Elizabeth's Spymaster (20 page)

The letter was retrieved from the beer keg and handed over to
Phelippes, still at Chartley, on the evening of 18 July. After deciphering its contents, Walsingham’s man gloatingly drew a gallows on the cover before dispatching it to the spy master. With a detective’s intuition, he knew the letter would become the instrument of Mary’s death.

He did something else as well: Phelippes could not resist adding a forged postscript to the letter, seeking more information about those planning to murder Elizabeth:
⁴²

PS I would be glad to know the names and qualities of the six gentlemen which are to accomplish the [design] for it may be, I shall be able upon knowledge of the parties to give you further advice necessary to be followed … and even so do I wish to be made acquainted with the names of all such principal persons [etc.]. [And] also from time to time particularly how you proceed …

In making his copy, he also inserted a number of phrases that drew the noose tighter around Mary’s neck, specifically in her enquiry regarding the method of assassinating Elizabeth.

Phelippes wrote to Walsingham on 19 July:

You have now this queen’s answer to Babington. If he be in the country, the original will be conveyed into his hands and like enough an answer returned.

I look for your honour’s speedy resolution touching his apprehension or otherwise, that I may dispose of myself accordingly. I think … you have enough [on] him, unless you would discover more particularities of the confederates, which may be [done] even in his imprisonment. If your honour means to take him, ample commission and charge would be given to choice persons for search of his house.

Phelippes fully understood the import of Mary’s letter:

I wish it for an evidence against her, if it please God to inspire her majesty with that heroic courage that were meet for avenge [vengeance] of God’s cause and the security of herself and this state.

At least, I hope she will hang Nau and Curie, who justly make Sir Amyas Paulet take upon him the name she imputes to him of a gaoler of criminals.

He took an impudent side-swipe at Elizabeth’s notoriously tight grip on government expenditure by reporting that Paulet now hoped the queen would have ‘better consideration’ of the costs of guarding Mary than when Burghley, on her behalf, had complained that his garrison was too large. This ‘pinching at charges’ was no small offence to Paulet, Phelippes told Walsingham. He added: ‘I am sorry to hear from London that Ballard is not yet taken and that searches by forewarning have been frustrated.’
⁴³

Three days later, on 22 July, his master, then at Elizabeth’s court, told Phelippes that his work was appreciated: ‘At your return, you shall, from her majesty’s self, understand how well she accepts your service.’ He looked ahead to finally resolving the lingering problem of Mary Queen of Scots:

I hope there will be a good course held in this cause. Otherwise, we that have been instruments in the discovery shall receive little comfort for our travail [labour].

At your return, come as quietly as you may, for the practisers [plotters] are jealous of your going down and the gallows upon the packet sent has greatly increased their suspicion. Some of them are very inward with our post of London.

[I] hope Babington will be taken before your return. My friend [Gifford] remains still here. And so in haste I commit you to God.

Your loving friend

Francis Walsingham

[Postscript] Babington shall not be dealt with until your return. He remains here. The original letter [sent] to him you must bring with you.
⁴⁴

That hapless conspirator received Mary’s letter on 29 July, as he was unexpectedly away from his base at Lichfield in Staffordshire. He wrote to the Scottish queen on 3 August from London with some bad news:

In the meantime, your majesty may understand that one Maude (that came out of France with Ballard, who came from Mendoza concerning this affair) is discovered to be for this state. Ballard acquainted him with the cause of his coming and has employed him of late into Scotland with letters.

By whose treachery unto [what] extreme danger myself have been and the whole plot is likely to be brought, and by what means we have in part prevented and purpose by God’s assistance to redress the rest, your majesty shall be by my next letter informed.

The plot was therefore dangerously compromised, or ‘blown’ in espionage parlance. Nevertheless, Babington remained hopelessly optimistic:

My sovereign, for His sake that preserves your majesty for our common good, dismay not, neither doubt of happy issue. It is God’s cause, the church’s and your majesty’s, and enterprise honourable before God and man, undertaken upon zeal and devotion, free of all ambition and temporal regard and therefore no doubt will succeed happily. We have vowed and we will perform or die.
⁴⁵

These are the noble, reckless words of an innocent moving inexorably to his slaughter.

At some stage during this tight little drama, Walsingham met Babington in an attempt to persuade him to switch sides. He posed the conspirator several questions about Mary Queen of Scots and, according to the Jesuit priest William Weston, ‘charged [Babington] to cultivate affection for his own country and the fidelity of a subject towards his own sovereign’. After several days, he summoned the conspirator again, but this time took a gentler, more conciliatory tone:

Stretching out his hand, [Walsingham] said: ‘Come now, act with confidence, and do not fear to speak out freely’ All these particulars Babington narrated to me with his own lips … I knew full well what a master of deception this Walsingham was and how powerful to accomplish what his mind was set upon.

Weston told Babington:

I cannot tell you in what manner you can escape out of his snares. If you yield, you give up your religion; if you decline his offers, you inevitably incur the peril of death.
⁴⁶

Not much comfort there. Despite these less than subtle hints from Walsingham about cooperation – he clearly wanted everyone involved named and arrested – Babington recklessly, stupidly decided to take the path of religion and the road to martyrdom.

