14 dangerous than before.13 Elizabeth felt and publicly avowed her feeling of her personal danger, but was not dismayed by it, and earnestly expressed to her parliament, her sense of their provisions for her safety. Yet if the estimation of the state of England by the agent of Rome, is to be considered as a correct account of the disposition of the Catholics, and of their comparative number, the government was in greater peril of being circumvented or subverted by the landing of any force that could maintain itself till the friends of the papal cause 13 Sir Philip Sidney's description of this portion of our population, in the year 1580, deserves our citation, as it was made to the queen as his deliberate judgment on this subject. Men whose spirits are full of anguish; some being infected by others, whom they accounted damnable; some having their ambition stopped, because they are not in the way of advancement; some in prison and disgrace; some whose best friends are banished practisers. Many think you are an usurper; many think also that you have your right disannulled, because of the pope's excommunication: all burthened with the weight of their conscience. Men of great numbers, of great riches, because the affairs of the state have not lain on them; of united minds, as all men that deem themselves oppressed naturally are. With these, I would willingly join all discontented persons, such as want and disgrace keep lower than they have set their hearts to be; such as have resolved what to look for at your hands; such as Cæsar said, 'to whom a civil war is necessary,' and who are of his mind; 'I had rather fall in the field than in the forum.' These be men so much the more to be doubted, because, as they embrace all estates, they are commonly of the bravest and wakefullest sort, and most know the advantage of the world. This double rank of people, how their minds have stood, the northern rebellion, and infinite other practices have well taught you. At present they want nothing so much as a head.' Sidney's Letters, v. 1. p. 288. 14 When she dissolved her parliament on 29th March 1585, her speech was, 'My Lords, and ye of the Lower House! My silence must not injure the owner so much, as to suppose a substitute sufficient to render you the thanks that my heart yieldeth you; not so much for the safe keeping of my life, as for the neglecting your private future peril, in regarding only my present state. No prince can be faster bound than I am, with the link of your good will. I can for that but yield you a heart and head to seek for ever all your best. I know no creature that breathes, whose life stands in more peril than mine own, who entered not into my state without sight of manifold dangers of life and crown, as one that had the mightiest and greatest to wrestle with.' Stow, 702. CHAP XXXIV BOOK 1. could assemble and join it, than either the queen or her ministers may have believed.15 In 1586, this branch of the population had been excited to a renewal of their objects and wishes by a fresh introduction of the Jesuit missioners.16 Averse to the deprivation of life, the queen had in the preceding year caused thirty-two of the intruded seminary priests and Jesuits to be deported out of the kingdom, and landed at Boulogne;" but in this, four of the more offending were executed for treason at Tyburn.18 In the summer of 1586, the country was alarmed 15 The papers found on the Jesuit Crichton, stated, 'First, all the Catholics, without any exception, do favor, or rather do greatly desire some such enterprise. The faction of the Catholics in England is great; and able, if the kingdom were divided in three parts, to make two of them. But because there is no fortress in all the country where they may remain in surety while they gather their forces together, and the officers of the queen have always an eye over them, they dare not rise without some beginning of forces.' It thus divides the realm into two parts, one, the earls, barons, knights and esquires; the other is of yeomen, the most part of which are Catholics.' Strype Annals, v. 3. p. 602. The writer of this seems to have overrated the numbers of his party. 16 So one of them, Parsons, in this year reported to cardinal Allen, after he had landed, that they had had a very happy journey to England, that their arrival in the island did in a wonderful manner refresh and cheer the Catholics, who had before complained that they were forsaken by the society, and that the shepherds, discouraged by difficulties, would forsake their flock, which had never more need of them.' Strype, p. 600. Garnet. the Jesuit, who was implicated in the gunpowder plot, and who suffered for it, came at this time into England, in July 1586, as sir John Croke stated on his trial. State Trial, 1. p. 242. 17 Stow, p 710. 18 Two on 21 Jan. Devorox and Barber: and two others, Thompson and Lea, on 20 April. Stow, 719, 720. It was a barsh punishment, like that of many felonies to which death has been too promiscuously and rashly attached by our former laws; but as they came into the island after the statute had made it treason for such persons to enter into it, stay 40 days, and act as they did, they voluntarily and wilfully chose to incur the legal sentence and the penalty; and as such, their case was an act of deliberate suicide: for all criminal or unauthorized martyrdom is so. XXXIV. by the detection of a conspiracy for that general CHAP. rebellion 19 to which the disaffected Catholics had so long and so eagerly looked, and for the assassination of Elizabeth. The guilty plotters were apprehended. Of these, Savage confessed that he had been incited by Dr. William Gifford, at the seminary at Rheims, to swear to kill the queen, and that his tempter suggested the plan.20 He came to England for the purpose, but had not summoned his resolution to the perpetration, tho further urged by letters from his continental instigators, when he learnt that Anthony Babington and several others were also forming a similar plot." One of these, Ballard, a priest, being taken up, he agreed with Babington to make an immediate attempt; 22 but the complete discovery 19 Stow, 728. It was discovered at last to Walsingham, by Gilbert Gifford, a priest, one of the conspiring parties. Camd. 305. 