for this
purpose. Now it is a special point of honor among all sovereign
kings and queens, throughout the civilized world, that they can,
technically, do no wrong; that they can not in any way be brought to
trial; and especially that they can not be, by any means or in any
way, amenable to each other. Mary refused to acknowledge any English
jurisdiction whatever in respect to any charges brought against her,
a sovereign queen of Scotland.

Elizabeth removed her prisoner to another castle further from the
frontier than Carlisle, in order to place her in a situation where
she would be more safe _from her enemies_. It was not convenient to
lodge so many of her attendants at these new quarters as in the other
fortress, and several were dismissed. Additional obstructions were
thrown in the way of her seeing friends and visitors from Scotland.
Mary found her situation growing every day more and more helpless and
desolate. Elizabeth urged continually upon her the necessity of
having the points at issue between herself and Murray examined by a
commissioner, artfully putting it on the ground, not of a trial of
Mary, but a calling of Murray to account, by Mary, for his
usurpation. At last, harassed and worn down, and finding no ray of
hope coming to her from any quarter, she consented. Elizabeth
constituted such a court, which was to meet at York, a large and
ancient city in the north of England. Murray was to appear there in
person, with other lords associated with him. Mary appointed
commissioners to appear for her; and the two parties went into court,
each thinking that it was the other which was accused and on trial.

The court assembled, and, after being opened with great parade and
ceremony, commenced the investigation of the questions at issue,
which led, of course, to endless criminations and recriminations, the
ground covering the whole history of Mary's career in Scotland. They
went on for some weeks in this hopeless labyrinth, until, at length,
Murray produced the famous letters alleged to have been written by
Mary to Bothwell before Darnley's murder, as a part of the evidence,
and charged Mary, on the strength of this evidence, with having been
an abettor in the murder. Elizabeth, finding that the affair was
becoming, as in fact she wished it to become, more and more involved,
and wishing to get Mary more and more entangled in it, and to draw
her still further into her power, ordered the conference, as the
court wa