Elizabeth and her Council decided to run the latter risk rather than that Mary should go to France to be a permanent thorn in the flesh of England, and the Queen of Scots’ long imprisonment commenced.[277] Even in the first few weeks of her stay she was busy endeavouring to subvert English ends; appointing Chatelherault, Argyll, and Huntly to the supreme government of the kingdom against Murray; Chatelherault being strongly in the French interest, and daily clamouring through his brother in Paris for French armed support. All this was known to the Queen and Cecil; and Mary’s intemperate letters of protest against her removal from Carlisle, and her constant threats to appeal to France and Spain if Elizabeth would not help her,[278] made it altogether inconsistent with prudence to allow the misguided woman her liberty. The investigation into Mary’s guilt or innocence seems to have originated with Cecil.[279] Left to herself, Elizabeth, as we have seen, was mainly influenced by the personal feeling of reverence for a sovereign: Cecil could not oppose this, and as usual took an indirect means of reaching his end. When Mary complained to Knollys at Carlisle of the subjects who had dethroned her, he had told her that as it was lawful for subjects to depose mad sovereigns, it was also lawful for them to depose those who had lost their wits to the extent of conniving at murder. Mary wept at this, and Knollys softened the blow; but Knollys had certainly seen Cecil’s report, and took the line suggested by it. If Mary could be shown to have connived at Darnley’s death—and Cecil must have known of the damning proofs against her when he proposed the negotiation—the regal immunity fell from her like a loosened garment, and Elizabeth’s personal desire to consider the sacredness of the monarch before the interests of the country lost its principal resting point.