Mary Queen of Scots (The persecution of Queen Elizabeth)

Mary Queen of Scots

Art. IV. ----  The Letter Books of Sir Amias Poulet, Keeper of Mary Queen of Scots.  Edited by John Morris, Priest of the Society of Jesus.   London:  Burns & Oates.  1874. 8vo, pp. 401.

   When in April 1585, Sir Amias Poulet entered upon his charge as keeper of Mary Queen of Scots at Tutbury, that lady had already spent seventeen years in captivity in England.  She had grown to be a very heavy burden on English hands.  Elizabeth was aging fast, and thought, true to herself she still coquetted with the thoughts of possible or impossible husbands, there was small chance of her marrying,  and smaller chance still of her having children.  Were she to die thus husbandless and childless, leaving Mary after her, Elizabeth’s captive became Elizabeth’s successor, uniting in her own person the hitherto divided sovereignties of England and Scotland.

The immense interests that hung on the slender thread of Mary’s life will be at once manifest.  But those interests were not confined to England and Scotland merely.  The England of that day entered far more deeply into European politics, than does the England of this.  The outbreak of the Reformation had divided Christendom into two hostile camps:  the Protestant and the Catholic.  The latter had for its leader Spain with Phillip at its head:  the former, England and Elizabeth.  France had a strong Protestant party, led by fierce and able men.  England had a Catholic party, still numerically strong, but which had been for a long time headless.  All over Europe the war of religion was raging.  England was now the hope of the Protestant factions, Could it be won over to the old faith, the final success of the Catholic party was, humanly speaking, secured.  It was a constant thorn in Philip’s side.  It fed and fostered rebellion in Fr4ance and the Netherlands.  It crippled Spanish commerce on the seas.  It was governed by the ablest, most astute, and least scrupulous of statesmen.  It revolted against Philip’s own claim to the throne, which his marriage with Mary Tudor had supplied him.

The Queen of Scots just supplied the want so long felt in England, No more powerful head for the Catholic party could be found, which fact constituted at once her danger and her strength.  By Marriage, she was allied to the royal house of France: by birth, she was a member of the powerful house of Guise.  She was as sincere a Catholic as Philip, but without his narrowness.  While not yielding a jot to all the ferocious ravings of her Scotch Protestants, she was never driven into reprisals by their bitter hatred of all that she held sacred.  She consistently advocated liberty of worship for all her subjects alike.  There was every reason to believe that, if she succeeded to the English throne, her religious policy would have been maintained, for, at the risk of provoking the enmity of Spain, she had refused to enter the Catholic League.  When to the strength that she inherited as added to graces of her person and her mind, the romance in which she was cradled and which only expanded with her years, the cruelty with which she had been treated by her English cousin, and the revenge that it was only in human nature to expect once her freedom was recovered, -- there needs no argument to point out how she must have been hated and feared by Elizabeth and councilors .To their minds the situation could present only one safe issue:  the death of Mary.  She living, the Cecils and the Walsinghams could never breathe freely:  she dead, her son might safely succeed their queen, and threaten neither their positions nor their creed, for he had been brought up a Protestant, and manipulated to the purposes of his mother’s foes.

Long before the time when Sir Amias Poulet entered on the scene as Mary’s keeper, the question with Elizabeth and her favorite councilors was less, Shall we take her life?  than,  How shall we take it?  The life of an independent sovereign who was no subject of the Queen of England, was something requiring a certain finesse in the manner of its taking,  that, even to the practiced minds of Burghley and of Walsingham, presented unlooked-for difficulties.  More than once had they appealed to her own Scottish subjects to rid them of a burden that they had voluntarily set on their own shoulders: and, to do them justice, her Scottish subjects entered upon the scheme with becoming alacrity, the main difficulty in the matter being the amount of the “consideration to be awarded for Mary’s blood.”  At one time it was her half-brother, Murray,  at another,  Morton and Mar, who were to have done the deed.  “Nothing presently is more necessary than that the realm be presently relieved of her,” thought  Burghley, as early as 1572.  He was of opinion that, though she might be lawfully put to death in England, it was “for certain respects better that the Regent of Scotland and her own subjects should bring her to the block, for, to have her, and to keep her, were of all others the most dangerous.”  And naturally so:  for, while Mary was imprisoned in England,  what else was to be expected than that she should form the centre of agitation for all the disturbed elements, of which there was an abundance, in English political and religious parties at this time?  Each of these plots, however, fell through in a strange manner.  As a Protestant, and one of the ablest and best writers in every way who has yet treated this subject, remarks:  “It was a startling coincidence the twice, within two years, the surrender of Mary to her enemies should have been prevented by the unexpected death of a Scottish regent.

  “It was a just retribution on Burghley and his ministers that they should find themselves hopelessly saddled with a prisoner, whom they dared neither  to set at liberty,  nor to put to death.”*

This is evidence enough though it were easy to supply more,  to show that Mary’s death was resolved upon by Elizabeth and her councilors.  Religious, personal and political hatred combined to decree her doom. Elizabeth’s own feelings on the subject may be left to the judgment of the reader.  “The execution of the sentence tends to the state of the Church,” writes Burghley to Davison when all was over, and only the royal signature to the death-warrant wanting.  “The sentence is already more than a full month and four days old,” he writes again impatiently.  “It was full time it should also speak.”  “I hope there will a good course held in this cause,” writes Walsingham, after the Babington conspiracy had come to a head.  “Otherwise, we that have been instruments in the discovery shall receive little comfort for our travails.”  The Scottish conspiracies to get rid of her having fallen through, the thing, if done at all, must be done in England, but in such a manner as to appear to justify the execution.  

