An Accidental Tragedy (57 page)

Ballard was taken on 4 August to be ‘committed to the Tower and forced by torture to utter that which otherwise he will not disclose’. A detailed list of what he would confess to was drawn up. Savage was arrested on 8 August with one Robert Poley, whose confession ran to twelve pages and implicated someone called Parsons and George Gifford, as well as men in Sir Walter Raleigh’s service. Poley would have confessed to
anything else he could think of and after Babington’s execution, Raleigh was given part of Babington’s estate as a recompense for the libel.

Babington fled to the north of London and was arrested, with his fellow conspirators, hiding in St John’s Wood on 14 August. He was interrogated, but not tortured, and between 18 August and 8 September he confessed in detail to the entire plot, including Mary’s acceptance; ‘I wrote to her touching every particular of this plot unto which she answered.’ Finally he tried to plead innocence and feebly admitted that he thought no one would believe him. ‘He saith also and protests earnestly upon salvation of his soul, that to his remembrance he never moved or dealt with any touching the act against her Majesty’s person, or the invasion of the realm, or the delivery of the Scottish Queen, but with such and in such manner as he hath before declared. Yet he saith that he must needs confess that his letters to the Scottish Queen do import great probability to the contrary.’

Babington may have escaped the terrors of the rack, but his execution on 20 September was horrifying even by Tudor standards. Elizabeth ‘became more cruel as a result of the terror and danger she had gone through’ and asked that the executions be more savage, and therefore more memorable, than usual. They were to take place over two days. Babington and six of his fellow conspirators were executed first, and after being cut down from hanging before death, their torsos were scarified with ‘sinister looking pitch forks’ before their hands and feet were cut off. Then the castration, disembowelling and quartering were carried out. On the second day, Elizabeth ordered that the remaining prisoners should be allowed to die by hanging before dismemberment.

A month previously Walsingham had had to deal with the problem of proving Mary’s guilt, and to this end he needed to have a thorough search of her apartments and papers. He especially wanted to see the drafts or minutes of her letter to Babington, possibly with the intention of destroying them. Mary was unaware of the arrests and the collapse of the plot and was
now in high spirits, her mood improving when Paulet suggested that she and her household attend a stag hunt on 11 August. She was delighted to accept, not knowing that Paulet had received precise orders to ‘with all convenient speed as you may, under the colour of going a hunting and taking the air, remove the Queen your charge to some house near to the place where she remaineth as you shall think meet for her to stay in for a time, until you shall understand our further pleasure for the placing of her’. He was also to arrest Nau and Curle, sending them incommunicado to London.

By coincidence Mary had asked Paulet if she could be allowed to take the air, probably by being carried in a chair, and to her delight Paulet, who knew that she could still ride, suggested the hunting expedition. On the day of the false outing Mary dressed with special care in a long-unused but still-pretty riding habit in the hope that she might meet other gentry. Paulet, who was rheumatic, had fallen back from the main party and Mary was solicitous during the ride, riding back to help him. For the hunt Mary was accompanied by Nau and Curle, Melville, Dominique Bourgoing, her physician, and her page, Bastien, while one of Mary’s grooms, Hannibal Stuart, performed an almost-forgotten task and carried her crossbow and arrows. ‘Open air, the howling of the dogs, the hunting horns made her forget her present plight and undoubtedly recall the distant memories of the great hunts of St Germain and Fontainebleau.’

