Elizabeth's Spymaster Read Online Free PDF Page B

espionage finding himself in the unaccustomed glare of a state trial.
    Mary was impressed by his denials. Perhaps chastened by his eloquence and apparent sincerity and exhausted by the strain of the trial, she begged Walsingham not to be angered by her words; she had merely repeated freely what she had heard reported. The Secretary now should give no more credit to those who slandered her than she did to those who accused him. ‘Spies,’ she said, ‘are men of doubtful credit, who dissemble one thing and speak another.’ She burst into tears once more and added: ‘I would never make shipwreck of my soul by conspiring the destruction of my dearest sister.’
    Gawdy quickly interjected that this statement would be disproved by testimony that afternoon. So, at one o’clock, after the heady drama of the morning, the proceedings broke up for the midday meal. Mary told her followers that the trial reminded her of the Passion of Jesus Christ and that she was being treated just as Christ had been by the Jews when He was in the hands of Pontius Pilate. She was seemingly already willingly taking on the mantle of a holy martyr.
    After the break for refreshments, the prosecution moved on to the confessions of Claude Nau, her secretary, and Gilbert Curie, her cipher clerk, obtained by Walsingham after the arrest of the Babington conspirators. Their evidence must have come like a thunderbolt to Mary, rocking her supreme confidence, but she stoutly maintained a brave face. She stood up and faced her accusers, and said it might be that these two may have inserted into her letters such things as she had not dictated to them – indeed, letters might have come into their hands that she had never seen.
The majesty and safety of all princes falls to the ground if they depend upon the writings and testimonies of secretaries. I delivered nothing to them but what nature delivered to me, that I might at length recover my liberty.
I am not to be convicted but by my own word or writing.
If they have written anything which may be hurtful to the queen, my sister, they have written it altogether without my knowledge.
Let them bear the punishment of their inconsiderate boldness. I am sure, if they were here present, they would clear me of all blame in this cause. And I, if my notes were at hand, could answer particularly to these things. 47
    More evidence was produced at the next and final day’s hearing at Fotheringay, with one last telling exchange between Burghley and the Scottish queen. Mary had accused the minister of being her enemy. ‘No,’ said the Lord Treasurer: ‘I am enemy to the queen’s enemy.’ 48
    The trial was adjourned to be reopened ten days later in the Star Chamber, within the security of the Palace of Westminster. There the commissioners reviewed the evidence against Mary and unanimously judged her guilty of having ‘compassed and imagined within this realm of England, tending to the hurt, death and destruction of the royal person of our said lady the queen’. 49 Walsingham wrote to Leicester:
We had proceeded presently to sentence but we had a secret countermand and were forced under some colour to adjourn our meeting until the 25th of the month to Westminster. I see this wicked creature ordained of God to punish us for our sins and unthankfulness for her majesty has no power to proceed against her as her own safety requires. 50
    One can sense vividly Walsingham’s intense frustration at the slowness of events.
    Even after the commissioners pronounced sentence, Elizabeth havered over issuing a public proclamation announcing the verdict against Mary. She needed a nudge towards signing the death warrant. Parliament reassembled on 29 October and petitioned the queen to agree to the execution. 51 Burghley and Walsingham’s fingerprints were all over the wording:
Having of long time to our intolerable grief seen by how manifold most dangerous and execrable practices, Mary … commonly called Queen of Scots has encompassed