Babington Plot

Walsingham's "Decypherer" forged this cipher postscript to Mary's letter to Babington. It asks Babington to use the—broken—cipher to tell her the names of the conspirators.

The Babington Plot was a plot in 1586 to assassinate Queen Elizabeth, a Protestant, and put the rescued Mary, Queen of Scots, her Roman Catholic cousin, on the English throne. It led to the execution of Queen Mary Stuart of Scotland as a direct result of a letter sent by Mary (who had been imprisoned for 18 years since 1568 in England at the behest of Elizabeth) in which she consented directly to the assassination of Elizabeth.[1]

The long-term goal of the plot was the invasion of England by the Spanish forces of King Philip II and the Catholic League in France, leading to the restoration of the old religion. The plot was discovered by Elizabeth's "spymaster" Sir Francis Walsingham and used to entrap Mary for the purpose of removing her as a claimant to the English throne.

The chief conspirators were Anthony Babington, a young recusant recruited by John Ballard, a Jesuit priest who desired to rescue the Scottish Queen; Robert Poley; Gilbert Gifford, and Thomas Phelippes, a Walsingham spy agent and cryptanalyst. The turbulent Catholic deacon Gifford had been in Walsingham's service since the end of 1585 or the beginning of 1586. Gifford obtained a letter of introduction to Queen Mary from a confidant and spy for her, Thomas Morgan. Walsingham then placed double agent Gifford and spy decipherer Phelippes inside Chartley Castle, where Queen Mary was imprisoned. Gifford organised the Walsingham plan to place Babington's and Queen Mary's encrypted communications into a beer barrel cork which were then intercepted by Phelippes, decoded and sent to Walsingham.

Ballard was attempting to recruit Babington in an undeveloped scheme to rescue Mary and place her on the throne of England by killing Elizabeth. Babington sent a coded letter to the imprisoned Mary, which gave his name to the complicated multiple-sided plot.

On 7 July 1586, the only Babington letter that was sent to Mary was decoded by Phelippes. Mary responded in code on 17 July ordering the would-be rescuers to assassinate Elizabeth. The response letter also included deciphered phrases indicating her desire to be rescued: "The affairs being thus prepared" and "I may suddenly be transported out of this place". At the Fotheringay trial in October 1586, Elizabeth's Secretary of State William Cecil and Walsingham used the letter against Mary who refused to admit that she was guilty. But she was betrayed by her secretaries Nau and Curle who confessed under pressure that the letter was mainly truthful.[2]

Mary's imprisonment

Mary in captivity, c. 1578

Mary, Queen of Scots, a Roman Catholic, was a legitimate heir to the throne of England. In 1568 she escaped imprisonment by Scottish rebels and sought the promised aid of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, a year after her forced abdication from the throne of Scotland. The issuance of the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis by Pope Pius V on 25 February 1570, granted English Catholics authority to overthrow the English queen. Queen Mary became the focal point of numerous plots and intrigues to restore England to its former religion, Catholicism, and to depose Elizabeth and even to take her life. Rather than the promised aid, Elizabeth imprisoned Mary for nineteen years in the charge of a succession of jailers, principally the Earl of Shrewsbury.

In 1584 Elizabeth's Privy Council signed a "Bond of Association" designed by Cecil and Walsingham which stated that anyone within the line of succession to the throne on whose behalf anyone plotted against the Queen, would be excluded from the line and executed. This was agreed upon by hundreds of Englishmen, who likewise signed the Bond. Mary also agreed to sign the Bond. The following year, Parliament passed the Act of Association, which provided for the execution of anyone who would benefit from the death of the Queen if a plot against her was discovered. However due to the Bond, Mary could be executed if a plot was initiated by others that could lead to her accession to England's throne.

Elizabeth ordered Queen Mary transferred back to the ruined Tutbury Castle in the wintry weather of Christmas Eve 1584. Mary became ill due to the bad conditions of her captivity, imprisoned in a very damp cold room with closed windows and with no access to the sun.

In 1585, Elizabeth ordered Queen Mary to be transferred in a coach and under heavy guard and placed under the strictest confinement at Chartley Hall in Staffordshire, under the control of Sir Amias Paulet. She was prohibited any correspondence with the outside world. Puritan Paulet was chosen by Queen Elizabeth in part because he abhorred Queen Mary's Catholic faith.

