Babington Plot
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The Babington Plot was a plan in 1586 to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I, a Protestant, and put Mary, Queen of Scots, her Catholic cousin, on the English throne. It led to Mary's execution, a result of a letter sent by Mary (who had been imprisoned for 19 years since 1568 in England at the behest of Elizabeth) in which she consented to the assassination of Elizabeth.[1]
The long-term goal of the plot was the invasion of England by the Spanish forces of King Philip II and the Catholic League in France, leading to the restoration of the old religion. The plot was discovered by Elizabeth's spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and used to entrap Mary for the purpose of removing her as a claimant to the English throne.
The chief conspirators were
On 7 July 1586, the only Babington letter that was sent to Mary was decoded by Phelippes. Mary responded in code on 17 July 1586 ordering the would-be rescuers to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. The response letter also included deciphered phrases indicating her desire to be rescued: "The affairs being thus prepared" and "I may suddenly be transported out of this place". At the Fotheringay trial in October 1586, Elizabeth's Lord High Treasurer William Cecil — Lord Burghley — and Walsingham used the letter against Mary who refused to admit that she was guilty. However, Mary was betrayed by her secretaries Nau and Curle, who confessed under pressure that the letter was mainly truthful.[3]
Mary's imprisonment
Mary, Queen of Scots, a Roman Catholic, was regarded by Roman Catholics as the legitimate heir to the throne of England. In 1568, she escaped imprisonment by Scottish rebels and sought the aid of her first cousin once removed, Queen Elizabeth I, a year after her forced abdication from the throne of Scotland. The issuance of the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis by Pope Pius V on 25 February 1570, granted English Catholics authority to overthrow the English queen. Queen Mary became the focal point of numerous plots and intrigues to restore England to its former religion, Catholicism, and to depose Elizabeth and even to take her life. Rather than the expected aid, Elizabeth imprisoned Mary for nineteen years in the charge of a succession of jailers, principally the Earl of Shrewsbury.
In 1584, Elizabeth's Privy Council signed a "Bond of Association" designed by Cecil and Walsingham which stated that anyone within the line of succession to the throne on whose behalf anyone plotted against the Queen, would be excluded from the line and executed. This was agreed upon by hundreds of Englishmen, who likewise signed the Bond. Mary also agreed to sign the Bond. The following year, Parliament passed the Act of Association, which provided for the execution of anyone who would benefit from the death of the Queen if a plot against her was discovered. Because of the bond, Mary could be executed if a plot was initiated by others that could lead to her accession to England's throne.
Queen Elizabeth ordered Queen Mary transferred back to the ruined Tutbury Castle in the wintry weather of Christmas Eve 1569.[4] Mary became ill because of the bad conditions of her captivity, imprisoned in a very damp cold room with closed windows and with no access to the sun.
In 1585, Elizabeth ordered Mary to be transferred in a coach and under heavy guard and placed under the strictest confinement at
Reacting to the growing threat posed by Catholics, urged on by the pope and other Catholic monarchs in Europe,
Plot
The Babington plot was related to several separate plans:
- solicitation of a Spanish invasion of England with the purpose of deposing Protestant Queen Elizabeth and replacing her with Catholic Queen Mary;
- a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth.
At the behest of Mary's French supporters,
He told me he was retorned from Fraunce uppon this occasion. Being with Mendoza at Paris, he was informed that in regarde of the iniuries don by our state unto the greatest Christian princes, by the nourishinge of sedition and divisions in their provinces, by withholding violently the lawful possessions of some, by invasion of the Indies and by piracy, robbing the treasure and the wealthe of others, and sondry intolerable wronges for so great and mighty princes to indure, it was resolved by the Catholique league to seeke redresse and satisfaction, which they had vowed to performe this sommer without farther delay, havinge in readiness suche forces and all warlike preparations as the like was never scene in these partes of Christendome ... The Pope was chief disposer, the most Christian king and the king Catholic with all other princes of the league concurred as instruments for the righting of these wronges, and reformation of religion. The conductors of this enterprise for the French nation, the
D. de Main; for the Italian and Hispanishe forces, the P. of Parma; the whole number about 60,000.[7]
Despite this assurance of this foreign support, Babington was hesitant, as he thought that no foreign invasion would succeed for as long as Elizabeth remained, to which Ballard answered that the plans of John Savage would take care of that. After a lengthy discussion with friends and soon-to-be fellow conspirators, Babington consented to join and to lead the conspiracy.[8]
Unfortunately for the conspirators, Walsingham was certainly aware of some of the aspects of the plot, based on reports by his spies, most notably Gilbert Gifford, who kept tabs on all the major participants. While he could have shut down some part of the plot and arrested some of those involved within reach, he still lacked any piece of evidence that would prove Queen Mary's active participation in the plot and he feared to commit any mistake which might cost Elizabeth her life.