It is well to note that in the year before Poulet was chosen, to the surprise of all, to succeed Sir Ralph Sadler as Mary’s keeper, the famous Act of Association was drawn ups and passed in the English Parliament.  It was simply a circumlocutory death-warrant for Mary.  First it provided not only to exclude from the succession “any person by or for whom such detestable act (that shall tend to the harm of her 

        *Hosack’s  “Mary Queen of Scots and her Accusers.” Vol. ii, p. 152

Majesty’s person) shall  be attempted or committed, “but also, “in the presence of the Eternal God, to prosecute such person or persons to death with our joint and particular force, and to act the utmost revenge upon them that by any means we or any of us can devise and do for their utter overthrow and extirpation.”  The Act was so far softened in its passage through Parliament as not to touch the succession, but to provide that “any person” attempting or plotting against the queen’s life might be pursued to the death.

All that was now needed was a conspiracy endangering the life of Elizabeth, in which Mary should be implicated, to bring her to the block.  A conspiracy of some sort was sure to arise.  The Queen of Scots had given up all hope of being voluntarily set free.  Indeed she dreaded secret assassination, and frequently  gave expression to that dread.  She was resolved, and said so openly, to do all she could to escape from the living death to which she had been consigned.  If, then, matter, rendered treasonable in her by the provisions of this new and  special Act, could only be infused into the details of a conspiracy and brought home to her, Mary Stuart was at the mercy of Elizabeth, and legal sanction for political murder could be shown.  The recently discovered Letter Books of Sir Amias Poulet throw some new and much interesting light on the details of the conspiracy that brought all this about.

The letter announcing the arrival of Poulet at Tutbury, and the departure of Sir Ralph Sadler, is dated April 19, 1585.  Mary had heard of the proposed change of keepers; and though Sadler had been, by special order “from above,” rigorous enough, she dreaded the advent of Poulet.  So great was her anxiety, and so frequent her expression of it, that Elizabeth herself wrote to assure her that she ‘need not to doubt that a man that reverenceth God, loveth his Prince, and is no less by calling honourable than by birth noble, will ever do anything unworthy of himself.”

Poulet’s character was sufficiently known to Mary.  He had been English ambassador to France from 1576 to 1579.  During that time he had been constant in his intrigues both with Mary’s enemies and with the enemies of the Catholic Church.  In religion, he was of the severest type of Puritan” narrow, precise, a fanatic almost: in ink in which he writes, seems poison, and his pen, a poniard.  The very works stab, and distil hate.  It may be imagined how such a man would greet the prospect of a Catholic sovereign reigning over him.

By some manner of means he has gained a character for a certain kind of blunt honesty,  that chafed at deception, and hesitated at a direct lie.  His blunt honesty, however, never hindered his dealing with any rascal whose infamous services were for sale.  For the honor and glory of the English realm and the cause of Protestantism, while ambassador in France he entered into close communion with spies and informers of every class and caste, ready to do any show of conscientious scruple that he entered on work of this nature, but with all the zeal and ambition of a political neophyte,--a zeal, indeed, that was apt to carry him a little too far.  One clever rascal bled him to some purpose, until his embassy stamped him as a man who shrunk from connection with no rascality that would tend to injure Mary and the Catholic cause, while the scowling rigidness of his religious character made him proof against all the arts that bear upon her keeper.  His honest amounted to this:  while he hesitated at actually telling a verbal lie, honestly, sot to say, he never scrupled at living one. 

Such a man was Mary’s last keeper.  It is no surprise to find him beginning his work in the spirit in which it was assigned to him.  He is very precise about his preliminary instructions.  One instruction is worth giving her, as it shows effectually how Mary, whose character has been so furiously attacked recently, was regarded by all in England with whom she came in contact, at  a time when the air was full of slander against her:--

   “You shall order that she shall not, in taking the air, pass through any towns, or suffer the people to lie in the way where she shall pass, appointing some always to go before to make the to withdraw themselves for that heretofore, under colour of giving alms and other extraordinary courses used by her, she hath won the hearts of the people that habit about those places where she hath heretofore lain.”

   Poulet was not the man to misread his instructions on the side of lenity.  At his first interview with his charge, he strives hard to be civil:--

   “I prayed her,” he writes, “to have care of my poor honesty and credit, a thing more precious unto me than living or life, and that nothing might be done, directly or indirectly, by her or her servants, that might procure me blame, or suspicion of blame, at your Majesty’s hands, having no worldly thing in so great reputation as your service and contentment.  And therefore, if occasion did move her to send any letter or remembrances to London or any other place, I desired that they might be delivered unto me and I would see them safely conveyed and would procure an answer, if so it pleased her.”

This was simply a request to Mary to refrain from carrying on any secret correspondence.  She acknowledged frankly enough that, “being deprived of all open means to send to all persons to seek to help themselves, I did not spare to seek some extraordinary helps to convey me letters, which, sithence I entered into good terms with the Queen, my good sister, I have utterly forborne.”

   The manner of and the reason for her resuming this secret correspondence, and the share that honest Poulet had in it, all will appear.

Eight days after the letter announcing his arrival, he writes to Walsingham: “I fear lest my clam beginning her will have a rough proceeding.”  He excuses himself beforehand for certain “riguors and alterations” in the house.  He confesses that he has “no commission to show any riguors: “and therefore, if he has exceeded his commission, it is reasonable that he answer it at his peril.  He trusts, however, as he always trusts, that “these riguors shall be found nothing else than dutiful service.”  As a sample of what this man considered dutiful service, these opening “riguors” are instructive.

