Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/33

I57I-] THE DUKE OF NORFOLK. 13 whatever may have been his past hesitation, was now determined to be faithful to his mistress. Mary Stuart's correspondence was effectively crushed. A lad was de- tected in bringing * dangerous letters to her concealed in a staff. She was at once confined to a single room, the bolts were taken off" the doors, and she was watched day and night. Even the linen of herself and her ladies was passed to the wash through the hands of male inspectors, the women of the castle being all de- voted to her, and the observance of common decorum being no longer safe or possible. Shrewsbury told Cecil that ' those should buy her dearly who should get her from his hands ; if five thousand men tried to rescue her he would give them such a banquet as they should repent that they had come to Sheffield.' L The Bishop of Ross was then called up again from the country. Cecil had waited till the case was com- plete against him. Elizabeth's tenderness to the sove- reign rights of the Queen of Scots had permitted him to remain at the Court with the privileges of an am- bassador. He had abused his liberty to be the arch- contriver of a gigantic conspiracy, and the law officers of the Crown, when consulted by Cecil, gave as their opinions, first, that the representative of a prince or princess lawfully deposed possessed no privileges at all ; and secondly, that an ambassador who could be proved to have moved a rebellion in the country to which he was accredited, had forfeited his protection and might 1 Shrewsbury to Cecil, October 24: MSS. QUEEN or SCOTS.