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Do you remember Mary Stuart? She had been
imprisoned in various castles around England since 1567, nearly twenty years ago. She and Elizabeth wrote loads and loads of letters to each other but they never
met.
Some people believed that as long as Mary was alive she was a threat to Elizabeth. This was not necessarily because Mary would do anything, but while
she lived, people had an alternative person to put on the throne, particularly Catholics
This worried Elizabeth and, although she had really been quite kind to Mary, she wanted to be sure there were no plots going on. One of the people
Elizabeth knew she could trust was a man called Sir Francis Walsingham and she paid him to set up a network of spies across Europe.
His was a very successful spy network. He would know everything that was
going on both in court and in the country.
He even set up a school in London that taught people how to break codes and spot forgeries. 25-5-19—8-5—4-9-4. Just testing you there. That's a really
simple code where each letter of the alphabet is given a number with A=1, B=2 etc.
Anyhow, in the last few years, before 1586, there had been several
plots that Walsingham uncovered. In 1583 there was the Throckmorton plot, so-called because a leading player was Francis Throckmorton. In fact he was really only
the messenger used to carry messages from the Duke of Guise who would lead a Spanish-backed invasion which would be supported by an uprising of English Catholics.
Elizabeth would be deposed, Mary would become Queen, the Duke would marry Mary and become King and everyone, who was catholic, would be happy.
Walsingham got to hear about it from one of his spies and Throckmorton was followed as soon as he came back to England. The messages were sent via the
Spanish ambassador to England. He was sent home, Throckmorton arrested, tortured and executed in July 1584. Treachery seemed to run in the Throckmorton family as
Robert Catesby (see the Gunpowder plot next century) was a relation.
Then, in 1586, along came the Babington plot, so called because
it involved a guy called Anthony Babington and a priest called John Ballard. The aim was roughly the same as the Throckmorton plot which was to put Mary, Queen of
Scots, on the throne of England. This time Walsingham had two double agents involved (a double agent is someone who seems to be working for one side but is
actually working for the other) Robert Poley and Thomas Gifford. Gifford got a letter of introduction to Mary from one of her spies, Thomas Morgan (considering we
never had a king called Thomas there seem to be a lot of them about in the sixteenth century – maybe Thomas a'Becket had an influence). Anyway,. Mary had spies too.
This is getting quite exciting Mr Bond. Walsingham put Gifford into Chartlet Castle, where Mary was imprisoned, and he made sure that he intercepted coded letters
between Babington and Mary and they were picked up by a guy called Phelippes who was able to decode them and send them on the Walsingham. Are you keeping up?
On 7 July 1586, the only Babington letter that was sent to Mary was decoded by Phelippes. Mary responded in code on 17 July ordering her would-be
rescuers to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. This was a bad move by Mary. Walsingham had long wanted Mary Stuart out of the way so he presented Elizabeth and
Parliament with a successful file showing Mary was linked to several plots against Elizabeth since 1571 but, most importantly, including this letter. Mary was
brought to trial but refused to admit that she was guilty. But she was betrayed by her secretaries who confessed that the letter was mainly truthful.
Mary was then found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. Elizabeth signed the death warrant and Mary Stuart was executed on February 8 1587.
Later Elizabeth would say that she had indeed signed the warrant but had not wanted it carried out which is a bit like saying I agreed you could eat 4 bars of
chocolate but I didn’t want you to do so.
Forward to 1588AD
