"whilst he was suing for St. Catherine's at Greenwich." This was eleven months before his arrest in February, 1584. "That letter," he continues, “I showed to some in court, who imparted it to the queen. It might be suspected, that he made the letter known as a contrivance to ensure his safety and deceive the government. But it appears that he communicated it in the visionary expectation of its producing upon Elizabeth an effect favourable to the catholics, and thus releasing him from "his vows in heaven, and his letters and promises on earth.”- "What it wrought or may work," he says, "in her majesty, God knoweth: only this I know, that it confirmed my resolution to kill her, and made it clear to my conscience that it was lawful and meritorious; and yet I was determined never to do it if either policy, practice, persuasion, or motion in parliament could prevail. I feared to be tempted, and, therefore, when I came near her, I left my dagger at home." The conflicts in the mind of this wretched man are an instructive commentary upon persecuting laws. The very enactments by which Elizabeth thought to repress conspiracy made Parry an assassin; Walsingham's system of secret denunciation by informers and spies brought the assassin within reach of her bosom; and if nature made him lay aside his dagger, it was only because Elizabeth's code of persecution and her ministers' state-practices had not yet wholly corrupted nature and extinguished humanity in him. Upon the death of Westmoreland in exile, Neville, his next heir, entertained hopes of his inheritance, and to recommend himself denounced Parry. The queen supposed that Parry, who had already denounced him, had been merely sounding him in his capacity of a spy, and instructed Walsingham to ask him whether he had been making a proposition to take her life by way of experiment to any person.‡ Not seeing the drift of the question, he answered in the negative; and after his voluntary confession, and *See his confession. - State Trials, i. + Ibid. several letters avowing his crime to the queen and ministers, he was convicted and executed. Parry, in his confession, expressly acquitted the queen of Scots of any knowledge of his designs. She was equally innocent of the conspiracy of Throgmorton, if he really conspired, which is at least doubtful. The queen of Scots offered to Elizabeth every security, renouncing absolutely the crown of Scotland, and succession to that of England, in favour of her son; her health was breaking down rapidly; and yet her imprisonment was only the more rigorous, her general treatment the more contemptuous and cruel. Sir Ralph Sadler was not long her gaoler, when at his own entreaty, and in consequence of indulgences granted by him to his prisoner, he was removed. One of these indulgences appears to have been his allowing her to go out and enjoy the amusement of his hawks.* Sir Amias Paulet was appointed to succeed him. Elizabeth after some time would no longer trust the vigilance or faith of one person. She joined sir Drue Drury in the commission with Paulet. Both were puritans, and protected by Leicester. Paulet would not permit his prisoner to distribute popish alms to the neighbouring poor; she was confined at Tutbury in apartments so damp and pervious to the wind that she lost the use of her limbs. Even before she came into the hands of her new gaolers, her state of health was pitiable. "I find her," says Sadler + "much altered from what she was when I was first acquainted with her. She is not yet able to strain her left foot to the ground, and to her very great grief, not without tears, findeth it wasted and shrunk of its natural measure." In a further stage, and a state still more deplorable, she appealed to Elizabeth, who did not even notice her appeal. It was rumoured that Leicester sent assassins to despatch her, but that Paulet and Drury, whose integrity was severe as their puritanism, * Sadler's State Papers, ii. 539. + Ibid. 460. refused them admission. Her fate was now approaching its crisis, and her miseries their close. The intrigues of Elizabeth and her council in Scotland against their unhappy prisoner properly belong to the history of that kingdom, and have, therefore, been passed over.* Scotland, poor, barbarous, and remote from the centre of European politics, was not the less the theatre of European intrigue. The king of Spain and the pope occasionally, the king of France almost constantly, caballed against Elizabeth. The fall of Morton broke up her supremacy. She made several efforts to recover it with imperfect success. At last, in the month of June, 1586, her minister, Randolph, succeeded in negotiating a treaty of "stricter amity" with James, in spite of the remonstrances and intrigues of the French ambassador, Corcelles, and of every feeling of decency or duty to James's unhappy mother, whom, at the pleasure of Elizabeth, he excluded from its provisions. One of the historic accusations against the queen of Scots is, that she conspired with foreign powers to disinherit her son. This treaty was the provocation, and justified her. A son so