Mary Stuart (37 page)

But Mary Stuart would not have been Mary Stuart had she allowed herself to be frightened from her intended courses by a warning, if she had learnt to act cautiously and thoughtfully.

Still, to begin with she was content with a brief and noncommittal acknowledgment of Babington's letter—so brief that her enemies were disappointed, but Phelippes reported to Walsingham: “We attain her very heart at the next.” She hesitated awhile, and Nau, her secretary, urgently advised her against involving herself in so dangerous an affair by putting pen to paper. But the plan was too exciting, the conspiracy too promising, for Mary Stuart to control her dangerous longing for intrigue. “
Elle s'est laissée aller à l'accepter
”
—
she allowed herself to agree
—
remarked Nau with manifest concern. For three days she was closeted in her room with her two secretaries, Nau and Curle, writing a detailed answer to the various proposals. On 17th July, a few days after getting Babington's missive, she dispatched her rejoinder by the usual route in the beer barrel.

Phelippes was loitering in the neighbourhood of Chartley that he might decipher this momentous letter forthwith. As chance would have it, one of these days when Mary Stuart was out driving, she caught sight of the rascal, and was struck by his pockmarked countenance. He beamed at her genially, for he knew that the fruit of his labours was about to be garnered. The hopeful Mary fancied he must be one of the emissaries of her friends, come to the neighbourhood in order to prepare the way for her liberation. But Phelippes had a much more urgent and perilous task in hand. As soon as he had taken her missive from its cache, he set to work busily deciphering it. It began with generalities.

Mary Stuart expressed her thanks to Babington, and made three separate proposals for the
coup de main
which was to get her safe away from Chartley. Of course these matters were not without interest to the spy, but they were not of decisive importance. Then, however, Phelippes's heart almost stopped beating from delight, for he came to a passage that conveyed what Walsingham so greatly desired, Mary Stuart's “consent” to the murder of Elizabeth Tudor. To Babington's remark that “to dispatch the usurper” there were “six noble gentlemen, all my private friends”, prepared to “undertake that tragical execution”, Mary replied unambiguously: “The affairs being thus prepared and forces in readiness both without and within the realm, then it shall be time to set the six gentlemen to work, taking order that, upon the accomplishment of their design, I may be suddenly transported out of this place, and that all of your forces in the same time be on the field to meet me in tarrying for the arrival of the foreign aid, which then must be hastened with all diligence.”

What more was needed? Thus Mary Stuart disclosed “her very heart”, by approving the plan for the murder of Elizabeth. At length Walsingham's plot had reached fruition. Commissioners and creatures, masters and servants, could congratulate one another, could clasp one another's befouled and soon to be bloodstained hands. “Now you have documents enough,” wrote Phelippes triumphantly to Walsingham. Sir Amyas Paulet, likewise, knowing that the execution of Queen Mary would soon free him from his jailership, was filled with pious exultation. “God has blessed my exertions,” he wrote, “and I rejoice that He has thus rewarded my faithful services.”

Now, when the bird of paradise was caught in the net, Walsingham need no longer hesitate. His plan had proved successful; his unsavoury machinations had been carried to a safe conclusion; but so sure was he of his position that he could not refrain from the gloomy pleasure of playing with his victim for a few days more. If he duly sent the deciphered and copied letter of Mary Stuart to Babington, there would be no harm in giving Babington a chance to answer, and perhaps thereby procuring additional items for the indictment. Something, however, must have made Babington aware that his mysteries were being probed. His courage failed, for the nerves of the most valiant man may give way under stress of an invisible and incomprehensible danger. He ran hither and thither like a hunted rat. Mounting a horse, he rode forth into the country. Then, as aimlessly, he returned to London and (a Dostoevsky touch!) visited Walsingham, the intriguer who was playing with his fate. His obvious intention was to discover, if possible, whether he was suspect. Walsingham, tranquil as ever, disclosed nothing and let Babington take leave unmolested. Perhaps the fool would give additional proof by some act of stupidity. Babington, however, felt that the atmosphere was threatening. He scribbled a note to a friend, using heroic words in the attempt to keep up his courage. “The fiery furnace is made ready in which our faith will be tested.” At the same time he sent a last word to Mary Stuart, telling her to trust and hope.

