honor, should remove from him all suspicion of such base arts as forgery and subornation; arts which even the most corrupt ministers, in the most corrupt times, would scruple to employ. Having finished the trial, the commissioners, adjourned from Fotheringay Castle, and met in the star chamber at London, where, after taking the oaths of Mary’s two secretaries, who voluntarily, without hope or reward, vouched the authenticity of those letters before produced, they pronounced sentence of death upon the queen of Scots, and confirmed it by their seals and subscriptions. The same day, a declaration was published by the commissioners and the judges “that the sentence did nowise derogate from the title and honor of James, king of Scotland; but that he was in the same place, degree, and right, as if the sentence had never been pronounced.”[*] * Camden, p. 526. The queen had now brought affairs with Mary to that situation which she had long ardently desired; and had found a plausible reason for executing vengeance on a competitor, whom, from the beginning of her reign, she had ever equally dreaded and hated. But she was restrained from instantly gratifying her resentment, by several important considerations. She foresaw the invidious colors in which this example of uncommon jurisdiction would be represented by the numerous partisans of Mary, and the reproach to which she herself might be exposed with all foreign princes, perhaps with all posterity. The rights of hospitality, of kindred, and of royal majesty, seemed in one signal instance to be all violated; and this sacrifice of generosity to interest, of clemency to revenge, might appear equally unbecoming a sovereign and a woman. Elizabeth, therefore, who was an excellent hypocrite, pretended the utmost reluctance to proceed to the execution of the sentence; affected the most tender sympathy with her prisoner; displayed all her scruples and difficulties; rejected the solicitation of her courtiers and ministers; and affirmed that, were she not moved by the deepest concern for her people’s safety, she would not hesitate a moment in pardoning all the injuries which she herself had received from the queen of Scots.