Elizabeth's Spymaster (27 page)

The queen somehow at long last steeled herself and signed the death warrant on 1 February at Greenwich, summoning Davison into the palace from the park, where he was taking the air, to fetch the document from his chamber.

After reading it ‘she called for pen and ink, signed it and laying it from her, demanded [of Davison] whether I were not heartily sorry to see it done’. After some discussion, Elizabeth, ‘with smiling countenance’, asked him what other documents he had for her to sign, which ‘it pleased her with the best disposition and willingness that might be to dispatch them all’. She instructed him to have the Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas Bromley, set the Great Seal upon the death warrant and also to inform Walsingham of her action. The spy master was still away from court, now recovering from his illness at his London home in Seething Lane, and Elizabeth joked, with heavy irony, that the news would cause him ‘grief… [to] go near to kill him outright’.
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Then she stopped Davison dead in his tracks as he bowed out of her presence, suddenly complaining that Paulet and others ‘might have eased her of this burden’.

He immediately guessed what she meant by this euphemism. She wanted Paulet to murder the Scottish queen.

Davison argued against such a plan, knowing full well the honesty
and integrity of Paulet, ‘whom I thought would not do so unlawful an act for any respect in the world, yet finding her desirous to have the matter attempted, I promised for her satisfaction to signify this, her pleasure, to Mr Secretary’.
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Walsingham wrote to Paulet later that day, mincing no words about Elizabeth’s desire for him to assassinate Mary:
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We find by speech lately uttered by her majesty that she notes in you a lack of that care and zeal of her service that she looks for at your hands, in that you have not in all this time …
found out some way to shorten the life of that queen, considering the great peril she is subject unto hourly so long as the said queen shall live
[author’s italics].

Wherein, besides a kind of lack of love towards her, she notes greatly that you have not that care of your own particular safeties or rather of the preservation of religion and the public good and prosperity of your country that reason and policy commands …

She takes it more unkindly towards her that men professing that love towards her that you do, should in any kind of sort, for lack of the discharge of your duties, cast the burden upon her, knowing as you do, her indisposition to shed blood, especially of one of that sex and quality, and so near to her in blood as the said queen is.

These respects we find do greatly trouble her majesty … We thought it very meet to acquaint [you] with these speeches lately passed from her majesty, referring the same to your good judgements.
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In a covering letter, Davison urged Paulet to destroy the communication: ‘I pray let this and the enclosed be committed to the fire, which measure shall be likewise meet to your answer, after it has been communicated to her majesty for her satisfaction.’

Paulet received Walsingham’s bombshell letter at five o’clock the following afternoon at Fotheringay. Within the hour, he wrote an indignant reply from both himself and his assistant Sir Dru Drury:

I would not fail according to your directions to return my answer with all possible speed which shall deliver to you … great grief and
bitterness of mind, in that I am so unhappy to have lived to see this unhappy day, [when] I am required by direction from my most gracious sovereign to do an act which God and the law forbids.

My good living and life are at her majesty’s disposition and [I] am ready … to lose them this next morrow if it shall please her …

But God forbid that I should make so foul a shipwreck of my conscience, or leave so great a blot to my poor posterity, [as] to shed blood without law or warrant.
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Although the letter was signed by both Paulet and Drury, it is clear from the tumbling, anguished words that the former was the author. Indeed, in a postscript, Paulet adds that his assistant ‘subscribes in his heart to my opinion’. Fearing that his reaction would anger the queen, the last portion of the letter is an anxious appeal to her good nature:

Trusting that her Majesty, of her accustomed clemency, will take this, my dutiful answer in good part … as proceeding from one who will never be inferior to any Christian subject living in duty, honour, love and obedience towards his sovereign.

Later, when the Privy Council clerk Robert Beale was at Fotheringay, he heard talk of Elizabeth’s desire to murder Mary, with one ‘Wingfield’
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chosen to do the deed. The queen pretended that the Scottish ambassador Archibald Douglas had suggested assassination as a suitable solution and that the Earl of Leicester had supported the idea.
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But ‘both the secretaries misliked [it]’ and certainly, the belief in Elizabeth’s government was that Mary should die openly, in contrast to earlier slain monarchs like Edward II and Richard II.
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Paulet’s letter would have come as no shock to Walsingham: he knew the Puritan and his godly ways well enough to believe that he would not stoop to administering poison, or wielding the assassin’s knife, to rid Elizabeth of her unwelcome decision.

Despite his queen’s arch and less than subtle hints regarding what for her would be the quick, easy and more palatable outcome, Walsingham was convinced that a judicial execution was the only route to take. On 2 February, probably even before Paulet received his electrifying letter,
he sat down quietly to draw up a memorandum about the official arrangements that had to be made for the execution of Mary at Fotheringay.
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We can only speculate on the thoughts that ran through his mind as he scribbled across the parchment in his untidy, spindly writing. So much of his official life had been concerned with thwarting the Scottish queen’s machinations and foiling the conspiracies inspired by her presence in England. His own royal mistress had constantly ignored his warnings of the dangers she posed to her. Now Mary was entrapped in a net he had woven for her and the threat to the English crown would soon be neutralised.

Walsingham was never anything but methodical. His two pages of notes coldly and calculatingly lay down the critical path to the axeman’s block. Once completed, he sent the document off by special messenger to Burghley to review and to add his own comments. Always conscious of the importance of propaganda, the Secretary suggested that speeches should be specially written for the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury to make at the execution. These are Burghley’s comments on their content, which he scribbled alongside Walsingham’s proposals:

To express her many attempts both for destruction of the queen’s person and the invasion of this realm; that the hope and comforts she has given to the principal traitors of this realm, both abroad and here at home …

All the attempts that have been against her majesty’s person, and so confessed and yet do continue, so as sure by the laws of God and man, she is justly condemned to die.

