Elizabeth's Spymaster (19 page)

I am advised from England by four men of position who have the entry into the queen’s house, that they have discussed for at least three months the intention of killing her. They have at last agreed and the four have mutually sworn to do it.

They will, on the first opportunity, advise me when it is to be done and whether by poison or steel, in order that I may send the intelligence to your majesty, supplicating you to be pleased to help them after the business is effected.
³⁴

Maude and Ballard returned to England on 22 May. The priest immediately looked up Babington in his lodgings in London at Herne’s Rents in Holborn. He told him that a grand conspiracy against Elizabeth was now in play, supported by Pope Sixtus V, and that the king of Spain and an army of 60,000 foreign troops, possibly led by the Duke of Guise, would be invading England. Mendoza had sworn, said Ballard, that September would not pass without a powerful landing on the English coast.

Unbeknown to Babington, this stunning news bore no resemblance whatsoever to the priest’s conversations in Paris, but had been fermented in Ballard’s fevered fanatic’s mind. Babington promised to discuss the plan with his immediate friends – Thomas Salisbury of Denbighshire, Chidiock Tichbourne of Portchester, Hampshire, and Robert Barnwell of London, thus sucking them into the spiral of conspiracy. They too were seduced by the excitement and religious righteousness of the cause, and by early June, after a number of meetings in Babington’s rooms, the number of conspirators had increased to thirteen. Ballard meanwhile had travelled north to gauge the level of support amongst the Catholic gentry for an uprising. The spy Bernard Maude rode with him, thereby enabling Walsingham to monitor his movements and receive intelligence on how rampant the disease of sedition had become in England’s body politic.

On 6 July 1586, Babington wrote to Mary Queen of Scots, talking of

this great and honourable action, upon the issue of which depend not only the life of your most excellent majesty … and the lives of all us actors herein, but also the honour and wealth of our country … and the last hope ever to recover the faith of our forefathers and to redeem ourselves from the servitude and bondage which has [been] imposed upon us with the loss of thousands of souls.

Six separate actions or factors needed to be implemented or assured, he told her. First, an invasion of England was necessary, and second, this had to be in sufficient strength to guarantee a military victory. Third, the ports where the invading forces would come ashore or be resupplied should be chosen. Fourth, there must be ‘a strong party at every place to join with them and warrant [guarantee] their [successful] landing’. Fifth, Mary herself had to be freed from her imprisonment. And last, Elizabeth had to be finally dispatched into oblivion and eternal damnation.

Babington would recommend those ‘fittest in my knowledge to be your lieutenants in the West, in the north, South Wales, North Wales and the counties of Lancaster, Derby and Stafford’. He would lead Mary’s rescue party himself: ‘Myself, with ten gentlemen and a hundred of our followers, will undertake the delivery of your royal person from the hands of your enemies.’

And what of Elizabeth?

For the dispatch of the usurper, from the obedience of whom we are by excommunication made free,
³⁵
there be six gentlemen, all my private friends, who for the zeal they bear to the Catholic cause and your majesty’s service, will undertake that tragic execution [sic].

He was also seeking ample reward for the assassins:

It rests that according to their infinite good deserts and your majesty’s bounty, their heroic attempt may be honourably rewarded … if they escape with [their lives] or in their posterity and so much I may be able by your majesty’s authority to assure them.

In a postscript addressed to Claude Nau, one of Mary’s private secretaries, Babington made enquiries about a Robert Pooley ‘whom I find
to have intelligence with her majesty [on] occasions. I am private with the man and by means thereof know somewhat but suspect more. I pray you deliver your opinion of him’.
³⁶
Poor gullible, innocent Babington! Pooley was another of Walsingham’s double agents – indeed, he was a member of the household of his daughter Frances, who had married the soldier-poet Sir Philip Sidney in September 1583. Morgan had earlier told the Scottish queen on 11 March that on his advice, Pooley was ‘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’. His words have a triumphant tone, as he clearly believed he had scored a victory over the spy master.
³⁷

Babington’s damning letter was handed over to an ‘unknown boy’ who delivered it to Phelippes at his home in Leadenhall Market. It was quickly decoded and given to Walsingham, who, sensing that the defining moment was imminent, ordered Phelippes to take it himself to Chartley, where he was to watch for Mary’s reply. Phelippes left London at nine o’ clock on the evening of 7 July and would have arrived at his destination sooner ‘but for the extreme carelessness of constables and contempt of some of them, wherein,’ Phelippes crossly told Walsingham, ‘your honour needs [to] take order upon special services [such] as this.’
³⁸

The decipherer eventually arrived at Chartley on 9 July, the day before the Burton brewer was due to make his weekly beer delivery to the household. Babington’s letter was secreted and duly retrieved.

Mary’s secretaries Gilbert Curie and Claude Nau deciphered Babington’s letter and handed it to the Scottish queen. Nau, apprehensive and suspicious, strongly advised her to leave the missive unanswered.
³⁹
Mary, the chance of freedom and accession to the English throne tantalisingly held up before her, was less wary. Her immediate concern was where to hide the letter in a household so closely monitored by her enemies; perhaps she hid it about her person. The next day, 11 July, she decided to accept the situation and talked further with her secretaries. After several drafts, a letter was eventually written in French and translated into English by Curie before being enciphered and sent off on 18 July.

Phelippes wrote to his master in London on 14 July, reporting that
he and Paulet attended Mary’s ‘very heart. She begins to recover health and strength and did ride abroad in her coach yesterday.’ In a chillingly sinister aside, he described how he had seen her as she left the manor house and ‘had a smiling countenance. But I thought of the verse:
Cum tibi dicit Ave, sicut ab hoste cave’
⁴⁰
–
‘when he greets you, beware him as if he were an enemy’.

