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.