ae 
_— ——— 
ye 
428 Belsham’s Comparison beiween Robertson and Hume. [Dec: ¥, 
“the crown lawyers opened the charge’ 
“against the queen of Scots, They proved, 
by intercepted letters, that she had al- 
Towed Cardinal Allen, and others, to 
treat her as Queen of England; and that 
she had kept a correspendence wit Lord 
Paget, and Charles Paget, in view of en- 
gaging the Spamiards to invade the king- 
dom. Mary seemed not anxious to clear 
herself from either of these imputations. 
There was also produced evidence to 
provethat Allen and Parsons were at that 
very time negociating, by her orders, at 
Reme, the conditions of transferring her 
English crown to the King of Spain, and 
of disinheriting her heretical son. She 
had even proceeded so far as to appoint 
Lord Claud Hamilton regent of Scotland, 
and had instigated her adherents to seize 
James’s person, and deliver him into the 
hands of the Pope, or the King of Spain, 
Lhe only part of the charge which Mary 
positively denied, was her concurrence in 
the design of assassinating Elizabeth. 
This article, indeed, was the most heavy, 
and the only one that could fully justify 
the queen in proceeding to extremities 
against her. In order to prove the accu- 
sation, there were produced the follow- 
ing evidence: copies taken in Secretary 
Walsingham’s oftice of the intercepted 
letters between her and Babington, in 
which her approbation of the murder was 
clearly expressed; the evidence of her 
two secretaries, Nau and Curle, who had 
confessed, without being put to any tor- 
ture, both that she received these letters 
from Babington, and that they had writ- 
ten the answers by her order; the con- 
fession of Babington, that he had written 
the letters, and recefved the answers; 
and the confession of Ballardand Savage, 
that Babington had shewed them these 
letters of Mary, written in the cypher 
which had been settled between them. 
Hier reply consisted chiefly in her own 
denial. Whatever force may be in that 
denial, was much weakened by her posi- 
tively athirming that she aS had had 
any correspondence of any kind with Ba- 
bington ; ; a fact, however, of which there 
remains not the least question. She as- 
serted, that, as Nau and Curle had taken 
an oath of secresy and fidelity to her, 
thew evidence against her ought not to 
be cr redited. She confessed, however, 
that Nau had been in the service of her 
uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, and had 
been recommended to her by the King 
of France, as a man in who she might 
safely confide. She also acknowledged 
Curle to bea yeu honest man, but sim- 
ple, and easily imposed upon by Nau. If 
these two. men had received any ietters, 
or had written any answers, without her 
knowledge, the imputation, she said, 
could never lie upon her. The sole cir- 
cumstance of her defence which to us 
may appear to have some force, was her 
requiring that Nau and Curle should be 
confronted with her; and her athrming 
that they never would, to her face, persist 
in their evidence. But that demand, 
however equitable, was not then support- 
ed by law in triais of high treason, and 
was often refused even in other trials, 
when the crown was the prosecutor. 
Queen Elizabeth herself was willing to 
have allowed Curle and Nau to_be pro- 
duced in the trial, and writes to that pur- 
pose to Burleigh and Walsingham, in 
her letter of the 7thof October. She only 
says, that she thinks it needless, though 
she was willing to have agreed to it. The 
not confronting of the witnesses was not 
the result of desiyn, but the practice of 
the ave.” For bes’s MS. Collections. 
“ The great character, indeed, which 
Sir Francis Walsingham bears for probity 
and honour, should | remove from him all 
suspicion of such base arts as forgery and 
subornation; arts which eyen the most 
corrupt ministers, in the most corrupt 
times, would scruple to employ.” 
“« Having finished the trial, the com- 
missioners “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 au- 
theuticity of those letters, before pro- 
duced, they pronounced sentence of death 
upon the queen of Scots, and confirmed 
it by their seals and subscriptions.” oH 
287-299. 
In the notes subjoined to this part of 
his History, Mr. Hume observes (p. 510), 
“that the volume of State Papers collected 
by Mr. Murden prove, beyond contro- 
versy, that Mary was long in close corre- 
- spondence with Babington. She enter- 
tained a like correspondence with Bal- 
lard, Morgan and Charles Paget, and laid 
a scheme with them for an insurrection, 
and for the invasion of England by Spain. 
These circumstances prove > that no weight. 
can be laid on Mary’s demal of guilt.” 
‘There are (says this sagacious writer) 
three suppositions by which the letter to 
Babington may be accounted for, with- 
out allowing Mary’s concurrence in the 
conspiracy for .assassinating Elizabeth. 
The first is that which she herself seems 
to have embraced; that her secretaries” 
had. © 
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