There was this addition (_puis est adjouxté_), ‘We think this voluntary offer’ (of Mary) ‘so important that, in our opinion, all her demands should be granted, without prejudice or contravention to the Queen of England, so that none may be able to say a word against the manner of procedure.’[304] To myself it appears that the majority of the civilians consulted returned the reply which insists that Mary must be tried with acknowledgment of jurisdiction, if she is to be heard at all, and that the addition, declaring her demands just, is the conclusion of a minority. Mary wanted the pomp and publicity of a great trial, which, after all, was to be a mere appeal to public opinion. As Queen of Scots, she could not destroy the fruits of Bannockburn and the wars of Independence, by acknowledging an English sovereign as her Judge and Superior. She could not return to the position of John Balliol under Edward I. She had been beguiled into confiding her cause to Elizabeth, and this was the result. On December 4, Mary’s men, without consulting her, made a fatal error. Before seeing Elizabeth they met Leicester and Cecil, in a room apart, and asked that Elizabeth should be informed of their readiness, even now, to make a compromise, with surety to Moray and his party. Now Mary had declared to Knollys that, if once Moray accused her publicly, they were ‘past all reconciliation.’ That was the only defensible position, yet her Commissioners, perhaps with her approval, receded from it. Elizabeth seized the opportunity. It was better, she said, and rightly, for her sister’s honour, that Mary’s accusers should be charged with their audacious defaming of their Queen, and punished for the same, unless they could show ‘apparent just causes of such an attempt.’ In fact, Elizabeth must see the Letters, or cause them to be seen by her nobles. She could not admit Mary in person while, as at present, there seemed so little to justify the need of her appearance--for the Letters had not yet been shown. When they were shown, it would probably turn out, she said, that Mary need not appear at all. The unhappy Scottish Commissioners tried to repair a blunder, which clearly arose from their undeniable want of confidence in their cause. The proposal for a compromise, they said, was entirely their own. We remember that, by Norfolk’s desire, Mary had already refused a compromise to which she had once consented. She would probably, in the now existing circumstances, have adhered to her resolution.[305]