By now Walsingham had all the proofs he needed, and he struck hard. One of the conspirators was arrested, and this showed Babington that the game was lost. In an outburst of despair he proposed to Savage that they should hasten to the palace and make an end of Elizabeth. But it was too late. Walsingham's catchpoles were already on their trail, and only for a moment could the pair evade capture. Whither could they flee? The roads were blocked, the ports were watched, they were short of money and provisions. For ten days they hid in St John's Wood, then a few miles from London, though now not far from the heart of the huge city—ten days of horror. But hunger was pitiless, and at length drove them to a friend's house, where they received food and where the last sacraments were administered to them. Then they were arrested and led back in chains through the streets of London. The only mercy these two bold young men could expect in the vaults of the Tower was that of the rack, while the bells of the London churches were pealing in triumph. The populace was lighting bonfires and inaugurating processions to celebrate the rescue of Elizabeth, the revealing and foiling of the conspiracy, and the imminent destruction of Mary Stuart.

Meanwhile at Chartley the prisoner had enjoyed a few hours of unfamiliar happiness. Her nerves were tensed. At any hour men might gallop up with the report that the scheme had successfully been carried into effect. Today, tomorrow or the day after, she might be making a triumphal progress to London, where she would be housed in the royal palace. In fancy she pictured the nobles and the burgesses in festal attire, awaiting her at the gates of the city, while the bells pealed jubilantly. She did not know, poor thing, that the bells were already pealing jubilantly to celebrate Elizabeth's deliverance. In one or two days more her long martyrdom would be ended; England and Scotland would be united under her sovereignty, and all Britain would be restored to the bosom of the Church Universal.

No physician can prescribe a better remedy than hope for an exhausted body or an outwearied spirit. Now that Mary, always credulous and full of hope, felt her triumph to be so near, she seemed completely transformed. She was refreshed and rejuvenated. Though of late years she had continually suffered from fatigue and exhaustion, so that she could scarcely walk any distance without bringing on pain in the side, and was a martyr to rheumatism, she was able once more to swing herself into the saddle. Astonished at this rapid change for the better, at the very time when the conspiracy had been blown upon she wrote to her “good Morgan” as follows: “I thank God that He hath not yet set me so low, but that I am able to handle my crossbow for killing of a deer and to gallop after the hounds on horseback.”

Being in this cheerful mood of restored health, she welcomed the invitation of the morose Sir Amyas (unaware, she thought, stupid Puritan that he was, how soon his jailership would come to an end!) to participate on 8th August in a stag hunt organised by Sir Walter Aston in his park of Tixall. The weather was unsettled for a week, and it was not until the 16th that Mary, in hunting costume, was able to ride forth, attended by her court chamberlain, her two secretaries, her physician and Paulet himself, who remained unusually friendly. Paulet, however, was accompanied by a sufficient force. A glorious morning, sunshiny and warm, the fields steaming after the recent rain. Mary spurred her horse, to win the full enjoyment of recovered energies. For weeks, for months, she had not felt so young. During all these gloomy years of imprisonment she had not been so cheerful as on this lovely forenoon. Everything looked beautiful to her, all was going well. When hope springs up in the heart, a sense of benediction falls upon the soul.

The cavalcade trotted through the gates of Tixall Park. Now, however, Mary's pulses began to beat furiously. In front of the castle was waiting a troop of armed horsemen. Were they her friends, Babington and his associates? Had the undertaking hinted at in the correspondence been successfully carried out? But, strangely enough, only one of the waiting horsemen detached himself from the group. Slowly and solemnly he rode up to the Queen, bowed, and raised his hat. It was Sir Thomas Gorges, gentleman-pensioner of Queen Elizabeth. Next moment, Mary Stuart's joy and excitement were dissipated, for Sir Thomas told her in bald words that Babington's conspiracy had been discovered, and that he was charged to arrest her two secretaries.

