On Saturday, October 2, Mary’s Commissioners arrived in York, but Wood did not ride in from London till October 8.[273] Moray and the other Commissioners of the Lords came in on Sunday, followed, an hour later, by the English negotiators: ‘mediators,’ Mary calls them. Then began a contest of intrigue and infamy. If we believe Melville, he no sooner arrived in York than Moray sent him to Bolton, ‘to deal with the Queen as of his awin heid,’--that is, as if the proposal were an unofficial suggestion of his own. He was to propose a compromise: the Lords were not to accuse her, and she was to stay in England with a large allowance, Moray still acting as Regent. ‘The Quene did take it verie hardlie at the begyning ... bot in the end condescendit to it, swa that it come of [part obliterated] the Quene of England’s sute.’ Melville was then kept going to and from Bolton, till the Commissioners departed to London. On this statement Moray, apparently as soon as the Commissioners met at York, treated with Mary for a compromise in his favour, and Mary assented, though reluctantly.[274] Turning to the reports of Elizabeth’s Commissioners, we find that, on October 4, they met Mary’s Commissioners, and deemed their instructions too limited. Mary’s men proposed to ask for larger license, and, meanwhile, to proceed. But Herries (Oct. 6) declared that he would ‘in no ways say all in this matter that he knew to be true.’[275] Moray and Lethington, already ‘though most sorry that it is now come to that point,’ said that they must disclose what they knew. Lethington by no means tried to ‘mitigate these rigours intended,’ as in the letter which Lesley says that he sent to Mary by Melville. He already boasted of what ‘they could an’ they would.’ Probably Lethington, to use a modern phrase, was ‘bluffing.’ Nothing could suit him worse than a public disclosure of the letters, laying him open to a _riposte_ from Mary if she were allowed to be present, and speak for herself. His game was to threaten disclosure, and even to make it unofficially, so as to frighten Mary into silence, and residence in England, while he kept secretly working for another arrangement with Norfolk, behind the backs of the other English Commissioners. This was a finesse in which Lethington delighted, but it was a most difficult game to play. His fellows, except Morton, not a nervous man, were less compromised than he, or not compromised at all, and they might break away from him, and offer in spite of him (as they finally did) a public disclosure of the Letters. The other English Commissioners, again, might not take their cue from Norfolk. Above all, Norfolk himself must be allowed to see the Letters, and yet must be induced to overlook or discredit the tale of the guilt of Mary, which they revealed. This was the only part of Lethington’s arduous task in which he succeeded, and here he succeeded too well.[276]