close imprisonment have much decayed my understanding; I pray God, that this day it fail me not, and another time I will forgive it: I beseech this of you, my Lord High Steward. The second request I thought to make to you, my Peers: I think myself happy to have my trial in such a company. A much greater matter, if I could have greater, I dare put it into your hands, and (a very few excepted) even into the single hand of every one of you; that opinion I have of you. I hope that religion so rules your consciences, that for no respect you will swerve from justice; you will not bring a worm into your own consciences; you will not burden your souls with condemning me wrongfully; you will not do what God's law and right forbid. If I had not made a full account to have this means for my lawful purgation, I needed not to have been here at this time, neither for matters passed two years ago, nor for that whereof I am now charged. But, my Lords, I have chosen rather to come here to be tried by you, than by cowardly running away, to leave a gap open for my enemies slanderously to lay to my charge, in my absence, what their malice might invent. This one request then I beseech of you, my Lords, which I with favour may ask, and you with justice may grant; unhappy man that I am, though I have to this indictment pleaded not guilty of the treasons therein objected against me; yet I confess, as I have already with all humility and with tears confessed, and as some of you, my Lords here present, can witness, that I have neglected my duty to the Queen's most excellent Majesty, in matters inferior to treason: I have laid them at her Majesty's feet, and poured them forth before her in confession, so far as my conscience will suffer me to declare them. I beseech you, let neither my confession already made of inferior faults, not amounting to treason; nor, if I shall now in mine answers confess them again, when they are objected against me, lead you to judge the worse of me in the greater case. Let each fault have its own punishment; remember the differences and degrees of offences, and do not mix my smaller faults with this great cause; let these meaner crimes rest at her Majesty's feet, where I with all humility have laid them.

The Queen's Serjeant Barham here opened the contents of the indictment.

Duke. Mr. Serjeant, you begin as though you would draw me into treason by circumstances, and by enforcing things that are not treasons in themselves exasperate matters against me. I beseech you, for God's sake, do your duty, but remember equity and conscience, and what I am: I am no stranger, but a Christian man and an Englishman. You may do your duty to the Queen sufficiently, and yet deal conscientiously with me. Go directly to the indictment: it is no praise nor glory for you to overlay me. I am unlearned, unable to speak, and worst of all to speak for myself; I have neither good utterance, as the world well knoweth, nor under standing for God's sake do not overlay me with superfluous matter. A man suspected is half condemned.

Serjeant. My Lord, I have as yet only recited the matter contained in the indictment, and enforced nothing against you; I now proceed to set forth the evidence for the Queen, to prove the things contained in the indictment to be true. Leaving the rest to others, I am to open the evidence to prove the first part of the indictment, namely that the Duke compassed and imagined to deprive the Queen of her crown and royal estate, and to bring her to death and destruction, and to alter against her will the government of the realm. In support of this part of the charge, I shall show that the Duke, knowing that the Scottish Queen claimed a title to the present possession of the Crown of England, practised to join himself in marriage with her, contrary to her Majesty's express commandment upon his allegiance, and against his own promise and protestation. And although it might amount to treason in the article of compassing and imagining the death of the Queen within the statute of the 25th Edward III., to show an intent of marrying with a person claiming title to the present possession of the Crown, inasmuch as the person having such an intent, without doubt aspires to the Crown himself; yet if it shall appear that at any time during the practising to bring the marriage to effect, there existed an intent and purpose in the Duke to advance and maintain that pretended title by force of arms, it amounts

to clear and palpable treason. In respect of time, I am to divide the evidence into two parts; First, I shall prove the private motions and suits to the Scottish Queen touching this marriage at the beginning; then how the design was continued by secret conferences and messages, by sending and receiving letters and tokens, and by other indirect means of dissimulation and falsehood on the part of the Duke, until the time when he was commanded by her Majesty at Titchfield upon his allegiance to deal therein no further. The second part of the evidence shall be directed to prove, that immediately after her Majesty's command, and her expression of her disapprobation of the scheme, he departed from Court with intent to prosecute it more earnestly, and to accomplish it by force, and so to attain both to the marriage with the Queen of Scots, and the present possession of the Crown by the deprivation of her Majesty.

