Heretic Queen (38 page)

This first packet contained letters to Morgan and James Beaton in Paris, a letter to Henry of Guise, and one to Châteauneuf. All that was to be learned from this first group of letters was Mary's elation at being able to communicate with them once more. In her instructions on how to reply, Mary told Châteauneuf to send all packets that had been held for her at the embassy via Gifford. At last Walsingham knew that the plan had worked. All he needed now was to ensure that the chain of control wasn't breached.

They didn't have long to wait. In the twenty-one packets sent through to Mary were all the letters written since the discovery of the Throckmorton Plot. Morgan, Charles Paget, a noble exiled Catholic, and James Beaton all wrote from Paris. Sir Francis Englefield and Robert Persons wrote to her from Spain. From the Low Countries two other correspondents wrote of developments there—albeit a year out of date. The vindication Walsingham must have felt at being able to read at one sitting
all
the foreign correspondence relating to the Throckmorton Plot should have been tremendous.

How Mary had pinned her hopes and prayers on the empty promises of Henry of Guise for years, how she had turned to Philip of Spain, and how Philip with Parma had planned her escape, as well as how all these schemes had failed, were laid before Walsingham. He could see with absolute clarity where the chinks in Mary's armor were: whom she trusted and how she thought over the previous two years. Among this treasure trove, two of the letters demonstrated beyond any doubt that Mary had full knowledge of the Throckmorton Plot encompassing the Guise and Spanish invasion plan and she approved of it. Based on those two letters alone, Walsingham could have presented an open-and-shut case against Mary for treason based on the Oath of Association. Still, Walsingham wanted more.

To protect the secret nature of the organization against Mary, Walsingham told Paulet to give a pay raise to the “honest brewer” when he demanded it. Walsingham also had other plans for Gifford back in Paris. Before his man went on to pastures new, Gifford wrote to Mary to commend his “cousin,” who was a man, apparently, “of honest credit, good wealth, good understanding and a servant of the earl of Leicester.” It was Gifford's substitute who would hand over the return correspondence from the French embassy to Mary in dribs and drabs, in part to allow time for the complete deciphering of the letters, in part because they were too numerous to fit into the casket within the cask.
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*   *   *

It is at
this point
that an entirely separate conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth, coupled with a romantic ideal to free Mary and put her on England's throne, merges. A priest named John Ballard had been part of a plot in 1584 to murder Elizabeth along with his friend and fellow priest, Anthony Tyrrell. The pair later claimed that they had gone to Rome to seek Gregory XIII's blessing. Gregory may have been favorable to Ballard's request (so long as it didn't interfere with his own plans), but the Jesuit rector of the English College in Rome, Alfonso Agazzari, was not. This should not have come as any surprise. The Jesuits, he said, had been clear from the outset that they had no wish to become embroiled in England's politics.

On their way back from Rome, in the spring of 1586, Ballard and Tyrrell stopped in Paris. There they met Charles Paget, Mary's long-standing servant. Ballard, reportedly an unstable man, bragged to Paget that he knew all the leading Catholics in England and Scotland and that he had been sent to the Continent to declare their readiness to take up arms against Elizabeth. When Ballard later repeated his story to the Spanish ambassador Mendoza, he added that the time was ripe to invade, as England's finest soldiers were engaged in the Low Countries with Leicester. So far, Ballard had said nothing that Mendoza hadn't already known. He was thanked for his attention and sent on his way.

Before Ballard and Tyrrell left Paris, Charles Paget told them they must visit Anthony Babington in London. En route, and certainly not suspecting to unite their plot to Babington's, the pair met with an ex-soldier in Parma's army, John Savage. Together with Gilbert Gifford's cousin William Gifford, Savage had planned to murder Elizabeth as well.
8
Unknown to all of them, Walsingham was following their every move.

