The Elizabeth Tudor Conspiracy

by Alexandra Walsh

  A shout from outside drew all their attention to the doors as they were thrown open by the heralds.

  “The countess of Shrewsbury, Lady Newton and Lady Effingham,” came the cry as the three women tumbled through the door.

  “What’s happened?” asked Elizabeth, already halfway across the chamber to meet them.

  “This, from Mignonne,” said Katherine, pushing a leather scroll into Elizabeth’s hand. Unfurling it and stretching it out across the table, Elizabeth began to read.

  “This is the deciphered and translated version, madam,” explained Bess, approaching the table. “It arrived only moments after you left for this meeting. We decoded it as quickly as possible.”

  Elizabeth was too intent on reading to reply. When she had finished, she turned away, her face blanched white. She thrust the scroll at her spymaster, who scanned the text before handing it to the other members of the privy council to read.

  “Do you think it’s genuine?” asked Sir Francis Knollys.

  “Who but the king of Spain would have the audacity to put something like this in writing?” snapped Elizabeth. “This proclamation states that there is a way to save Mary. If I am prepared to stand aside and give her my throne then Philip claims he will let me live quietly until my death, which would probably be shortly afterwards. Once again, he throws in a counterplot. This man is infuriating.”

  “And if you refuse?” asked Burghley from the shadows.

  “Mary will be executed,” said Elizabeth, her voice icy cold.

  Walsingham continued to study the scroll; his brow furrowed. “But why would he offer the throne to Mary when he knows she’s dying?” he asked. “It makes no sense.”

  “She is a Catholic. I’m sure he believes it is better to have a dying Papist on the throne than a healthy heretic,” Elizabeth replied. “He is playing us; he is seeing how far I am prepared to go to save my sister … Queen.” Aware of who surrounded her, Elizabeth covered her small slip.

  “Elizabeth, this is ridiculous,” came a voice and all heads turned towards Kate Howard. “This ludicrous situation has gone on long enough. At the centre of all this egotistical plotting is a sick woman. It doesn’t matter about her religion — she is dying and while she languishes alone and in pain, held on false charges, you all quibble and posture as you try to appear the most intelligent while pushing your own political agendas.”

  The silence was eloquent and Elizabeth caught Kate’s eye, giving her permission to continue her impassioned speech, even though the assembled men were staring at her in transfixed horror.

  “The Welsh border is now safe,” continued Kate. “The Spanish coup has been quelled as easily as the Ridolfi Plot. It’s the same with most of Philip’s plots — he has an idea but then doesn’t properly commit money or men, hoping they will work out of their own accord. He might think he is a great military strategist but his plans are based on the boasts of his oldest friends and his own delusions of grandeur. He seems to think God will intervene, yet strangely, He never does. This plot is the same. The duke of Hereford and his men must set up camp near Fotheringhay Castle. Our informers tell us it’s possible to smuggle people in and out because of the laxness of Philip’s guards. If we had the Scottish queen here, under our protection, it would render Philip’s insane plan null and void.”

  “You are quite correct, Kate,” said Elizabeth.

  Around her, the great men of the land exchanged nervous glances.

  “Such strategies as men like Philip devise will never work because they are careless with the detail,” said Elizabeth. “The earl of Leicester returns within the week. We begin to plan our invasion and when our weary knight is home, he and the duke of Hereford will lead the charge to remove the Scottish queen from the clutches of the Spanish. Until then, we must hope we’re not too late.”

  PART SEVEN: January, 2019

  Chapter One

  It was Monday morning and Perdita pushed her chair back from her desk, wandering over to stare out of the window as she considered all she had read in the past few days. She was still reeling over the possibility that Elizabeth I did not sanction Mary, Queen of Scots’ execution and the suggestion that it was an unknown Spanish invasion that had been the true cause of her death, but, to her, all this paled into insignificance in the face of her theory that Mary, Queen of Scots was in fact the missing princess; daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine Howard, rather than the daughter of James V and Mary of Guise. It was an idea that continued to send shivers down her spine.

