desirable that she should be sent to Scotland and delivered to the Regent (Mar), “if it might be wrought that they themselves should secretly require it, with good assurance to deal with her by way of justice, that she should receive that which she hath deserved, whereby no further peril should ensue from her escaping, or by setting her up again. Otherwise the Council of England will never assent to deliver her out of the realm; and for assurance, none can suffice but hostages of good value—that is, some children of the Regent and the Earl of Morton.”[366] The suggestion was not a chivalrous or a generous one. It meant nothing less than handing over the unfortunate Mary to her enemies to be executed, and so to rid Elizabeth of her troublesome guest without responsibility. Killigrew was Burghley’s brother-in-law, and the two, with Leicester and the Queen, were the only persons acquainted with the intention. On his arrival in Edinburgh the new envoy found the Protestants profoundly moved by the news of the massacre in Paris; Knox, paralysed and on the brink of the grave, used his last remaining spark of life to denounce the Guises and the Papists who had forged the murder plot against the people of God. Killigrew found Morton ready and eager to help in the sacrifice of Mary, but Mar held back; and Burghley and Leicester wrote, urging speed in the matter.[367] When the terms of the Scots at last were sent to Burghley, it was seen that, though they were willing to have Mary killed, they would not relieve Elizabeth of the responsibility.[368] The death of Mar put an end for a time to the negotiation, which was never seriously undertaken again, as it was clear that the Scots would drive too hard a bargain to suit Elizabeth. It is my province to explain facts rather than to apologise for them, and the explanation of the plan to cause Mary to be judicially murdered in Scotland must be sought in the panic which seized upon the Protestants after St. Bartholomew. The massacre was generally believed to be only a part of a plan for the universal extirpation of the reformers, in which it was known that Mary Stuart’s friends and relatives were the prime movers, and one of the main objects was represented to be the raising of Mary to the throne of a Catholic Great Britain. So long as this belief existed, no step was inexcusable that aimed at frustrating so diabolical and widespread a conspiracy. That Burghley himself was not sensible of any turpitude in the matter may be seen from a letter written by him to Walsingham on the 14th January 1573, begging him to discover the author of a book printed in Paris, in which he and Bacon are scurrilously accused of plans against Norfolk and Mary. “God amend his spirit,” he says, referring to the author, “and confound his malice. As for my part, if I have any such malicious or malignant spirit, God presently so confound my body to ashes and my soul to perpetual torment in hell.”[369]