John Ballard

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John Ballard (d. 20 September 1586), was an English Jesuit priest who was famed for being involved in an attempt to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I of England.

Ballard was educated at Caius College, Cambridge and at the English College at Rheims. After completing his training as a Jesuit priest he returned to England as a missionary Catholic and as such had a price on his head. In order to conceal his true identity he played the part of a swashbuckling, courtly soldier called Captain Fortescue and was once described as wearing 'a fine cape laced with gold, a cut satin doublet and silver buttons on his hat'. Being a tall, dark-complexioned man, he was referred to by those who were unaware of his true identity as 'Black Foskew'.

In the Babington Plot, Ballard instigated Anthony Babington, Chidiock Tichborne and others to assassinate the Queen as a prelude to a full blown invasion of England by Spanish led Catholic forces. However, the plot had been known about and nurtured by Queen Elizabeth's spymaster Francis Walsingham from the start. Indeed, Ballard's inseparable companion and fixer Barnard Maude who travelled everywhere with him was actually a government spy.

The plot was cynically manipulated by Walsingham in order to bring about his primary objective of the destruction of Mary Queen of Scots and when Mary rather foolishly gave her consent to the assassination plot by replying to a letter sent to her by Babington her days were numbered.

With this vital piece of evidence in his possession Walsingham had Ballard and the other conspirators arrested and after being tried at Westminster Hall they were all executed in two batches on the 20th and 21st September 1586. Ballard was executed on the first day along with the other main conspirators and the manner of their deaths was so bloody and horrific that it deeply shocked those who were present at the spectacle. When Elizabeth was told of the appalling suffering which the men had endured on the scaffold she instructed that the remaining seven conspirators should be left hanging until they were quite dead before being cut down and butchered.