Could anyone suppose that this momentous proceeding was going on without the knowledge of the English Queen? Such a supposition would be impossible. Walsingham was a daily visitor at court and Elizabeth's paid secretary. It would have been as much as his life was worth to negotiate this diabolical plot unknown to his mistress, and particularly as every movement in connection with the Queen of Scots had to be communicated to her. It was a case where she reserved to herself exclusively the privilege of giving every order, with no intention whatever of consulting her responsible ministers or her Privy Council. In this particular matter they were merely figureheads. Walsingham, therefore, whose character we have already described, was in this case nothing but a puppet in the hands of a powerful and unscrupulous woman, stronger than himself. If he had an audience of her daily no correspondence between them would be necessary. The spies employed were Walsingham's servants. Their object was to inveigle Mary into a crime that was punishable with death. Walsingham having failed to get Babington's consent to Elizabeth's assassination, and thereby compromise the Scottish Queen, evidently resolved on the other alternative, and manufactured the material which Phillips introduced into the letters. The circumstantial evidence is too strong to permit of Elizabeth's escape from the responsibility. The actual extent to which she was compromised we shall probably never know, but it is a fair and reasonable deduction from the correspondence, as now disclosed, to say that she and Walsingham were responsible for connecting Mary with the plot against her life. There is no proof against Mary that will stand investigation, and no proof at all save forged and interpolated letters (see pp. 228-40). It was, in plain language, a cunning plot by Elizabeth against Elizabeth to encompass the Scottish Queen in a false conspiracy against her life.
SIR FRANCIS WALSINGHAM,
Secretary to Queen Elizabeth.
The foregoing paper containing instructions to Buckhurst, the outcome of this plot, we shall proceed to analyse. For audacity and unblushing falsehood it is almost without precedent. It proceeds on the assumption that the duplicity of the writer would not be found out, and we have no evidence that during her lifetime, or for long after, it was found out. The first paragraph takes us back to the beginning of Mary's captivity, and considering the length of that captivity and the treatment Mary experienced, the paragraph and its charges may be regarded as sheer imagination, to which the innocence of Mary has given the lie. The second paragraph requires Buckhurst to explain the cause of his mission, the entire responsibility of which Elizabeth put on the shoulders of her lords and commissioners, who, she says, gave sentence against Mary unanimously! This almost takes away one's breath. The reader will take note that the sentence was written out by Elizabeth, handed by her to her ministers with a command to make it their finding notwithstanding Mary's guilt or innocence. No one dared to offer a word against it, or in short to have any opinion of his own; otherwise it might have cost him his life. As regards Nau and Curie, their evidence was obtained by the rack, and is of no value. The third paragraph orders the execution, with the hypocritical reasons which led to it, in all of which the wish is father to the thought, and plainly indicates the mind of Elizabeth. The conspiracy trick was an excellent trump card for such a woman to play against Mary, and by that means get quit of a rival whom of all the women in the world she knew to be superior to herself in every accomplishment. No woman could frequent the court of Elizabeth who was superior to her in these respects. We have a proof of this in the famous interview between her and Sir James Melville in 1564, when Melville's ingenuity was taxed to the uttermost to acknowledge Elizabeth's accomplishments against his will. The fourth paragraph may be considered as perjury and hypocrisy and a repetition of the unblushing falsehoods already expressed. The fifth paragraph doubtless was intended to convey to Mary some idea of the saintly conduct of Elizabeth and the wicked conduct of Mary, which reminds us of the Pharisee in the Hebrew story. The commissioners were to let her know “how much in respect of her degree, calling, and nearness in blood to us, have moved us to take the course we have done in sending our chief nobility to try her case.” Whether this sentimental and insulting message was conveyed to Mary is not recorded, but the probability is it was not. The sixth paragraph is an “instruction” to the captive that as she has no case she is not to abuse the plaintiff. If she attempted to justify herself before the commissioners she was to be told what was equivalent to an insult: “how much she is to blame to wrong us in honour with her unjust and untrue assertions.” This was before any assertions were made! Obviously the English Queen was not endowed with the common feelings of humanity. If we wished to get a side-light into her character this paper would afford us as much information as we require.
On the same day, 16th November, Queen Elizabeth wrote Paulet, authorising him to allow the commissioners an interview with Mary:—
“We have thought it convenient, for sundry reasons, to send Lord Buckhurst and Beale to acquaint the Queen your charge, as well with the proceedings of the commissioners since their departure from Fotheringay, as with what hath been lately done in Parliament concerning the commissioners' proceedings. Our pleasure is that you permit them to have access to the said Queen, hoping in God that before they repair thither you will be restored to that good state of health, so that you may be able to assist and join them in the present service committed to them. And in case the said Queen shall desire to have any conference apart, upon pretence to reveal some secret matter to be communicated to us, either with Lord Buckhurst or with any one of our servants, we are willing to assent thereto if she shall request the same; otherwise we could best like that you should be present when any such remarks should be delivered.”
When Parliament ordained the sentence to be carried out, Elizabeth was the more overjoyed at it as she believed herself thereby cleared, while she had accomplished her brutal purpose; and she took care to hint that but for the love of her people she could never have made up her mind to sign the death-warrant of Mary Stuart! She said, “I must tell you one thing, that by the last Act of Parliament you have reduced me to such straits and perplexities that I must resolve upon the punishment of her who is a princess, so nearly allied to me in blood, and whose practices against me have so deeply affected me with grief and sorrow that I have willingly chosen to absent myself from this Parliament lest I should increase my trouble by hearing the matter mentioned, and not out of fear of any danger or treacherous attempts against me, as some think. But I will now tell you a further secret (though it be not usual with me to blab forth in other cases what I know). It is not long since these eyes of mine saw and read an oath wherein some bound themselves to kill me within a month. Hereby I see your danger in my person, which I will be very careful to prevent and keep off.”[12]
The unabated energy shown in the espionage of the Scottish Queen is evident from Paulet's letter to Walsingham under date 21st November 1586:—