   They are four.  “First I restrained Sharp, this lady’s coachman, from riding abroad with my privity.”  “This lady” and “this Queen” are Poulet’s titles for Mary.  The second “riguor” sets forth at length the taking down of Mary’s Cloth of Estate, “representing by letter the names of her father and mother, and furnished with the arms of Scotland in the midst, and the same quartered with the arms of Lorraine of every side.”  His reason for such a indignity put upon one who was a queen in her own right, and heir presumptive to the throne of which he was a subject, is , that “in my simple opinion her Majesty’s subjects may not with their duties allow in this realm of any more Cloths of Estate than that which is due to her Highness.”

  Mary, who was too ill to leave her bed at the time, remonstrated through her secretary Nau, and her remonstrance hit the blot:--

   “He told me that his mistress doubted lest the taking down of this Cloth of Estate did threaten a diminution of her estate, which she believed the rather for three causes.  The first, the late motions in the Parliament against her; the second, the strange and unnatural  dealing of her son; the third, that she was not ignorant that some great personages in England has assured her son that he should be the next successor to this crown, and that she should be deprived of her title……He concluded that I had promised this Queen in my first speech to deal plainly with her, and therefore prayed me that if I had in commandment to make any alteration of importance, I would signify the same rather in one work than to minister new griefs from day to day.”  

     LAST SERIES ---VOL.III. NO. I.  P. 13

    Poulet’s response was the imposition of a third “riguor:” “I said I misliked greatly that those of this Queen’s retinue were seen often walking upon the walls, where they overlooked the gate and ward, and took a full view of all comers and goers, a thing very offensive to all the neighbors, and not meet to be endured in reason and judgment.”

Nau made the very natural response, that “those which did so, had no other meaning than to take the open air, which was not without need for such as were shut up in the castle.”  How their taking the open air could have been “very offensive to all the neighbors, “ whom Poulet, as we have seen was instructed to keep out of Mary’s way because she had won their hearts, it is difficult to see.  But it is proverbially easy for the wolf to find cause for quarrel with the lamb.  The fourth “riguor” is in keeping with the rest.  Sharp. “this Queen’s cocher,” is forbidden to dine and sup with Poulet’s servants, as he has been accustomed to do with those of the Earl of Shrewsbury and Sir Ralph Sadler.  Poulet considered this “a familiarity to dangerous.”    If the days when excursions to Gretna Green were in vogue be excepted,--and Gretna Green in Mary’s time was as yet unknown to fame, for people had still some reverence for the sacrament of marriage,--the ranks of conspirators have probably been less recruited from the highly respectable profession of coachmen that from any other.  But Sir Amias was evidently of opinion that Sharp had not his name for nothing.  He puts the matter plaintively to Walsingham, “if this people ought not in reason to grant them (the riguors)   without contradiction, as matters importing them nothing at all.”  He charitably hopes at the same time that “Sir Ralph Sadler can show good cause why he was not curious in this trifles,” while he condones his carelessness by suggesting that he, “perchance, by this occasion was the more inward with her, and did gather the more from her.  And, therefore, I shall earnestly pray you so to temper this advertisement as his doings may not be brought in question.” (p.15)  

This is significant.  It shows plainly enough to what a condition of abject terror “the gentleman writes to excuse a negative act of kindness on the part of another to a most unfortunate lady, as though it were an act of treason, and, lest be so considered, excuses in on the plausible plea, one well understood at Elizabeth’s court, that Sadler’s lack of curiosity “ in these trifles” was only assumed for the purpose of being “ more inward with her,” and thereby to “gather the more from her.”  Surely, Burke cried out too late that the age of chivalry was over.  Shakspeare knew his countrymen well.  “Alas! I am woman, friendless, hopeless, “ cries out Queen Katharine, when her husband is seeking the divorce.  “Your hopes and friends are infinite,” says Wolsey; and the Queen responds in words that stamp the whole standing of the English nobility under the Protestant Tudor:--

   ………………..”Can you think, lords, That any Englishman dare give me counsel?  Or be a known friend’ against his highness’ pleasure, (Thought he be grown so desperate to be honest,) And live a subject?”

   Any trick that might force Mary to speak words that could be used against her, was seized upon by Elizabeth’s agents with avidity, always under instruction “from above.”  This was so throughout her captivity.  Thus, in a letter dated only five days after the last-mentioned, we find the blunt and honest-minded Poulet thanking Walsingham for “some heads of the French occurrents.”  “And, indeed,” he adds,  “it may stand me in stead to be acquainted with some part of the French and Scottish doings, which will minister good occasion of talk between this lady and me.”  Did the sentence only end here, it would lead one to imagine that Poulet was softening, and might afford some ground for Mr. Froude’s statement that, “notwithstanding his forbidding creed, Mary Stuart tried her enchantments upon him.”  But, unfortunately, he goes on to give the reason for his desire for subjects of conversation between himself and Mary, “whereby somewhat, perchance, may be drawn from her, when she is in her angry mood.” (p.17)

Her long captivity, accompanied, as it had been, with more or less severity, generally with more, had fatally underminded Mary’s health.  Poulet’s letters, those especially now under notice, many of which have come into public view for the first time under the very able editing of Father Morris, are often occupied with accounts of her suffering and treatment.  A request for the attendance of a priest had often been made, and had been as persistently refused or disregarded.  She reminded Elizabeth of the liberty of worship that she had granted to her own subjects in Scotland, but to no purpose.  Poulet was scarcely the man to encourage so reasonable a request.  His unerring Puritanic instinct soon sniffed out illicit Popery.  He writes to Walsingham, on May 28th, of certain letters which have arrived for Mary:--“In one of these letters mention was made of a book of prayers sent to this Queen from one belonging to the Scottish embassy in France.  I asked Nau for this book.  He answered that it was delivered in Mr. Somer’s time, and that Mr. Somer has seen it.  These books are dangerous.” (p. 30.)