  As ever, Kit was by her side, assuring her the information was all there to back up their new theory. Today, he was going to talk her through the Babington Plot to see what anomalies they could spot. He had sent her a copy of his thesis and, although she had not yet told him, she had read it over the weekend and found it fascinating. Despite his obvious intelligence and his natural sharpness when it came to dealing with his role within Jerusalem, Perdita had never given much thought to Kit’s academic background but now she realised he was bordering on a genius.

  As though her thoughts had summoned him, Kit crashed through the door with his usual exuberance. His hair was standing on end and his battered Fred Perry computer bag was slung across his chest.

  “Is it just us?” he asked, dumping his bag on the sofa.

  “Yep, Piper and your dad are discussing her divorce,” said Perdita.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. Poor Piper.”

  “Jeremy has emailed to say he wants to begin proceedings,” she continued. “He’s being very aggressive and threatening. Your dad has had divorce lawyers on hand for a while but Piper was reluctant to go ahead — now, though, she’s furious and that’s driving her.”

  “Breaking off a relationship is hard enough,” he said. “Filing for divorce must be gut-wrenching.”

  The distress in his voice was genuine and Perdita wondered if he was remembering the pain he had inflicted on Lydia when he had ended their relationship. Although, thought Perdita, he had done it with tact, consideration and decency, trying to soften the blow as much as possible, not like Jeremy, who had been flaunting his new relationship in Piper’s face.

  “Exactly — the end of a marriage seems so sad,” she sighed. “Especially as we’ve known Jeremy since we were children and we’ve always been close to his parents, too. They were Dad’s best friends from his art college days. Your dad and Piper are going to have an update on the ruby ring, too. Alistair has been tracing the current owner, Hannah White.”

  “Didn’t you want to be there?”

  “No, it’s her inheritance, too; she’s allowed to make decisions. Anyway, she found the ring.”

  Kit took some papers out of his bag. “I’ve been refreshing my knowledge of the Babington Plot. I did study it for my doctorate but it was a while ago…”

  “I read your thesis,” she said, waving it at him, as he had once done to her with her grandmother’s unpublished Catherine Howard manuscript.

  “All of it?” asked Kit, a hint of doubt tingeing the question.

  “Yes,” she replied. “Once I got started, it was impossible to put it down. Your writing style carries the argument so well, it’s engrossing.”

  For a moment Kit looked unsure, then he grinned.

  “Thanks Perds, I think you’re probably the only person outside of my tutors and Dad, who’s ever read it.”

  Their eyes met and Perdita found it difficult to tear her gaze away.

  “The Babington Plot,” she stammered, forcing herself to look down.

  “Yes, one of the oddest entrapment schemes in British history,” said Kit and Perdita was pleased to see he was flustered, too.

  “From what you state,” she said, “the Babington Plot was manipulated by Elizabeth I’s chief spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, in order to implicate Mary, Queen of Scots in a plot to suggest she sanctioned the assassination of Queen Elizabeth.”

  “Very succinct,” said Kit, dropping into the seat beside her. “Walsingham’s plan was in respon
se to the Bond of Association; the law Burghley had created which stated that should an attempt be made on Elizabeth’s life in favour of the Stuart succession then both Mary and James VI could be executed.”

  “Was that even legal?” asked Perdita.

  “I shouldn’t think so, which was why Elizabeth was furious. She viewed it as a lynch law that would undermine her sovereignty, so she changed the wording. Instead, any claimant or pretender to the throne who stood to benefit from a plot to assassinate the queen would be tried in a special court. Even if a guilty verdict was reached, nothing could be done until Elizabeth declared it so and signed a proclamation under the Great Seal of England, which tied Burghley’s hands.”

  “And it was with this in mind that Walsingham formed the Babington Plot,” said Perdita.

  “Yes,” said Kit. “Burghley had set up the legal framework, now Walsingham used his spy network to lead Mary into their web.”

  “So far, so believable,” said Perdita, “but only if you take the view that Elizabeth hated Mary and saw her as a potential threat.”

