friends of the Council most likely made him their scapegoat, for he was immediately arrested and committed to the Tower. But the ministers themselves did not escape their share of the storm. For four days the matter was before the Council, and they received the severest and most unmeasured upbraidings from their Royal mistress the burden being naturally thrown on poor Davison. The Earl of Buckhurst, however, behaved most honourably on the occasion. He presented a memorial to the queen, in which he dared to maintain that Davison had only done his unavoidable duty, and that to punish him would do to give rise to the assertion that the Queen of Scots had been executed without due warrant, and therefore had been actually murdered. The warrant being actually in existence, and shown openly and read to the Queen of Scots, the story of the delivering of it by the secretary without authority would not be believed.
Sir Francis Drake. From the original Portrait.
But Elizabeth had made up her mind, and the lameness and improbability of her story had no effect in restraining her from the publication of false statements and punishment of the innocent, to screen, if possible, her own guilty name. She sent for Roger, the Groom of the Chamber to the King of France, and bade him assure his sovereign of her profound grief for this sad accident, of her ignorance of the dispatch of the warrant, and of her determination to punish the presumption of her ministers. She kept up the farce for some time, disgracing her ministers, and so rating them, that they were glad to keep, out of her way. But she summoned them into the Star Chamber to answer for their offence, on which they made, their humble apologies, and one by one were gradually restored to their offices. Not so the unfortunate Davison. She had discovered that he was of too honest and unbending material for her Court and service. He would never
