Finding that their emissaries did not succeed in moving her, the Lord Chancellor, Burleigh, and some others obtained admission to her in the hall of the castle, and assured her that their patent and commission authorised them to try her; that neither her condition as a prisoner nor her state as a queen could make her independent of the laws of the country; and they protested that if she refused to plead, they would proceed against her without regard to her objections. Mary, though alone against a host of the ablest men and most practised in law, chicanery, and state intrigue, still refused to plead, except it were in a full and free parliament. She knew, she said, that they had passed the statute against her, and desired to take her life; but she bade them look to their consciences and remember their reputations, for the theatre of the whole world was much wider than the kingdom of England. She complained of the shameful usage which she had suffered in this country, and Burleigh had the hardened assurance to tell her that the queen had always treated her with a rare kindness!
They then sent her the list of her judges, to show her that they were of a high and honourable character; but she declared that she could not submit her cause to any subjects, and would sooner perish than dishonour her ancestors, the kings of Scotland, by admitting herself the subject of the English monarch. Burleigh then declared that they would, nevertheless, proceed against her on the morrow as contumacious; and Hatton added, "If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear; but if you avoid a trial, you stain your reputation by an everlasting blot." This remark appeared to have sunk into her mind, for in the morning she consented to plead, provided that her protest against the authority of the court was admitted, and that she were called upon to do nothing derogatory to the prerogatives or honour of her ancestors or successors. Burleigh asked her if she would plead, provided the protest was laid before them in writing without their signifying its acceptance; and Mary agreed to this. In fact, they would, she saw, try her with or without that consent; and by pleading she could, at least, make her defence in some manner.
The next day, the 14th of October, the Court assembled in the great hall of Fotheringay, at the upper end of which was placed a chair of state with a canopy, as for the Queen of England; and below it, at some distance, a chair without a canopy, for the Queen of Scots—thus studiously indicating her inferiority. The Chancellor, Bromley, opened the Court by informing Mary that the Queen of England, having heard that she had conspired against her state and person, had deputed them to inquire into the fact. Upon this Mary entered her solemn protest against their authority, declaring that she had come as a friendly sovereign to seek aid from her cousin, the Queen of England, and had been unjustly detained by her as a prisoner; on that ground she denied their authority to try her. It was permitted to record her protest, together with the Chancellor's reply. To use the words of the historian, Lingard—"She was now placed in a position in which, though she might assert, it was impossible that she could prove her innocence. A single and friendless female, the inmate of a prison for the last nineteen years, ignorant of law, unpractised in judicial forms, without papers, witnesses, or counsel, and with no other knowledge of the late transactions than the reports collected by her female servants, nor of the proofs to be adduced by her adversaries but what her own conjectures might supply, she could be no match for that array of lawyers, judges, and statesmen, who sat marshalled against her. … Yet, under all these disadvantages, she defended herself with spirit and address. For two days she kept at bay the hunters of her life."
The charges against her wore two: first, that she had conspired with traitors and foreigners to invade the realm, and secondly, to compass the death of the queen. As to the first charge, Mary pleaded guilty to it, and justified it. They grounded this charge on far better proof than their evidence for the second, namely, letters—a host of letters intercepted or found in her cabinets, to and from Mendoza, Paget, Morgan, and others. From these it appeared that she had fully sanctioned an invasion on her behalf, and had offered to raise her friends to support it, and especially that those in Scotland should make themselves master of the person of her son, and prevent any aid being sent to the Government in England. And what was there in this, Mary demanded, that she had not a right to do? Was she not the equal of Elizabeth, a sovereign as independent as herself? By what right did she, then, detain her in her dungeons, but that of unjust and dishonourable force? She was neither subject to her laws, nor bound by any act or contract to refrain from asserting her own freedom. The laws of nations authorised her to use every exertion to recover her liberty, which was wrongfully withheld. She had proposed all kinds of terms and treaties, and offered all possible securities for observing amity towards Elizabeth's kingdom; but her offers, her entreaties, her protests, had all been treated with contempt. Who, therefore, would contend that she was not justified in seeking and accepting the services of any friendly powers or private friends to aid in the achievement of her liberty?
When they came to the second charge, the conspiracy to murder Elizabeth, she denied any participation in it totally, indignantly, and with many tears. She called God to witness the truth of her assertion, and prayed him, if she were guilty of such a crime, to grant her no mercy. The proofs produced to establish her approval of this design were—first, the copy of the letter of Babington, in which was this passage:—"For the dispatch of the usurper, from the obedience of whom, by the excommunication of her, we are made free, there be six noble gentlemen, all my private friends, who, for the zeal they bear to the Catholic cause and your majesty's service, will undertake the tragical execution." Next there was a copy of seven points, which professed to be derived from her answer to Babington, the sixth of which was, "By what means do the six gentlemen deliberate to proceed?"
After these came the confessions of Nau and Curie, and, finally, reported admissions in her letters to her foreign correspondents of having received these intimations of their intention of assassinating the queen, and of having given their assenting cautions and instructions on this point.
Thus, if all this evidence was based on bonâ fide documents openly produced and fully identified, the case would have been decisive, for Nau and Curie were made to
