In spite, however, of the vehemence of those "Messieurs les Chicaneux," as Bourgoing terms them, Mary preserved her calmness; and the hotter they grew, the more courageous and constant was she in her replies. She now recapitulated much of what she had before said to the Commissioners in her own room, in order that the assembly might know her sentiments; and after pointing out the injustice of her long imprisonment, she thus continues: "I have, as you see, lost my health and the use of my limbs. I cannot walk without assistance, nor use my arms, and I spend most of my time confined to bed by sickness. Not only this, but through my trials I have lost the small intellectual gifts bestowed on me by God, such as my memory, which would have aided me to recall those things which I have seen and read, and which might be useful to me in the cruel position in which I now find myself. Also the knowledge of matters of business which I formerly had acquired for the discharge of those duties in the state to which God called me, and of which I have been treacherously despoiled. Not content with this, my enemies now endeavour to complete my ruin, using against me means which are unheard of towards persons of my rank, and unknown in this kingdom before the reign of the present Queen, and even now not approved by rightful judges, but only by unlawful authority. Against these I appeal to Almighty God, to all Christian princes, and to the estates of this kingdom duly and lawfully assembled. Being innocent and falsely suspected, I am ready to maintain and defend my honour, provided that my defence be publicly recorded, and that I make it in the presence of some princes or foreign judges, or even before my natural judges; and this without prejudice to my mother the Church, to kings, sovereign princes, and to my son. With regard to the pretensions long put forward by the English (as their Chronicles testify) to suzerainty over my predecessors the Kings of Scotland, I utterly deny and protest against them, and I will not, like a _femme de peu de coeur_, admit them, nor by any present act, to which I may be constrained, will I fortify such a claim, whereby I should dishonour those princes my ancestors as well as myself, and acknowledge them to have been traitors or rebels. Rather than do this, I am ready to die for God and my rights in this quarrel, in which, as in all others, I am innocent.