The books are bad enough, but there is something more dangerous in reserve.  Mary, having been persistently denied the service of a priest, although, as Poulet’s letters show, she was constantly suffering, and sometimes so grievously as to cause alarm, by some means had secured the services of one, Father Camille du Pr’eau, who acted as her reader.  Whether Sir Ralph Sadler knew what he was or not is not known, although “Sir John,” as Father du Pr’eau was called, was in Mary’s service during Sadler’s term of office.  But to Poulet he soon became suspect.  In the letter quoted from, above, he continues, after writing that he hears “the Ambassador of France is required to make complaint to her Majesty in the behalf of this Queen, that she is restrained to give her alms:’—“The distributor of this alms is one that beareth the name to be a reader unto this Queen, but I am much deceived if he be not a Massing Priest.  His meaning was to have gone from house to house as in time past, and to have bestowed the alms by discretion.  Their alms are very liberal, which will easily win the hearts of the poor people, if rather they be not won already.” (p. 31.)

They probably were won already, more by reason of their religion than of the alms they received.  Sir Ralph Sadler had complained that the country round about was a Papist country.  And certainly, as far as alms went, Elizabeth was not likely to win their hearts by excess of liberality.  Poulet’s letters, apart from the Babington conspiracy, are chiefly occupied with complaints of want of money, which is scantily supplied him, want of beer, want of news, the complaints of Mary’s household, Mary’s illnesses, and his own gout.  Every three letters of the five are occupied with one or more of these interesting subjects; but, on the question of lack of funds, Poulet is at times outspoken enough to have caused even Elizabeth to blush if there were a blush in her. The mental torture that the presence of this priest in one house with him caused Mary’s keeper, is positively amusing. 

And now the circle of her enemies is slowly closing around Mary.  She is cut off from any kind of open communication with her friends, and so driven back on her secret “practices,” as her efforts to communicate with them in the best way she could were called.  This was precisely what Walsingham desired.  Poulet writes to him in September:--

         “Following our direction, I signified to this Queen her Majesty’s pleasure touching her packets coming from hence and to be sent hereafter into France, to be directed unto you and not to the new French Ambassador, and that order was given that such letters as the Bishop Glasgow should send out of France should be delivered unto her Majesty’s Ambassador there.

        “I can hardly express unto you by writing how much she was moved with this message, and will forbear to utter the greater part of her angry speeches because you have been accustomed unto them.” (p. 95.)

   It is strange to observe throughout Poulet’s  letters the genuine surprise he manifests at anything like a remonstrance on Mary’s part against the ill-usage to which she was constantly subject.  In his eyes she was clearly beyond the pale of human pity in this world at least, and probably in the next.  There is nothing like it, unless it be the beadle’s astonishment at the impudence of a poor wretch who aspired to the same heaven as “My lady,” and who was told by the wrathful official that “heaven was not for such as him.  Hell was his place, and he ought to be thankful to Almighty God that he had a hell to go to.”  To Poulet it was clearly incomprehensible that his charge should endeavor to escape, that a prisoner should sigh for liberty.  It never seemed to occur to him that Mary had been robbed of her liberty under the guise of friendship; that her detention as a prisoner was an outrage; that her hopes of being set free by Elizabeth were futile; and that she was in every way right and justified in using every lawful means within her power to effect her freedom.  There is no vestige of such thoughts as these ever crossing this man’s mind.  His duty was to guard, watch over, and torment her, and like a loyal subject and a profoundly pious man, he did his duty to the letter, and beyond it.  He assures Walsingham: “I will never ask pardon if she depart out of my hands by any treacherous slight or cunning device;… and if I shall be assaulted with force at home or abroad, as I will not be beholden to traitors for my life, whereof I make little account in respect of my allegiance to the Queen my Sovereign, so I will be assured by the grace of God that she shall die before me.” (p. 49.)  What wonder that Mary should assure Poulet himself in the September of that year that “she might see plainly that her destruction was sought, and that her life shall be taken from her one of these days, and then it shall be said that she was sickly and died of some sickness”!

   Poulet “used all arguments to dissuade her from her fond, or rather wicked opinion of her intended destruction.” Which he told her was “a foul and most manifest slander.”  But he confesses that he “could not satisfy her therein;” and the sequel wills how right she was and how mistaken he, in a manner that even he scarcely contemplated.  He adds, and the passage is noteworthy, as, soon after it was written, the last plot began:  “I think the care of my charge greatly increased by reason of the Queen’s discontentment, because it is likely that now she will employ her best means to renew her practices, as well by letters as other ways.”  He goes on, with a jocularity worthy of Mr. Froude: “The indisposition of this Queen’s body, and the great infirmity of her legs, which is so desperate as herself doth not hope of any recovery, is no small advantage to her keeper, who shall not need to stand in great fear of her running away, if he can foresee that she be not taken from him by force.” (p. 97.) He adds in a postscript, after “beseeching God to bless your (Walsingham’s) counsels and to give them a happy issue:” “I had some felling of my gout at the very instant of my going to Chartley.:  The contrast is touching.  Poor Sir Amias!

