Elizabeth's Spymaster Read Online Free PDF Page A

interrupted him with a fierce, defiant rebuttal:
I knew not Babington. I never received any letters from him, nor wrote any to him. I never plotted the destruction of the queen. If you want to prove it, then produce my letters signed with my own hand.
    There was a moment’s silence. Gawdy, smilingly triumphant, quickly responded: ‘But we have evidence of letters between you and Babington.’ Mary, still feeling sure of her ground, answered:
If so, why do you not produce them? I have the right to demand to see the originals and the copies side by side. It is quite possible that my ciphers have been tampered with by my enemies. I cannot reply to this accusation without full knowledge. Till then, I must content myself with affirming solemnly that I am not guilty of the crimes imputed to me.
I do not deny that I have earnestly wished for liberty and done my utmost to procure it for myself.
In this I acted from a very natural wish – but I take God to witness that I never either conspired against the life of your queen nor approved a plot of that design against her …
    Then, damningly, she began to lie and to embroider the fabric of her protest:
I declare formally that I never wrote the letters that are produced against me. Can I be responsible for the criminal projects of a few desperate men, which they planned without my knowledge or participation? 41
    Suddenly, with a timely sixth sense, she must have begun to experience a sudden, terrible foreboding of Walsingham’s ambush that was closing, relentlessly, around her. Another lawyer stood up and read two letters, one from Mary to Babington and another from him to her. One of Walsingham’s men carefully translated the passages in French for all to hear and understand. The Scottish queen tried to bluster herself out of harm’s way:
It may be that Babington wrote them – but let it be proved that I received them. If Babington or any others affirm it, I say they lie openly. Other men’s crimes are not to be cast upon me.
A packet of letters, which had been kept from me almost a whole year came to my hands about that time, but by whom it was sent I know not. 42
    Mary continued: ‘If Babington really confessed such things, why was he put to death without being confronted with me? It is because such a meeting would have brought to light the truth, that he was executed so hastily.’
    In the teeth of such evidence, the Scottish queen decided to play her powerful sympathy card – seeking pity from those in the court, she was sure, who could not publicly own up to their private thoughts. She pointed to the injustice of her long imprisonment:
I have, as you see, lost my health and the use of my limbs. I cannot walk without assistance, nor use my arms and I spend most of my time confined to bed by sickness.
Not only this, but through my trials, I have lost the small intellectual gifts bestowed on me by God, such as my memory, which would have aided me to recall those things which I have seen and read and which might be useful to me in the cruel position [in which] I find myself. Also the knowledge of matters of business which I formerly had acquired for the discharge of those duties in the state to which God called me, and of which I have been so treacherously despoiled.
Not content with this, my enemies now endeavour to complete my ruin, using against me means which are unheard of towards persons of my rank and unknown in this kingdom before the reign of the present queen and even now not approved by rightful judges … 43
    Mary maintained that she did not fear
the menaces of men. I will never deny Jesus Christ, knowing well that those who deny him in this world, He will deny before His Father. I demand another hearing, and that I be allowed an advocate to plead my cause, or that I be believed on the word of a queen. I came to England relying upon the friendship and promises of your Queen. Look here my lords, [drawing a ring from her finger] see this pledge of love and