Note 121 — II.—The Influence of Parliament
Reading edition
The same Parliament asked the council to bring forward its evidence against Mary. If we knew all that lay behind this motion, we should probably possess a key to the problems on which so much ingenuity has been exercised. The statement, frequently quoted, that the Estates passed a solemn resolution affirming their power to depose the sovereign rests solely on the authority of Buchanan, and is directly antagonistic to the language both of the Acts and of the Scottish commissioners' protestations at York and Westminster, in which Mary is represented as abdicating of her own free will.