In October the plan for Mary’s destruction, which developed into what is known in history as the Babington Conspiracy, was set fairly on foot.  The details of it the reader must find elsewhere.  Mr. Hosack has an excellent account in his second volume.  It is the purpose of this article to adhere mainly to the Poulet letters.  Father Morris’s own remarks on this portion of his subject are excellent, and almost cause one to regret that they are not more numerous.  There is, however, quite enough for the purpose.  He has very judiciously allowed Poulet’s letters to tell their own story, filling in only with such letters as were before known, in order to link the story together.  In December Mary was removed to Chartley, where Poulet boasts to Walsingham: “Of this house I may affirm, and therein I take God to witness that the laundresses being lodged within the house as now they are, and the residue of this Queen’s train watched and attended in such precise manner as they be, I cannot imagine how it may be possible for them to convey a piece of paper as big as my finger, and I think if you were here with me you would say as I say.” (p. 126.)

The letter from which this passage is taken is dated January 10,1585.  In the next paragraph Poulet informs Walsingham: “Mr. Phelippes hath assisted me in perusing of the Queen’s packet.”  Phelippes, who, just in this time, was on a short visit to Chartley, was Walsingham’s secretary.  His chief business was that of a decipherer, and a dealer with spies, both by correspondence and otherwise, In addition, he had a position under the government, was well paid, and was, by every account, in heis way, one of the most accomplished rascals that ever lived.  As Walsingham was the soul, so was he the instrument of the conspiracy by which Mary’s life was to be taken away.

It has been seen how every means of outer communion with the world was withheld from Mary, and Poulet’s boast at Cartley speaks for itself.  One outlet however, is allowed her,--one outlet only through which all her secret correpondence must pass.  Mr. Froude, anxious to remove the stigma of a deliberate conspiracy concocted by Walsingham on purpose to entrap Mary and take away her life, or force her by some means or another to throw it into his hands, elaborates an argument to show that Walsingham’s only purpose was to get possession of the entire secrets of the Catholic confederacy; that Babington’s plot was a happy accident which just chimed in with his views, and of which he hastened to avail himself, never dreaming, innocent man!  That it would develop into the astounding revelation of Mary’s connivance at Elizabeth’s assassination, thus bring her at once under the provisions of that Act of Association, which he himself had drawn up the year before, and which, doubtless, was also a happy accident.  It is sufficient to say here that he was already in full possession of those secrets.  His army of spies served him to excellent purpose.  Renegade Catholics abounded everywhere, who were only too eager to sell their souls for Elizabeth’s gold.  Even Ch’erelles, the secretary of the French embassy, upon Mary naturally relied, sold copies of every letter that he received to Walsingham; and, to do Mary Struart’s friends full justice, they seem to have been , from first to last, mere puppets in the hands of Walsingham and his clever scoundrels.  Had France or Spain, or her son in Scotland, steadily adhered to the necessity of her release without compromise, without looking to the tasteful the task might have been, Elizabeth would have released Mary Stuart fifty times over.  On the other hand, every fresh conspiracy only tightened Mary’s chains, and gave a certain show of reason for her detention.  In truth, the Catholic powers, actuated chiefly by their own shifting policy, were negatively to blame for the death of Mary Stuart.  Instead of maker her release a preliminary step to any negotiations with England, they used her as a convenient check as long as she lasted, and left her to agitate in prison means for her own release with ambitious but foolish English noblemen, with excellent but simple-minded clerics and seminarians, with vain and hot-headed boys burning to achieve boyish greatness, while the astute ministers of Elizabeth had them, one and all, gathered into their net, a net so large that, to the limited vision of the conspirators, it looked like liberty.

The one outlet left open for Mary was filled by Walsingham’s creatures, and every letter that passed to or fro passed straight into his hands.  Mary’s correspondence was for better security carried on in cipher, of which some of her friends had the key.  All these keys fell into Phelippes’ hands, and he it was who deciphered all the letter to or from her.  After giving a short but thoroughly comprehensive review of this fellow’ life, Father Morris asks well:--

     “Is this the man, having it in his power, unchecked by fear of discovery, to tamper with the letter he had to decipher, well rewarded for exceptional service, and knowing perfectly what would be acceptable to his employers, -- is this the man to be quoted as an irreproachable witness, whose evidence is conclusive against Mary? …. On the veracity of phelippes, and as Mary’s life deepened then, so do her character and her history depend now.  In the Calendar of the “Mary Queen of Scots’ State Papers, no less than one hundred and eight are expressly stated to be in this man’s handwriting, either that  we are dependent on hem for the decipher, or that the copy surviving is in his hand.  When Mary’s papers were seized, it is extremely improbable that the letters in cipher only should have been preserved, and the deciphers made for her use by her secretaries should have all been destroyed.  Yet the Calendar attributes by fifteen to Curle, and none to Nau; and of those by Curle, most, if not all, were deciphered when he was a prisoner….It comes then to this: the deciphers made for Mary have been destroyed, and those made by Phelippes alone survived.  When the secret letters are quoted this should always be borne in mind.” (pp. 117, 118.)

Little could be added to the simple force with which Father Morris has assailed the character of this man, which never stood high.  The very occupation of his life was trickery, artifice, and willful fraud.  His yea or nay is absolutely inadmissible as evidenced in any disputed point.  Yet on the truth of this convicted forger of documents, this creature of Walsingham, and avowed enemy of Mary, her life was taken.  The letter incriminating her was, with all others that she wrote at this time ore were written to her, deciphered by Phelippes.  Who shall say that, failing so long to draw any statement from her approving of any attempt against the life of Elizabeth he did not interpolate passages to suit the purpose of his master and his mistress?  The evidence that such precise passages were interpolated is overwhelmingly strong, and is accepted by the most trustworthy writers on the subject.  Mr. Hosack sifts the matter admirably, as does also Father Morris.  Certain it is that, given a sufficient motive for such interpolation, Phelippes was just the man to do it, and Walsingham the man to have it done.

