#babington plot

[thedudleywomen]

The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots - 08 Feb 1587

On This Day (08 Feb) in 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots was executed at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire.

There had been multiple plots involving the exiled-Scottish queen during her 19 years in English captivity (1569-1587), relating to plans to usurp the English throne from her Protestant kinswoman Elizabeth I, and replace her with the Catholic monarch.

Mary was arrested in Aug 1586, following discovery of the Catholic plot, 'The Babington Plot', with letters to Mary being intercepted whilst she was residing at Chartley Castle, Staffs. She was subsequently moved to Fotheringhay, where she underwent a trial in Oct 1586; following a review of the evidence collected, Mary was convicted of high treason and sentenced to death.

Elizabeth did not act immediately following this conviction, attempting to encourage a 'confession' from Mary, being aware of potential retaliatory action from Mary's Catholic allies abroad. However, after ongoing pressure from her privy councillors, the English monarch reluctantly signed Mary's execution warrant on 01 Feb 1587; arrangements were then made (without Elizabeth's knowledge) for the execution to proceed.

A scaffold was erected in the Great Hall of Fotheringhay Castle, which had been draped in black cloth. George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, was one of the English peers present at her execution; Mary had been under his custody for 15 years (1569-1585), and had participated in her trial. Being informed of her planned death the previous evening, Mary was subsequently executed on 08 Feb by beheading, multiple strokes being required by the axeman.

Following her death, Mary's body was disembowelled, with her entrails secretly buried within the castle grounds, her body then placed within a lead coffin. Contrary to her requests to be buried in France, Mary was interred at Peterborough Cathedral, following a Protestant ceremony held on 01 Aug 1587. However, on the accession of her son James I to the English throne, Mary was reinterred in the Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey on 11 Oct 1612, where an elaborate tomb had been built in her memory.

The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots - 08 February 1587

On 08 February 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots was executed at Fotheringhay Castle, after being found guilty of high treason.

[scotianostra]

On September 25th 1586 Mary Queen of Scots was moved to her final prison at Fotheringhay Castle

Mary became Queen at six days old and, briefly, Queen of France at sixteen.  As Henry VII’s great-granddaughter she had a strong claim to the English throne too; a stronger claim, depending on your point of view, than that of her cousin, Elizabeth, whose rule of England began in 1558.  Forced to abdicate the Scottish throne in favour of her infant son, James, and subsequently flee the country, Mary sought refuge in England in 1568.

She was just twenty-five years old and was to spend the next nineteen years, as a captive guest of the English queen, in a succession of castles and manor houses in the north and midlands of England, most notably at the now largely invisible Sheffield Castle.  Though treated as befitted her status, she was nonetheless a prisoner. She spent much time on embroidery and riding. 

The problem with Mary was nothing to do with any feud between England and Scotland, nor on a personal level was it really a difference in religious dogma between Catholic Mary and Protestant Elizabeth: it was a simple matter of power.  Many Catholics – including the king of England’s No 1 Enemy at the time, Spain – regarded Elizabeth as a bastard who should not be sitting on England’s throne at all.  And Mary, with her claim to the title, became the focus of every Catholic plot – of which there were several – against Elizabeth.

Eventually, she was proven to have been involved in the Babington Plot, a plan to assassinate Elizabeth and replace her with Mary.  The Queen of Scots was transferred to Fotheringhay in September 1586.  Fotheringhay had held distinguished prisoners before, including during the reign of Elizabeth’s half-sister and predecessor, Mary, and in the distant past after the battles of Dunbar and Agincourt.

Mary was brought to Fotheringhay from Chartley in Staffordshire to stand trial for treason.The castle was set in a marshy landscape, where access was difficult, especially during the winter months.It was felt by the authorities that the unfortunate Scottish queen would be more secure at Fotheringhay, and the location would discourage any rash attempt to free her by force.

Mary was tried at the castle on 14th and 15th October 1587 in a show trial and predictably found guilty on 25 October - a foregone conclusion. 

I shall take up the story again  in a few weeks 

[jurijurijurious]

History Tumblr, help me: I'm certain I recall reading about Elizabeth I having a tirade against the conspirators in the Babington plot and possibly demanding they all receive like the worst punishment possible or something for their crimes? I also seem to recall there was a scene of this in the Helen Mirren Elizabeth I miniseries. But I can't find it in my books even though I think it's in one of the Walsingham books, and it's driving me mad.

Anyone tell me whether I have made this up or just been inspired by the Mirren TV drama, or is there a source somewhere?

[ap-kinda-lit]

Mary Queen of Scots was tragic and sympathetic but she wasn’t an innocent victim. A lot of the things that happened to her (her execution, her accused of being involved in Darnley’s death, her bad blood with Elizabeth) were from her own doing and she was involved in multiple plots to dethrone and kill Elizabeth before the Babington Plot. Elizabeth might not have liked her cousin a lot but she still didn’t want to dethrone or kill her even when Mary was actually trying to kill her. So can we stop making Mary out as the wholly innocent martyr and Elizabeth as the jealous villain?

