The Watchers (32 page)

But another man was as important as Babington in what became the greatest of all Elizabethan conspiracies, and the one that in the end destroyed the Queen of Scots. What historians know as the Babington Plot could so easily have been called the Ballard Plot instead.

John Ballard had been educated in Cambridge and at William Allen's seminary in Rheims. He was a priest, ordained in Châlons in 1581. He was sent by his superiors to England in March 1581 and was certainly in London in 1582. In Paris in 1584 Ballard got to know Thomas Morgan and Charles Paget, who gave him a mission to complete in England. He was again in London in the early months of 1586 living under the false names of Thompson and Turner. Sometimes (as Walsingham's spy Nicholas Berden reported) Ballard called himself Captain Fortescue or even Black Fortescue.

At the end of May 1586 Ballard had visited Anthony Babington at his lodgings in Hernes rents. The two men knew each other; they had met some time before 1584. Ballard spoke approvingly of plans by the powers of Catholic Europe – by the Pope, the King of Spain and the Duke of Guise – to invade England. Babington objected, rightly, that these powers and princes were too busy with their own affairs to be able to mount an invasion. Babington also pointed out to Ballard the immense logistical challenge for the Catholic powers. And while the queen was alive, he said, few Englishmen would rally to the invaders. Ballard replied that the way forward was to kill Elizabeth. In fact, he told Babington, the plan had already been made. The instrument was a man named Savage who, a month or so earlier, was planning the assassination. Receiving letters of support and instruction from Thomas Morgan in Paris and other émigrés, Savage plotted at the church of St Giles-in-the-Fields in London.

In June, Babington met some of his friends to talk about the situation that they as Catholic gentlemen found themselves in. They believed they faced either a massacre of Catholics in England by Elizabeth's government or the invasion and destruction of the kingdom by foreigners. Babington wanted to avoid both horrors by leaving England.

But his mind was slowly changed. By early July, talking to his friends and once more to John Ballard, he seemed willingly to be
involved in a plan to free the Queen of Scots from her captivity. That plan slowly but surely became one element in a greater and more dangerous scheme, the capture or assassination of Queen Elizabeth.

And so, in the summer months of 1586, began the extraordinary, fascinating and complicated story of Babington and Ballard's plot.

Thomas Phelippes was a close and secret man who trusted few beyond his immediate circle. Even with Sir Francis Walsingham's secretary, Francis Mylles, the watchers and informants Nicholas Berden and Maliverey Catilyn, Arthur Gregory the forger, and his own manservant Thomas Cassie he exercised a testing and critical judgement. Those inside the circle could be found wanting: once Cassie fell out of his master's favour and Phelippes threatened him with the Tower of London. Those outside his circle he found it harder to trust. At times he doubted the discretion of Justice Richard Young, the harrier of priests in Westminster and Middlesex. The royal messengers – the pursuivants – were certainly beyond the pale, as Phelippes wrote bluntly to Walsingham: they were ‘very knaves', a view which, given common accusations of corruption and bribery, was probably a fair one. By summer 1586 Phelippes had earned the privilege to speak as plainly as this. For at least three years he had been Sir Francis's trusted right hand in secret affairs. Phelippes, always careful and precise, practised espionage, the object of which, as he saw it, was to protect the cause of God, queen and country. Phelippes often used a phrase that has a modern ring to it: the security of the state.

As well as being an expert in the breaking of codes and ciphers, Phelippes was an intuitive and skilled handler of agents. He briefed informants like Berden and Catilyn and read the reports they wrote. No less importantly, he made sure that they had money to live on. They received no salary: espionage in the reign of Elizabeth had everything to do with patronage and favour and the financial pickings, though occasionally rich, were infrequent. It was not a trivial matter when on 6 July 1586, shortly before he set out for Chartley, Phelippes
attended to the reward of Nicholas Berden and Gilbert Gifford with a handsome piece of royal patronage, which to Berden alone was worth £30.

Gifford was all the time growing in confidence and trust. On Thursday, 7 July he was near Chartley, but getting ready soon to travel south. Phelippes had sent him into Staffordshire to test ‘the honest man' – the brewer of Burton upon Trent – and to find Thomas Barnes. Gifford wrote as ‘Cornelys' to Phelippes in London. Gifford felt the brewer could be trusted. He was very well paid and was, Gifford wrote, ‘totaliter ours'. Beyond the money, ‘the honest man' sought nothing more than to impress Sir Amias Paulet. But of Thomas Barnes, his cousin and fellow courier to and from Mary Queen of Scots, he could write nothing. Worryingly, Barnes had disappeared.

