It need not be the least surprising that Walsingham should have written the following false and calumnious letter to the Master of Gray, dated 15th September. If he could surreptitiously open, copy, and interpolate Queen Mary's letters, he was quite capable of giving the advice contained in this communication. This Master of Gray was one of Mary's enemies, and was mainly instrumental in putting discord between mother and son. No man knew better than Walsingham that Mary was innocent of Darnley's murder, but to admit this would be to jeopardise his scheme for her execution. Consequently her innocence could not be entertained. Mary losing her Crown had nothing whatever to do with the Darnley murder. She never voluntarily gave up the Crown, but it was compulsorily taken from her by Lindsay and Ruthven when she was confined in Loch Leven in 1567, in order that Moray might assume the Regency:— “I thank you for sounding the King's disposition, how he could be content to have the Queen his mother proceeded against for the late fact, but I suppose it will be in vain to move him any further, because he may conceive it would be _contra bonos mores_, in respect of the bond of nature between them, that he should make himself a party against her. Nevertheless, you may with good reason persuade him that he make no mediation for her, or oppose himself against the course that is intended to be adopted with her, considering the hard treatment that his father received at her hands, for which detestable deed she was deprived of her Crown. It is meant that she shall be tried here according to the Act made in the last Parliament, and that agreeably to the contents of the said Act certain noblemen shall be appointed to charge her, who assembled for that purpose the 27th of this month, and shall be with her by the 4th of the next at Fotheringay Castle, seven miles from Stamford, whither she is appointed to be brought. But the matters whereof she is guilty are already so plain and manifest, being also confessed by her two secretaries, as it is thought they shall require no long debating. We suppose she will appeal and challenge the privilege of her sovereignty, which in this case neither by the civil law nor by the laws of this realm can be available.” Bourgoyne's _Journal_ exposes the cruelty of Queen Mary's enemies and their importunity about the Babington Conspiracy, and while she protested that during her captivity “Elizabeth had maintained, sustained, and aided her rebel subjects, alienated her son from her, and taken away what she possessed,” and could prove this, they would not listen to it, but wanted to squeeze out of her something that would incriminate herself.