*   *   *

Anthony Babington, after
whom the notorious Babington Plot is named, became an admirer of Mary Queen of Scots when he was a boy, most likely when he had served as a page to the Earl of Shrewsbury. Like many other young Catholics, he saw Mary in the romantic guise of the spirit of the Counter-Reformation and Elizabeth as England's “she-tyrant.” In his letters to Mary, his flowery language revealed how she could fulfill his Catholic vision for England. Originally from Derbyshire, the twenty-five-year-old was typical of well-to-do Midlands Catholic youths, like Charles Paget, who prayed for a change in their religious fortunes.

Ballard met Anthony Babington at his lodgings in London late in May 1586 but seemingly had known him for at least two years before that. Ballard, true to form and full of braggadocio, gave Babington an overblown account of the preparations under way and the great Catholic League that was at hand against Elizabeth.

To an intelligent and sensitive young man like Babington, this was not the good news that Ballard had believed it to be. On June 7, 1586, Babington met with his close circle of friends: Sir Thomas Salusbury, a ward of the Earl of Leicester and heir to Lleweni in Denbighshire in Wales; Edward Abington of Worcestershire, Elizabeth's cofferer; Chidiock Titchborne from Southampton, a known Catholic; and Charles Tilney, cousin of Edmund Tilney, Master of the Queen's Revels and censor of all plays. When Babington told his friends what Ballard had said, he lamented, “We seemed to stand in a dilemma … On the one side lest by a massacre … the magistrates here would take away our lives … and on the other side lest the stranger should invade and sack our country, and bring it into servitude to foreigners.”
9
The only course open to them, Babington felt, was to flee England.

As a result, Anthony Babington applied to an acquaintance of his, Robert Poley, who was, of course, in Walsingham's pay. Poley and Nicholas Skerres had just returned from their spying mission on Frederick II of Denmark, along with some of Leicester's company of actors, Leicester's Men.
10
Babington was not to know about Poley's double life, since he had also fooled Thomas Morgan. On March 11, Morgan wrote to Mary that they should, in fact, use Poley to their own advantage as it was known that he “is placed with the Lady Sidney, the daughter of Secretary Walsingham, and by that means ordinarily in his house and thereby able to pick out many things to the information of your Majesty.”
11

It was then that the Babington plotters thought better of fleeing. What if they freed Mary and placed her on the throne without the foreign intervention of Spain? Meanwhile, Babington himself had been recommended to Mary through two distinct channels: Morgan in Paris and her former emissary Fontenay, who was her secretary Nau's brother-in-law. This seemingly made Babington trustworthy. Fontenay wrote that Babington had a dispatch for her from Scotland. So Mary wrote to Babington on June 25 to convey the letters through her trusted messenger. Babington's indiscreet reply began “I write unto her touching every particular of this plot” and continued by revealing the entire plan of rescuing her and “despatching the usurping competitor” by six of his closest friends to place Mary on her English throne at long last.
12
Walsingham noted down every detail before forwarding the letter on to Mary, who received it on July 14, 1586. Though the Scottish queen didn't know it, she was at a crucial crossroads. If she had written disapprovingly to Babington or, better still, informed her jailer, who knows how the outcome could have changed? The fact remains, she did neither.

Mary replied on July 17. It was a lengthy letter that left no doubt regarding her attitude. Mary wholeheartedly approved of Babington's scheme. Throughout her reply Mary stresses the practical considerations of what must be done. The conspirators must have horsemen at the ready to advise her when Elizabeth was dead. She let Babington know in no uncertain terms, too, that failure could only bring the most dire consequences for them all. To rescue her, Babington would need “a good army, or in some very good strength”; otherwise, she would remain Paulet's prisoner. She wrote to Sir Francis Englefield that same day that she “fear[ed] they may ruin themselves in vain,” meaning that she would never be successfully rescued.
13
After the letter was decrypted, Thomas Phelippes drew a gallows on the outside of it before handing it across to Walsingham.

