The other councillors stared, but remained silent.

It was no pleasant task to accuse the Queen's kinsman in the Queen's presence.

Mary had scarcely ever opened her lips at Council; but now, being possessed of clear proofs of her uncle's treason in his own handwriting, and knowing that respect for her prevented her advisers from proposing what the public safety required, she broke silence.

"Sir Henry," she said, "I know, and every body here knows as well as I, that there is too much against my Lord Clarendon to leave him out." The warrant was drawn up; and Capel signed it with the rest.

"I am more sorry for Lord Clarendon," Mary wrote to her husband, "than, may be, will be believed." That evening Clarendon and several other noted Jacobites were lodged in the Tower, [667] When the Privy Council had risen, the Queen and the interior Council of Nine had to consider a question of the gravest importance.