Infiltration
After the Throckmorton Plot, Queen Elizabeth had issued a decree in July 1584, which prevented all communication to and from Mary. However, Walsingham and Cecil realised that that decree also impaired their ability to entrap Mary. They needed evidence for which she could be executed based on their Bond of Association tenets. Thus Walsingham established a new line of communication, one which he could carefully control without incurring any suspicion from Mary. Gifford approached the French ambassador to England, Guillaume de l'Aubespine, Baron de Châteauneuf-sur-Cher, and described the new correspondence arrangement that had been designed by Walsingham. Gifford and jailer Paulet had arranged for a local brewer to facilitate the movement of messages between Queen Mary and her supporters by placing them in a watertight box inside a beer barrel.[9] Thomas Phelippes, a cipher and language expert in Walsingham's employ, was then quartered at Chartley Hall to receive the messages, decode them and send them to Walsingham. Gifford submitted a code table (supplied by Walsingham) to Chateauneuf and requested the first message be sent to Mary.[10]
All subsequent messages to Mary would be sent via diplomatic packets to Chateauneuf, who then passed them on to Gifford. Gifford would pass them on to Walsingham, who would confide them to Phelippes. The cipher used was a nomenclator cipher.[11] Phelippes would decode and make a copy of the letter. The letter was then resealed and given back to Gifford, who would pass it on to the brewer. The brewer would then smuggle the letter to Mary. If Mary sent a letter to her supporters, it would go through the reverse process. In short order, every message coming to and from Chartley was intercepted and read by Walsingham.
Correspondence
Babington wrote to Mary:
Myself with ten gentlemen and a hundred of our followers will undertake the delivery of your royal person from the hands of your enemies. For the dispatch of the usurper, from the obedience of whom we are by the 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.[12][13]
This letter was received by Mary on 14 July 1586, who was in a dark mood knowing that her son had betrayed her in favour of Elizabeth,[14] and three days later she replied to Babington in a long letter in which she outlined the components of a successful rescue and the need to assassinate Elizabeth. She also stressed the necessity of foreign aid if the rescue attempt was to succeed:
For I have long ago shown unto the foreign Catholic princes, what they have done against the King of Spain, and in the time the Catholics here remaining, exposed to all persecutions and cruelty, do daily diminish in number, forces, means and power. So as, if remedy be not thereunto speedily provided, I fear not a little but they shall become altogether unable for ever to rise again and to receive any aid at all, whensoever it were offered. Then for mine own part, I pray you to assure our principal friends that, albeit I had not in this cause any particular interest in this case... I shall be always ready and most willing to employ therein my life and all that I have, or may ever look for, in this world."[15][16]
Mary, in her response letter, advised the would-be rescuers to confront the
These pretexts may serve to found and establish among all associations, or considerations general, as done only for your preservation and defence, as well in religions as lands, lives and goods, against the oppressions and attempts of said Puritans, without directly writing, or giving out anything against the Queen, but rather showing yourselves willing to maintain her, and her lawful heirs after her, not naming me.[17]
Mary was clear in her support for the murder of Elizabeth if that would have led to her liberty and Catholic domination of England. In addition, Queen Mary supported in that letter, and in another one to Ambassador Mendoza, a Spanish invasion of England.
The letter was again intercepted and deciphered by Phelippes. But this time, Phelippes, on the direction of Walsingham, kept the original and made a copy, adding a request for the names of the conspirators:[18]
I would be glad to know the names and quelityes of the sixe gentlemen which are to accomplish the dessignement, for that it may be, I shall be able uppon knowledge of the parties to give you some further advise necessarye to be followed therein; and even so do I wish to be made acquainted with the names of all such principall persons ... as also from time to time particularlye how you proceede and as sone as you may for the same purpose who bee alredye and how farr every one privye hereunto.[19][20][21]
Then, a letter was sent that would destroy Mary's life.
Let the great plot commence.
Signed
Mary
Arrests, trials and executions
John Ballard was arrested on 4 August 1586, and under torture he confessed and implicated Babington. Although Babington was able to receive the letter with the postscript, he was not able to reply with the names of the conspirators, as he was arrested. Others were taken prisoner by 15 August 1586. Mary's two secretaries, Claude Nau and Gilbert Curle, and a clerk Jérôme Pasquier were likewise taken into custody and interrogated.[22]
The conspirators were sentenced to death for
In October 1586, Mary was sent to be tried at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire by 46 English lords, bishops and earls. She was not permitted legal counsel, not permitted to review the evidence against her, nor to call witnesses. Portions of Phellipes' letter translations were read at the trial. Mary was convicted of treason against England. One English Lord voted not guilty. Elizabeth signed her cousin-once-removed's death warrant,[23] and on 8 February 1587, in front of 300 witnesses, Mary, Queen of Scots, was executed by beheading.[24]
In literature
The story of the Babington Plot is dramatised in the novel Conies in the Hay by
. A fictional account is given in the My Story book series, The Queen's Spies (retitled To Kill A Queen 2008) told in diary format by a fictional Elizabethan girl, Kitty. The Babington plot forms the historical background – and provides much of the intrigue – for Holy Spy, the 7th in the historical detective series by Rory Clements, featuring John Shakespeare, an intelligencer for Walsingham and elder brother of the more famous Will.The simplified version of the Babington plot is also the subject of the children's or Young Adult novel, A Traveller in Time (1939), by Alison Uttley, who grew up near the Babington family home in Derbyshire. A young modern girl finds that she slips back to the time shortly before the Plot is about to be implemented. This was later made into a BBC TV mini-series in 1978, with small changes to the original novel.
