Elizabeth's Spymaster (21 page)

Laymen – Of Abilities (
Wisbech
) Mistress [Dorothy] Pawnsfoot; Moore the younger. Poor men: [Thomas] Penkeville; [Robert] Bellamy, [Brian] Lacy.

The time had come to swoop down on the conspirators, but for Walsingham, fully engaged in court business at Richmond Palace on the banks of the River Thames, there were lurking, nagging fears that he had waited too late to strike. Concerned that his trap would snap shut but miss the suspects, he fired off four letters in two days to Phelippes, who was now back in Seething Lane.

Writing on 2 August, Walsingham
⁷⁵
ordered Phelippes to decode Babington’s answer to Mary’s letters, sent to him by Paulet.

So soon as you … have deciphered the letter, so earnestly looked for by her majesty [Elizabeth], I pray you bring it with you, for I think it right you should deliver it yourself

I directed Francis Milles to confer with you about the apprehension of Bal[lard] which I wish now executed out of hand, unless you shall see cause upon the decipher of the letter to the contrary.

It shall be right also to apprehend Bab[ington] and such as are noted to be his friends. I am sorry that G G[ifford] is absent. I marvel greatly how this humour of straying … comes upon him.

I pray you think [?of a] man to apprehend Bab[ington] and consider also of the manner [of the arrest].

I mean both he and Bal[lard] shall be kept in my house until they be thoroughly examined.

I hope you have thought on the articles [questions] that are to be ministered unto them both, [and the evidence] as also caused [Nicholas] Berden to set down the names of the principal practisers [conspirators] as well as clergy men and temporal.

I would be glad to understand who accompanies Sir George Peckham
⁷⁶
for I take him to be a great practiser and his companion Sir Thomas Gerard.
⁷⁷

The next day, 3 August, Walsingham, still occupied with royal business but clearly preoccupied by his all-consuming worry that his quarry would escape, hastily penned another letter to Phelippes from Richmond Palace:
⁷⁸

I am sorry the event [has resulted] so ill. I doubt greatly her majesty has not used the matter with that secrecy that [is necessary]. The circumstances show [Babington has] departed [after] some doubt [or] apprehension.

I fear he has come to some knowledge by Dunne.
⁷⁹
I have dispatched a letter [to] Sir Amias [sic] Paulet and have acquainted him with Bab[ington’s] departure and desired him to give some secret order for his apprehension. But I doubt he will repair [to] those parts.

Touching your going down, I think it not necessary. Our way
will be to discover here what is the cause of his departure wherein great secrecy would be used.

I look for Pooley [Walsingham’s spy] from whom I hope to receive some light.

Ballard would be taken but with no other course of proceeding than with an ordinary Jesuit.
⁸⁰
Accordingly as I have directed Francis Milles, with whom you may confer, who is most secret …

You will not believe how much I grieved with the event of this cause. I fear the addition of the postscript has bred the jealousy. And praying God to send us better success than I look for, I commit you to his protection.

I pray you learn of Mr H. Offley what is become of G[ilbert] G[ifford] whose straying manner of withdrawing himself I know not what to think of. Let the messenger repair this day to Bab[ington] to solicit [an] answer.

Within hours, Walsingham dashed off a third letter to Phelippes from Richmond:
⁸¹

… Your Latin letter comforted me. I think [if your] messenger receives no answer this day at Bab[ington’s] hands, then were it not good to defer the apprehension of him, lest he should escape. If you hope by giving of time that an answer will be drawn from him, then I wish the stay [of arrest].

It may be yet the deferring of the answer proceeds upon conference, which if it be so, then were it a great hindrance of the service to proceed over hastily to the arrest.

These causes are subject to so many difficulties as it is a hard matter to resolve. Only this, I conclude it were better to lack the answer than lack the man.

I do not mean to speak with [Babington] for many causes. And therefore, if Pooley repair[s] hither, I will put off the meeting until Saturday, to the end he may in the meantime be apprehended.

I like well that Ball[ard] should be apprehended in such sort as is agreed on …

I mean to acquaint her majesty with the contents of your letters. In the meantime, I [want] the messenger you use [to] be directed to solicit answers, unless you shall see some cause to the contrary. And so in haste I commit you to God.

Walsingham adds a postscript: ‘I send you two blanks signed to be converted into [arrest] warrants.’

That evening, Walsingham wrote for the final time that day to Phelippes:
⁸²

Pooley has been with [me and] has given me great [assur]rance of Bab[ington’s] devotion both to myself and the public service.

To strengthen my opinion and good concept towards him, he has told me from Bab[ington] that there is one Ball[ard], a great practiser in this realm with the Catholics to stir up rebellion within the realm, being set on by the Amb[assador] of Spain and Charles Paget.

I [asked] him to give him great thanks for this advertisement [news] and to require him in my name to draw from Ballard what he could touching such parties as he had dealt with and to meet me at my house on Saturday next.

Though I do not find but that Pooley has dealt honestly with me, yet I am loath [to] lay myself any way open to him but have only delivered such speeches as might work …

I do not think good, not withstanding, to defer the apprehension of Bab[ington] longer than Friday
Ne forte
[Not chance or luck].

I like well therefore that he hasten the Fr[ench] Amb[assador’s] dispatch. And yet can I not think that he should use his help in the matter; but do rather judge it he doubted what to answer.

I long to hear of Ball[ard’s] apprehension which I have caused to be done by a warrant signed by the Lord Admiral
⁸³
for that I would not be seen in the matter.

Sorry I am that I hear not of G[ifford] who might at this present [time] have given good assistance.

The Lord Admiral’s warrant is in Francis Mille’s hands.