  “Something we now know to be incorrect, thanks to the Lady Pamela letters.”

  “Exactly,” said Perdita. “What happened next in the ‘history-book version’?”

  “Sir Francis Walsingham used his double-agents to encourage a young, rather boastful, Catholic nobleman called Anthony Babington to approach Mary and open lines of communication. She was said to have begun a correspondence with him. Babington passed his messages to the queen using ‘The Barrel Method’. With the help of a friendly brewer, he would seal a letter in a water-tight casket and hide it in the stopper of the barrels of beer that were sent to Mary’s home. This would then be delivered to Mary and she would reply using the same method,” explained Kit. “Unbeknown to Babington, the brewer was a spy in Walsingham’s pay. All his letters were being passed to Walsingham first. They were deciphered and read, then replaced in the barrels and passed on to Mary. In one case, Pheilippes, Walsingham’s double agent, even added information to a note for Mary in order to incriminate her further. Interestingly, Mary’s secretaries, Claude Nau and Gilbert Curle admitted, under torture, that these fabricated documents were the real letters that they had written and not Walsingham’s fakes.”

  “Do you think that was the case or was it added by The Scribe later?” asked Perdita.

  “As we have no evidence in the Lady Pamela letters to suggest either man was ever arrested, I would suspect The Scribe,” replied Kit. “Against the advice of her secretaries, Mary allegedly wrote to Babington agreeing to support the plot. This incriminating document became known as ‘The Bloody Letter’.”

  “Walsingham now had enough evidence to incriminate Mary,” Perdita said, and Kit nodded.

  “But,” he added, “in order to be sure he had a water-tight case, he wanted to catch Babington and force a confession out of him to corroborate this supposed written evidence from the Queen of Scots in order to convince Elizabeth.

  “Babington was caught on 14 August 1586 and was taken to the Tower of London. After intense interrogation, on 18 August he confessed all he knew about the plot and implicated Mary, Queen of Scots. Elizabeth was said to be unconvinced but allowed Walsingham to continue his investigation. Now it gets really odd; according to official records, at this point, Mary was then tricked into leaving Chartley Manor where she was under house arrest and was forced to stay at Tixall Castle while Chartley was searched. All her letters and money were seized.”

  “Meanwhile, according to the timeline I’ve been creating from the Lady Pamela letters,” Perdita added, “there was upheaval in Pembrokeshire and the rumours that Carew, Tenby, Llawhaden and Haverfordwest castles had been captured by Spanish soldiers.”

  “Something which isn’t evident in any records except ours,” said Kit.

  “Convenient, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Especially as at that point, Burghley is reported to have approached Elizabeth demanding that now she has this information from the Babington interrogation, she must act swiftly, brutally and without mercy.”

  Perdita looked appalled. “Whoever The Scribe was,” she said, “he or she was either completely ruthless or so scared of what they had been commissioned to do, they were writing for their life.”

  Kit gave Perdita an appraising look. “Do you know, I’ve never thought about it like that before,” he said. “I always assumed The Scribe was in cahoots with whoever ordered this widespread changing of history. Perhaps it was fear motivating them rather than agreement with what was being done because to alter events to this level is enormous. Do you think it was done deliberately to smear Elizabeth?”

  “Possibly,” said Perdita, “but I think it’s bigger than that.”

  “Bigger than executing a monarch?”

  “She wasn’t the only one though, was she? There was Charles I — he was beheaded outside the Banqueting House in London on 30 January 1649. For The Scribe to suggest that Mary, Queen of Scots was also executed, a monarch of the blood royal rather than a consort like Anne Boleyn, then there is precedent and English law is based on that rather than a constitution, which would have made the decision over Charles I’s death easier.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yes, we have a constitutional monarchy which was introduced in 1689, entitled the Bill of Rights, when William and Mary were crowned but we don’t have a written constitution like they do in America. Our law has been built up over years of Parliamentary Acts and in the case of the legal system and the law courts, we follow precedents…” she broke off, her face immobile as another possibility occurred to her.

  “What?” prompted Kit.