The Babington Plot is also dramatized in the 2017
The plot figures prominently in the first chapter of The Code Book, a survey of the history of cryptography written by Simon Singh and published in 1999.
Dramatic adaptations
Episode four of the 1971 television miniseries Elizabeth R (titled "Horrible Conspiracies") is devoted to the Babington Plot. It is also depicted in the miniseries Elizabeth I (2005) and the films Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) and Mary Queen of Scots (2018).
A 45-minute drama entitled The Babington Plot, written by Michael Butt and directed by Sasha Yevtushenko, was broadcast on
Episode one of the 2017 BBC miniseries Elizabeth I's Secret Agents[26] (broadcast in the U.S. on PBS in 2018 as Queen Elizabeth's Secret Agents[27]) deals in part with the Babington plot.
See also
- Rising of the North
- Ridolfi Plot
- Throckmorton Plot
- History of cryptography
Notes and references
- ^ Somerest, Anne (1991). Elizabeth One. pp. 545–548.
- ^ Anthony Babington, Dictionary of National Biography (1895). http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/Bios/AnthonyBabington.htm
- ^ Fraser, Antonia (1985). Mary Queen of Scots. pp. 575–577.
- ^ Marie Stuart Society Mary, Queen of Scots: England: Calendar State Papers Scotland vol. 3 (1903), pp. 17, 21, 34, 36, 40–41
- doi:10.1111/j.1468-2281.2006.00396.x., as quoted by Ristau, Ken. "Bringing Down A Queen". Archived from the originalon 12 January 2007. Retrieved 10 February 2007.
- .
- ^ Pollen, John Hungerford (1922). Publications of the Scottish Historical Society Third Series, Volume III: Mary Queen of Scots and the Babington Plot. T & A Constable Ltd. pp. 53–54.
- ^ Pollen, p. 54.
- ^ John Hosack, Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Accusers, 2 (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1874), p. 337.
- ^ John Hosack, Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Accusers, 2 (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1874), p. 338.
- ISBN 978-3-319-01628-3.
- ^ Pollen, p. 21.
- ^ John Hosack, Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Accusers, 2 (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1874), p. 351.
- ^ John Hosack, Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Accusers, 2 (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1874), p. 358.
- ^ For the full text of the letter, see Pollen, pp. 38–46. The spelling is modernised for clarity.
- ^ John Hosack, Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Accusers, 2 (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1874), pp. 359–360.
- ^ John Hosack, Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Accusers, 2 (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1874), p. 362.
- ^ Jessie Childs, God's Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England (Oxford, 2014), p. 127.
- ^ Sheila R. Richards, Secret Writing in the Public Records (London: HMSO, 1974), pp. 54–5.
- ^ "National Archives (UK) transcript of the forged postscript". Archived from the original on 2 March 2007. Retrieved 9 February 2007.
- ^ Cf. Pollen, pp. 45–46.
- ^ John Morris, Letter-books of Amias Poulet (London, 1874), p. 118
- ^ Francis Edwards, S.J., Plots and plotters in the reign of Elizabeth I. (Dublin: Four Courts, 2002), p. 164.
- ^ Fraser p. 635
- ^ "Michael Butt – The Babington Plot". BBC. Retrieved 26 June 2018.
- ^ "Elizabeth I's Secret Agents". BBC. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
- ^ "Queen Elizabeth's Secret Agents". PBS. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
Further reading
- Gordon-Smith, Alan. The Babington Plot. London: Macmillan (1936)
- Guy, John A. Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart (2005)[ISBN missing]
- Lewis, Jayne Elizabeth. The trial of Mary Queen of Scots: a brief history with documents (1999)
- Pollen, John Hungerford. "Mary Queen of Scots and the Babington plot," The Month, Volume 109 online (April 1907) pp. 356–365
- Read, Conyers. Mr Secretary Walsingham and the policy of Queen Elizabeth 3 vols. (1925)
- Shepherd, J.E.C. The Babington Plot: Jesuit Intrigue in Elizabethan England. Toronto, Ont.: Wittenburg Publications, 1987. 171 pp. [ISBN missing]
- Williams, Penry. "Babington, Anthony (1561–1586)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) accessed 18 Sept 2011
- Military Heritage August 2005, Volume 7, No. 1, pp. 20–23, ISSN 1524-8666.
- Briscoe, Alexsandra, "Elizabeth's Spy Network", BBC History online (17 February 2011)
Primary sources
- Pollen, John Hungerford, ed. "Mary Queen of Scots and the Babington Plot," Scottish Historical Society 3rd ser., iii (1922), reprints the major documents.
External links
- Camden's Account of the Babington Plot
- Portraits of Babington Plotters at their Execution and Ballad Describing their Ordeal
- Babington Plot at UK National Archives