Which writing so signed was in the custody of her secretary Davison, who took it to the Lord Chancellor to put the Great Seal thereto, which was done very secretly, and afterwards did declare the same to certain of the lords and others of the Privy Council, who seem glad thereof; and being at the same time greatly troubled with daily reports from many parts of the realm, of the seditious stirring up of people to take arms, and seeing the....” Left unfinished, 17th February 1587. It is by no means clear that Lord Burghley was the writer of this paper. It is unfinished and unsigned, two points against Burghley's authorship. Burghley was unlikely to leave a paper on this or on any subject unfinished. The paper is reproduced from the Report of the Historical MSS. Commission, and except the title, there is nothing to identify it with Burghley. It evidently belongs to one of two classes, namely, it is either a forgery of Walsingham and Phillips, or, if Burghley's, it is written under a total misapprehension of the facts as recorded in the official papers deposited in the State Paper Offices. The age that produced it was pregnant with forgery. Forgery, deciphering, and the surreptitious opening and closing of letters, were at that period in a high state of perfection. If we want an illustration of this we have only to refer to the treatment experienced by Mary and to the remarkably cunning artifice of the brewer's cart,[16] due to the ingenuity of Walsingham, when every letter she wrote or received was opened and copied quite unknown to her. Again, no man knew better than Burghley that Mary was never except once arraigned for being concerned in a plot against Elizabeth (Babington Plot), and of which she was totally innocent. If she had “ofttimes sought the destruction of the Queen's Majesty,” we would have had some proof of it, especially as every effort was made at the time to publish slander against the Scottish Queen. Considering the mock trial at Fotheringay and the unfounded charges brought against her, none of which Burghley could prove, we should think it very unlikely that he would write such a paper ten days after the execution. The primary object of the paper was to defend Elizabeth's sentence of execution, a sentence that could not be defended without resorting to the most unblushing falsehoods such as compose the text of this paper. At the last moment King James came forward with a letter to Elizabeth on behalf of his mother. He was very blameworthy not to have come forward at an earlier stage. His letter need surprise no one who has studied his character. It had no effect whatever on Elizabeth. The letter is dated 26th January 1587, and proceeds to say:—