XIII. Sir Amias Poulet to Secretary Walsingham. October, 1586

Extract

This paper is evidently the copy of part of a letter written by someone at Fotheringay to someone at the English court, describing an interview with Mary Stuart upon the question as to whether or not she would submit to a trial. It is, perhaps, in the hand of Thomas Wilkes, one of the Clerks of the Privy Council. It has been described as a letter from Lord Burghley to Secretary Davison (Royal Hist. Soc. Trans. 1908, p. 185) but there appears to be no evidence in support of this theory. Burghley certainly conferred with Mary in reference to her trial after his arrival at Fotheringay early in October. There is record of more than one interview which he held with her upon the subject both in the official account of her trial and in the journal of Bourgoing, her physician. But neither of these sources bear testimony to an interview in any such terms as those related in this copy. More probably this is Poulet's account, sent perhaps to Walsingham who was the ordinary recipient of official communications, of an interview held with Mary sometime after she had been informed that she was to be brought to trial. The style resembles Poulat's and the general tone of the letter rather suggests his hand than the hand of a Lord High Treasurer writing to a Secretary, Furthermore, this report harmonizes with other reports which are preserved of interviews between Mary and Poulet in which he urged her to confess her fault and to throw herself upon Elizabeth's mercy (cf. Chantelauze, Procès de Marie Stuart, pp. 484, 494). Bourgoing speaks of such an interview as taking place on the 1st of October (Ibid. p. 494) and perhaps this letter contains Poulet's own account of it.