It need not be the least surprising that Walsingham should have written the following false and calumnious letter to the Master of Gray, dated 15th September. If he could surreptitiously open, copy, and interpolate Queen Mary's letters, he was quite capable of giving the advice contained in this communication. This Master of Gray was one of Mary's enemies, and was mainly instrumental in putting discord between mother and son. No man knew better than Walsingham that Mary was innocent of Darnley's murder, but to admit this would be to jeopardise his scheme for her execution. Consequently her innocence could not be entertained. Mary losing her Crown had nothing whatever to do with the Darnley murder. She never voluntarily gave up the Crown, but it was compulsorily taken from her by Lindsay and Ruthven when she was confined in Loch Leven in 1567, in order that Moray might assume the Regency:—
“I thank you for sounding the King's disposition, how he could be content to have the Queen his mother proceeded against for the late fact, but I suppose it will be in vain to move him any further, because he may conceive it would be contra bonos mores, in respect of the bond of nature between them, that he should make himself a party against her. Nevertheless, you may with good reason persuade him that he make no mediation for her, or oppose himself against the course that is intended to be adopted with her, considering the hard treatment that his father received at her hands, for which detestable deed she was deprived of her Crown. It is meant that she shall be tried here according to the Act made in the last Parliament, and that agreeably to the contents of the said Act certain noblemen shall be appointed to charge her, who assembled for that purpose the 27th of this month, and shall be with her by the 4th of the next at Fotheringay Castle, seven miles from Stamford, whither she is appointed to be brought. But the matters whereof she is guilty are already so plain and manifest, being also confessed by her two secretaries, as it is thought they shall require no long debating. We suppose she will appeal and challenge the privilege of her sovereignty, which in this case neither by the civil law nor by the laws of this realm can be available.”
Bourgoyne's Journal exposes the cruelty of Queen Mary's enemies and their importunity about the Babington Conspiracy, and while she protested that during her captivity “Elizabeth had maintained, sustained, and aided her rebel subjects, alienated her son from her, and taken away what she possessed,” and could prove this, they would not listen to it, but wanted to squeeze out of her something that would incriminate herself.
The following paper, which is in the handwriting of Phillips, one of Walsingham's spies, is preserved in the Record Office under date September 1586. It is reproduced not because it is of any value, but rather to show the persistent and cunning efforts to entrap the Scottish Queen. It concerns the Babington Conspiracy, and is a wholly unauthenticated document. The papers Phillips refers to are from Mary's cabinets, seized on the day she was kidnapped; and in order to understand the object of the paper, we must keep in view that it assumes the accuracy of Mary's interpolated letter of 17th July to Babington. In short, it was Phillips, the writer of this paper, who was the copyist of these interpolations.
Bereft of these, any plot against Elizabeth by Mary is the merest fable and cannot be proved; and what remains is a series of enterprises for the release simpliciter of the Scottish Queen. Mary was connected only with schemes for her own liberty, and for that she cannot be blamed. This paper is a laboured and wicked attempt to induce posterity to believe that she was hatching plots for Elizabeth's murder and an invasion of England. There is no proof to defend this charge:—
“Memorial showing how the ten parcels of extracts and copies of the Scottish Queen's intercepted letters delivered to Wotton are to be used.
“For declaration of the attempt against the Queen's person (Elizabeth), invasion of the realm, and stirring rebellion within the land, proposed and wrought by Charles Paget, Ballard, and Babington, as is contained in the instructions with her acceptance and approbation of the whole.
“The extract of the letters sent by Charles Paget to the Scottish Queen of the 29th May 1586 with her answer of the 27th July.
“The copies of the letters between the said Queen and Babington, verified by Nau's confession, showing the manner of writing and making up all her despatches, and particularly proving the letters of the Queen to Babington have been penned by herself and taken out of a minute by her own hand (Nau's confession was got by the rack). The extract of the letters written from the Scottish Queen to Don Bernard de Mendoza, the Bishop of Glasgow, Sir Francis Englefeld, and Lord Paget, 27th July 1586, with sundry propositions.