprisonment’. ‘What vantage I have,’ quoth she, ‘you know: taking God to record I seek no vantage at your hands, for your so dealing with me; but God forgive you and me also!’ With that the rest kneeled, desiring her grace that all might be forgotten, and so departed, she being fast locked up again.”[499] Nevertheless, in spite of these bold words, so little was Elizabeth resigned to a life of captivity that she never ceased besieging her friends with letters, petitions that they would obtain her release, and assurances of her innocence.[500] “A sevennight after,” continues Foxe, “the queen sent for her grace at ten of the clock in the night, to speak with her: for she had not seen her in two years before. Yet for all that, she was amazed at the so sudden sending for, thinking it had been worse for her than afterwards it proved, and desired her gentlemen and gentlewomen to pray for her, for that she could not tell whether ever she should see them again or no. At which time, coming in, Sir Henry Benifield [Bedingfeld] with mistress Clarencius,[501] her grace was brought into the garden unto a stair’s foot that went to the queen’s lodging, her grace’s gentlewomen waiting upon her, her gentleman-usher, and her grooms going before with torches; where her gentleman and gentlewomen being commanded to stay all, saving one woman, Mistress Clarencius conducted her to the queen’s bedchamber, where her majesty was. At the sight of whom, her grace kneeled down, and desired God to preserve her majesty, not mistrusting but that she should try herself as true a subject towards her majesty as ever did any; and desired her majesty even so to judge of her; and said that she should not find her to the contrary, whatsoever report otherwise had gone of her. To whom the queen answered, ‘You will not confess your offence, but stand stoutly in your truth. I pray God it may so fall out.’ ‘If it doth not,’ quoth the lady Elizabeth, ‘I request neither favour nor pardon at your majesty’s hands.’ ‘Well,’ said the queen, ‘you stiffly still persevere in your truth. Belike you will not confess but that you have been wrongfully punished.’ ‘I must