The outlet for Mary’s secret correspondence was by means of the brewer of Burton, who supplied both the houses of Tutbury and Chartley with beer.  A small leather box, airtight, containing the letters, was enclosed in a barrel of beer, whence it was taken on its arrival by one of Mary’s household, opened, filled again with those she wrote, sealed and sent back to her agents, as she deemed them, chief of whom was “ the honest man,” the brewer himself.  They were all Walsingham’s creatures, acting under Poulet’s eye.  As soon as the desired message incriminating Mary was received, the plot, of course , had gained it object.  The plot to which Mary gave her consent was a proposed invasion of England, together with a sudden swoop on Chartley which was to set her free.   She had lost all hoop of being freed by the good-will of those in whose hands she was.  She resolved to trust Elizabeth’s words  no more, but to do all she could to free herself.  The treason infused into this particular conspiracy was the making the assassination of Elizabeth a preliminary step to the success of the plot.  That Mary every gave consent in any shape or form to a plot of this nature, she to the lasts most vehemently denied.  Approval of the plot for the invasion to effect her own escape, she did not deny.  She asked repeatedly when on her trail to have the works produced, the minutes drawn up by her, advocating or approving Elizabeth’s assassination.  She asked in vain.  Lame and insufficient confessions were wrung from her two secretaries after they had been worked upon by the mingled treats and cajoleries of Walsingham and Elizabeth.  She asked to be confronted with them, with the witnesses against here.  This request was also persistently refused.  She was convicted, simply and solely on the letter deciphered by Phelippes the forger.  She was denied the use of counsel.  She was denied everything.  With characteristic bravery, though so ill she could scarcely walk, she undertook her own defence, and that defence is a marvel of skill and even of legal force.  It foiled and baffled her judges, skilled men as they were and crafty politicians of a crooked school.  It spoke with all the greatness, directness, and keen brevity of that most unanswerable of weapons, the force of conscious innocence and truth in a great soul facing hirelings sitting in judgment upon her, with their verdict a forgone conclusion.  The reminder of Poulet’s Letter Books reaches up to her execution.

Father Morris’s exposure of the foolish inaccuracies of that writer, which have brought the whole question of Mary Stuart’s life and death so recently and so prominently before the public, is very severe in the account of the growth of the Babington conspiracy.  Unfortunately, Mr.  Froude had already passed almost beyond the region of exposure; nevertheless Father Morris’s account is excellent for its own sake. The Chief active agent of the conspiracy was Gilbert Gifford, Mr. Froude’s “young Jesuit,” who was not a Jesuit at all. He obtained a favorable letter from Morgan to Mary.  His Catholicity and excellent family connections, as well as his clerical character, gave him ready access to Mary’s friends, notwithstanding that he did not the best character at Rome where he had studied for some time.  With such agents at his command: a keeper like Poulet; and brewer like “the honest man;” a decipherer like Phelippes; a go-between like Gifford; a sovereign like Elizabeth; and a vain hot-headed fool like Anthony Babinton, -- what could not Walsingham effect against the lone woman sealed up in that English prison?

Grifford received his letter of recommendation from Morgan to  Mary on October 5th, 1585.  Mary was removed to Chartley in December.  Thither went Phelippes and passed about three weeks, returning to London in the early part of January, 1586.  Immediately after comes Gifford with his letter of introduction, which Mary receives on the 16th , and answers on the following day, thanking Morgan “heartily for this bringer, whom I perceived very willing to acquit himself honestly of his promise made to you.”  He takes his answer at once to London, and , on January 25th, we find Poulet writing to Phelippes, “I look daily to hear from your friend” (Gifford).  And now the letters run along glibly enough, with  almost constant allusion to “the enterprise,” varied by requests for money on Poulet’s part complaints about “this Queen’s” linen, and “this Queen’s “ alms and  “this Queens” household with sundry topics of a like nature, not omitting the keeper’s own gout.

Poulet’s boasts respecting the impossibility of Mary’s receiving any news or dispatching ony correspondence at Chartley, will be remembered.  On May 5th, he writes to Walsingham:--

  “I have kept this Queen fasting from all sort of news, good or bad, ever since I was so loudly belied upon the advertisement which I gave of the last alteration in Scotland, which they spared not to write to have been delivered by direction from above; and I know by good mean that this Queen pretendeth to be grieved that she cannot hear how the world goeth, and I would believe that she were so if I did not think that she had secret means to be advertised thereof.”   (pp. 179, 180.)

   The “secret means” is, of course, “the loinest man’s” beer barrel.  Thus is Mary goaded beyond human patience into doing something that may bring her under the provisions of the Act of Association. 

   “The honest man” was really admirable in his villainy, and deserves more than a passing mention.  He evidently valued his own business far above all the plots and counter-parts of rival queens, and never allowed the carriage of Mary’s letters to interfere a wit with his professional occupation.  Whither it was convenient for him to go thither “the substitute,” or whoever was to receive Mary’s letters from his hands or deliver others to him was obliged to follow.  He was paid by Mary for his services; he was paid by Walsingham for the same; and, considering the state of affairs, he thought it a very fair occasion to demand of Poulet a higher price for his beer, which there was no remedy but to give him.  He was a discreet villain withal, for not even his own wife ever suspected that he was other than the devoted servitor of the Queen of Scots.  “The honest man,” writes Poulet to Walsingham, in May probably, “had heretofore declared to the substitute that, if at any time he failed of his promise (to be present at the place appointed), he substitute should repair to his house where, in his absence, his wife should satisfy him in all things, who was acquainted with the practice… She told him that her husband had great credit with this Queen, and that he carried himself so well as he had no less credit with me, and that I had given him letters into other shires for provision of malt, as indeed I had.