Mary was struck dumb. Any words she uttered might betray her. Perhaps she did not immediately grasp the full extent of the danger, but the cruel truth was soon disclosed to her when she noticed that Sir Amyas Paulet made no move to ride back with her to Chartley. She grasped, at length, the meaning of this invitation to a hunting party. She had been lured away from her house that her rooms might be searched in her absence. No doubt her private papers would be examined. The authorities would raid the diplomatic chancellery over which she had presided almost as openly as if she had still been a sovereign ruler instead of a prisoner in a strange land. She was given plenty of time to think over her blunders and her follies, being detained for seventeen days at Tixall without being allowed to write or to receive letters. She knew that her most intimate secrets must have become known to Cecil and Walsingham, that her hopes had been dashed to the ground. She had been dragged a stage lower, from the position of prisoner to that of accused criminal.

The woman who returned from Tixall to Chartley was in a very different mood from the one who, seventeen days earlier, had joyously set forth from Chartley for Tixall. She did not ride through the gateway at a lively gallop, javelin in hand, surrounded by trusty friends and adherents, but slowly, mute, accompanied only by guardians and enemies, a weary, disappointed, ageing woman, with nothing but misery in prospect. Was she surprised to find that her coffers and drawers had been broken open, and that the documents they contained had been removed? Was it not natural that the few members of the Chartley household who remained loyal to her should welcome her back with tears of affliction? She knew that all was over. But an unexpected incident, a strange call upon her services, helped her through her first despair. Downstairs in the servants' quarters was a woman in the throes of labour, the wife of Curie, her secretary, who had been taken to London that he might bear witness against her and help to destroy her. Mistress Curie was alone in her extremity, with no doctor to help her and no priest to minister to her. The Queen, therefore, rising to the occasion in the everlasting sisterhood of women and of misfortune, did what she could to help, and (as the Church permits to the lay in such an extremity) herself baptised the new-born infant.

For a few days longer Mary Stuart was detained at Chartley. Then came orders to remove her to a safer hold. Fotheringay Castle was chosen for her new prison, this being the last of the many. Her wanderings were over, and soon her life would be over as well.

But Mary's sufferings during the last months of her life, tragic though they were, were slight in comparison with the abominable tortures inflicted upon the unhappy young men who had ventured all on behalf of the imprisoned Queen. For the most part historians are affected with a class bias, describing at great length, and often enough exclusively, the distresses of those who sit in the seats of the mighty, the triumphs and tragedies of the rulers of the earth. They ignore the deeds of cruelty done in dark places, the torments inflicted upon sufferers of little note—as if persons of high rank felt more acutely than their “inferiors”. Babington and a number of his confederates (who mentions their names today, although the name and the sad destinies of Queen Mary have been immortalised on countless stages and in numberless books?) endured in three hours of hideous torture more than Mary Stuart had to endure in the twenty years of her misfortune. Traitors in the England of those days were sentenced to be “hanged, drawn and quartered”, and this gruesome penalty was inflicted on Babington and the others with the full approval of Cecil, Walsingham and Queen Elizabeth. After a preliminary hanging the offender was taken down from the gallows while still alive, his sexual organs were cut off, he was disembowelled and was then quartered by the executioner. Among the seven who were thus executed on the twentieth day of September—Babington, regarded as the ringleader, Ballard, a Jesuit, Savage and four others—were two who were little more than boys and whose only offence had been that they had given bread to their friend Babington to aid him in his flight. Even the London mob, not as a rule squeamish, had had its fill of horrors, and murmured at the long-drawn-out barbarity of the execution. Next day, therefore, when “justice” was wreaked upon seven more of the offenders, the horrible procedure was shortened. Once again, however, a place of execution became drenched with blood for the sake of this woman whose magical power it was to lure more and ever more youths to destruction. For the last time! The Dance of Death that had begun with Chastelard had now drawn to a close. No one else, except Mary herself, would perish on behalf of her dream of power and greatness.