[amalgamortuum]

Code and cipher tables of Mary, Queen of Scots, circa 1596. A prime example of a classic nomenclator, this system lists names, words, and common letter combinations alongside their equivalent code symbol(s), in addition to a supplementary cipher alphabet to cover any words or names not listed in the code section. Nomenclators were employed by European royalty to conceal diplomatic as well as personal correspondences during the 15th century onward. They saw widespread use until the 1850s when they were superseded by the invention of the telegraph and Morse code.

The box in the upper left corner of the table contains a cipher alphabet where each plaintext letter has four symbol equivalents. The top half of the upper right box contains substitution symbols for common digraphs (including the letter W, which was historically a digraph), each of which has two equivalent symbols; the lower half lists signs to represent common English word endings.

Below this is a list of 31 null characters — these are meaningless signs intended to confuse decryption attempts — followed by a list of 16 symbols, 12 of which represent the months of the year, and four more representing the words “Ponds,” “Angels,” “Crownes [sic],” and “Ducats.”

The next line details the use of four specialized signs:

The first sign (resembling a cursive digit 1 or lowercase /) is used to represent a doubling of any preceding character (used to double a letter, for example)

The second sign (a small square) is used as a full stop or period

The third sign (resembling a cursive capital V) is used as parentheses

The fourth sign (resembling a lowercase j without the dot) makes any preceding character null

The rest of the table lists symbol equivalents of the names of key individuals and locations as well as common words and short phrases. The first three columns encrypt the names of individuals and places (many titles are abbreviated, such as k. for king, Q. for queen, E. for earl, and lo. for lord). The fourth through seventh columns list encryptions for common words as well as a few more names.

[oupacademic]

A Very Short Fact: On this day in 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots was executed for her suspected role in the Babington Plot, which planned the assassination of her cousin Queen Elizabeth I.

“Scotland’s aristocrats did not want too strong a monarch, but an ineffective one was just as useless. Mary did reasonably well fending off the strident warnings of Protestant leader John Knox (c. 1514–72) and containing factions until she made an unwise marriage in 1565. Subsequently her rule fell apart and the nobility forced her out. Exiled and imprisoned in England, she was decapitated there as a traitor in 1587, all her possessions burned. Mary was a woman of extraordinary political talents and immense personal courage, a lover of life as much as a conscientious and charismatic queen, who should be judged not by her failure to bring stability to her fatally unstable country, but by her many successful attempts to do so. She was defeated not because she could not match her enemies, but because they were so numerous and the problems so intractable.”

[P.12- Scotland: A Very Short Introduction by Rab Houston.]

Like the Very Short Introductions on Facebook for more from the series.

Image credit: Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587) by François Clouet. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

[thedudleywomen]

ON THIS DAY - 14 October 1586

On This Day (14 Oct) in 1586, the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots began at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire: she had been charged with plotting the assassination of Elizabeth I.

Mary had been arrested on 11 Aug 1586 whilst being held prisoner at Chartley Manor, Staffordshire; she had been held there since Dec 1585, the residence of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. From here she was transported to nearby Tixall House, before finally being moved to Fotheringhay on 25 Sep 1586.

It was whilst at Chartley that Mary corresponded with Anthony Babington, a Catholic and long-time supporter of hers; letters were written in cypher and transported in and out of the house in beer barrels. Babington was the head of the eponymous 'Babington Plot' - a conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth and place the Catholic Mary on the English throne. However, Elizabeth's Secretary of State and 'spymaster' Sir Francis Walsingham was able to intercept these letters, leading the arrest of Babington, his co-conspirators and eventually Mary. It was these letters that were used as evidence against Mary, and led to her being tried on charges of high treason.

Mary's trial was held in the Great Hall at Fotheringhay - an 'examination' of the evidence by a panel of English nobles, under the 'Act of Association'. Being found guilty under this act would lead to Mary being stripped of her claim to the English throne, and lawfully being put to death. She appeared in person at 9 o'clock in the morning, in front of crown representatives and noblemen, including William Cecil, Baron Burghley (Elizabeth's Lord High Treasurer) Walsingham and George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, under whose custody she had been held for 15 years. She wore her favoured garments of her captive years: a black velvet dress and mantle, with white headdress (with widows peak) and veil.

Mary denied the charges put to her, as well as arguing that she had been denied access to legal counsel. She continued to assert her authority as an anointed queen, and expected to be treated so. Correspondence between the two were passed around, in addition to Babington's deposition and signed confessions of two co-conspirators; Mary denied ever having met Anthony Babington, and accused Walsingham of inventing the cyphers and manufacturing the plot to implicate her. However, she confirmed that she continued to support Catholic interests in England, as well as abroad.

Elizabeth had ordered that no sentence be passed until all the evidence had been presented to herself, and following the conclusion of the trial on 15 Oct, the panel returned to London. Their findings were subsequently presented to Elizabeth on 25 Oct 1586 at the Star Chamber in London; Mary was found guilty of being "not only accessory and privy to the conspiracy, but also an imaginer and compass of her majesty's destruction" and a sentence of death was passed. However, Elizabeth continued to demonstrate ambiguity, requesting attempts to obtain a 'full confession' from the Scottish Queen, in an attempt to save her life, and void any retaliatory action from Mary's Catholic allies abroad.

Links to information about the five major collecting areas of the Parliamentary Archives: Commons and Lords, Palace of Westminster, Societie

[principleofplenitude]

Babington Plot - Wikipedia