  “Of course; the swapping of the royal baby,” she said. “There was something nagging me but I couldn’t remember what — hang on a sec, Kit, let me check something.”

  She flicked through a few pages on a search engine and after a moment, grinned up at Kit.

  “On 10 June 1688, King James II and his second wife, Mary of Modena, had a son who was christened James Francis Edward, however, there has always been a rumour that the baby was stillborn and another child was smuggled into the queen’s chamber inside a bed warming pan in order to replace the royal heir.”

  “And James II was a Stuart?” confirmed Kit.

  “Yes, he was a direct descendant from Mary, Queen of Scots — she would have been his great-grandmother. In 1688, he was deposed and replaced by his daughter, Mary II, who incidentally was named after Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Dutch husband, William III. This was what prompted the Bill of Rights.”

  “Why?”

  “Mostly to do with religion,” said Perdita. “It came after a law was passed saying no Catholic could sit on the British throne. Don’t you think it’s odd that considering what we’ve discovered that there’s another well-known rumour concerning a royal baby being swapped, but many years later?”

  Perdita watched Kit considering this new piece of information. He ran his fingers through his hair, screwing up his face in concentration.

  “It’s definitely curious,” admitted Kit, “but we can’t connect it.”

  “Not yet, anyway,” said Perdita.

  “OK,” Kit said, “going back to the Babington Plot. On Tuesday 20 September 1586, Anthony Babington was taken from the Tower of London to St Giles’s Field near Holborn on a horse-drawn sledge where he and six accomplices were hanged, drawn and quartered on the charge of treason.”

  “Nasty,” said Perdita, the words horrific enough, the thought of the deed still shocking. “But strange that there is no record of who the other six were, seeing as they were executed alongside Babington. You’d think someone would have written their names down?”

  “You would, considering how evil their punishment was in connection with the crime,” agreed Kit. “However, the next day, Mary was moved to Fotheringhay Castle via Hill Hall to await trial.”

  “And that’s another weird thing,” said Perdita. “My geography isn’t great, so while I was
reading this, I looked up the houses on a map. Chartley Manor is in Rugeley near Stafford, and Tixall, the other place Mary was placed, is also near Stafford. So, why move her to Fotheringhay Castle in order to make her stand trial — it’s over 90 miles away near Oundle, Northamptonshire. If Mary was so ill, wouldn’t Walsingham, Burghley and Elizabeth suggest she was held and tried somewhere closer to where she was already staying?”

  Kit looked at her in surprise. “I’ve never noticed that before,” he admitted. “Although, if you add in the extra information that we have from the Lady Pamela letters, we now know that Mary was making her way gradually towards London. Perhaps she was near Fotheringhay when the Spanish caught up with her.”

  “Deborah said she’ll have the next section of letters for us later today, so we might find something relevant there,” said Perdita.

  “Great — in that case, we’ll keep going,” said Kit. “On 25 September, Elizabeth continued to refuse to send Mary to trial, despite the fact there seemed to be incontrovertible evidence of her involvement in the plot. On 1 October, Amyus Paulet, Mary’s gaoler, told the Scottish queen she was to be interrogated and advised her to confess but she refused.

  “On 8 October, the Commissioners gathered at Westminster and agreed to try Mary under the Bond of Association. They arrived at Fotheringhay on 11 October. Meanwhile, Elizabeth had written to Mary advising her that it would be in her best interests to appear in person at the trial. Mary agreed but only to answer the single charge of plotting Elizabeth’s assassination, which she denied.”

  “And this is when the supposed trial took place?” asked Perdita.

  “Yes,” replied Kit. “On 15 October 1586, Mary entered the Great Hall at Fotheringhay Castle to be confronted by the earl of Shrewsbury, who was also Earl Marshal of England and had been her gaoler or carer — depending on how you view her stay in England — for over 25 years; Sir Francis Walsingham; William Cecil, Lord Burghley; Sir James Croft, Sir Christopher Hatton and the bulk of the privy council. Mary was supposed to defend herself with no idea about the case against her. She denied writing the letters but the council quickly overturned this claim.