Gorges again attacks Mary about Elizabeth's life—Mary's sharp response, and Gorges silenced—Procession sets out from Burton and reaches Hill Hall Castle; next day it reaches Leicester—People there hostile to Paulet—Arrival at Fotheringay—Mary's dissatisfaction with it—Interview with Paulet—Paulet and Elizabeth's insolence—Arrival of the commissioners—They attend prayers—Elizabeth's insolent letter to Mary—Mary's interview with Mildmay, Paulet, and others, official report—Elizabeth's reply—Lord Chancellor and commissioners visit Mary in her chamber—Burghley's overbearing attitude and speech—She refuses to recognise their authority—The second interview, when she is too many for them—Third interview, when Mary delivers an eloquent speech in her defence and exposes the duplicity and false character of Elizabeth. “_Thursday, 22nd September 1586._—Her Majesty prepared to resume her journey. Being in great uneasiness, she sent to ask Gorges what he had to tell her: which was that Elizabeth thought it very strange, and would never have thought that she would have been accessory to those things which had been discovered against her, she being a relation and of the same rank. To think of laying hands on a consecrated Queen, Gorges said his mistress was never so astonished. She was so angry with what had happened that she knew well if she had sent Her Majesty into Scotland she would not have been safe and her subjects would have been against her. To have sent her to France, of which there was no intention, they would have thought her a fool. Her Majesty answered that she had never undertaken nor thought of undertaking anything against the Queen of England or her kingdom, and that she had not so little prudence as to wish to conspire against Elizabeth or put her hands upon a consecrated Queen. She knew not if Elizabeth had done like Saul. In place of thinking such a thing, she had cautioned her repeatedly of what she knew would be hurtful to her interests. But there were many people who had different schemes, so that if she would communicate with her, together they could put things in order, and by those means she would be assured. In this she had never been listened to but rather despised and ill-treated, not like a prisoner of her rank but like as if taken in war or even worse, as if they had the power of life and death or a right to torment and afflict her, taking away from her all the conveniences of life, so that she was without power to communicate with friends or relations, nobody whatever. She was shut up, kept under the order of a man without whose will she could do nothing. That he had been as strict with her as he could, not only as to her liberty and captivity, but concerning her eating and drinking, for herself and household. During her captivity the Queen of England had maintained, sustained, and aided her rebel subjects, alienated