The fact that Gifford had no clue of Barnes's whereabouts nagged him. The brewer told Gifford that Barnes had set out for London at least a week before without fixing an appointment with him for another meeting. Gifford thought his cousin was probably in the city and, given the length of time he had been away from Staffordshire, likely to be leaving London to travel north once again. The brewer did not know Barnes's real name, and only now did Gifford give Sir Amias Paulet the identity of their mysterious second courier: ‘His name is Barnes. I know him well. But I think he hath no chamber in London. Neither were it expedient [for] you to lean harder of him for the cause I told, for that would spoil all.' He undertook, for both Paulet and Phelippes, ‘to cut him clean off from this course'. Cousin Barnes could expect, in other words, a stiff dressing down for disappearing – when Gifford found him. But even on 11 July there was still no sign of him. Gifford thought Barnes might be with the French ambassador but dared not go to the ambassador's house till he had a packet of letters to deliver.

On Sunday, 10 July Gifford met John Ballard for the first time in England. He knew Ballard a little already, from Paris, but not very well. He was not surprised by Ballard's visit. Thomas Morgan played his agents close to his chest, and Gifford knew from their meeting in Paris that Morgan had a scheme in play and that he had already sent someone ‘to solicit matters' in England. This was Morgan's method, small revelations when the time came, no one knowing the whole
picture. Gifford quickly perceived that this unexpected meeting with a man he hardly knew was another unfolding of Thomas Morgan's plan. Ballard, on the other hand, seemed to know all about Gifford and had been searching for him for some time. When he met Gifford that Sunday, he was both relieved and angry.

Ballard's anger was directed at Morgan and Charles Paget. They had promised him regular news from Paris, but he had so far heard nothing; he said he was in half a mind to return to France. Gifford tried to calm him: the delay, he said, could be explained by the usual problems of communication. Ballard thanked God that he and Gifford could now help each other. It was obvious to Gifford that Ballard knew more of Morgan's plan than he did, for Ballard said that even if they did not hear from Morgan and Paget their mission could at least be completed by Gifford and Ballard doing their parts.

Gifford asked Ballard plainly: What was it they had to do? Ballard told Gifford that he should obtain from the Queen of Scots her hand and seal ‘to allow of all that should be practised for her behalf': without such a document they laboured in vain. Gifford said that this kind of warrant had never been obtained by any man, and to do so would be very difficult. They agreed to think about the proposal; Gifford would give his answer next day. Ballard left Gifford's lodgings and travelled out of London. He left his manservant to wait upon Gifford for his answer. Gifford was left with the impression after their meeting that Ballard was working alone and that he was ‘marvellous earnest' in hearing Gifford's reply. Though Gifford did not yet know the full extent of Ballard's knowledge, he was sure that Ballard would reveal everything to him in time. Certainly Ballard was very keen to keep Gifford's company. Straight away Gifford wrote to Walsingham to find out what answer he should give to Ballard.

Ballard and Gifford met again two days later, a Tuesday morning, when Ballard was in what Gifford called ‘a marvellous rage', still furious that he had heard nothing from either Morgan or Paget. He was again thinking about returning to France. He spoke of the great men in England, nobility and gentry, who supported him. Gifford was reluctant to press him too hard for names. Ballard had heard that Gifford was under Walsingham's protection, but Gifford was able to persuade him that he was not. Ballard railed against Thomas
Phelippes. He knew that Phelippes was at Chartley and said that Phelippes was opening and reading packets of letters, causing Gifford to suspect that Ballard had a spy close to Walsingham. Gifford advised Sir Francis to keep special guard on his correspondence.

About six days before Gilbert Gifford's second meeting with John Ballard, Anthony Babington wrote to the Queen of Scots. By now he and his group of Catholic friends had concocted a plan to free Mary from captivity. He been approached, he wrote, by a man called Ballard, who had informed him of great preparations by the Catholic princes of Europe ‘for the deliverance of our country from the extreme and miserable state wherein it hath too long remained'. England would be invaded; Mary would be freed; Queen Elizabeth, ‘the usurping competitor', would be dispatched. Babington's meaning was clear. Elizabeth was to be murdered, and members of his group of conspirators would do the killing:

[for] the dispatch of the usurper, from the obedience of whom we are by 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.