Sir Francis Walsingham

Reacting to the growing threat posed by Catholics, urged on by the Pope and other Catholic monarchs in Europe, Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I's Secretary of State and spymaster, together with William Cecil, Elizabeth's chief advisor, realised that if Mary could be implicated in a plot to assassinate Elizabeth, she could be executed and the "Papist" threat diminished. As he wrote to the Earl of Leicester: "So long as that devilish woman lives, neither Her Majesty must make account to continue in quiet possession of her crown, nor her faithful servants assure themselves of safety of their lives."[3] Walsingham used the Babington plot to ensnare Queen Mary by sending his double agent, Gilbert Gifford to Paris to obtain the confidence of Morgan, then locked in the Bastille. Morgan previously worked for George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, an earlier jailor of Queen Mary. Through Shrewsbury, Queen Mary became acquainted with Morgan. Queen Mary sent Morgan to Paris to deliver letters to the French court. While in Paris Morgan became involved in a previous plot designed by William Parry, which resulted in Morgan's incarceration in the Bastille. In 1585 Gifford was arrested returning to England through Rye in Sussex with letters of introduction from Morgan to Queen Mary. Walsingham released Gifford to work as a double agent, in the Babington Plot. Gifford was assigned the alias "No. 4" and used many others in his espionage work, such as Colerdin, Pietro and Cornelys. Walsingham assigned Gifford to function as a courier in the entrapment plot against Queen Mary.

The plot

The Babington plot was related to several separate plans:

At the behest of Mary's French supporters, John Ballard, a Jesuit priest and agent of the Roman Church, went to England on various occasions in 1585 to secure promises of aid from the northern Catholic gentry on behalf of Queen Mary. In March 1586, he met with John Savage, an ex-soldier who was involved in a separate plot against Elizabeth and who had sworn an oath to assassinate the queen. He was resolved in this plot after consulting with three friends, Dr. William Gifford, Christopher Hodgson (priest) and Gilbert Gifford. Gifford had been arrested by Walsingham and agreed to be a double agent. While it is certain that Gifford was already in Walsingham's employ by the time Savage was going ahead with the plot, according to Conyers Read (Read, Conyers (1925). Mr Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth, Volume III. Clarendon Press. pp. 27–28. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2281.2006.00396.x. ) Later that same year, Gifford reported to Charles Paget and Don Bernardino de Mendoza, and told them that English Catholics were prepared to mount an insurrection against Elizabeth, provided that they would be assured of foreign support. While it was uncertain whether Ballard's report of the extent of Catholic opposition was accurate, what was certain that he was able to secure assurances that support would be forthcoming. He then returned to England, where he persuaded a member of the Catholic gentry, Anthony Babington to lead and organise the English Catholics against Elizabeth. Ballard informed Babington about all the plans that had been so far proposed. Babington's later confession made it clear that Ballard was sure of the support of the Catholic League:

"He toulde me he was retorned from Fraunce uppon this occasion. Being with Mendoza at Paris, he was informed that in regarde of the iniuries don by our state unto the greatest Christian princes, by the nourishinge of sedition and divisions in their provinces, by withholding violently the lawful possessions of some, by invasion of the Indies and by piracy, robbing the treasure and the wealthe of others, and sondry intolerable wronges for so great and mighty princes to indure, it was resolved by the Catholique league to seeke redresse and satisfaction, which they had vowed to performe this sommer without farther delay, havinge in readiness suche forces and all warlike preparations as the like was never scene in these partes of Christendome. ... The Pope was chief disposer, the most Christian king and the king Catholic with all other princes of the league concurred as instruments for the righting of these wronges, and reformation of religion. The conductors of this enterprise for the French nation, the D. of Guise, or his brother the D. de Main; for the Italian and Hispanishe forces, the P. of Parma; the whole number about 60,000.[4]

Despite this assurance of foreign support, Babington was hesitant, as he thought that no foreign invasion would succeed for as long as Elizabeth remained, to which Ballard answered that the plans of John Savage would take care of that. After a lengthy discussion with friends and soon-to-be fellow conspirators, Babington consented to join and to lead the conspiracy.[5]

Unfortunately for the conspirators, Walsingham was certainly aware of some of the aspects of the plot, based on reports by his spies, most notably Gilbert Gifford, who kept tabs on all the major participants. While he could have shut down some part of the plot and arrested some of those involved within reach, he still lacked any piece of evidence that would prove Queen Mary's active participation in the plot and he feared to commit any mistake which might cost Elizabeth her life.

