'I thank you for such welcome news. You will do me a great good in withdrawing me from this world, out of which I am very glad to go, on account of the miseries I see in it, and of being myself in continual affliction. I am of no good and of no use to any one. I have long looked for this, and have expected it day by day for eighteen years. Unworthy though I think myself, I am by the grace of God a queen born and a queen anointed, a near relative of the Queen (of England), granddaughter of King Henry VII., and I have had the honour to be Queen of France, but in all my life I have had only sorrow. I am very happy that it pleases God by your means to free me from so many evils and afflictions. I am quite ready and very happy to die, and to shed my blood for Almighty God, my Saviour and my Creator, and for the Catholic Church, and to maintain its rights in this country, for the welfare of which I have always done everything that has been possible, loving the Queen, my good sister, and this island as dearly as myself, as I have often shown. I have constantly offered to arrange matters peacefully and to bring things to a happy issue, but have always been rejected and put aside. I have been held a prisoner without having merited it, for I came into this country of my own free will in hope of succour, according to the promise of the Queen. We should have agreed very well, and would together have arranged matters so well as to satisfy every one if I had at once been permitted to speak to her.' Mary continued to speak on this capital point, her unjust imprisonment for eighteen years, in violation of all laws human and divine, as also of all the humiliation and sorrow it had brought upon her; and then, placing her hand on an English New Testament which lay on the table by her, she protested on oath that she was innocent of the crime imputed to her. 'I have never,' she said most solemnly, 'either desired the death of the Queen, or endeavoured to bring it about, or that of any other person.' The Earl of Kent objected that it was a Catholic Bible, the Pope's version, and that therefore the oath was of no avail. 'This is the translation approved by the Church,' replied Mary, 'and if I swear on the book which I believe to be the true version, will not your lordship believe my oath more than if I were to swear on a translation in which I do not believe?'" [Footnote 110: Chantelauze, p. 572; _La Mort_, p. 613, where the document is given at length.]