Mary Queen of Scots

by Retha Warnicke

  In his edition of this correspondence Conyers Read dismissed the importance of the disjointedness with the quip, but “if we argue that every documents,” failing, however, to identify the other female inconsistencies in question.13 His biased analysis appears even more invalid when compared to the equally biased comment of Antony Perrenot, cardinal of Granvelle, Philip’s regent in Madrid during his absence in Portugal. In 1582 Granvelle indicated he admired the epistolary skills of Mary’s correspondence. After reading her message about the enterprise, he surmised that she employed a very intelligent secretary. It was impossible to explain with greater clarity than she had in her lengthy letter the manner in which the business should be conducted, the extent of financial support that would be necessary, and the number and kind of armed forces that would be required.14

  Mary’s recent biographers, including those who have generally written favorably about her, such as Antonia Fraser and John Guy, have either failed to note or at least to consider seriously the inconsistencies in Mary’s letter. Accepting the extant decoded version as a true reflec-tion of her intent, their reading of it in association with Babington’s letter provides adequate proof for them that the references to the six men’s design meant Mary did approve of Elizabeth’s assassination as a prelude to her own release from prison. Earlier sympathetic writers also failed to understand the significance of the placement of Elizabeth’s death before Mary’s liberation.15 This altered sequence of events did not make sense given Mary’s fears that her guardian would kill her or could not protect her if Elizabeth died first either peacefully or violently.

  Even if, as is being argued here, Mary did fail explicitly to approve the six gentlemen’s task, the Statute for the Safety of the Queen’s Person still applied to her because Babington was conspiring on her behalf to assassinate Elizabeth. To enforce this statute against Mary, Walsingham and the other councilors realized that their major hurdle was persuading Elizabeth to assent to her captive’s death. Although Walsingham had amassed extensive data linking Mary to various invasion schemes, he used his spy network to manipulate her and her allies into agreeing to a conspiracy that included Elizabeth’s demise. He surely realized that this was the only evidence that would induce his queen to permit her cousin’s execution. To convince Elizabeth that Mary had approved of the plot’s every detail, including regicide, Walsingham must have ordered Phelippes to add brief phrases to the letter that could be read as specifically confirming that consent. Indeed, on 19 July after recopying Mary’s ciphered message to Babington, Phelippes predicted that the letter would inspire their queen. In discussions of Mary’s trial and execution in Chapter 10, the question of whether Phelippes inserted passages into her letter will be revisited.

  ARREST OF THE BABINGTON PLOTTERS

  On 4 August Ballard was arrested and tortured so severely he could not stand during his trial. By the 14th nearly all the other conspirators, including Savage and Babington, were in custody and probably fearing torture had begun confessing their parts in the scheme. They were tried in mid September, found guilty, and executed a few days later.

  While these events were underway, Paulet received new instructions concerning his prisoner and her household. First, pretending to have arranged a stag hunting party, he should escort her to a nearby residence and confine her there for several months. En route he should have her secretaries, Curle and Nau, arrested and sent to London under strict guard. Next, Paulet should confiscate her documents at Chartley and seal them in bags for delivery to London. Finally, he should reduce the number of her 47 or so servants; ultimately, he permitted her to retain ten men, seven women, and Pagez’s young son.

  The dwelling Paulet chose was Tixall, Sir Walter Aston’s seat three miles from Chartley. Their original departure date of 11 August having been postponed to the 16th, Mary looked forward to the sport and rode happily toward Tixall. She soon discovered the ruse which, when followed by Curle’s and Nau’s arrest, upset her so much that she demanded to be returned to her quarters. After realizing they were taking a different route, she dismounted but unable to walk sat on the ground weeping. Then supported under each arm by her servants, she knelt under a tree and prayed God to have pity on her and her people and to pardon her for her offences, claiming she wanted nothing but “the honor of His holy name.”16 Remounting, she rode to Tixall and disappeared into her chambers. On the 22nd Paulet requested and obtained permission to return to Chartley, a more defensible structure than Aston’s residence. Emerging from Tixall’s gate on the 25th, Mary tearfully explained to the waiting paupers that she had nothing for them and that she was also a beggar since everything had been taken from her. To the gentlemen she denied being involved in any conspiracy against their queen.

  At Chartley she learned that Barbara Mowbray, Curle’s wife, had delivered a baby and that Paulet had sent de Préau away. When Paulet refused to let his chaplain conduct the christening rite to permit her as the godmother to name Curle’s daughter, Mary astounded him by sprinkling her with water, saying, “I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,” and calling her Mary.17 After discovering that her papers were missing, she swore she possessed two things they could never take from her, her English blood and her Catholic faith.

  Elizabeth was meanwhile approving the relocation of her prisoner to Fotheringhay, a royal castle in Northamptonshire in the keeping of Sir William Fitzwilliam. Walsingham and Burghley sent Mildmay to report on its condition and required Paulet to determine how much of Chartley’s furnishings should be transferred to it. Having earlier requested removal from Essex’s manor house, Mary was pleased to learn that her next residence would be Fotheringhay. As it was only 84 miles from London, she hoped to be permitted to speak to Châteauneuf. Also delighted to leave Staffordshire, Paulet requested replacement as her custodian.

  On 10 September before their departure, while suffering pains in her neck, unable to use her hands, and scarcely able to walk, the outraged queen was forced to witness Paulet confiscating more of her property. He seized from her cabinet over £100 in coins, from Curle’s closet 2,000 crowns intended as his wife’s dowry, and from Nau’s chamber gold and coins worth over £1,400, earmarked to pay for the costs of her funeral and of her servants’ transportation home after her death. Retaining £500 for household expenses, Paulet forwarded the remainder to London and later took additional money from her quarters. These were not to be his last unpleasant acts. After her trial and conviction, he humiliated the queen by removing the cloth of estate from her chamber and depriving her of the support and presence of her priest and the master of her household.

  10: ENDING CAPTIVITY

  On Wednesday, 21 September, Mary’s servants carried her to the coach for the ride to Fotheringhay, which they reached on Sunday, after four stops: Burton in Staffordshire, Hill Hall Castle near Abbots Bromley, a property of the earl of Huntington, the Angel, a Leicester hotel, and Roger Smith’s manor in Rutlandshire. A stone castle with a double moat, Fotheringhay, where her trial and execution took place, was destined to be her last prison. Following those events, the book ends with brief discussions of Buchanan’s theory of revolution, of James’s memorial for her at Westminster Abbey, and of her status as a Catholic martyr.

  After settling in at their new quarters, Paulet attempted to persuade Mary to confess her involvement in the Babington plot. He argued that she would receive better treatment if she admitted her offences instead of leaving the determination of her guilt to the royal commissioners, who would shortly arrive to interrogate her. Proclaiming her innocence, she protested that the only superior authorities she recognized were God and the Church.

  On 11 October along with other officials, the commissioners began arriving at Fotheringhay, although six of the 48 who were appointed did refuse to attend and participate. On the 12th Mildmay, Paulet, and Edward Barker, the royal notary, delivered to their prisoner Elizabeth’s letter authorizing the trial. She explained to Mary that she was subject to Engl
ish laws, as she resided in England under its queen’s protection. Aggrieved that Elizabeth was commanding her to undergo a trial as though she were her subject, Mary again swore she was innocent and complained about the confiscation of her documents and her lack of counsel.

  The next day, the 13th, when a number of the commissioners, including Sir Thomas Bromley, the lord chancellor, and Burghley, informed her that neither her prerogative nor her captivity could exempt her from trial by the common law, she again refused to prejudice her rank by responding to their charges, but as she was innocent, she agreed to defend herself before parliament. Finally, she requested a list of the commissioners’ names, which was afterwards released to her, and promised to inform them presently whether she would appear at the trial.

  When they later returned to her apartment, although she did not object to any of the commissioners named, she still denied their right to judge her. She complained that their authority derived from the Statute for the Safety of the Queen’s Person, which had been enacted to entrap her. Christopher Hatton, the royal vice-chamberlain, warned Mary that if she were innocent, she would besmirch her reputation by declining to answer the charges, and Burghley then revealed that the proceedings would commence the next day even if she refused their jurisdiction. Later that evening, she resolved to speak to them again before the trial.

  The next morning, the 14th, when they re-entered her chamber, she repeated that as a foreign, anointed queen, she was not subject to their laws or their monarch. Since she cared more for her honor than her life, she continued, she was persuaded by Hatton’s argument to participate in the hearing but would answer only to the allegation that she had plotted Elizabeth’s death. Then dismissing them, she promised to join them in the great hall after dining, as she felt feeble and ill and needed to drink a little wine. One explanation for her decision to respond to this charge is that it was the only one of which she was truly innocent. This limited defense supports the contention that the references to the six men in the Babington letter were forged insertions.

  At the upper end of the chamber in which the trial was conducted stood Elizabeth’s dais of estate and a table holding the documentary evidence. At the table were positioned the crown’s representatives, including Sir John Popham, attorney general, Sir Thomas Egerton, solicitor general, and two clerks to record the proceedings. The commissioners were arranged along both sides of the room. When she appeared at 9:00 a.m. supported under her arms by Andrew Melville, master of her household, and Dr Dominique Burgoyne, her physician, she wore a black dress with a long train and a pointed widow’s cap with a long white gauze veil.

  After she was seated on a velvet chair near the dais, Bromley opened the proceedings, accusing her of conspiring to murder Elizabeth, usurp her realm, and disrupt religious matters and the public peace. She protested that as she was an absolute queen and had come voluntarily to England seeking the aid that had been promised, she would refuse to prejudice herself, her allies, or relatives by responding to his charges. Only to the untrue claim that she sought Elizabeth’s death would she answer, not as a subject but as an innocent declaring to the world her blamelessness. After he pronounced her protestation illegal, she asserted that she lacked political ambitions because her captivity had ruined her health, leaving her with at most three years to live. To Burghley’s pointed reminder that she had once borne England’s arms, she explained that she had been obeying Henry II’s orders. That Burghley could not resist referring to this earlier behavior, although she had not repeated it since 1560, indicates some of the lingering outrage he and his associates felt. Mary next displayed the ring Elizabeth sent to her in Scotland with a promise of assistance. Finally, the commissioners instructed the clerks to record her protestation and Bromley’s response.

  When questioned about Babington’s plot, she denied knowing him or communicating with him. After copies of her letters to him were read, she accused her enemies of tampering with her ciphers and requested to see the originals. Furthermore, she had not been in contact with Ballard, as they claimed, and charged Walsingham with manipulating the evidence. Declining to respond to her accusation directly, Walsingham replied defensively:

  I call to God to witness that as a private person I have done nothing unbeseeming an honest man, nor, as I bear the place of a public man, have I done anything unworthy of my place. I confess that being very careful for the safety of the queen and the realm, I have curiously searched out all the practices against the same.1

  Following an hour’s recess, the trial resumed at 2:00 p.m. During this session, Nau’s and Curle’s depositions concerning her communications with Babington and a copy of Paget’s letter about Guise’s enterprise were read. She surmised that her secretaries had confessed under fear of death, although she admitted that Nau was capable of taking bribes to give false information and of enticing Curle to follow his lead. As for Guise’s enterprise, its goal was her liberation not Elizabeth’s murder. Burghley also reproached her for employing Morgan after he plotted with Parry to assassinate Elizabeth, but she insisted she knew nothing about that conspiracy and denied that the imprisoned Morgan was her servant, although she admitted supplying him with funds.

  At the opening of the trial on the 15th, she reminded the commissioners that she was appearing before them voluntarily and that their authority derived from the Statute for the Safety of the Queen’s Person. She also reminded them that if it had been in force in 1554, when Wyatt had rebelled against Mary Tudor on Elizabeth’s behalf, it would have required the death of their future queen. Her protestation having once again been recorded, they introduced copies of her communications with Paget, Allen, and Mendoza, which called for an invasion of England. She repeated that the goal of the enterprise was her liberation and charged her captors with punishing her for her religion. Burghley denied penalizing individuals for their faith and accused her of scheming to send James to Spain and to give her alleged succession rights to Philip. The English should be sorry, she retorted, for separating her son from his mother in their treaty and for making him Elizabeth’s pensioner. Again, she asked for a parliamentary hearing, and then as she departed, she pardoned the commissioners for their rude behavior.2

  Believing that the commissioners had condemned her before they arrived, she assured Paulet that she possessed a clear conscience and was prepared to die. At the end of October, she took physic several times and was bedridden for five or six days, an indication that this ordeal may have adversely affected her health.

  At the proceedings, which followed contemporary rules for English treason trials, only copies of Mary’s correspondence were produced and her judges declined to question her secretaries in her presence. In obedience to Elizabeth’s request, the trial was prorogued and reopened on the 25th in the Star Chamber at Westminster. There, Curle and Nau confirmed the validity of their depositions and admitted burning Babington’s letter and the drafts of her responses to him. It is noteworthy that both secretaries made independent statements contradicting their official testimony. Earlier in September Nau sent a private message to Elizabeth denying that Mary was a party to the assassination plot and later, in 1605, repeated that denial to James. In 1609 Curle swore on his deathbed to his confessor that none of the “calumnies and imputations put in print” about her were true.3 In 1586, nevertheless, the commissioners pronounced Mary guilty and sentenced her to die.

  Pressure mounted for Elizabeth to agree to the death penalty. On 12 November when a parliamentary deputation requested Mary’s speedy execution, Elizabeth asked them to reconsider since she was loath to pursue this severe penalty. Two days later, they repeated their original recommendation, undoubtedly holding the same opinion as Thomas Sackville, first Lord Buckhurst, who declared to Elizabeth that “every hour of her life did greatly endanger your death.”4

  Meanwhile, responding to Châteauneuf’s written request, Elizabeth temporarily postponed the publication of Mary’s death sentence. She decided, however, to proceed with informing Mary of he
r decision to accept the commissioners’ verdict. Elizabeth issued instructions on the 16th, requiring Buckhurst and Beale to convey that information to her captive. Four days later, the two messengers recommended to the Scottish queen that she begin preparations for her demise and made the offer to her, which she declined, of the spiritual services of Dr Richard Howland, bishop of Peterborough, or Dr Richard Fletcher, its dean. Joining Buckhurst and Beale in imparting this news to her were Paulet and his new deputy custodian, Sir Dru Drury, who privately referred to Mary as a serpent in his queen’s bosom. Some two weeks later, Elizabeth permitted the death sentence to be published.

  Earlier on 22 November, Paulet and Drury revealed to Mary that their queen had commanded them to remove from her chamber the cloth of estate with her royal arms and explained that she was a “dead woman, incapable of dignity.”5 Mary defiantly ordered a crucifix hung in its place.

  When informed of Mary’s death sentence, James and Henry dispatched envoys to plead for clemency for her. Despite his estates’ recommendation that he prepare for war if she were executed, James and his agents, William Keith, Robert Melville, and Grey, who joined Archibald Douglas, the Scottish resident ambassador in England, refrained from threatening military retaliation. James’s poverty and concern about the English succession led him to protest Mary’s treatment cautiously and circumspectly, and Walsingham had, furthermore, informed him that she bequeathed her English rights to Philip. Her intentions were also reiterated in a letter to Sixtus V on 23 November that was made public. The subsequent plea of Pomponne de Bellièvre, the French envoy, that Elizabeth should permit Henry to ransom Mary met with no success; concerned about domestic disturbances, the king could not insist that Elizabeth release her captive to him.