Ballard had returned to London on 9 July with depressing information about the likelihood of Elizabeth’s Catholic subjects joining an open rebellion. They may have voiced wholehearted support for the destruction of the Protestant state, but were less than enthusiastic about taking up arms against it. However, with the terrible certainty of a religious zealot, or perhaps as a result of an unrealistic belief in miracles, he refused to read the writing on the wall for his grand conspiracy. He told one of the plotters, John Savage, that he had been promised that 60,000 were ready to assist him in the north, but most of them did not own armour, which would, of course, be provided ‘out of France’.
⁴⁷

Knowing that Maude had been discovered, the spy master decided it was high time to haul in his far-flung net around the conspirators. Always the efficient planner and administrator, he first needed to create some room in London’s crowded prisons for the large number of arrests he expected to make as the full extent of the conspiracy was exposed. At the end of July, therefore, Walsingham sent a list of names of those priests and recusants incarcerated, prison by prison, to Phelippes for decisions on their ultimate fate.

Of the thirty-four priests and suspected seminarists and fifty-six recusants then detained in London, many had been committed to the jails by the Secretary himself.
⁴⁸
Some were clearly already destined for execution. The codebreaker sent on a copy of the list to Walsingham’s spy Nicholas Berden, alias Thomas Rogers, for his comments and recommendations, based on his personal knowledge of the prisoners.

Walsingham’s document,
⁴⁹
bluntly entitled
Prisoners to be Disposed
of,
makes grim reading. Their ultimate fate rested upon the mere whim of someone they would fully regard as an enemy and a traitor. Phelippes made his own annotations before Berden added his comments (shown here in italics).

The Marshalsea Prison
[Southwark]
⁵⁰

Priests –
(Meet
[fit for]
for Wisbech
[Castle, Cambridgeshire],
if not for the gallows)

[Edward] Caverley, gentleman and priest.
⁵¹

Palmer alias Stamford, gentleman and priest. Brother to Mr Stamford, justice of the peace in Staffordshire … proud, arrogant fellow.
⁵²

[James] Edwards, of great learning accounted;
⁵³
[William] Clareregent.
⁵⁴

Meet to be banished: [John] Lyster,
⁵⁵
[John] Habberley,
⁵⁶
[Francis] Tilleson,
⁵⁷
[Nicholas] Knight,
⁵⁸
[Thomas] Bramston,
⁵⁹
[John] Bolton, [Ralph] Crockett, [Robert] Wilcocks.

Thought meet for the gallows
(or the galleys)
⁶⁰

[John] Smith, alias Owen, a banished man but not so [well] known as Owen; [George] Potter – a shrewd fellow and obstinate.

Laymen
⁶¹
– Gentlemen and of wealth (
meet for Wisbech
)
:
Mr Beckett, Mr Moore the elder, Mr [John] Williamson, Mr Shaxton and Mr [Walter] Blunt.

Poor fools but very knaves
(neither wealthy or wise but all very arrant
[downright knaves]): [Richard] Webster, [William] Green, [Peter] Lawson, [Robert] Holland, [Lionel] Edes alias Jennings, [John] Tucker, [Henry] Webley, [William] Crabb and Thomas Shelley’s man.

The Poultry
⁶²

Little Ralph [Emerson], sometimes servant to the Jesuits in England.
⁶³

King’s Bench Prison, Southwark

Clifton, priest condemned in praemunire

Two brothers passing poor.

The Gatehouse at Westminster
⁶⁴

Priests: John Bawdwin,
⁶⁵
meet for banishment; Ralph Bickley.
⁶⁶

Laymen – Gentlemen and of ability (
Meet for Wisbech
)
:
Humfrey Cumberford, Walter Whitehall, Thomas Worthington,
⁶⁷
John Hewes, a collector and maker over of money.

Mean persons (
meet for what place you please
)
:
Owen Fletcher, Richard Johnson, Thomas Edwards, Roger Astell, John Aparry, Anthony Snape – William Shelley’s man and of his secret counsel and acquainted with Paget’s being in England.

The Counter in Wood Street
⁶⁸

Priests: Dr [John] Bavant, an old man, no seminary;
⁶⁹
[John] Maddox, an old man meet enough for Wisbech; [Richard] Davis, alias Winckfield and the corrupter of William Flitton and all his family and a great guide to the Jesuits. A gentleman and no priest; Richard Sherwood, alias Carleton, well known.

Laymen:
⁷⁰
Thomas Shelley, gentleman and of ability; [Roger] Lyne and [William] Higham, gentlemen under nineteen years; [John] Chaundler and Dutton, passing poor.

The White Lion, Newington, Southwark
⁷¹

Priests: George Collinson to be banished; [Thomas] Higate alias Simpson, a banished man …

Laymen – Gentlemen of abilities (
Wisbech
)
:
Mr [John] Beckensale; Mr Smith, a great collector and maker over of money; Richard Sampson and Richard Waldren,
⁷²
poor knaves (
gallies or gallows
)
.

The Clink, Southwark
⁷³

Priests – None of them of any account
(of small wit or honesty):
[John] Adams, a banished man; [John] Lowe, meet for Wisbech; [John] Robinson, an old priest; Edward James; Parry, alias Morgan; Paul Spence.

Laymen – Benjamin Stookwith of some ability (
meet for Wisbech
)
.

Poor fellows – John Lawnder; [John] Bradstock, [Stephen] Chester, Richard Dowse, Old [John] White.

Newgate

Priests – Alban Dolman, no seminary but known.
(A Justice of the Peace of Paget’s description.
) [Here Berden inserts a small sketch of a gallows.]
⁷⁴
[William] Wiggs, [Isaac] Higgins, [Leonard] Hyde – bad fellows. [Robert] Rowley (
Roley
) and Nutter – banished men.