   “She said that this Queen had dealt liberally with her husband, and that she was bountiful without measure to all such as deserved well of her.  In all her speech she called this Queen her husband’s mistress” (p. 190.)

   And again he writes: “I have written unto you before this time, that the honest man playeth the harlot with this people egregiously, preferring his particular profit and commodity before their service, because he knoweth he can satisfy them with words at his pleasure, and that they cannot control anything that he saith.” (p. 191) At the close of the same letter he mentions incidentally:  “It seemeth that the honest man is persuaded that I cannot spare his service, having of late required an increase of price for his beer in unreasonable sort, and yet so peremptorily as I must yield to his asking, or lose his service.  I think his new mistress and her liberal rewards make him that, whatever became of Mary, the malt business did not suffer the while.     

But the months are passing, and Mary is still provokingly non-committal.  She is willing enough to do all she can to favor her escape, even to the extent of an invasion of England. But she is an independent sovereign, who has subjects and alliances of her own, and there is no law in England to judge upon her case so far. Monarchs are always intriguing against one another more or less, and the issue is decided between them by battles or statecraft. It was nothing surprising that an imprisoned queen should move heaven and earth to effect her escape from a prison whose doors were hopelessly sealed; and the punishment of death against an independent sovereign for enterprise of such a nature, that sovereign, too, the nearest to the English throne, was something, however desirable in itself, at which even Elizabeth and her councilors recoiled. She must be convicted of some crime so terrible that even the conscience of all Europe, friend or foe alike, should be brought to pronounce her guilty of death, and not till then may her life be safely taken. The plea of danger to, or conspiracy against, the English realm might serve for sentence against a subject. But the case was altogether different with one who was a queen by her own right, and against whom, from the very moment of her crossing the sea to ascend her throne, the English realm, in its queen and ministers, had unceasingly plotted and acted treason even to the extent of the invasion of her territory, and the unlawful imprisonment and detention of that queen’s own person. It was not in the power of the English law to convict Mary of the crime for which the Babington conspirators suffered, or on the same grounds, for they were subjects of the English queen. It must be a deadlier sin than royal conspiracy against royal conspiracy; and it is significant to note how, as the time passes and the wished-for words are not written, these hounds who are close on her track rage with fever-thirst that their victim is not yet within reach of their fangs.

“The last week’s meeting was disappointed,” writes Poulet to Walsingham in May, “and a new day and place set down by the honest man, which was performed yesterday, at which time I trusted that yet now at the last some good success would have followed, although…it seemed that his (Curle’s) mistress, finding herself pressed to make speedy answer, did forbear when she was before resolved to have written…It may be that all things good will come to pass;…but the suspicion of the contrary is so apparent as in my simple opinion I should do wrong to my place if I did not inform you of it, leaving the same to your better consideration, and yet resting in some little hope of better success.” This is endorsed by Phelippes, “A secret note.” (pp.193,194.)

   On the 3d of June he writes to Phelippes: “I trust the last dispatch from hence was so effectual as will suffice to  slave all sores:”  “You write of your coming into these parts, which I desire greatly.”—What  did Phelippes, Walsingham’s secretary, want at this precise time “in these parts:

   On the 29th of June, Poulet writes to Walsingham, informing him that  “the honest man on Saturday last, the 25th of this present, brought unto me this little packet enclosed, which being so little as could be nothing answerable to that which you expect, and was not likely to contain any great matter,  I thought good to stay the said packet in my hands for these few days.”  The “said packet” was the first of Mary’s two letter to Babington,  Poulet acknowledges “letters from Mr. Phelippes of the 25th, together with two several packets.”  “Mr. Phelippes ,” he goes on, “hath set down a course for many things to be done, which surely I dare not put in execution for fear of the worsts, wherein I am also the more fearful because it seemeth there is hope that the 3d of this present great matter will come from this  people, which might be in danger to be stayed if, [by] any means, cause of suspicion were ministered by any of the agents in this intercourse.” (pp. 211,212.) 

They had probably grown impatient in London, and Phelippes had recommended some plan of entrapping Mary that frightened Poulet, who write to assure them: “All is now well, thanks be to God, and I should think myself very unhappy if, upon any instructions to proceed from me, this intercourse, so well advanced, should be overthrown.” He does not carry out Phelippes’ directions.

On July 8th Pheilippes writes to Walsingham from Stilton that he has intercepted a packet of Mary’s letters which he opened. He was then on his way to Chartley, and adds: “By Sir Amias’ letter to your honour, and our friend’s to me, I find all things to stand in so good terms a my abode there will be less but for Babington’s matters, which I beseech  you resolve thoroughly and speedily of.”(p.218). It is plain what opinion he and Walsingham held of the dread conspirators who were to do such great things. Mr. Hosack has well described them: “Babington and his friends were now fairly in the toils of Walsingham. Wholly unconscious of their danger, they meanwhile daily met and discussed their plans. That they might  converse more freely, they usually repaired, as if for recreation, to St.Giles’s in the Fields; and we may conclude that on each occasion one at least of Walsingham’s three spies took care to be present: and we may perhaps attribute to their insidious advice a piece of egregious folly on the part of Babington, who was so elated with his scheme of killing the Queen that he had a painting executed containing portraits of the six conspirators, with himself in the most prominent position as their chief.”* Such were  “the conspirators,” and such their chief. In these days six months of the Penitentiary would effectually cure such  a chief of all such ambitious projects.

