Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/227

 she begged vehemently to be removed elsewhere. In January 1586 Elizabeth transferred her to Chartley in Staffordshire, a house of the Earl of Essex, where she remained till the following September. During these eventful months the vigilant supervision over Mary was relaxed, and as a matter of course intrigue and conspiracy began again and worse than ever.

The Babington plot was initiated [see, By the instrumentality of Gilbert Gilford (whom Mr. Froude strangely asserts to have been trained by the jesuits, which he certainly was not), Walsingnam became as well acquainted with the movements of the plotters as they were themselves; he chose his own time for apprehending them, and was so deliberate in his plan of operations that the whole plot was believed by some to have been concocted by himself (see a letter in Cal. State Papers, Dom., Addenda, 1580-1625, p. 223), and is so represented even by Lingard. Gifford was allowed to slip away into France, where he died as a prisoner in the Bastille in 1590 (Walpole Letters, x. n. 2). The rest, fifteen in number, were put to death with such inhuman barbarities that even in those days the populace were shocked and indignant. There is too much reason to believe that Elizabeth herself suggested this exceptionally horrible treatment of the wretched criminals in one of her outbursts of ferocity.

The wretched men who had taken part in the Babington plot were brought to trial on 13 Sept. On 6 Oct. a commission was issued for the trial of the Queen of Scots. The commissioners assembled at Fotheringay, whither Mary had been removed (on 25 Sept.); the actual trial began on 15 Oct. Mary Stuart was tried upon the late statute, the charge being that she had conspired to procure the invasion of the realm and the death of the queen. Elizabeth had strictly enjoined that on this occasion no sentence should be passed, and though the trial was virtually at an end the court adjourned to meet again in the Star-chamber at Westminster on 25 Oct. On that day the commissioners reassembled and pronounced sentence of death. Parliament assembled on the 29th, and the proceedings in the trial were laid before each house. On 12 Nov. both houses united in a petition to the queen that the sentence should be carried out without delay. Elizabeth returned an ambiguous answer; she could not take the decided step; she hesitated and delayed from week to week; she wished the Queen of Scots were dead with all her heart; she shrank from the shame and disgrace that would attach to her if she brought her to the block. The lords of the council, with Burghley at their head, were unanimous in pressing for the execution. Leicester, away in Holland, wrote letters urging her to it. It must be conceded that Elizabeth stood alone at this dreadful time in feeling any reluctance to carry out the sentence. She knew that the whole responsibility of the act would rest with her if it were carried out, and she tried desperately to shift that responsibility from her own shoulders. There is no trace of any softening towards the Queen of Scots, only a feverish desire to set herself right with the world outside her own kingdom, exactly as her father had for years shrunk from divorcing himself from Catherine of Arragon. When Elizabeth saw that she must either cease to look for the approval of the civilised world or leave undone the deed which she had resolved to do, she sent Mary Stuart to the scaffold and repented, not that the deed was done, but that she had been the doer of it. By far the most dreadful reproach that posterity has to bring upon her is, and must for ever remain the fact, that a week before the execution Elizabeth made one last attempt to induce Sir Amyas Paulet and Sir Drue Drury to kill Mary Stuart privately. Paulet, 'with great grief and bitterness of mind,' made answer to the detestable proposal: 'God forbid,' he wrote, 'that I should make so foul a shipwreck of my conscience or leave so great a blot to my poor posterity, to shed blood without law or warrant' (, Letter Book, p. 362). When the tidings came that the warrant Elizabeth had signed had indeed been executed, she overacted her part; her fury was real, but her repudiation or all share in the responsibility of the final tragedy could deceive none of those who to the very last she had vainly hoped might contrive somehow to save her from herself. Davison was the one victim whom she sacrificed to her resentment, the one statesman whom she could afford to degrade. Six days after the execution had become known to the world and had provoked one loud burst of horror and indignation over Europe, Elizabeth, in a letter to James (now by his mother's death undisputed king of Scotland), expresses 'extreme dolour' for the 'miserable accident' that had befallen, and Robert Carey, the bearer of that letter, believed she was sincere. There is little doubt she was. How could she but be grieved that the moral sense of the world condemned her?

While the arrangements for the removal of Mary Stuart from Tutbury to Chartley were being discussed by Sir Amyas Paulet and his correspondents, Sir Francis Drake set