Then Mr. Serjeant urged the Duke to confess if he had knowledge that the Scottish Queen pretended title to the present possession of the Crown of England; offering, if the Duke would deny it, to make proof of it.

Duke. I will make mine own confession; I pray you teach me not how to answer or confess; but because I know not whether my peers do all know it or not, I will make a short declaration of my doings with the Scottish Queen.

Serjeant. First, my Lord High Steward, we pray your Grace that my Lord of Norfolk may directly answer, whether he knew that the Scottish Queen so claimed; if he deny it, we will prove it.

Then being ruled by the Lord High Steward, that he should answer directly to that question, he answered, that "indeed he knew that she had so claimed, but with circumstance."

Serjeant. Say plainly, Did you know it or no? for if you say nay, we can prove it.

Duke. You handle me hardly; you would entrap me by circumstances, and infer upon me that the Queen of Scots was the Queen's enemy, and so make me a traitor. I am ready to answer directly to the whole matter of my dealing with her.

Serjeant. You must answer to the parts as they fall

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out. Did you know that she claimed the present pos session of the Crown? that she usurped the arms and royal style of this realm? and that she made no renunciation of that usurped pretence? If you say you knew it not, we will prove your knowledge of every part of it.

Duke. I did not know it in such sort as is alleged; I know that renunciation of that claim was offered, and upon certain causes respited.

Serjeant. That you were privy to the Scottish Queen's unjust claim to the present possession of the Crown of England, by quartering the arms of England with the arms of Scotland, is most clear; for besides that it was commonly bruited amongst all men, you were of her Majesty's Privy Council, by whom it has been many times deliberated upon as a matter of great moment; you knew also that a French power was sent to prosecute it by invading this land through Scotland; for yourself was made the Queen's Lieutenant in the North, and levied an army to expulse them. Afterwards you were a party to the treaty entered into at Edinburgh between the Queen's Ambassadors, and the Commissioners of the French King and the Scottish Queen; in which treaty was one special article, that the Scottish Queen should renounce her pretended claim to the present possession of the Crown of this realm, and acknowledge her Majesty's undoubted title. My Lord of Norfolk was present at this treaty; and afterwards, when he and the other Commissioners sat at York about the matter between the Scottish Queen, her son, and the nobility of Scotland, one special instruction was that the Scottish Queen should renounce her unjust claim, and ratify the former treaty made at Edinburgh. The Duke knoweth well that neither of these things hath been done to this day.

Duke. What is this to me? I need not to defend the doings of the Scottish Queen; I like them not. It is not my case, though you would make it so. I have heard without doubt that being married to the French King, she made claim during her husband's life to the Crown of England, and quartered the arms of England with those of Scotland and France. But I have also heard that Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, who was then Ambassador in

France, made complaint thereof, and that thereupon it was laid down.

Serjeant. Thus have you confessed far enough, that you knew that she did pretend title to the present possession of the Crown of England, and that she quartered the arms, and usurped the royal style of this realm. Duke. It was in her husband's time.

Serjeant. But you knew also, that since her husband's time, she hath not renounced that claim; and you had special instructions to require it when you were Commissioner at York.

Duke. You undertook to prove that I knew of the Scottish Queen's claiming the present possession of the Crown.

Serjeant. You have yourself confessed it; for you know that there was no renunciation made, though you were specially commissioned for that purpose: and now we will by good evidence prove your partial and indirect dealing in that Commission. I will produce your own conference at York with Ledington and the Bishop of Rosse, and how yourself told them, that you understood that rigorous matters would be brought forward by the Earl of Murray and the other Scottish Lords of that party against the Scottish Queen, touching her adultery and the murder of her husband. You gave advice to the ministers of the Scottish Queen to stay the Earl of Murray from so doing; you told them how the Queen of England. had some counsellors who would persuade her to publish all those matters to the Scottish Queen's infamy; you practised with them to devise means to qualify the matter; and told them the way in which you thought best to do it.

Then was read the following Examination of the Bishop of Rosse, taken at the Tower, November 6th, 1571

As touching the proceedings betwixt the Queen " my mistress and the Duke of Norfolk, immediately ' after her first arriving_within this realm, and during the conference at York; whereby the same did grow to greater liking and familiarity thereafter, I do

*Murdin's State Papers, p. 52.