284 ROBERTSON. 



take her off by assassination. When those two gallant 

 cavaliers rejected the infamous proposition with indigna- 

 tion and with scorn, she attacked them as " dainty " and 

 " precise fellows," " men promising much and perform- 

 ing nothing ;" nay, she was with difficulty dissuaded 

 from displacing them, and employing one Wingfield in 

 their stead, " who had both courage and inclination to 

 strike the blow." Then finding she could not commit 

 murder, she signed the warrant for Mary's execution ; 

 and immediately perpetrated a crime only less foul than 

 murder, treacherously denying her handwriting, and 

 destroying by heavy fine and long imprisonment the 

 Secretary of State whom she had herself employed to 

 issue the fatal warrant. History, fertile in its records of 

 royal crimes, offers to our execration few such characters 

 as that of this great, successful, and popular princess. 

 An assassin in her heart, nay, in her councils and her 

 orders ; an oppressor of the most unrelenting cruelty 

 in her whole conduct ; a hypocritical dissembler, to 

 whom falsehood was habitual, honest frankness strange 

 such is the light in which she ought to be ever held 

 up, as long as humanity and truth shall bear any value 

 in the eyes of men. That she rendered great services 

 to her subjects ; that she possessed extraordinary firm- 

 ness of character as a sovereign, with despicable weak- 

 ness as an individual ; that she governed her dominions 

 with admirable prudence, and guided her course 

 through as great difficulties in the affairs of the state, 

 and still more in those of the church, as beset the path 

 of any who ever ruled is equally incontrovertible; 

 but there is no such thing as " right of set-off" in the 

 judgments which impartial history has to pronounce 