This was still not enough for Walsingham. He penned a forged postscript, also in Mary's cipher, to ask for the names of the six gentlemen who would rid her of Elizabeth:

I would be glad to know the names and qualities of the six gentlemen which are to accomplish the designment; for that it may be I shall be able, upon knowledge of the parties, to give you some further advice necessary to be followed therein … As also … particularly how you proceed: and as soon as you may, for the same purpose, who be already, and how far everyone, privy hereunto.
14

Twelve days before her reply to Babington, Mary heard that a full treaty between James and Elizabeth had been signed at Berwick, excluding Mary's interests entirely. All Mary wanted to do now was escape her captivity. On Tuesday, July 19, “the gallows letter” was in Walsingham's hands. Gilbert Gifford fled to the Continent the following day to avoid the fallout from the impending arrests. By July 29, Babington had received the gallows letter and deciphered it with Tichborne. By August 4, Ballard was in custody, with Babington fleeing north to St. John's Wood. Ten days later, Babington, too, was captured and brought through jeering crowds to the Tower of London. By the end of August, they had all confessed.

*   *   *

Mary remained at Chartley,
ever hopeful of her release, ever ignorant of events. On August 11, Paulet suggested that Mary join him for a buck hunt. Mary was unused to any kindnesses from Paulet and took particular care over her toilette under the assumption that they would be meeting the local gentry. As they rode out, a group of horsemen thundered toward them. Could this be Babington's men come to rescue her? If Mary had thought this, she was mistaken. The lead horseman, Sir Thomas Gorges, wearing the queen's colors, dismounted and approached Mary. “Madame, the queen my mistress finds it very strange that you,” Gorges warned Mary loudly, “should have conspired against her and her state, a thing which she could not have believed had she not seen proofs of it with her own eyes and known it for certain.”
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Mary's servants were immediately dragged from her side for their implied guilt in the plot. A bemused Mary was taken with her physician to Tixall, still dressed in her fine riding clothes, utterly abandoned. She hadn't worn her usual gold cross so that she could kneel in prayer as was her custom. Mary would stay at Tixall for a fortnight while Paulet searched every inch of her apartments and household at Chartley. The inventory of Mary's possessions shows a queen who had had to sell all her jewels of great value, with her greatest possessions being miniatures of her son, James, and Elizabeth.

*   *   *

When Mary was taken
away on September 21, 1586, at gunpoint, her servants were locked in their rooms, their windows guarded so they could not witness a martyr's departure for posterity. Mary was taken to Fotheringay Castle in Northamptonshire to stand trial.

Forty-two commissioners were appointed to take part, with thirty-six arriving at Fotheringay by early October. The trial took place on October 14 and 15. The case against Mary was based upon the testimony of Mary's secretaries and her own correspondence. Her July letter to Babington—the gallows letter—was the most important document to be produced. Mary objected, claiming that the gallows letter was a forgery, just as the ciphers and sequence of events were fictitious. She added that this was all Walsingham's work, as he had always sought her death.

Walsingham sprang to his feet: “I call God to witness … that as a private person I have done nothing unbeseeming an honest man, nor as I bear the place of a public man, have I done anything unworthy of my place.”
16
The Tudor concept of the public and private person lived on in Elizabeth's servants. Walsingham's ambiguous phrasing leads us to conclude that he did what he had to for the state, no matter how personally distasteful.

Though the verdict and sentence were intended to be immediate, Elizabeth hesitated. In the small hours of the morning of October 13, she summoned Davison to her, demanding he write to the commissioners to deliberate and adjourn the commission until such time as she could personally review the results, prior to pronouncing sentence. Elizabeth knew a guilty verdict was a foregone conclusion. Ten days after the trial was ended, the commissioners reassembled in the Star Chamber at Westminster. “Considering the plainness and evidence of the proofs,” Walsingham wrote that day, “… everyone [
sic
] of them after this gave their sentence against her, finding her not only accessory and privy to the conspiracy but also an imaginer and compasser of her Majesty's destruction.”
17

All that remained was for Elizabeth to sign Mary's death warrant, something that all Elizabeth's ministers believed would be difficult to obtain. For a month, they cajoled and devoted themselves to the task, but to no avail. All the confessed plotters had been executed as traitors. Parliament presented the queen with a petition on November 12, “for the speedy execution of Mary, late Queen of Scots, according to the just sentence which had been pronounced against her.” Elizabeth delivered her famous reply: