Heretic Queen

by Susan Ronald

  It was then that the Babington plotters thought better of fleeing. What if they freed Mary and placed her on the throne without the foreign intervention of Spain? Meanwhile, Babington himself had been recommended to Mary through two distinct channels: Morgan in Paris and her former emissary Fontenay, who was her secretary Nau’s brother-in-law. This seemingly made Babington trustworthy. Fontenay wrote that Babington had a dispatch for her from Scotland. So Mary wrote to Babington on June 25 to convey the letters through her trusted messenger. Babington’s indiscreet reply began “I write unto her touching every particular of this plot” and continued by revealing the entire plan of rescuing her and “despatching the usurping competitor” by six of his closest friends to place Mary on her English throne at long last.12 Walsingham noted down every detail before forwarding the letter on to Mary, who received it on July 14, 1586. Though the Scottish queen didn’t know it, she was at a crucial crossroads. If she had written disapprovingly to Babington or, better still, informed her jailer, who knows how the outcome could have changed? The fact remains, she did neither.

  Mary replied on July 17. It was a lengthy letter that left no doubt regarding her attitude. Mary wholeheartedly approved of Babington’s scheme. Throughout her reply Mary stresses the practical considerations of what must be done. The conspirators must have horsemen at the ready to advise her when Elizabeth was dead. She let Babington know in no uncertain terms, too, that failure could only bring the most dire consequences for them all. To rescue her, Babington would need “a good army, or in some very good strength”; otherwise, she would remain Paulet’s prisoner. She wrote to Sir Francis Englefield that same day that she “fear[ed] they may ruin themselves in vain,” meaning that she would never be successfully rescued.13 After the letter was decrypted, Thomas Phelippes drew a gallows on the outside of it before handing it across to Walsingham.

  This was still not enough for Walsingham. He penned a forged postscript, also in Mary’s cipher, to ask for the names of the six gentlemen who would rid her of Elizabeth:

  I would be glad to know the names and qualities of the six gentlemen which are to accomplish the designment; for that it may be I shall be able, upon knowledge of the parties, to give you some further advice necessary to be followed therein … As also … particularly how you proceed: and as soon as you may, for the same purpose, who be already, and how far everyone, privy hereunto.14

  Twelve days before her reply to Babington, Mary heard that a full treaty between James and Elizabeth had been signed at Berwick, excluding Mary’s interests entirely. All Mary wanted to do now was escape her captivity. On Tuesday, July 19, “the gallows letter” was in Walsingham’s hands. Gilbert Gifford fled to the Continent the following day to avoid the fallout from the impending arrests. By July 29, Babington had received the gallows letter and deciphered it with Tichborne. By August 4, Ballard was in custody, with Babington fleeing north to St. John’s Wood. Ten days later, Babington, too, was captured and brought through jeering crowds to the Tower of London. By the end of August, they had all confessed.

  * * *

  Mary remained at Chartley, ever hopeful of her release, ever ignorant of events. On August 11, Paulet suggested that Mary join him for a buck hunt. Mary was unused to any kindnesses from Paulet and took particular care over her toilette under the assumption that they would be meeting the local gentry. As they rode out, a group of horsemen thundered toward them. Could this be Babington’s men come to rescue her? If Mary had thought this, she was mistaken. The lead horseman, Sir Thomas Gorges, wearing the queen’s colors, dismounted and approached Mary. “Madame, the queen my mistress finds it very strange that you,” Gorges warned Mary loudly, “should have conspired against her and her state, a thing which she could not have believed had she not seen proofs of it with her own eyes and known it for certain.”15

  Mary’s servants were immediately dragged from her side for their implied guilt in the plot. A bemused Mary was taken with her physician to Tixall, still dressed in her fine riding clothes, utterly abandoned. She hadn’t worn her usual gold cross so that she could kneel in prayer as was her custom. Mary would stay at Tixall for a fortnight while Paulet searched every inch of her apartments and household at Chartley. The inventory of Mary’s possessions shows a queen who had had to sell all her jewels of great value, with her greatest possessions being miniatures of her son, James, and Elizabeth.

  * * *

  When Mary was taken away on September 21, 1586, at gunpoint, her servants were locked in their rooms, their windows guarded so they could not witness a martyr’s departure for posterity. Mary was taken to Fotheringay Castle in Northamptonshire to stand trial.

  Forty-two commissioners were appointed to take part, with thirty-six arriving at Fotheringay by early October. The trial took place on October 14 and 15. The case against Mary was based upon the testimony of Mary’s secretaries and her own correspondence. Her July letter to Babington—the gallows letter—was the most important document to be produced. Mary objected, claiming that the gallows letter was a forgery, just as the ciphers and sequence of events were fictitious. She added that this was all Walsingham’s work, as he had always sought her death.

  Walsingham sprang to his feet: “I call 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.”16 The Tudor concept of the public and private person lived on in Elizabeth’s servants. Walsingham’s ambiguous phrasing leads us to conclude that he did what he had to for the state, no matter how personally distasteful.

  Though the verdict and sentence were intended to be immediate, Elizabeth hesitated. In the small hours of the morning of October 13, she summoned Davison to her, demanding he write to the commissioners to deliberate and adjourn the commission until such time as she could personally review the results, prior to pronouncing sentence. Elizabeth knew a guilty verdict was a foregone conclusion. Ten days after the trial was ended, the commissioners reassembled in the Star Chamber at Westminster. “Considering the plainness and evidence of the proofs,” Walsingham wrote that day, “… everyone [sic] of them after this gave their sentence against her, finding her not only accessory and privy to the conspiracy but also an imaginer and compasser of her Majesty’s destruction.”17

  All that remained was for Elizabeth to sign Mary’s death warrant, something that all Elizabeth’s ministers believed would be difficult to obtain. For a month, they cajoled and devoted themselves to the task, but to no avail. All the confessed plotters had been executed as traitors. Parliament presented the queen with a petition on November 12, “for the speedy execution of Mary, late Queen of Scots, according to the just sentence which had been pronounced against her.” Elizabeth delivered her famous reply:

  If I should say unto you that I mean not to grant your petition, by my faith I should say unto you more than perhaps I mean. And if I should say unto you that I mean to grant your petition, I should then tell you more than is fit for you to know. And thus I must deliver you an answer, answerless.18

  Nonetheless, Parliament’s petition had the desired effect. Elizabeth knew full well that she could not keep the verdict against Mary a state secret forever. On December 3, 1586, she consented to proclaiming the sentence. Of course, special embassies from Spain, France, and Scotland choked the court to plead for Mary’s life. Mendoza, who knew how Elizabeth thought, had rightly predicted that the embassies alone would provide a stay of execution for the Scots queen. Elizabeth had a heartfelt aversion to harming a hair of an anointed monarch, and Mary was no exception. So while Elizabeth delayed, Walsingham, in particular, was at his wits’ end.

  Finally, on February 1, after a long discussion with Lord Admiral Howard, Elizabeth sent for William Davison. He was to bring Mary’s as yet unsigned death warrant. Davison had no sooner entered than Elizabeth commanded him to pass her pen and ink, and she signed it without hesitation. She then told him to take it to the Lord Chancellor to have him affix
the Great Seal of England. As he was leaving, utterly stunned, Elizabeth added that he should stop in to see Walsingham at his home, where he had been ill for some while. She asked Davison to tell him what had just transpired, adding with a wicked smile, “The grief thereof will go near to kill him outright.”19

  With the queen’s signature and Great Seal affixed to the death warrant, Burghley moved quickly to carry out the sentence. On the morning of February 8, 1587, the final act in the twenty-year drama between the two British queens was played out. As Mary mounted the scaffold in the Great Hall at Fotheringay, her sentence was proclaimed across England. She would serve as a symbol to all Catholics that “stubborn disobedience … [and] incitement to insurrection … against the life and person of her Sacred Majesty” would never again be tolerated.20

  Elizabeth, of course, recanted her signature on the death warrant. Davison was summarily taken to the Tower, entering through its notorious Traitor’s Gate. Yet eventually, for Davison, Traitor’s Gate swung both ways. He was later released on an eye-wateringly high bond of £10,000. Elizabeth had heavily scripted her reaction to Mary’s demise, and Davison was a much-needed scapegoat. A dynamic performance, lasting all of three weeks, was put on at court by the queen, where she cried loudly, shouted her anguish for all to hear, and significantly wrote a heartfelt letter of apology and explanation to James, blaming Davison and begging James’s forgiveness. James may have been many things, but he was no fool. If Elizabeth begged forgiveness, he would gladly comply. With the throne of England dangled before his eyes, how could he refuse?

  When Mary’s head with its elaborate auburn wig was held aloft for the executioner to say the customary words for traitors, “Long live the queen,” in Elizabeth’s name, war with Spain became inevitable. After all, Philip—once king of England—held his own fair right to the throne through Edward III. Now that Mary was dead, the time had come for him to reclaim it for Catholicism.

  TWENTY-TWO

  God’s Obvious Design

  Let tyrants fear … that under God I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects.

  —Elizabeth I, Armada Speech, August 9, 1588

  The news of Mary’s execution reached Elizabeth the following day, just as Elizabeth had mounted her horse and headed off for her daily hunt. She did not take any heed of Shrewsbury’s son or his apparent haste to speak to her. Instead, Burghley received the official confirmation, for which he thanked young Shrewsbury, and then did precisely nothing with his knowledge. All of Greenwich Palace buzzed with the news—as did London, where bells of deliverance were rung out from the churches, before Elizabeth herself registered the momentous turn of events. Elizabeth promptly embarked on a three-week-long grief-stricken harangue, punctuated with sobs and accusations launched at her ministers that would have made her father seem evenhanded. Still, the facts were the same. With Mary dead, Philip would most certainly invade.

  News of Mary’s execution at Fotheringay took longer to arrive on other shores. Channel storms prevented word reaching Paris until ten days later. Of course, the scheming Spanish ambassador Bernardino de Mendoza was the first outside the English embassy to hear the reports. His immediate reaction was to call upon the Paris Committee of Sixteen, who were fashioning the Paris mob into a revolutionary force to back Guise in his ultra-Catholic and antiroyalist conspiracy against Henry III. Among those who would fight by Guise’s side were exiled Catholic Scots, Irishmen, and Englishmen. They listened intently to the report of Mary’s demise. Mendoza’s next stop was his own embassy, where an army of devoted emissaries convened to spread the word that the queen of Scots had been beheaded, murdered on the order of England’s heretic queen. Before Elizabeth’s official proclamation had arrived in the French capital, the Catholic League had made their verdict against the “English Jezebel.” Elizabeth had committed judicial murder of her Catholic rival, and Henry III was her accessory and accomplice.

  The friars of Paris preached fanatical and treasonous calumny against their king. Rumors flew about crypto-Protestants close to the throne, their poisonous heresies and witchcraft devouring the French king’s court. Priests warned of ten thousand secret Huguenots, lurking in the shadows of Parisian cellars and alleyways, armed to the teeth, just waiting to slit the throats of the city’s Catholics. Libelous pamphlets and ballads fluttered across the Channel, back to England. Yet Henry III seemed oblivious to the dangers.

  * * *

  In Brussels, Parma had heard of Mary’s execution long before Mendoza’s letter had reached him. A thoughtful man and phenomenal military leader, Parma immediately assessed what the news would mean for the war in the Netherlands. For the commander of an army of largely heterogeneous mercenaries, it was a sensible time-out to take. History would judge Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, as the chief architect of modern Belgium. His reconquest of the southern ten rebellious “Dutch” provinces had brought a period of reconstruction to the south, and he was not about to jeopardize his years of hard-won gains by taking his eye off the military map of the Netherlands.

