and myself, only did procure this prorogation for the other two causes.” Mary was evidently not aware that, by an Act passed fifteen years before, witnesses in trials for high treason were required to be confronted with the accused, and not one of her six-and-thirty judges had the courage to inform her of this important fact. All remained deaf to her appeals; her secretaries were not examined and her notes were not produced. Nothing could have been more utterly worthless than the evidence produced against her. The letters were alleged to be copies of cyphers, but by whom the cyphers were deciphered, and by whom the copies were made, the commissioners were not informed, nor did they ask a question on the subject.[7] On the second day neither the attorney-general nor the solicitor-general nor the Queen's sergeant took any part in the proceedings. Whether he was dissatisfied with the mode in which they had conducted the case, or whether he was desirous of displaying his erudition and his animosity against the Scottish Queen, Burghley took upon himself the whole management of the trial. Such conduct on the part of a judge was neither dignified nor decent, nor do we find in any other of the State trials of this reign so marked a departure from established usage. It may perhaps be taken as a proof of his declining powers that he had even the vanity to boast of the skill and success with which he had encountered and defeated the “Queen of the Castle,” as he facetiously termed the woman against whose life and reputation he had plotted incessantly for more than twenty years.[8]