Thus terminated a trial which in legal history has probably no counterpart, and regarding which the following points especially strike us: the incompetence of the English tribunals, as then constituted, to judge an independent sovereign; the refusal of counsel to the prisoner, in violation of the laws of England, and in especial of the statutes of Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth; the absence of the witnesses, whose presence in face of the accused was essential to all just procedure; the forced position of Mary, not before independent and trustworthy judges, but before Commissioners carefully chosen beforehand, and who, combining the offices of judge and jury, united in endeavouring to nullify the defence. At Fotheringay we find the prisoner standing alone before her judges. At Westminster the witnesses appear in the absence of the accused, while at neither is a single original document produced; copies, not of written letters, but pretended copies from ciphers were admitted and believed on the faith of men whose confessions were drawn from them by fear of torture or documents forged by Philipps. Such was the evidence by which Mary was tried and condemned. CHAPTER V SUSPENSE Although Bourgoing's Journal furnishes us, for the first time, with some details of the Queen's life during the days following the conclusion of the trial, it is provokingly silent as to the manner in which she passed the remainder of the day itself. All he notes is, that "after supper Sir Amyas sent the copy of her protest to Her Majesty." Sir Amyas, we may suppose, spent his evening in congenial company, for at least one guest of importance remained in the castle. Burleigh writes to Secretary Davison from Fotheringay on the same evening, and the following extracts from his letter show the spirit in which he had carried out his Commission. "The Queen of the castle," he writes, "was pleased to appear before us in public, so as to be heard in her own defence; but she only replied negatively upon the points in the letters regarding the plots against Her Majesty. She maintained that they had not been written by her, and that she had never had the smallest knowledge of them. In the other things with which she was reproached, as her escape from prison, even by force, and as to the invasion of the kingdom, she said that she neither denied nor avowed them. But her intention was, by long and artificial speeches, to excite the pity of the judges, to throw all the blame upon the person of Her Majesty the Queen, or rather upon the council, from whom she said all the past troubles emanated; maintaining that her offers were reasonable, and that the refusal came from our side. And on this point I fought, and refuted her arguments in such a manner, by my knowledge and experience, that she did not have the advantage she had promised herself. I am also certain that the audience did not think her position worthy of much pity, her allegations being proved to be untrue."[43]