Within hours of the dispatch of this letter, Phelippes tracked down Babington in the garden of Pooley’s house in London. The hole in Walsingham’s net now seemed closed.

The following day, 4 August, at between eleven o’ clock and noon, Pooley’s home was surrounded and Ballard seized by agents of the London Magistrate Richard Young. Babington, in bed, was not apprehended, to his astonishment, and Pooley, still keeping up his pretence as his friend, went to court to plead for him with Walsingham. He was arrested there and thrown into the Tower. The break-up of the conspiracy was taking on all the hallmarks of a farce.

Babington, unaware of Pooley’s detention, wrote him a letter, saying that

proceedings at my lodgings have been very strange … Take heed to your own part, lest of these my misfortunes you bear the blame. Farewell sweet Robin, if as I take it, you are true to me. If not, adieu!
Omnium bipedim nequissimus
[of all two-footed things, the wickedest].
⁸⁴

By this point, Babington must have been confused and frightened. After hearing the seductive offers from Walsingham and escaping arrest by the skin of his teeth, he decided to flee.

But he met some of his fellow conspirators amongst the crowds in Paul’s Walk, the two aisles within Old St Paul’s Cathedral which then were the habitual daytime haunt of loiterers, adventurers and broken-down gallants.
⁸⁵
He asked them: ‘Ballard is taken, all will be betrayed! What remedy now?’ John Savage replied: ‘No remedy now, but to kill her presently.’ Very well, said Babington, ‘Then go you into the court tomorrow and there execute the fact.’ But Savage said he was not dressed properly, limply adding: ‘In this apparel I shall never come near to the queen.’ Babington crossly gave him his ring and all the money in his purse to buy some new clothes and told him bluntly to ‘dispatch it’.
⁸⁶

The spy master sent a letter to Babington via his man Scudamore,
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explaining that Ballard’s arrest had been nothing to do with him and to stay close to Scudamore to avoid being taken by Young’s men. They went for a meal at a nearby tavern, and while they nervously ate, a messenger
brought a note for Walsingham’s man. Babington immediately suspected it was an order for his detention and, leaving his cloak and sword on the back of his settle, said he was going to the bar to pay the bill. He fled the inn and ran to Westminster where he met Charnock and another plotter, Robert Gage. By now thoroughly panic-stricken, the trio retreated to rural St John’s Woods, north of London, and then north-west, on to Harrow in Middlesex, having cut their hair and stained their faces with walnut juice in an attempt at disguise. They and two more conspirators, Robert Barnwell and Henry Dunne, were arrested on 14 August near Uxendon Hall, the home of the Bellamys, a prominent recusant family,
⁸⁸
where they had sought food. All the rest were quickly rounded up and taken to the Tower.

A month later they were tried in two groups at Westminster with Walsingham sitting as one of the commissioners. There was little mention of Mary Queen of Scots during the proceedings, other than Ballard’s plea:

That I practised [plotted] the delivery of the queen of Scots, I am guilty. And that I went about to alter the religion, I am guilty – but that I intended to slay her majesty, I am not guilty.
⁸⁹

There were also references to Mary’s letters to Babington. All of the conspirators were inevitably condemned and sentenced to the usual death for traitors – hanging, drawing and quartering. That was not enough for Elizabeth, for once genuinely fearful of her life. She told Burghley that extra agonising torment should be added to the plotters’ last moments – ‘for more terror’, as she stressed.
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This was an extraordinary crime, said the queen, and it deserved ‘further extraordinary pain’.
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Following her orders, the first group of seven to be executed on 20 September, including Ballard and Babington, died more slowly than was usual on such occasions on the scaffold at St Giles in the Fields.
⁹²
This was not popular with the watching crowd and the second batch, the following day, were allowed to hang until they were dead.

Propaganda at such times is all important, and it was probably Walsingham who ensured that the printed accounts of the executions suggested that Elizabeth, ‘detesting such cruelty’, had ordered clemency.

Pooley was soon after released from the Tower.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Trial of Mary Queen of Scots

‘Look
to your consciences. Remember that the theatre of the whole world is wider than the kingdom of England.’

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS TO THE COMMISSIONERS BEFORE HER TRIAL, 13 OCTOBER 1586.
¹

Elizabeth entertained no doubts at all that Mary Queen of Scots was ‘the worst woman in the world’. In May 1578, she had bluntly told a French envoy who had come to London to plead on Mary’s behalf that her ‘head should have been cut off years ago’. Elizabeth angrily declared to Jerome Gondi, Comte de Retz, that she ‘could never be free as long as she lived, even though it cost her realm and her liberty’.
²
But when Walsingham’s plans to finally destroy the Scottish queen came to fruition in the aftermath of the Babington plot, the sometimes ruthless Tudor monarch was tormented by doubts, fears and unaccustomed anxiety.

The antiquary William Camden generously described Mary Queen of Scots as a ‘woman most constant in her religion; of singular piety towards God, invincible magnanimity of mind; wisdom above her sex and passing beauty’. She was, he wrote, ‘A lady to be reckoned amongst those princesses that have exchanged felicity for calamity.’
³

In 1586, Mary was aged forty-three. Beneath all her regal poise and charm lay the harsh medical and psychological impact of almost two decades of captivity at the hands of Elizabeth. Five years earlier,
Robert Beale had reported to Walsingham that the Scottish queen

desires earnestly to have the benefit of taking the air sometimes, not that she would be out of Queen Elizabeth’s hands, but in order to recover herself from that indisposition and weakness of her body [to] which want of air has reduced her.

She said also that though she’s not old in years, she found herself old in body and that her hair was turned grey. She would never have another husband.
⁴