of Pope Pius, an invasion from Flanders; after she had seduced the queen’s friends, and incited every enemy, foreign and domestic, against her; it became necessary to treat her as a most dangerous rival, and to render her confinement more strict and rigorous: that the queen, notwithstanding these repeated provocations, had, in her favor, rejected the importunity of her parliaments, and the advice of her sagest ministers;[*] and was still, in hopes of her amendment, determined to delay coming to the last extremities against her: that Mary, even in this forlorn condition, retained so high and unconquerable a spirit, that she acted as competitor to the crown, and allowed her partisans every where, and in their very letters addressed to herself, to treat her as queen of England: that she had carried her animosity so far as to encourage, in repeated instances, the atrocious design of assassinating the queen; and this crime was unquestionably proved upon her by her own letters, by the evidence of her secretaries, and by the dying confession of her accomplices; that she was but a titular queen, and at present possessed nowhere any right of sovereignty; much less in England, where, the moment she set foot in the kingdom, she voluntarily became subject to the laws, and to Elizabeth, the only true sovereign; that even allowing her to be still the queen’s equal in rank and dignity, self-defence was permitted by a law of nature which could never be abrogated: and every one, still more a queen, had sufficient jurisdiction over an enemy, who, by open violence, and still more, who, by secret treachery, threatened the utmost danger against her life; that the general combination of the Catholics to exterminate the Protestants was no longer a secret; and as the sole resource of the latter persecuted sect lay in Elizabeth, so the chief hope which the former entertained of final success consisted in the person and in the title of the queen of Scots; that this very circumstance brought matters to extremity between these princesses; and rendering the life of one the death of the other, pointed out to Elizabeth the path which either regard to self-preservation, or to the happiness of her people, should direct her to pursue: and that necessity, more powerful than policy, thus demanded of the queen that resolution which equity would authorize, and which duty prescribed.[**] * Digges, p. 276. Strype, vol. ii. p. 48, 135, 136, 139. ** Camden, p. 533.