He told Mary that he would be at Lichfield, a few miles from Chartley, where he would expect her reply. Once he had finished his letter, Babington gave it to the boy, who was unknown to him, who came to collect the Queen of Scots's packets. The boy worked for Thomas Phelippes.

Phelippes saw and read for himself Babington's letter to Mary. Waiting patiently near Chartley for Mary to betray herself in her reply to Babington, Phelippes may have remembered some words from the Act for the Queen's Surety passed by parliament only a year earlier. A special judicial commission would try the Queen of Scots on the evidence of any plot or conspiracy ‘compassed or imagined, tending to the hurt of Her Majesty's royal person by any person or with the privity of any person that shall or may pretend title to the crown of this realm'.
With the privity of any pretender to the English throne
: in other words, if the Queen of Scots gave her support to the conspiracy
of Babington and his friends, she would in effect sign her own death warrant.

The Queen of Scots was too clever and experienced to fall into an easy trap. She replied to Babington's letter but took ten days to do so. She was careful to leave no evidence in her own handwriting. Any notes she may have made for the letter's composition were carefully destroyed, and she dictated the letter to her secretaries. It was Gilbert Curll, Mary's secretary for the English language, who put the plain words into cipher.

The Queen of Scots acknowledged Babington's ‘zeal and entire affection' to the Catholic faith and her cause and commended his efforts to prevent ‘the designments of our enemies for the extirpation of our religion out of this realm with ruin of us all'. She encouraged Babington to consider each element of his proposal and to confer with Don Bernardino de Mendoza, King Philip's ambassador in Paris. The nearest she came to acknowledging Babington's conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth was in a question: ‘By what means do the six gentlemen deliberate to proceed'? But it was enough.

Leaving Babington in God's protection, Mary instructed him to destroy the letter once he had read it: ‘fail not to burn this present quickly'. On 18 July Curll posted this startling document from Chartley, where it went, of course, not straight off to Babington but first, by way of Phelippes's complicated postal system, to Phelippes himself, to be deciphered, read and analysed in careful detail.

It took Phelippes less than twenty-four hours to decipher Mary's reply to Babington and to make a copy for Walsingham. ‘It may please your honour. You have now this queen's answer to Babington which I received yesterday' were the opening words of Phelippes's letter to Walsingham on Tuesday, 19 July. The copy Phelippes sent by fast despatch to his master. The original he kept, and would send on to Babington if he was in Staffordshire, as Babington had said he would be. Phelippes thought that if Babington were caught quickly enough Mary's letter would ‘not be so sore defaced', even though the Scottish queen had instructed the young man to destroy it. He asked Walsingham to find out from Nicholas Berden or Thomas Cassie, Phelippes's servant, whether Babington was in London.

Phelippes was confident that in what he called the ‘bloody letter'
Elizabeth's government at last possessed the evidence necessary to proceed against the Queen of Scots. He hoped that God would inspire Elizabeth ‘with that heroical courage that were meet [fit, appropriate] for avenge of God's cause and the security of her self and this state'. In other words, Phelippes believed the time had come to destroy Mary for the good of Elizabeth's throne and kingdom. But at the very least, Phelippes hoped that the queen would hang Mary's two secretaries, Nau and Curll.

Receiving Phelippes's letter, Walsingham briefed the queen on what had been happening at Chartley. Sir Francis wrote to Phelippes on Friday, 22 July to say that nothing would be done about Anthony Babington till Phelippes was back in London; for the time being the young man was free. Walsingham knew that Phelippes had the original of Mary's letter with him and he instructed Phelippes to bring it to court. Already Walsingham's mind, like Phelippes's, was moving. It was clear to him that so brilliant a chance for action needed thought, planning and care. He wrote: ‘I hope there will be a good course had in this cause. Otherwise we that have been instruments in the discovery shall receive little comfort for our travail.' In other words, given this opportunity, there had to be decisive and definitive action against the Queen of Scots. What now, he must have wondered, should or could be done?