Infiltration

The cipher code of Mary, Queen of Scots

Walsingham and Cecil realised that the July 1584 decree by Queen Elizabeth after the Throckmorton plot that prevented all communication to and from Mary, also impaired their ability to entrap her in another plot. They needed evidence of another plot for which she could be executed based on their Bond of Association tenets. Thus Walsingham established a new line of communication, one which he could carefully control without incurring any suspicion from Mary. Gifford approached the French ambassador to England, Guillaume de l'Aubespine, Baron de Châteauneuf-sur-Cher, and described the new correspondence arrangement that had been designed by Walsingham. Gifford and jailer Paulet had arranged for a local brewer to facilitate the movement of messages between Queen Mary and her supporters by placing them in a watertight casing that could be placed inside the stopper of the barrel. Thomas Phelippes, a cipher and language expert in Walsingham's employ, was then quartered at Chartley Hall to receive the messages, decode them and send them to Walsingham. Gifford submitted a code table—that had been supplied by Walsingham—to Chateauneuf and then requested the first message be sent to Mary.

All subsequent messages to Mary would be sent via diplomatic packets to Chateauneuf, who then passed them on to Gifford. Gifford would pass them on to Walsingham, who would confide them to Phelippes. The cipher used was a nomenclator cipher. Phelippes would decode and make a copy of the letter. The letter was then resealed and given back to Gifford, who would pass it on to the brewer. The brewer would then "smuggle" the letter to Mary. If Mary sent a letter to her supporters, it would go through the reverse process. In short order, every message coming to and from Chartley Hall was intercepted and read by Walsingham.


The fatal correspondence

"Myself with ten gentlemen and a hundred of our followers will undertake the delivery of your royal person from the hands of your enemies. For the dispatch of the usurper, from the obedience of whom we are by the excommunication of her made free, there be six noble gentlemen, all my private friends, who for the zeal they bear to the Catholic cause and your Majesty's service will undertake that tragical execution.[6]

This letter was received by Mary, who was in a dark mood at that period of time because she received the news that her son betrayed her in favour of Elizabeth, on 14 July 1586 — after being intercepted and deciphered — and on 17 July she replied to Babington in a long letter in which she outlined the components of a successful rescue and the need to assassinate Elizabeth if her rescue had any chance to be successful. She also stressed the necessity of foreign aid if the rescue attempt was to succeed:

"For I have long ago shown unto the foreign Catholic princes, what they have done against the King of Spain, and in the time the Catholics here remaining, exposed to all persecutions and cruelty, do daily diminish in number, forces, means and power. So as, if remedy be not thereunto speedily provided, I fear not a little but they shall become altogether unable for ever to rise again and to receive any aid at all, whensoever it were offered. Then for mine own part, I pray you to assure our principal friends that, albeit I had not in this cause any particular interest in this case... I shall be always ready and most willing to employ therein my life and all that I have, or may ever look for, in this world."[7]

Mary in her response letter, advised the would-be rescuers to confront the Puritans and to link her case to the Queen of England as her heir.

"These precepts may serve to found and establish among all associations, or considerations general, as done only for your preservation and defence, as well in religions as lands, lives and goods, against the oppressions and contempts of said Puritans, without directly writing, or giving out anything against the Queen, but rather showing yourselves willing to maintain her, and her lawful heirs after her, unnaming me".

Mary was clear in her support for the murder of Elizabeth if that would have led to her liberty and Catholic domination of England. In addition, Queen Mary supported in that letter, and in another one to Ambassador Mendoza, a Spanish invasion of England.

The letter was again intercepted and deciphered by Phelippes. But this time, Phelippes, at the direction of Walsingham, kept the original and made a copy of the letter in which Mary supported the murder of Elizabeth, adding the names of the conspirators:

"I would be glad to know the names and quelityes of the sixe gentlemen which are to accomplish the dessignement, for that it may be, I shall be able uppon knowledge of the parties to give you some further advise necessarye to be followed therein; and even so do I wish to be made acquainted with the names of all such principal persons [&c.] as also from time to time particularlye how you proceede and as son as you may for the same purpose who bee alredye and how farr every one privye hereunto.[8][9]


Arrests, trials and executions

John Ballard was arrested on 4 August 1586, and under torture he confessed and implicated Babington. Although Babington was able to receive the letter with the postscript, he was not able to reply with the names of the conspirators, as he was arrested. Others were taken prisoner by 15 August 1586. Mary's two secretaries, Claude Nau de la Boisseliere (died 1605) and Gilbert Curle (died 1609), were likewise taken into custody and interrogated.

The conspirators were sentenced to death for treason and conspiracy against the crown, and were sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. This first group included Babington, Ballard, Chidiock Tichborne, Sir Thomas Salisbury, Robert Barnewell, John Savage and Henry Donn. A further group of seven men, Edward Havington, Charles Tilney, Edward Jones, John Charnock, John Travers, Jerome Bellamy, and Robert Gage, were tried and convicted shortly afterward. Ballard and Babington were executed on 20 September 1586 along with the other men who had been tried with them. Such was the public outcry at the horror of their execution that Elizabeth changed the order for the second group to be allowed to hang until dead before being disembowelled.

In October 1586 Mary was sent to be tried at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire by 46 English Lords, Bishops and Earls. She was not permitted legal counsel, not permitted to review the evidence against her or to provide witnesses. Portions of Phellipes' letter translations were read at the trial. As the Scottish Queen, Mary was convicted of treason against the foreign country of England. One English Lord voted not guilty. Elizabeth signed her cousin's death warrant,[10] and on 8 February 1587, in front of 300 witnesses, Mary, Queen of Scots, was executed by beheading.[11]

In literature

Mary Stuart (German: Maria Stuart), a dramatised version of the last days of Mary, Queen of Scots, including the Babington Plot, was written by Friedrich Schiller and performed in Weimar, Germany in 1800. This in turn formed the basis for Maria Stuarda, an opera by Donizetti, in 1835: although the Babington Plot occurs before the events of the opera, and is only referenced twice during the opera, the second such occasion being Mary admitting her own part in it, in private, to her final confessor (a role taken by Lord Talbot in the opera, although not in real life).

The story of the Babington Plot is dramatised in the novel Conies in the Hay by Jane Lane(ISBN 0-7551-0835-3), and features prominently in Anthony Burgess's A Dead Man in Deptford. Episode Four of the television series Elizabeth R (titled "Horrible Conspiracies") is devoted to the Babington Plot, and the movie Elizabeth: The Golden Age deals substantially with the Plot as well. A more fictional account is given in the My Story book series, The Queen's Spies (retitled To Kill A Queen 2008) told in diary format by a fictional Elizabethan girl, Kitty.

The Babington plot is also the subject of the children's novel A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley, who grew up near the Babington family home in Derbyshire.

See also

Notes and references

  1. ↑ Somerest, Anne (1991). Elizabeth One. pp. 545–548.
  2. ↑ Fraser, Antonia (1985). Mary Queen of Scots. pp. 575–577.
  3. ↑ Read, Conyers (1925). Mr Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth, Volume II. Clarendon Press. p. 342. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2281.2006.00396.x., as quoted by Ristau, Ken. "Bringing Down A Queen". Archived from the original on 12 January 2007. Retrieved 10 February 2007.
  4. ↑ Pollen, John Hungerford (1922). Publications of the Scottish Historical Society Third Series, Volume III: Mary Queen of Scots and the Babington Plot. T & A Constable Ltd. pp. 53–54.
  5. ↑ Pollen, p. 54.
  6. ↑ Pollen, p. 21.
  7. ↑ For the full text of the letter, see Pollen, pp. 38–46. The spelling is modernised for clarity.
  8. ↑ "National Archives (UK) transcript of the forged postscript". Archived from the original on 2 March 2007. Retrieved 9 February 2007.
  9. ↑ Cf. Pollen, pp. 45–46.
  10. ↑ Francis Edwards, S.J., Plots and plotters in the reign of Elizabeth I. (Dublin: Four Courts, 2002), p. 164.
  11. ↑ Fraser p. 635

Further reading

Primary sources

External links

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