unfilial had no claim upon a mother whom he abandoned to her enemies, in violation of the sacredness of nature, and her distress. One article of the treaty, and, perhaps, the essential one, was the payment of a pension by Elizabeth to James, who appears to have been as mean in his youth as in his more advanced age. In the same month of June exploded the conspiracy which was made the pretext for taking away his mother's miserable life on the scaffold. Leicester's bond of association for the protection of Elizabeth against popish conspirators, and the act of parliament, in which it was authorised and embodied, were engines framed for as direct agency in the execution of the queen of Scots as the executioner, the axe, and the block. The act provided, that any person See History of Scotland, by Sir Walter Scott, CABINET CYCLOPÆDIA. The transactions in Ireland have also been passed over, because the history of that country is in the hands of one whose genius and patriotism constitute him one of its brightest ornaments- Mr. Moore. having claim to the succession, by or for whom rebellion was raised, or the queen's life conspired against, should be tried by commissioners, and if proved guilty, adjudged to death. After this act, there was nothing wanting but a conspiracy. It soon presented itself. An English exile, or adventurer, named Savage, who had served the king of Spain in the Low Countries, was persuaded by three priests of the seminary of Reims, named Gifford, Gilbert Gifford, and Hodgson, that the pope's bull against Elizabeth rendered the taking of her life meritorious in the sight of God. Devoting himself to crime and martyrdom, Savage made a vow to kill the queen. About the same time a priest, named Ballard, returned from a mission in England to France, with a companion and confidant named Maude. Ballard moved the Spanish ambassador at Paris to take advantage of the employment of the queen's best troops in the Low Countries, by an invasion of England. The ambassador readily entered into his views, and communicated them to the king of Spain. Charles Paget, brother of lord Paget, a catholic exile, and a disinterested as well as devoted adherent of the queen of Scots, who had introduced Ballard to the Spanish ambassador*, declared, says Camden, that invasion would be fruitless whilst Elizabeth lived; and, accordingly, Ballard proceeded in the disguise of a military officer to England, for the purpose of rendering the projected invasion successful, by taking the queen's life. Carte, Hume, and other writers, repeat this imputation upon the memory of Charles Paget, after Camden, who appears to have had no authority beyond the suspicious one of Ballard's confession. But it. should be remembered that in the letter of Charles Paget himself to the queen of Scots†, narrating the arrival of Ballard in Paris, and his interview with the ambassador, invasion and rebellion alone are the topics mentioned: there is not the slightest allusion to the assassination of Elizabeth. } The only charge given *Murdin, State Papers, 519. + Ibid. 516. et seq. to Ballard, he says, is that, in the enterprise for the deliverance of the queen of Scots, particular care should be had of the safety of her person. Ballard, however, returned to England, and communicated his own and Savage's design upon the queen's life to Anthony Babington, a young catholic of ardent temper and accomplished talents. Babington had been already in correspondence with the queen of Scots, and discontinued it from jealousy of some preference shown by her to another partisan, named Folijambe.* Persuaded by Ballard to join in the plot against the queen's life, he proposed that it should be executed, not by Savage alone, but, to render success certain, by six resolute gentlemen, of whom Savage should be one. He further devised a plan for the projected invasion, and liberation of the queen of Scots. For the latter purpose, he associated with himself several persons of respectable condition, his private friends or zealous adherents, real or supposed, to her cause. Among them were Winsor (brother of lord Winsor), Salisbury, Tilney, Tichbourne, Abington, Gage, Travers, Charnock, Jones, Barnwell, Dunn, and Polly. Three very distinct elements entered into the composition of this plot, the devoted satellites of the see of Rome; English catholics, inflamed by religious zeal, enthusiastic temperament, and persecution; and the spies of Walsingham. Gilbert Gifford at Reims, the fountain-head; Maude, who accompanied Ballard from England to France; and Polly, who was among the chief confederates of Babington, were spies in the pay of the minister. Polly had introduced himself in the preceding year, at Paris, to Morgan, a zealous partisan of the queen of Scots, and her agent in France; was recommended by him as a trusty person to his mistress ; and became, in the course of 1585, the medium of correspondence with her. What the proportionate share See Murdin, State Papers, 513. + See State Trials, vol. i. Trial of Babington, &c. See Murdin, State Papers, 532. Letter of Mary, Queen of Scots, to Thoma Morgan. |