This revolution in Scotland, this resistance to the pressure of Elizabeth and even the Protestant princes of the continent, revived the hopes of the Catholics. James had been brought up with great care in the Protestant religion. His tutor, George Buchanan, celebrated for his genius and learning, was a distinguished theologian, and had inspired the taste for that science in him, but it was hoped that the Catholic blood of the Guises would strengthen his power, and that the desire of delivering his mother would inspire in the young monarch opinions favourable to the intrigues which were still in progress on her behalf. The Earl of Arran, who wished to supplant Lennox in the favour of James, lent himself to these manœuvres. Queen Mary offered to legalize the irregular assession of her son, and to abdicate in his favour. But at the moment when the agents of the Catholic party abroad brought to James the approval of the the Pope and of Spain, he was lured into the residence of the Earl of Gowrie, son of old Ruthven, where he suddenly found himself a prisoner. The power fell again entirely into the hands of the Protestant lords. Arran was cast into prison. Lennox fled to France, where he perished shortly afterwards, and Queen Mary, trembling for her only son, wrote to Elizabeth, imploring her to preserve the life of the young king. James had already contrived to deliver himself from the snares of his enemies; he had promised pardon, he was free, and lived in the midst of a crowd of contradictory and confused intrigues which occasionally embarrassed even the penetration of Walsingham, who had been sent to Scotland by Queen Elizabeth. Meanwhile, the presence of the son upon the throne of Scotland had awakened the hopes of the mother in her prison, as well as the ardour of her friends in England and on the Continent. A number of isolated Catholic plots, of no serious importance, were constantly renewed and inevitably followed by torture and the gallows. The penal law against the Catholic priests were applied with extreme rigour, being often favoured by public opinion, which saw in them only so many conspirators. The most celebrated victim of this persecution was the Jesuit Campion, a distinguished and able man, whose execution excited a certain amount of passion. Burleigh was compelled to exonerate himself for having ordered him to be tortured. The wooden horse had been applied so gently, he affirmed, that the Jesuit had been able to walk at once to sign his confession. The prisons were filled with Catholics; those whom the persecutors dared not send to gallows, sometimes died there of grief and suffering. This was the fate of the Earl of Arundel, son of the Duke of Norfolk, formerly in great favour with Elizabeth. Having become a Catholic and fallen into disgrace, he was arrested while endeavouring to escape; being thrown into the Tower, he languished there for several years, and finally died without being permitted to see his wife and children again. The formidable abuses of absolute power manifested themselves vigorously, for the strong intellect of Burleigh had not, any more than that of his mistress, conceived the least idea of the rights of conscience. While Elizabeth forbade the Catholic priests to say mass, she drove from their livings the nonconformist ministers until 1589, and caused the anabaptists and heretics to be burned. A circumstance which aggravated the situation of the Catholics, was the suspicion, very often well founded, that they had a secret understanding with foreign countries, and mixed politics with the religious interests. In 1584, the ambassador of Spain, Mendoza, received his passports and quitted the kingdom, much compromised by the revelations of Francis Throgmorton, who was condemned to death for having conspired against the queen, with the object of delivering Mary Stuart. Parliament voted fresh measures against the Catholic priests; these measures were attacked by a Welsh member named Parry, who was sent to the Tower; his confessions were so complete, he denounced so many accomplices, he revealed dangers so imminent, that he was suspected of being simply the instrument of the Protestant party, intended to prove the peril which surrounded the queen. But if Parry had counted upon pardon, he was mistaken; he was executed on the 25th of February, 1585, retracting at the last moment all his revelations, and exclaiming upon the scaffold, "God grant that in taking my life Queen Elizabeth may not have killed the best keeper of her park." It was supposed that Parry was mad, but his accusations agitated the Catholics, who resolutely protested against any disloyal project and in particular against the theory of permissible assassination, which Parry had attributed to their Church. The gentleman who presented this protest to the queen was cast into prison where he died. A Protestant association was formed, to protect the life of her Majesty, and to avenge her death in case of crime. The Earl of Leicester placed himself at the head of the movement, which received the sanction of Parliament. Mary Stuart looked upon this league as her death-warrant; she trembled, with good reason, in her prison, for her son made no effort in her favour; he was negotiating with the Queen of England for a treaty of alliance against the Catholic powers, without the name of Mary being uttered between them. In reply to the pathetic appeals of his mother, James VI. contented himself with replying that she was Queen-Mother, and had nothing to do with the affairs of Scotland. "I love my mother, as I ought, by duty and by nature," he said to the French ambassador, "but I cannot approve of her conduct, and I know that she wishes no more good to me than to the Queen of England." The end of the long drama was approaching.