E
LIZABETH’S MINISTERS OF STATE
thus achieved their end. Mary Stuart innocently entered the trap, gave her “consent”, made herself “guilty”. Without stirring a finger, Elizabeth could let matters take their course, so that a legal decision would sweep her dangerous rival out of her path for ever. The struggle which had lasted for a quarter of a century was over. Elizabeth was victorious, and could rejoice as merrily as her subjects who, in the streets of London and elsewhere, were noisily celebrating the rescue of their sovereign and the triumph of the Protestant cause. But in every fulfilment, bitter is mingled with sweet in the cup. Now, when Elizabeth could strike, she hesitated. It had been far, far easier to entice a heedless prisoner into the snare than it was to slay her when the trap had closed on her. If Elizabeth had wanted to rid herself of the inconvenient captive by force, she had had ample opportunities ere this. Fifteen years earlier, parliament had requested that Queen Mary should be dealt with by the axe. In 1570, John Knox wrote to Cecil warning him “that, if he thrust not at the root, the branches, which appeared to be broken, would bud more quickly than men could believe, and with greater force than would be wished,” adding emphatically “God grant you wisdom” and signing “John Knox, with his one foot in the grave”.

Always when thus urged to take sharp measures, Elizabeth answered: “I cannot slay the dove which, pursued by a falcon, has flown to me for help.” Now, however, what choice was left her, when the Babington conspiracy (Walsingham’s plot!) convinced her that the choice lay between her own life or Mary’s? Nevertheless, Elizabeth continued to shrink from a decision, for she knew what immense possibilities, moving in ever-widening circles, were involved. It is hard for us of a later day to understand how newfangled, how revolutionary, was the thought of executing Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles—a notion at which the hierarchy of the western world shuddered. To send an anointed queen to the scaffold was a plain demonstration to the hitherto servile people of Europe that even a monarch was subject to doom at the hands of the executioner, and could not be regarded as sacrosanct. Thus Elizabeth’s decision implied, not merely the doom of a fellow creature, but the doom of an idea. For centuries the slaughtering of this idea would work havoc among the kings of this world. The execution of Queen Mary would be a precedent for the execution of King Charles I, her grandson; and the execution of King Charles, in its turn, would be a precedent for the execution of Louis XVI and of Marie Antoinette. Thus does destiny work. Elizabeth, taking long views, and having a strong sense of responsibility, perceived the far-reaching implications of her decision. She hesitated, vacillated and procrastinated. Once more there became active in her, perhaps more active than ever, the struggle between reason and feeling, the war of Elizabeth against Elizabeth. It is always a moving spectacle when we contemplate a fellow human being wrestling with conscience.

Oppressed by this bipolarity of purpose, Elizabeth tried to evade the inevitable. Again and again she refused to decide; again and again decision was forced upon her. Thus, once more, at the last moment, she tried to shuffle responsibility off upon Mary. She wrote the latter a letter (indubitably penned, though it has not come down to us) in which she asked Mary to make her a confidential communication, as from one queen to another. Mary was to avow participation in the conspiracy, and submit to Elizabeth’s personal judgement, instead of being tried in open court.

This proposal was the only way out of the difficulty, short of public trial and execution. It would spare Mary the humiliations that were otherwise unavoidable. From Elizabeth’s standpoint, it would provide an infallible safeguard if this dangerous pretender to her throne consented to make an avowal in her own handwriting. It would give Elizabeth a firm moral hold on Mary. Thenceforward Mary, disarmed by her concession, could go on living quietly in obscurity, and Elizabeth would be tranquil in the fierce light that beats upon a throne. Each member of the pair would be assigned a separate role. No longer would Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart stand as foes and equals on the stage of history, for Mary would have become a penitent on her knees before one who had graciously pardoned her and granted her her life.

But Mary no longer wished to be saved. The strongest of her instincts was pride, and she would rather kneel to lay her head on the block than kneel before a protectress, would rather tell a preposterous falsehood than make a plain confession, would rather perish than humble herself. She was therefore deaf to this offer, which implied debasement as well as salvation. She knew that as a sovereign ruler she had played and lost. Only one power was left to her on earth, that of putting her adversary Elizabeth in the wrong. Since she could no longer do her enemy direct harm, she would use the sole weapon that remained to her, would relentlessly manifest Elizabeth’s culpability to the world by dying a glorious death.

Mary rejected the proffered hand. Elizabeth, egged on by Cecil and Walsingham, was forced to adopt a course she loathed. To give the proposed trial a legal justification, the crown lawyers were summoned, and crown lawyers are wont to find good legal grounds for whatever the wearer of the crown wishes to do. Busily they sought for precedents, showing that, ere this, kings and queens had been tried before the courts; that the accusation of Mary was not a manifest breach with tradition, not an entirely new thing in the world. The examples they were able to discover were not very impressive: Cajetanus, an obscure tetrarch, who had been put to death fifteen hundred years before; Licinius, Constantine’s brother-in-law, equally unknown; finally Conradin of Hohenstaufen and Joanna of Naples—these were the only sovereigns who could be shown to have lost their lives through a decision of a law court. In their servility, the crown lawyers went so far as to declare that the court of nobles Elizabeth proposed to appoint was superfluous. They held it would suffice, since Mary Stuart’s crime had been committed in Staffordshire, to bring her before a common jury of that county. This democratic suggestion did not suit Elizabeth at all. She wanted to observe the forms. One who was the leading living descendant of the House of Stuart and (herself apart) also of the House of Tudor was to be done away with in right royal fashion, with pomp and circumstance, with the respect and the reverence due to a woman who had been a reigning sovereign. She must not be shuffled out of the way by the verdict of a few farmers and burgesses. Elizabeth angrily declared: “That would be a strange sort of procedure to take against a princess. I deem it right to avoid such absurdities, and to entrust the examination of so important a matter to a sufficient number of the noblest persons and judges in this land. For we princesses stand on the world’s stage in full sight of the world.” A royal trial, a royal execution, a royal burial were Mary Stuart’s right, and therefore Elizabeth selected forty-six commissioners from among the noblest and most distinguished in her realm.

Mary Stuart, however, had no inclination to allow herself to be examined or sentenced by even the most blue-blooded subjects of her sister queen. When, on 11th October 1586, Mary being ill in bed at the time, Paulet introduced Sir Walter Mildmay and Barker, the notary, into her bedchamber, to deliver Queen Elizabeth’s letter, which announced the decision to bring her to trial before the commissioners, Mary burst forth indignantly: “Doth not your mistress know that I am a queen by birth? Or thinketh she that I will so far prejudice my rank and station, the blood whereof I am descended, the son who is to succeed me, and the majesty of other princes, as to yield obedience to her commands? My mind is not yet so far dejected, neither will sink nor faint under this mine adversity.”

But, by an eternal law, character is destiny, and neither good fortune nor bad can wholly change it. Mary’s merits and defects remained the same throughout life. Always, in moments of grave peril, she could react with outstanding dignity; but always, in the end, she would show herself too indifferent, too inert, to defend herself resolutely and persistently against prolonged pressure. Just as, at the time of the York Conference, she had abandoned the strong position of her claim to inviolable sovereignty, and had thus dropped the only weapon Elizabeth feared, so was it now. Early on the morning of 14th October, Mary declared her willingness to appear before the commissioners—she thereby admitted the jurisdiction of Queen Elizabeth’s court.

On this fourteenth day of October 1586, a great spectacle was staged in the hall of Fotheringay Castle. At one end of the big room had been set up a dais, with a canopy and a chair of state surmounted with the arms of England, after the manner of a throne, to symbolise the invisible presence of England’s Queen, as supreme authority. To right and to left were ranged in order of precedence the various commissioners; before them was a table for the use of the prosecuting counsel, the presiding judge, other lawyers and minute-takers. Mary Stuart entered, supported on one side by her physician, Bourgoigne, and on the other by Andrew Melville, her master of the household. As usual throughout the years of her imprisonment, she was dressed in black. On entering, she looked contemptuously round the assembly and said, with scorn: “How many lawyers are here assembled, and not one of them to represent me.” Then she made her way to the chair that had been placed for her, not beneath the royal canopy, but a few steps from the empty throne. The “overlordship” the suzerainty of England over Scotland, which the northern land had persistently repudiated, was symbolised here by the loftier position of Elizabeth’s throne. Mary would not let this pass without protest. “I am a queen by birth, and have been the consort of a king of France. My place should be there,” she said, glancing at the vacant seat beneath the canopy.