  Parma already knew that the English intervention was doomed in 1586. In his eighteen months in Holland, Leicester had managed to achieve the inconceivable, alienating and infuriating his friends and the Dutch by his arrogance and incompetence, and he had made Parma warm to him. Sir John “Black Jack” Norris, who had faithfully served under William of Orange for years, had been relieved of his command by Leicester and shipped back to England. Leicester’s ablest field commander after Norris was the mercenary Count Hohenlo. Within months of Leicester’s appointment as governor-general, Hohenlo’s closest friends claimed that if he met Leicester again, blood would be shed. So Parma, learning about Mary’s execution and assessing the situation, penned a letter to Philip saying that he fully supported the Enterprise of England, which must happen sooner rather than later, since this murder of the Scots queen was an offence against Spain’s honor and the Catholic faith.

  * * *

  Enrique de Guzmán, Count of Olivarez, Spain’s ambassador to Rome, only received word from Mendoza on the morning of March 24 when Mendoza’s courier rode into the courtyard of the Spanish embassy. Olivarez lost no time in digesting Mendoza’s message. Mary, the primary hope of salvation for English Catholics, had died a martyr to her religion. His Holiness should also know that Mary had rejected her heretic son, James VI, and willed her claim to the English throne to Philip II of Spain. As for France, His Holiness should be aware that Henry III was Mary’s enemy, and thereby the enemy of His Holiness and Spain. Mendoza’s last suggestion was for William Allen to be made a cardinal at once so that he could be the religious leader of the invading army. English Catholics would, of course, rush to his standard.1

  Mendoza’s message betrays a certain concern that Felice Peretti, Pope Sixtus V, would not share his own zeal for the English Catholic cause. It was a mistake even Philip II made. Despite the veritable gushing of accolades Sixtus V heaped upon Elizabeth, calling her “his worthy opponent” and sighing, “Ah, if only she were a Catholic,” Mendoza should have looked to his actions rather than words. They spoke volumes. Though he made withering remarks about Philip, Sixtus V was nonetheless yoked to the Spanish king’s slow-moving wagon to restore the breakaway northern European Protestant dominions to Catholicism. Certainly Dr. William Allen, resident in the small house adjacent to the English College in Rome, never doubted Sixtus for a moment.

  * * *

  Still, the Roman Catholic world waited for Philip’s reaction. The news reached him in his lofty palace of San Lorenzo de El Escorial nestled in the Guadarrama Mountains near Madrid. The Escorial, as it became known, was more of a retreat or monastery than a royal palace. As far as the eye could see, there was no other human habitation. Philip, it is believed, had the news for over a week before he was stirred into action. Where Elizabeth had gained a reputation for hesitation and prevarication, Philip’s motto was festinare lente—hasten slowly.

  Mendoza�
�s letters had been followed swiftly by Parma’s and the pope’s. Santa Cruz, Philip’s able admiral in charge of the Armada fleet already assembling at Cádiz and Lisbon, demanded 150 great galleons (the battleships of their day), 40 urcas (tubby vessels that were used to store provisions), and 320 auxiliary craft, from dispatch boats to cruisers. Santa Cruz demanded a total of 510 ships at sail besides 40 galleys and 6 galleases to be manned by 30,000 sailors, carrying 64,000 soldiers. In other words, the largest force by far ever to be assembled at sea.

  Parma, on the other hand, urged Philip not to use his navy but to allow him to attack instead, using the 30,000 infantry and 4,000 horse at his disposal from the Low Countries. Above all else, Parma stressed, the element of surprise would be crucial to success. Philip must have shaken his head in dismay at such a thought while he scrawled his reply across the page: “Hardly possible!”

  * * *

  Just as Parma stressed the importance of the element of surprise to Philip, so Drake urged Elizabeth, “The advantage of time and place in military action is half the victory.”2 Drake, like Hawkins, itched to spring into action, to embark on some naval endeavor to cripple Spain’s worst-kept secret—its Armada. The wisdom of a preemptive strike against Spain depended largely, however, on England’s ability to mobilize as many ships as possible into the Channel when the winter of 1587 allowed. “Her Majesty shall also make preparation of all the strength that she can make by sea…,” Burghley wrote to Leicester, “that her own ships shall be removed to Portsmouth in March next and a great number of her subjects’ ships shall also be made ready … as by further intelligence of the King of Spain’s preparations shall be requisite.”3