The whole realm has often times vehemently required that justice might be done, which her majesty can not longer delay.

Walsingham also urged that only Mary’s ‘chief officers and servants’ should attend her on the scaffold, ‘excluding the women’; he wanted to avoid emotional outbursts that might disrupt the gruesome proceedings. He also suggested giving the earls precise instructions regarding what they should do in the event of Mary wanting ‘private speech’ with her servants – Walsingham was clearly anxious that no secret instructions, no
damaging testament to Mary’s memory should be smuggled out of the great hall at Fotheringay. Burghley added: ‘Not to refuse it, [but be limited] to three or two at the least.’ The fewer people involved, the easier the interrogation of them afterwards. Indeed, the Secretary goes on: ‘Her servants, both Scottish and French to be stayed [held] for a time in this realm,’ to which Burghley adds in the margin: ‘To remain also in the castle until further order.’ Moreover, Paulet should ensure that the stronghold’s gates were firmly locked.

Walsingham then moved on to the grim practicalities. ‘The body to be buried in the night in the parish church in such uppermost place as by the two earls shall be thought fit.’ He queried whether it should be embalmed. Then:

To send down the sheriff of Northampton, if he be here.

The executioner to be sent down.

To take order that her jewels and plate may not be embezzled by her servants.

Here Burghley added: ‘[Andrew] Melville [Mary’s steward] and her principal women [must] be acquainted therewith and their seals to be put to the cases etc’ Finally, in an astonishingly cynical attempt to ensure that no unwelcome, last-minute reprieve came from Elizabeth, Walsingham added: ‘The lords at the court to give out that there will be no execution.’ Burghley underlined the three words ‘at the court’ to emphasise his agreement and his shared anxiety about the prospect of an eleventh-hour reprieve.

Later that day, the Lord Treasurer received the signed and sealed death warrant, personally delivered by Davison.
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He decided to act quickly to avoid giving the fretful queen any further time, or opportunity, to change her mind again.

The next day, 3 February, despite a painful injury received in a riding accident two weeks earlier, Burghley convened a special Privy Council meeting, called solely on his own authority in his chamber at Greenwich. Burghley proposed, and the other Councillors unanimously agreed, to dispatch the warrant to Fotheringay without telling Elizabeth, together with
the Council’s special instructions to Henry, Earl of Kent, and the Earl Marshal, George, Earl of Shrewsbury, appointed by Elizabeth to superintend the execution.
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It was neither ‘fit nor convenient to trouble her majesty any further’, they decided, a telling indication of their rampant fears that Elizabeth would think of ‘some new concept of interrupting and staying the course of justice’.
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The documents were signed at two o’clock and Robert Beale, clerk to the Privy Council, was ordered to deliver the warrant to Paulet, as well as briefing the two earls on their grim duties, under the disguise of a special commission to investigate the still-troublesome hues and cries in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. The warrant probably reached Fotheringay on 5 February.

The two-and-a-half-page document is full of explanations – almost excuses – for the need to judicially kill Mary. Finally, it directs Shrewsbury, Kent and three other peers

as soon as you have time convenient, to repair to our castle of Fotheringay where the said Queen of Scots is in custody of our right trusty servant and counsellor Sir Amyas Paulet, and then taking her into your charge to cause by your commandment, execution to be laid upon her person in the presence of yourselves and the said Sir Amyas Paulet…

The same to be done in such manner and form and at such time and place there and by such persons as to you, five, four, three or two of you shall be thought by your discretions convenient notwithstanding any law, statute or ordinance to the contrary.
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The Privy Council’s instructions to Kent also included an exhortation to keep the matter strictly covert:

Your lordship shall understand by this bearer [Beale] how needful it is to have the proceeding herein to be kept very secret and upon what occasion no more of the lords in commission are at this time used herein.
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Davison meanwhile was still worrying about the fate of the incriminating ‘assassination’ letter written to Paulet. The same day, he sent
a note to Mary’s keeper repeating his earnest entreaties to destroy all the correspondence, adding:

I pray you let me hear what you have done with my letters because they are not fit to be kept, that I may satisfy her majesty therein, who might take offence thereat and if you [deal] with this postscript in the same manner, you will not err a whit.
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In the event, the cautious Paulet carried the originals with him to London, leaving, perhaps as a wise precaution given the political climate and the tensions at court, copies with his family in case he was arrested. On 8 February, he replied to Davison:

If I should say that I have burned the papers you [wrote] of, I cannot tell if everybody would believe me and therefore I reserve them to be delivered to your own hands at my coming to London. God Bless you and prosper all your actions to His glory.
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Walsingham now had other things to worry about. On 4 February, Elizabeth smilingly told Davison that she had been troubled the previous night by a dream that Mary had been executed. Her words must have sent a shiver of terror and trepidation down his back. Had she somehow learnt of that secret Privy Council meeting, convened behind closed doors? Did another of her infamous rages lurk behind that beguiling smile? He nervously asked whether she did not intend to ‘go through’ with the execution, according to the warrant. ‘Her answer was “yes” confirmed with a solemn oath [with] some vehemence … She thought that it might have received a better form, because this threw the whole burden upon herself.’
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The next morning the queen heard of Paulet’s refusal to assassinate the Scottish queen. She now threw a terrible tantrum, worthy of any testy Tudor monarch, complaining of the ‘niceties of these precise fellows, who in words would do great things for her surety, but in deed perform nothing’.
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As she angrily swept up and down the gallery at Greenwich, Elizabeth petulantly said she could ‘have it well enough done without them’, naming ‘one Wingfield’ who, she assured Davison, ‘would with
some others undertake it’. He told the queen that if Paulet and Drury had murdered Mary, they would have exposed themselves to ‘great extremity’: