“Notwithstanding that the Scottish Queen had oftentimes sought the destruction of Elizabeth, and has now been by order of justice convicted and found guilty of attempting her death by certain murderers, and that for the same she deserved death, and so by the states of Parliament adjudged; and requests being importunately made to Her Majesty that for the avoiding of danger to herself and the whole realm she might be executed: Her Majesty, always inclined to mercy, was most unwilling to assent thereto, as appeared by her answers to Parliament, much to the comfort of all evil-disposed persons whose estates depended on the Scottish Queen's life and well-doing in the hope of her coming to this crown by depriving the Queen's Majesty of her life, a life subject to daily peril so long as the Queen of Scots is not executed. Her Majesty was continually solicited by all who saw her perils and understood how much her enemies at home and abroad were comforted and inspired with hope of the Scottish Queen's life and her treasonable attempts against Her Majesty's life. Herewith followed the vehement solicitations by Ambassadors out of France and Scotland to save the Scottish Queen, without any stipulation how the Queen's Majesty's life might be safe from the attempts and treasons of many of them in England and abroad. For preserving the Scottish Queen to be Queen of this realm, they would never desist from attempts against Elizabeth's person. These Ambassadors were vehemently handled, in promoting her foul acts intended for killing Her Majesty, and for invasion and alteration of the whole state of the realm. There was also discovered a practice between the French Ambassador and a lewd young miscontented person named William Stafford, and one Maude, a prisoner in Newgate, a mischievous, resolute person, how Her Majesty's life should be taken, and all in favour of the Scottish Queen. After this followed a seditious general stirring up of the common people into arms by circulating billets in writing from one shire to another and from town to town; which though the justices sought to pacify, yet though it was stayed in one part it rose up again in another; and by these seditious practices sought to procure a rebellion. The whole realm was greatly stirred. Her Majesty, in view of these causes of danger likely to arise to her own person and her realm, thought it needful to have more regard how, if these dangers should continue by these seditious persons and stirrers of the common people, some factious and treasonable persons might by force recover the Queen of Scots out of the house where she was, there might be some order in readiness for prevention thereof, and therefore she signed a writing which had long before been devised, which was an order to certain lords, the Earls of Kent, Shrewsbury, Derby, Cumberland, and Pembroke, that they or any three or two of them might have authority to cause execution of justice to be done on the Queen of Scots.