On the morning of 14th October the trial began, when Bromley opened the proceedings charging Mary with the Babington Conspiracy. The Queen, notwithstanding the interview of the previous day, defended herself with great eloquence. It was the crowning effort of her life, in spite of the exertions of Bromley and Burghley to crush her. In asserting her innocence she “protested before the living God that she loved the Queen of England,” and in her concluding sentence she “appealed to Almighty God, her Church, and all Christian princes, and the Estates of the kingdom, she was ready and prepared to sustain and defend her honour as an innocent person.” She charged Walsingham as being her enemy. Whether she knew of his interpolations on her letters is not clear, but she undoubtedly suspected him. Walsingham's reply was significant and cunning: “He bore no ill will to anyone; he had never attempted anyone's life (yet he was plotting against Queen Mary's life at the time he was speaking), and protested that he was a gentleman, and a faithful servant of his mistress.” No one will doubt the last remark, and no one will believe the words that go before. Mary had charged him with being in communication with Ballard, one of the conspirators. If she had followed up this line of argument she would have defeated her accusers, but she was not allowed to produce a single witness nor to refer to her letters, and therefore could only say what she imperfectly remembered. Petit's version of the Walsingham incident varies from this. She said, addressing him haughtily, “Do you think, Master Secretary, that I am not aware of the artifices you use against me with such knavish cruelty? Your spies beset me on all sides; but you perhaps do not know that many of those spies have made false depositions, and have warned me of what you are about. And if he has so acted, my lords, how shall I be assured that he has not forged my cyphers to put me to death, when I know he has conspired against my child's life and mine?” Those withering words, falling suddenly and without warning on the head of the guilty Walsingham, called forth a quick reply: “God is my witness,” exclaimed he, “that in private I have done nothing but what an honest man ought to have done, and in public I have done nothing unworthy of my office. I have carefully sifted the conspiracies against Elizabeth, and had Ballard tendered me his services I should have accepted them.”