publicly recorded, and that I make it in the presence of some princes or foreign judges, or even before my natural judges; and this without prejudice to my mother the Church, to kings, sovereign princes, and to my son. With regard to the pretensions long put forward by the English (as their Chronicles testify) to suzerainty over my predecessors the Kings of Scotland, I utterly deny and protest against them, and I will not, like a _femme de peu de coeur_, admit them, nor by any present act, to which I may be constrained, will I fortify such a claim, whereby I should dishonour those princes my ancestors as well as myself, and acknowledge them to have been traitors or rebels. Rather than do this, I am ready to die for God and my rights in this quarrel, in which, as in all others, I am innocent. "By this you can see that I am not ambitious, nor would I have undertaken anything against the Queen of England through a desire to reign. I have done with all that; and as regards myself, I wish for nothing but to pass the remainder of my life in peace and tranquillity of mind. My advancing age and my bodily weakness both prevent me from wishing to resume the reins of government. I have perhaps only two or three years to live in this world, and I do not aspire to any public position, especially when I consider the pain and _désésperance_ which meet those who wish to do right, and act with justice and dignity in the midst of so perverse a generation, and when the whole world is full of crimes and troubles."[37] [Footnote 37: Chantelauze, p. 520.] Burleigh, "no longer able to contain himself," here interrupted the Queen, reproaching her with having assumed the name and arms of England, and of having aspired to the Crown. "What I did at that time," replied Mary, "was in obedience to the commands of Henry the Second, my father-in-law, and you well know the reason." "But," retorted Burleigh, "you did not give up these practices even after we signed the peace with King Henry." "You made the arrangement to your own interest and advantage," replied Mary; "I was not thereby bound to renounce my rights, or to abandon them to my own great prejudice and that of my successors, receiving nothing in return. I owed you nothing. I was not dependent on your Queen, nor am I now, and I was not obliged to cede to her rights so important. If I had shown such weakness I should have been always reproached with it as having acted to my own blame and dishonour." "You have also," insisted Burleigh, "continued to assert your pretension to the English Crown."