Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/523

A.D. 1586.] escaped from the servants into whose charge he was given. With his friends and accomplices, Gage, Charnock, Barnewell, and Donne, he concealed himself in St. John's Wood, till they were compelled by hunger to make their way to the house of their common friend Bellamy, at Harrow, who concealed them in his outhouses and gardens. But the cunning Walsingham had his agents on their trail the whole time, and on the 15th they walked into the premises of Bellamy, secured the concealed conspirators, together with their host, his wife and brother, and conveyed them, amid the shouts and execrations of the populace, and the universal ringing of bells, to the Tower, whither also were soon brought Abingdon, Tichbourne, Tilney, Travers; the only one of the friends of Babington that escaped being Edward Windsor, the brother of Lord Windsor.

On the 13th of September, Babington, Ballard, Savage, Donne, Barnewell, and Tichbourne wore put upon their trial, charged with a conspiracy to murder Elizabeth, and raise a rebellion in favour of the Queen of Scots. They pleaded guilty to one or other of the charges, and seven others pleaded not guilty; but all were alike convicted, and condemned to the death of traitors. The greater part of them appear to have taken no part in the blacker part of the conspiracy, the design to murder Elizabeth; and some of them, as Tichbourne and Jones, declared that they had taken no part whatever, but merely kept the secret for the sake of their friends. Bellamy was condemned for merely affording them an asylum; his wife escaped through a flaw in the indictment. Pooley, the decoy, was imprisoned as a mere blind, and then liberated; and Gifford was already in prison in Paris, where, three years later, he died.

On the 20th and 21st they were executed in Lincoln's Inn Fields, because they used there to hold their meetings. Elizabeth betrayed a singular and most unworthy and unwomanly vindictiveness in their deaths. She desired that they might be executed, if possible, in some manner more lingering and excruciating than the usual death of traitors; though that was horrible enough, in all reason. But, besides that this was illegal, there was much sympathy excited on behalf of the sufferers, who were young men of a superior class, and led on by the chivalrous generosity of youth. Those who suffered the first day were put to death with the customary barbarity, being cut down alive; the seven who died the second day were merely hanged till they were dead.

Though no mention was made on the trial of any participation of the Queen of Scots in this conspiracy, nothing was farther from the intention of Elizabeth and her ministers than her escape. The deaths of these gallant but misguided young men were but the prelude to the tragedy. They had already prepared for her death by the bill passed empowering twenty-four or more of the Lords of the Council and other peers to sit in judgment on any one concerned in attempts to raise rebellion, or to injure the queen's person. To procure every possible evidence for this end, the following stratagem was used:—The Queen of Scots was kept in total ignorance of the seizure of the conspirators, and on the copy of her letter to Babington being laid before the Council, an order was sent down to Sir Amyas Paulet to seize all her papers, and keep her in more rigorous confinement. Accordingly, one morning, Mary took a drive in her carriage, accompanied, as was her custom, by Paulet, but with a larger attendance. When Mary desired to return, Paulet told her that he had orders to convey her to Tixall, a house belonging to Sir Walter Aston, about three miles distant. Astonished and alarmed, Mary refused to go, and declared that if they took her there it should be by force. She must have suspected the design of searching her cabinets during her absence; but, in spite of her protestations and her tears, she was compelled to proceed. There she was confined to two rooms only, was guarded in the strictest manner, and debarred the use of pen, ink, and paper. Meantime Sir William Wade arrived at Chartley, and proceeded to break open the cabinets and take possession of all her letters and papers, as well as those of her secretaries. A large chest was filled with these papers, amongst which were Mary's own minute of the answer to Babington, and the original letter to him composed by Nau. Wade then returned to London with these, and with Nau, Curio, and Pasquier.

On the 28th of August, Paulet conducted the outraged queen back to Chartley. As she proceeded from her house to her carriage, a crowd of poor people surrounded her path, hoping for her usual alms; but she seems to have been now quite aware of what had taken place, for she said, "Alas! poor people, I have nothing to give you: all has been taken from me, and I am a beggar as well as you." When she entered her rooms at Chartley, and saw her violated cabinets, she turned to Paulet, and, with much dignity, said, "There still remain two things, sir, which you cannot take from me: the royal blood in my veins which gives me the right to the succession, and the attachment which binds me to the faith of my fathers."

In London there was much deliberation on the mode in which Mary was to be got rid of. Elizabeth was now resolved that she should die. She declared that the Scottish queen had sought her life, and that one of them must quit the scene. No persuasions could move her, and yet she dreaded the public censure of so unexampled a deed. To obviate this, Leicester, who was an adept in poison, recommended that as the safest and least obtrusive; and even sent over a divine from Holland to prove its lawfulness. Walsingham and Burleigh, however, would have nothing but a public trial, the sentence of which should be ratified by Parliament, to lay the burden of responsibility upon the whole nation.

In preparation, her secretaries were called up and repeatedly examined. They were subjected to the terrors of menaced death, and were called on to confess all they knew; but as this did not include any proof of Mary's conspiracy to murder Elizabeth, they were called up again the morning after the execution of Babington and his accomplices, when fear of such punishment was likely to affect them, and an abstract of the principal points in the letter of Babington and the reply of Mary was laid before them, and they were desired to say whether they were correct. They are said to have admitted the fact; but this we have only on the faith of the Council bent on the death of Mary, and at the same time that the real letter of Mary drawn up by Nau, and her own minute for its preparation, were neither produced nor mentioned. These were the documents on which rested the whole charge against Mary—documents which, if they proved the charge, would have been triumphantly produced both