The Protestant policy had completely gained the ascendant in the councils of Elizabeth; she was still officially at peace with Spain; but, for many years her great admirals, Drake, Hawkins, and Sir Walter Raleigh, freely overran the seas, taking possession of all the Spanish vessels which they encountered, furnished with letters of marque, pillaging at times the Spanish towns, and constantly the Spanish settlements in America. For a long while, moreover, the cause of liberty in the Low Countries had been secretly protected by the money and assistance of Elizabeth, and she had recently lent her brilliant support by sending an army of six thousand men, under the orders of the Earl of Leicester, to support the war which had lost (a year before, on the 10th of July, 1584,) its illustrious chief, William the Taciturn, by the dagger of Balthazar Gérard, an assassin in the pay of Philip II. The Queen of England again declined the Protectorate of the United Provinces; but she accepted as a pledge of her close alliance with that rising state the surrender of the towns of Brill and Flushing. On his own motive, and without consulting the queen, Leicester even went so far as to cause himself to be nominated governor by the States-general of the Low Countries. But he had presumed too much upon his past influence over his queen; she had never forgiven him for his marriage with the Countess of Essex; he gained no success in the Low Countries; his military talents were not as great as his political skill. Elizabeth flew into a passion against him, with a violence which gave uneasiness to the members of the council; great difficulty was experienced in preventing her from recalling Leicester at once, and the States-general, who had thought to satisfy the Court of England, soon perceived with grief that Elizabeth was growing cold toward their cause.
A fresh effort was being prepared in favour of Queen Mary, the last link of the long succession of plots which were to bring her to the scaffold. Anthony Babington, a young man of good birth, a fervent Catholic, rich, for a long while devoted to the unhappy captive, engaged in a project of conspiracy, supported, it is said, by the Duke of Parma, Alexander Farnèse, who was to make a descent upon England as soon as he should succeed in assassinating Queen Elizabeth. Babington was desirous of delivering Mary Stuart and placing her upon the throne; he did not take heed of the means proposed by Savage, the prime mover in the plot, and he gathered around him a few friends as bold and imprudent as himself. It appears certain that from this point Walsingham was aware of the conspiracy, but he allowed matters to proceed until Queen Mary had written twice to Babington. As soon as the captive was compromised, the accomplices were all arrested. Savage and Babington alone had desired and plotted the murder of the queen; a few of the conspirators contemplated only the deliverance of Mary Stuart, others limited themselves to keeping silence concerning the conspiracy. "It is my cruel destiny," exclaimed Jones, before the tribunal, "that I should betray my friend whom I love as myself or fail in my allegiance, and become a false friend or a miserable traitor. My tender feeling for Thomas Salisbury has ruined me, but God knows that I meditated no treason." The less guilty among the conspirators were condemned to be hanged; the chiefs of the conspiracy suffered the horrible punishment at traitors. They were so young and of such good appearance that their punishment caused a certain degree of emotion in London. These were the last victims of the beauty and misfortunes of Mary Stuart.
The captive queen had been transferred from prison to prison, each day more closely confined, each day treated with less consideration and respect. She had at one time reproached Lord Shrewsbury for too much severity, but she felt herself protected by his honour; Lord Shrewsbury was no longer her guardian, she was entrusted to Sir Amyas Pawlet and Sir Drew Drury, fierce Protestants, almost Puritans, who felt no pity for the corrupt, murderous, and idolatrous woman whom they held in their hands. Mary had been removed from Chartley Castle, in Staffordshire, a few days before the arrest of Babington; when she was taken back there, she found all her coffers open, her papers abstracted: her two secretaries, Nam and Curie, had been taken to London. She looked for a moment at the havoc, then, turning towards Pawlet, "There are two things, sir, which you cannot take from me," she said, with dignity, "the royal blood which gives me the right to the succession, and the attachment which unites me to the faith of my ancestors." Alas! Mary would willingly have repurchased her life and liberty at the price of the faith of her ancestors; she had formerly made the offer to Elizabeth, but the approach of death, which she felt to be inevitable, brought her back to the real convictions of her soul. Throughout all the faults and crimes of her life, she had been sincerely Catholic; purified by long sufferings, she was to die a Catholic, leaving to a rival whose life she had embittered, the odious stain of her execution.