A few miles from Chartley Mary saw a company of horsemen approaching at speed and, for a moment, she must have thought they would be Babington’s ‘ten men’ riding to her rescue. Paulet, however, was unalarmed at their approach, although Mary could now see that they were armed. Her hopes vanished when their leader, splendidly dressed in green serge, dismounted and approached Mary. He was the fifty-year-old Sir Thomas Gorges, a rising courtier, recently appointed keeper of the Royal Wardrobe and determined that he would be seen to carry out his task with utmost efficiency. He now gave direct orders for the arrest of Nau and Curle, whom Mary never saw again. Gorges, clearly
speaking from precise instruction said, ‘Madam, the queen my mistress finds it very strange that you, contrary to your agreement with her, conspire against her and her estate, something that she never thought to see. She believes that one of your servants is guilty. He will be taken separately and Sir Amyas will tell you the rest.’ Mary called up Nau but was forbidden to speak to him. When she realised that they were not returning to Chartley, she dismounted and, supported by Curle’s sister, Elizabeth, asked where they were going. Paulet showed her Queen Elizabeth’s warrant ‘to remove the said Queen unto some place as shall by you be thought meet’. Mary stumbled away and knelt on a tussock of grass some thirty paces distant and prayed, asking forgiveness for her sins, certain that she was to be executed there and then. The entire party was frozen in disbelief, Gorges’s men nervously handling their weapons, unsure of what was taking place. Mary, certain that her guilt had been discovered, was making her last confession, without a priest. She declared that she was totally worthless and that her only liberty was in the Holy Catholic Church. Finally, Bourgoing, in fear for his own life, went to her and gently lifted her upright. He then supported her back to her horse and she was helped back into her saddle. Bourgoing told Paulet that he was behaving with unnecessary savagery towards an ageing and sick woman, to which Paulet did not reply but merely rode on stone-faced.

They rode to Tixall, a beautiful house belonging to Sir Walter Aston, but Mary enjoyed none of its pleasures, keeping to her room the entire two weeks of her imprisonment there. Paulet did not allow Mary to write to Elizabeth but did permit two ladies to join her, and she was allowed at least one change of clothing, since she was still wearing the pretty riding habit in which she had hoped to enjoy the hunt.

Meanwhile, Chartley was being ransacked with the help of Sir William Waad, and three strongboxes of papers as well as chests and boxes of loose documents were taken, although the crucial minutes were not found. A list of the jewellery that was taken out of the care of Jane Kennedy was drawn up – a list which contrasts
sadly with those composed when Mary was widowed in France – but for a prisoner it was lavish enough. There were diamond and ruby rings as well as votary objects: the story of the Passion of Christ engraved on a gold crucifix as well as on painted panels, and Mary’s much-annotated Book of Hours. There were little gold animals, bears, cows and parrots. More private was the collection of portraits: an ivory portrait of Elizabeth, one of James VI framed in gold, and small framed portraits of the French royal family as well as of Mary’s Guise relatives. There was a double miniature of Mary backed by one of Elizabeth, a little chest garnished with diamonds, rubies and pearls, six little jewels and a chain enamelled in white and red – Mary had owned such a chain when a child in France. The sumptuous treasures of the past were all gone and what remained was a sad summary of Mary’s personal life.

Prospects of her future life came in a letter from Elizabeth to Paulet: ‘God reward thee treblefold in three double for thy most troublesome charge so well discharged. Let your wicked murderess know how with hearty sorrow her vile deserts compelleth these orders; and bid her from me ask God forgiveness for her treacherous dealings towards the saver of her life many a year.’ There was now no pretence that Elizabeth was a sister queen, filled with sympathy for her cousin’s plight. Elizabeth had been terrified by the Babington plot and by what seemed to her to be Mary’s endorsement of her murder. From now on her principal problem would be how to dispose safely of her Scottish cousin without creating a Catholic backlash.

After the search and removal of documents was completed, Mary was returned to Chartley, although not without some dramatics on leaving Tixall. Paulet said, ‘When she left Sir Walter Aston’s gate she said in a loud voice, weeping, to some poor folks there assembled, “I have nothing for you. I am a beggar as well as you. All is taken from me.” And when she came to the gentlemen, she said, weeping, “Good gentlemen, I am not witting or privy to anything intended against the Queen.” ’ She visited Curle’s wife, Barbara Mowbray, who had had a baby
daughter in Mary’s absence, but, with no priest available, it was still unchristened, so Mary took the baby on her knee and named it Mary, baptising the child herself. It was typical of Mary to show what kindness she could to her servants and equally typical of her to miss no opportunity for a public show of histrionics.