Her reply to Babington was dated 17 July and takes up six and half pages.
⁴¹
Its dramatic contents were finally to seal her fate and as such became a matter of controversy then and for historians in the centuries to follow. Mary certainly encouraged the conspirators:

I cannot but greatly praise and commend your desire to prevent in time the designs of our enemies for the extirpation of our religion from this realm, with the ruin of us all.

I have long ago shown to the foreign Catholic princes, and experience proves it, that the longer we delay to put in hand the matter on this side, the greater leisure have our enemies to prevail over the said princes … In the meantime, the Catholics here, exposed to all sorts of persecution and cruelty, daily diminish in number, force, means and power, so if remedy is not hastily provided, I fear they will become altogether unable to rise again and to receive any aid at all, whenever it were offered …

Mary astonishingly then goes on to deny that she had ‘any particular interest in this cause’ – other than for ‘the public good of this state’. Swiftly laying aside such diffidence, she then moves on to the mechanics of the plot to overthrow Elizabeth. The words demonstrate just what a seasoned campaigner she had become in the ways of intrigue and conspiracy:

Now to ground the enterprise substantially and to bring it to good success, you must examine deeply:

1. What forces on foot and horse may be raised amongst you all and what captains you will appoint for them in every shire in case a general in chief cannot be had.
   

2. Of what towns, ports and havens you may assure ourselves in the north, west and south, to receive succour from the Low Countries, Spain and France.
   

3. What place you think fittest and of great advantage to assemble the principal company of your forces and the same being assembled, whether or which way you are to march.
   

4. What foreign forces on horse and foot you require from the said foreign princes – which would be compassed according to the proportion of yours – for how long paid; what munitions and ports fittest for their landing in this realm from the three aforesaid foreign countries.
   

5. What provision of armour and money (in case you want [lack]), you would ask [for].
   

6. By what means do the six gentlemen deliberate [plan] to proceed.
   

7. Also, the manner of my getting from this [strong]hold.
   

She also gave Babington some advice:

You should impart the same with all diligence to Bernardino de Mendoza, ambassador lieger [resident] for the King of Spain in France, who besides the experience he has of the estate of this side [England], I may assure you will employ him therein most willingly. I shall not fail to write to him of the matter with all the earnest recommendations I can. You must make choice for managing this affair with the said Mendoza and others out of the realm of some faithful and very secret personage unto whom only you must commit yourselves …

Mary then moved on to the date for putting the
coup d’état
into action:

The affairs being thus prepared and forces in readiness without and within the realm, then shall it be time to set the six gentlemen to work … [and] I may be suddenly transported out of this place and that all your forces [at] the same time be on the field to meet me in tarrying for the arrival of the foreign aid, which must then be hastened with all diligence.

The raid on Chartley to release her was, of course, uppermost in her mind, and she urged that those charged with assassinating Elizabeth should have ‘always about them, or at least at court, four stout men furnished with good and speedy horses’, and as soon as the deed was done, these

should come with all diligence to advertise those that shall be appointed for my transporting … immediately they may be at the place of my abode, before my keeper can have advice of the execution … or at the least before he can fortify himself within the house or carry me out of the same.

Perhaps with the terms of the Bond of Association still ringing in her ears, the Scottish queen was also concerned about her security after her rescue. She wanted to be guarded

in the midst of a good army, or in some very good strength, where I may safely stay on the assembly of your forces and arrival of the said foreign succours, it were sufficient cause given to that queen in catching me again to enclose me for ever in some hole, [from] which I should never escape …

Mary, all too aware of Walsingham’s network of informers and agents, emphasised the dangers of spies

and false brethren that are amongst you, especially of some priests, already practiced [subverted] by our enemies, for your discovery … In any way, keep never any paper about you that in any sort may do harm; for from like errors have come the only condemnation of all such as have suffered heretofore, against whom there otherwise have been nothing proved.

The fates of Throgmorton and Norfolk must have haunted her as she dictated these words.

At the end of her letter she returned to the issue of her rescue and suggested three alternative plans:

The first that at one certain day appointed in my walking abroad on horseback on the moors betwixt this [house] and Stafford, where ordinarily, you know, very few people do pass, fifty or three score men well horsed and armed, come to take me there, as they may easily, my keeper having with him … but eighteen or twenty horsemen, [armed] only with daggs [pistols].

The second means is to come at midnight or soon after to set fire in the barn and stables, which you know are near to the house, and whilst my guardian [and] his servants shall run forth to the fire, your company (having every one a mark whereby they may know one another under night) might surprise the house, where I hope, with the few servants I have about me, I were able to give you some correspondence [signal].

And the third, some that bring carts hither … early in the morning, their carts might be so prepared and with such cart leaders that being just in the midst of the great gate, the carts might fall down or overthrow [their loads] and that thereupon, you might come suddenly with your followers to make yourself master of the house and carry me away. So you might do easily, before that ever any number of soldiers (who lodge in sundry places [outside] of this place, some half and some a whole mile off) might come to the relief.

Whatever issue the matter takes, I do and will think myself obliged, as long as I live, towards you for the offers you make to hazard yourself as you do for my delivery, and by any means that ever I may have, I shall do my endeavour to recognise by effects your desserts herein.

I have commanded a more ample alphabet [cipher] to be made for you, which herewith you will receive.

Mary ends her letter, the product of a mind constantly immured in conspiracy, with the solemn instruction: Tail not to burn this privately and quickly.’