20 He said, "Gifford charged him to forbear no time, nor place, but to murder her. As her Majesty should go into her chapel to hear divine service, Savage might lurk in the gallery, and stab her with his dagger; or if she should walk into her garden, he might shoot her with his dagg; or if she did walk abroad to take the air, as she would often do, and rather, as Gifford said, accompanied with women than men, and these men slenderly weaponed, Savage might assault her with his arming sword, and so make sure work; and tho he should be in extreme hazard of his own life, he would be sure to gain heaven thereby.' Sav. Confess. in State Trials, v. 1. p. 122. 21 Ib. Savage was described by his conspiring friend, Chornock, thus: Savage and I were acquainted. He was of Barnard's Inn, and I of Furnival's. We both served in the Spanish camp together. He was an excellent soldier, a man skilful in languages, and learned besides. He introduced me to Ballard.' State Tr. I. p. 132. 22 Then came Babington to Savage, saying, ‘Ballard is taken, all will be bewrayed; What remedy now? Savage answered, None; but to kill her presently.' Then, go you to court to-morrow, and execute the fact.'- Nay, I cannot go to-morrow, my apparel is not ready, and in this apparel I shall never come near the queen.' Babington gave him his ring and money, to get the clothes; but the next day, suspecting something, fled, and all was discovered.' Conf. ib. BOOK of the nefarious projects by the cabinet, intercepted their prosecution.23 II. The plot of Babington originated from Ballard, one of the seminary priests of Rheims. After visiting the Catholics in England and Scotland, and ascertaining their feelings, he returned to France at Easter 1586, and concerted and framed with the Spanish ambassador, and Charles Paget, a man devoted to Mary, a scheme for the invasion of England by Spain." He returned to this country in the disguise of a military officer; and there devised the villany with Babington, an ambitious young man of good family, whom Mary's agents had seduced when in France; and both agreeing that no invasion would avail as long as Elizabeth lived, Babington resolved to ensure her destruction by not leaving its execution to Savage alone, but by procuring five other determined gentlemen to co-operate." Babington acknowleged that Morgan, a friend of Mary, had 23 Savage had served under the prince of Parma. It was in the autumn of the preceding year, that Gifford had solicited him to include Leicester in the attempt. p. 122. The doctor assured him that the assassination would be 'just and meritorious;' and referring him to others in the seminary, at supper, for their opinions, they affirmed to him, that it was lawful, because she was an heretic, an enemy to true religion, and a schismatic person.' State Trials, p. 122. 24 Camd. 302. He had 'for five or six years ranged thro many parts of the realm, disguised in apparel, and under several names.' Hardw. v. 1. p. 225, 6. 25 Camd. 302. He returned to London on Whit-Sunday, the 22 May, and within four or five days after conferred with Babington.' Hard. p. 226. The solicitor general described him, 'being a popish priest, he came in a grey cloke laid on with gold lace, in velvet hose, a cut sattin doublet, a fair hat of the newest fashion, the band being set with silver buttons; a man and a boy after him, and his name captain Fortescue.' State Trials, I. 130. 26 Camd. 303. Hard. 226. These things, with many other material circumstances, were voluntarily confessed by divers of the principal conspirators.' Hard. ib. introduced him to the bishop of Ross, her ambassador, and that under their recommendations he corresponded with her;" and in one letter to her, he stated the plot in which he had engaged." She answered him in a cipher, which Titchborne, one of his confederates, assisted to read, and a copy of which he produced to Ballard and the rest." Several gentlemen united in the conspiracy, and met frequently to contrive for its effectual execution.30 But the man sent from France to England, to put Savage in mind of his vow, revealed what he knew to Walsingham, who by his instrumentality carried on their secret correspondence with Mary," till sufficient proof being obtained of the criminality of all the confederating parties, Ballard was arrested at Babington's house, as he was about to depart for France, to secure the foreign aid which had been promised; the others were also taken, and the elaborate plot was immediately disconcerted. The seven principal conspirators were first tried in the middle 32 27 His confession, Hard. p. 227. Babington was a gentleman of some social respectability, for his friend and confederate, Titchborne, thus spoke of him: Before this thing chanced, we lived together in most flourishing estate. Of whom went report in the Strand, Fleetstreet, and elsewhere about London, but of Babington and Titchborne. No threshold was of force to brave our entry. Thus we lived, and wanted nothing we could wish for.' State Trials, I. p. 133. 28 Hard. p. 227. A letter of Mary to Babington, of 28 June, from Chartly, and a long letter from him to her, intimating his intended enterprise, were produced on Mary's trial, and are in the State Trials, I. p. 141, 2. 29 Hard. 228. The substance of her answer is given in p. 230-3. 30 The associates of Babington were the Catholic gentlemen, Edward Windsor, brother of lord Windsor; Thomas Salisbury, of a knightly family in Denbighshire; Charles Tilney, a gentleman of an ancient house, and one of Elizabeth's gentlemen pensioners, whom Ballard had then lately reconciled to the Roman church; Titchborne; E. Abington, whose father had been under-treasurer of the queen's household, and six others. Camd. 33. 32 Camd. 306. 31 Camd. 305. СНАР. |