Back at Chartley, Mary, now realising that a legal case against her was being drawn up, confined herself to bed, but even there she was not secure from the attentions of Paulet, who questioned her closely over the identities of the ‘six men’. Paulet, realising that Mary’s resistance was at a low level, tried hard to get his ailing prisoner to confess to her participation in the plot, but she denied all knowledge of Babington’s plans. She only faintly remembered him when he had been Shrewsbury’s ward; ‘I have often received letters offering help but have never involved myself in their schemes.’ Paulet also wanted access to a cupboard in her bedroom containing Mary’s remaining money. The cupboard was locked so Paulet sent for crowbars and axes. Mary, still in her nightclothes and in bed, sent Elizabeth Curle for the key, and ‘without slippers or shoes’, under the watchful eyes of armed guards, she unlocked the cupboard for Paulet. It contained five rolls of canvas wrapping over 5,000 French crowns and two leather bags, one with £104 in gold the other with £3 in silver. Mary said the money was to pay for her funeral and to pay her servants after her death. The money was all sent to London with Sir William Waad, along with Mary’s private seals. Paulet made a marginal note, ‘This lady hath good store of money at present in the French Ambassador’s hands.’

Meanwhile Nau and Curle were being interrogated about the content of Mary’s letter to Babington. Curle read Babington’s letter and testified, ‘I do confess to have deciphered the like of the whole above written, coming written in one sheet of paper, as from Mr Babington. And the answer thereto, being written in French by Mr Nau, to have been translated in English and ciphered by me.’ To which Walsingham replied, ‘I would to God, these minutes were found.’

The interrogation of the two secretaries continued as they
were shown the very letters they had sent to Babington. Nau then claimed that he had taken direct dictation from Mary and Curle admitted that he had burnt the English copy. It was the familiar story of servants who had loyally followed orders now trying to save their own skins by placing the blame on Mary. Nau returned to France shortly afterwards, and Curle, since he was an Englishman, was imprisoned for a year.

In London, Walsingham was now in the position of having to bring Mary to a trial, even without the ‘minutes’, and he told Elizabeth that the documents no longer existed. Chartley would not serve as a location for Mary’s trial, and Walsingham first suggested the Tower, only to be overruled by Elizabeth, who was displaying a sharply divided purpose. She would not allow the imprisonment of a sister queen in the Tower, but insisted that Mary be separated from her servants and that her money be seized. She also rejected Hertford, Grafton, Woodstock, Northampton, Coventry and Huntingdon as locations for the trial before finally accepting Fotheringhay Castle, near Peterborough. Elizabeth was bitterly afraid of Mary as a focus for revolt but was equally determined that she should be treated with some kind of formal respect. Burghley pointed out that, since Mary had signed articles of abdication in Lochleven Castle, she was no longer a queen regnant, but this did not sway Elizabeth’s opinion. Walsingham was angry with Elizabeth, fearing that her treatment of the invalid Mary might accelerate her death – she was already known to be very ill and moving her again might prove the last straw – and let her escape the public trial he had in mind. More directly, Leicester wrote to Walsingham suggesting that Mary be quietly poisoned – and, in case Walsingham had any religious scruples against murder, recommending an Anglican priest who was willing to justify such an act from Scripture. The suggestion was rejected. Some members of parliament felt that, given the reported state of Mary’s health, all these machinations were a waste of time, since the woman would die soon in any case.

On 5 September 1586, Elizabeth established a special tribunal to hear the case against Mary, its findings to be examined in the
court of the Star Chamber and then ratified by parliament. To ensure a rapid conclusion, Burghley recalled parliament, saying, ‘Thus the responsibility is spread and everybody is content.’

Mary realised that another, possibly final, move was about to take place and asked permission to pay off her servants, but Paulet, unreasonably, forbade this. In any case, Mary’s money was now in London. She gave her servants receipts and told them to apply to the French embassy for back pay or for passage to France. On the day of departure Paulet locked the nineteen servants who were not going to Fotheringhay in their rooms and put guards outside their windows. Walsingham had chosen his gaoler well.

Mary was now too ill to ride and was led by heavily armed men into a coach which was escorted by 200 cavalry under Sir Thomas Gorges, himself carrying a pistol in his belt. During the journey – Mary was not told of the destination – she sat as upright in the coach as she could, watching the armed escort and questioning Roger Sharp, her coachman. ‘The unfortunate princess feared that her throat would be cut.’ She was not afraid of death, but did fear dying without a public confession and having her murder concealed as suicide.