“Ay, Mistress Cicely,” said Dr. Bourgoin from behind, “but the young gentleman has his fortune to make, and knows better than to look on the seamy side of Court favour.”

“Ah! see those scarlet robes,” here exclaimed Cis.  “Are they the judges, Humfrey?”

“Ay, the two Chief-Justices and the Chief Baron of the Exchequer.  There they sit in front of the Earls, and three more judges in front of the Barons.”

“And there are more red robes at that little table in front, besides the black ones.”

“Those are Doctors of Law, and those in black with coifs are the Attorney and Solicitor General.  The rest are clerks and writers and the like.”

“It is a mighty and fearful array,” said Cicely with a long breath.

“A mighty comedy wherewith to mock at justice,” said Jean.

“Prudence, madam, and caution,” suggested Dr. Bourgoin.  “And hush!”

A crier here shouted aloud, “Oyez, oyez, oyez!  Mary, Queen of Scotland and Dowager of France, come into the Court!”

Then from a door in the centre, leaning on Sir Andrew Melville’s arm, came forward the Queen, in a black velvet dress, her long transparent veil hanging over it from her cap, and followed by the two Maries, one carrying a crimson velvet folding-chair, and the other a footstool.  She turned at first towards the throne, but she was motioned aside, and made to perceive that her place was not there.  She drew her slender figure up with offended dignity.  “I am a queen,” she said; “I married a king of France, and my seat ought to be there.”

However, with this protest she passed on to her appointed place, looking sadly round at the assembled judges and lawyers.

“Alas!” she said, “so many counsellors, and not one for me.”

Were there any Englishmen there besides Richard Talbot and his son who felt the pathos of this appeal?  One defenceless woman against an array of the legal force of the whole kingdom.  It may be feared that the feelings of most were as if they had at last secured some wild, noxious, and incomprehensible animal in their net, on whose struggles they looked with the unpitying eye of the hunter.

The Lord Chancellor began by declaring that the Queen of England convened the Court as a duty in one who might not bear the sword in vain, to examine into the practices against her own life, giving the Queen of Scots the opportunity of clearing herself.

At the desire of Burghley, the commission was read by the Clerk of the Court, and Mary then made her public protest against its legality, or power over her.

It was a wonderful thing, as those spectators in the gallery felt, to see how brave and how acute was the defence of that solitary lady, seated there with all those learned men against her; her papers gone, nothing left to her but her brain and her tongue.  No loss of dignity nor of gentleness was shown in her replies; they were always simple and direct.  The difficulty for her was all the greater that she had not been allowed to know the form of the accusation, before it was hurled against her in full force by Mr. Serjeant Gawdy, who detailed the whole of the conspiracy of Ballard and Babington in all its branches, and declared her to have known and approved of it, and to have suggested the manner of executing it.