The proceedings were formally opened. Just as at York and at Westminster, so now, the most primitive legal considerations were disregarded. As at the conferences, many years before, the principal witnesses, Bothwell’s servants, had been executed with suspicious haste, so on this occasion had Babington and his associates been jostled out of the world before Mary’s trial began. Nothing but their alleged confessions, extorted under fear of imminent death, were laid before the court. By a further amazing breach of justice, even the incriminating letters upon which so much stress was laid, the missives from Mary Stuart to Babington and from Babington to Mary Stuart, were not read aloud from the reputed originals, but from transcripts. Mary Stuart protested against this use of Phelippes’s decipherments. “Nay,” she said, “bring me my own handwrit; anything to suit a purpose may be put in what you do call copies. Also, it is an easy matter to counterfeit ciphers and characters, if others have got the alphabet used for such correspondence.” Then she went on to hint at Walsingham’s plan for her destruction and that of her son.

Legally, the Queen of Scots had ground for a vigorous defence along the line here indicated, and had she been represented by counsel, much stress would have been laid upon the matter. But Mary stood alone before the judges, ignorant of English law, unaware of what incriminating material could be produced against her and, to her disaster, she made the mistake she had made at York and Westminster. She did not confine herself to protests against certain suspicious circumstances in the accusation, but denied the charges against her in block, thus trying to refute much that was irrefutable. She began by denying all knowledge of Babington, but was compelled, on the second day of the trial, under stress of the proofs put in, to admit that she was acquainted with him by correspondence. This mistaken repudiation, which she was forced to withdraw, weakened her moral position, and it was too late to try a return to the old standpoint, to demand “as a queen” the right of being believed on the strength of her royal word. It was of no avail for her to exclaim: “I came to this land relying upon the friendship and the pledges of the Queen of England, who had sent me a ring in token that I could so rely.” For Mary’s judges were not trying her that right, which is eternal and inviolable, should prevail, but simply that they might secure peace at long last for their own Queen and their own country. The verdict had been settled before the hearing; and when, on the twenty-fifth of the month, the commissioners reassembled in the Star Chamber at Westminster, only one of them, Lord zouche, was bold enough to declare himself unsatisfied that the Scottish Queen “had compassed, practised or imagined” the death of Elizabeth. Thus the verdict was robbed of the charm of unanimity, but all the other commissioners subserviently decided as they had been told. Promptly a scrivener set to work, writing fair on parchment the court’s decision that “the aforesaid Mary Stuart, a pretender to the crown of this kingdom of England, had approved and devised various plans for the purpose of injuring, destroying or slaying the royal person of our sovereign lady the Queen of England.” Parliament had already decreed that punishment for such plots against Elizabeth’s life was to be death.

It had been incumbent on the assembled nobles to utter the verdict and pass sentence. The verdict had been “guilty”, and the sentence one of death. Elizabeth, however, the Queen of England, was the incorporation of the highest powers in the realm, and could exercise the humane, the generous right of clemency. With her it ultimately rested whether the death sentence should be carried out or should be annulled. Once more a choice she hated was forced upon her. What would she do? Again Elizabeth was marshalled against Elizabeth. As in the tragedies of the ancient Greek playwrights the chorus was ranged to right and to left of a conscience-stricken principal, uttering strophe and antistrophe, so now did Elizabeth hear voices both within and without, some urging her to be inflexible, and others imploring her to be forgiving. Above them all looked down unseen the supreme judge of human actions, History, whose voice is silent while the actors still live, and who utters the verdict only when the curtain has fallen on them for ever. The right wing of the chorus was loud and inexorable in clamouring
—
“Death, death, death.” The Lord High Treasurer, the Privy Council, Elizabeth’s closest friends (such as Leicester), the lords and the commons—one and all considered that the execution of Mary Stuart was the only way of securing tranquillity for the realm and peace of mind and safety for its Queen. Both Houses of Parliament adopted an address to the Queen’s most Gracious Majesty praying that sentence of death be executed forthwith against Mary. “We cannot find that there is any possible means to provide for Your Majesty’s safety but by the just and speedy execution of the said Queen, the neglecting whereof may procure the heavy displeasure and punishment of Almighty God.”