John said:  “I received from Queen Mary’s friends in Scotland letters asking me to meet her on the border, and requesting me to conduct her to my father’s castle.  Those letters mentioned no Englishman but myself, and they stated that Queen Mary’s flight to England was to be undertaken with the tacit consent of our gracious queen.  That fact, the letters told me, our queen wished should not be known.  There were reasons of state, the letters said, which made it impolitic for our queen openly to invite Queen Mary to seek sanctuary in England.  I received those letters before I left Westminster.  Upon the day when I received them, I heard our gracious queen say that she would gladly invite Queen Mary to England, were it not for the fact that such an invitation would cause trouble between her and the regent, Murray.  Her Majesty at the same time intimated that she would be glad if Mary Stuart should come to England uninvited.”  John turned to Elizabeth, “I beg your Majesty, in justice, to ratify my words.”  Elizabeth hesitated for a moment after John’s appeal; but her love of justice came to her rescue and she hung her head as she said, “You are right, Sir John.”  Then she looked her counsellors in the face and said, “I well remember that I so expressed myself.”

“In truth,” said John, “I having only an hour before received the letter from Scotland, believed that your Majesty’s words were meant for my ear.  I felt that your Majesty knew of the letters, and I thought that I should be carrying out your royal wishes should I bring Queen Mary into England without your knowledge.”

The queen responded:  “I then felt that I wished Queen Mary to seek refuge in my kingdom, but so many untoward events have transpired since I spoke on the subject at Westminster that I have good cause to change my mind, though I easily understand how you might have been misled by my words.”

“I am sure,” replied John, “that your Majesty has had good cause to change your mind; but I protest in all sincerity that I considered the Scottish letters to be a command from my queen.”

Elizabeth was a strange combination of paradoxes.  No one could be truer than she to a fixed determination once taken.  No one could be swayed by doubt so easily as she to change her mind sixty times in the space of a minute.  During one moment she was minded to liberate John and Lord Rutland; in the next she determined to hold them in prison, hoping to learn from them some substantial fact concerning the plot which, since Mary’s arrival in England, had become a nightmare to her.  But, with all her vagaries the Virgin Queen surely loved justice.  That quality, alone, makes a sovereign great.  Elizabeth, like her mother, Anne Boleyn, had great faith in her personal beauty; like her father, she had unbounded confidence in her powers of mind.  She took great pride in the ease with which she controlled persons.  She believed that no one was so adroit as Elizabeth Tudor in extracting secrets from others, and in unravelling mysterious situations, nor so cunning in hunting out plots and in running down plotters.  In all such matters she delighted to act secretly and alone.