Parliament now voted a law, which, without naming Mary, condemned her by anticipation. The council of Elizabeth urged the queen to place the captive upon her trial. The repeated plots of which she had been the occasion, the inexhaustible interest which she had excited in Europe, appeared to Burleigh, Walsingham, and Sadler, sufficient reasons for her destruction. Elizabeth hesitated, irresolute and perplexed; she foresaw, perhaps, better than her councillors the harm which would be done her by the death of her relative, who had taken refuge under her protection and was without defence in her hands. Leicester, who had recently returned to England proposed to have recourse to poison; Walsingham opposed this suggestion resolutely; he was specially entrusted with the matter. Burleigh was old, and perhaps had a repugnance, like the queen, to striking the last blow; but Walsingham insisted upon a trial in due form and a public condemnation. "That conduct is alone worthy of your Grace," he said. He carried with him the majority of the council, and the queen nominated a commission entrusted to try "her good sister, the Queen of Scotland," according to the new law of Parliament, against "any person claiming the succession who might have encouraged or supported plots, invasions, or attempts against the safety of the of kingdom and the person of the queen." It was not necessary to bring together the great names which formed the commission for signing a sentence already written in the law itself.
Mary was brought, a few days after the execution of Babington, to Fotheringay Castle, in Northamptonshire. It was there that the commissioners arrived, on the 11th of October, 1586, the bearers of a letter of Queen Elizabeth, which informed the captive that she was compromised in the recent conspiracy, and that she was about to be tried upon that count, as well as several other points, according to the laws of England, under the protection of which she had lived. Mary was old before her time, infirm and overwhelmed with sorrows, but her royal pride was aroused by this arrogant pretension of her rival. "I do not recognize the laws of England," she replied; "and I know that what the Parliament has just voted is directed against me; but I will not derogate from the honour of my ancestors, Kings of Scotland, by submitting to be tried as the subject of my sister of England, and as a criminal." The legists were before her when she made this protest "We will try you then as absent and contumacious," said Burleigh. "Look to your conscience," replied Mary. "If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear," insisted the old chamberlain, Hatton: "but in rejecting the trial, you sully your reputation with eternal infamy." Mary at length yielded, on condition that her protest should be admitted. Protestation and resistance was equally useless.
On the 14th of October, the commissioners assembled in the great hall of Fotheringay Castle. A throne, with a canopy, occupied the place of Queen Elizabeth; lower down, a chair without a canopy awaited Queen Mary. The judges were surrounded by their assessors, with tables for their documents. The accused queen had neither assessors, advocates, nor documents; but her pride, her skill, her presence of mind sufficed, for two days, to hold in check the most able lawyers of England. It was no longer a question of defending herself from past accusations, from the murder of her husband, or her complicity with Bothwell; she was accused of having participated in plots for the overthrow and death of the Queen of England, and, notwithstanding her denials, it is difficult for history to exonerate her from this crime. She had probably implicated herself in the conspiracies against Elizabeth at the time when she was yet a sovereign and free. What a temptation to do so when she was detained, a prisoner, in defiance of justice as well as royal hospitality! The light of those eyes which had made so many victims was extinguished, the elegant figure bent, but the subtle wit, the majestic grace, the infinite seductiveness which had been the danger and the charm of Mary Stuart still existed. She covered her face with her hands when the Earl of Arundel, still in prison at the Tower was mentioned. "Alas!" she exclaimed, "what has the noble House of Howard endured for my sake?" She asked that her two secretaries, whose depositions had been read, should be brought before her. They were in London, and she challenged the authenticity of their testimony, as well as that of a letter written, it was said, by her, to provoke an invasion of England. "I think that that document is the work of the secretary of State, Walsingham," she said. Walsingham rose, protesting that he had never acted through malice, and had done nothing which was unworthy of an honest man. He, no doubt, congratulated himself inwardly on having rejected the suggestion of poison put forth by the Earl of Leicester. The weight of the accusation rested upon the recent conspiracy of Babington, and upon the testimony of the two secretaries. Mary demanded to be heard by Parliament and to see the queen in person. The instructions of the commissioners were formal. Elizabeth would not see the captive. When the judges quitted Fotheringay and assembled at Westminster, the witnesses were summoned before them, but the accused was not there. On the 25th of October, 1586, in the Star Chamber, the commissioners declared that Mary Stuart, daughter of James V., known as the Queen of Scotland, had taken part in the conspiracy of Anthony Babington and in several others to the prejudice of and against the life of her Majesty the Queen of England, in the name and under the pretext of her pretended rights to the crown; consequent upon which, she was condemned to death, without this sentence being in any wise prejudicial to James VI., King of Scotland, who retained all his rights and privileges as though the said condemnation had not existed.