At last the end is coming. Pheilippes writes to Walsingham from Chartley in great glee, on July 14th. The letter bore a gallows on the outside. “The packet is presently returned which I stayed in hope to send both it and the answer to B[Abington]’s letter at once….We attend her very heart at the next. She begins to recover health and strength, and did ride abroad in her coach yesterday. I had a smiling countenance, but I thought of the verse, ‘Cum tibi dicit Ave, sicut ab hoste cave.’ “I hope by next to send your honour better matter.”(pp.223,224.)

On the same date Poulet writes to Walsingham to advertise him that “the packet sent by Mr. Phelippes hath been delivered and thankfully received.”---“The packet sent by Mr. Phelippes,” says Father Morris, “was Babington’s letter, placing the plot before Mary, which thus came to her straight from Walsingham. Its possession, no doubt, brought Phellipes down to Chartley.”(p.224.)

The letter which was the outcome of this whole conspiracy, and on which its virtue hinged, has already been marked upon. For a thorough examination of the letter itself the reader may be referred to Mr. Hosack’s second volume, as well as this latest examination by Father Morris. His dissection of Mr. Froude is a scientific study, so complete and cleanly done it is. It may be left to the enjoyment of the reader: “Nothing but copies of Babington’s letter and Mary’s alleged reply were put in evidence, nor was Phelippes himself brought forward to attest on oath the agreement of those copies with his own decipher.” 

It will be seen how all these men hang upon Mary’s words only.  For the rest they care little.  What is written to her does not much import.  All the conspirators were from the beginning in their hands.  This in itself tends very materially to destroy Mr. Froude’s theory, that the conspiracy was fostered by Walsingham on purpose to gain possession of the secrets of the Catholic confederates.  Once they have in their hands the faintest breath of approval, directly from Mary, of Babington’s plan, that is enough.  Their object is attained.  It is easy to contort or manipulate mere ciphers to their purpose.—“You have now this Queen’s answer to Babington, which I received yester-night,” writes Phelippes to Walsingham from Chartley on July 19th.  “I look for your honour’s speedy resolution touching his apprehension or otherwise, that I may dispose of myself accordingly.  I think under correction you have enough of him, unless you would discover more particularities of the confederates, which my be [done] even in his imprisonment.  If your honour mean to take him, ample commission and charge would be given to choice persons for search of his house.”(p.234.)

Evidently Babington was thought very little of.  The letter goes on to hope that Elizabeth will “at least hang Nau and Curle,” and adds the cheering information that notwithstanding her Majesty’s ”pinching at the charges” of his household, Poulet is “wonderfully comforted with these discoveries.”  He goes on:  “She (Mary) is very bold to make way to the great personage (Cecil), and I fear he will be  forward in satisfying her for her change till he see Babington’s treasons, which I doubt not but your honour hath care enough of mot to discover which way the wind comes in.”

The words italicized above, coming as they do from Phelippes, mean one of two things.  Either he hopes that together from “the great personage” up to the present: but of that he seems confident; or he hopes Walsingham will not divulge to “the great personage” how the whole plot was brought about, and what exact share Phelippes’ craft and handiwork had in it.  For, if it was all fair and aboveboard, there is no reson whatever why “which way the wind comes in” should be concealed from Burghley, whom, as the event showed, Mary was mistaken in considering her friend.

Poulet the godly cannot restrain his rejoicings, and his expression of his heart ease is characteristic of him and his school.  Once grating that Oliver Cromwell was a religious fanatic, which it is not necessary to grant, there is something that one can understand and respect on the morning of a battle with a dangerous foe in his cry, “The Lord hath delivered them into our hands,”  But when it is thought how Poulet of all men, by his harsh rigor and sour Puritanism, hounded on this woman to what he hoped would prove her destruction, one can only feel the most utter contempt for the character of the man, and abhorrence for the influence of the creed, that could prompt such a letter as this to the arch schemer in all this villainy, who, be it remembered was not only guilty of the blood of Mary Queen of Scots, but also of the generous-hearted but foolish youths who shared her fate.  He writes to Walsingham on July 20th:---

   “I should do you wrong to trouble you with many words, the papers sent herewith containing matter enough of trouble for some time. God hath blessed you faithful and careful labours, and this is the reward due for true and faithful service.

  “And thus, trusting that her Majesty and her grave Councillors will make their profit of the merciful providence of God towards her Highness and this state, I comment you to the mercy and favour of the highest.” (pp. 244,245.)

   The question might be fairly and fearlessly put to manhood, and the answer would scarcely be doubtful.  Knowing all the circumstances of the case, knowing the instruments at work and the issue intended;  knowing the pitiless character of her foes, and the fixed desire they had of his captive’s 

LAST SERIES—VOL. III. NO.I. destruction, had her keeper, by a word or hint, conveyed to his captive, as it was in his power to do, a caution of the plot against her, in sheer pity for a helpless woman who was being decoyed into a net from which escape was wellnigh impossible; would such an act have been treason to the sovereign be served?  The letter quoted, which is but a sample of many such, shows effectually how Poulet would have regarded such a question.  What wonder that Elizabeth should deem a man of this kind a fit subject to whom to propose the getting Mary off her hands by some secret means!

At last the storm burst. Mary’s secretaries, Nau and Curle, were seized while riding with her and conveyed to London, where, instead of  being sent to the Tower, they were cared for by Walsingham himself. The Babington conspirators were taken in due order. Mary was conveyed to Tixall. All was done by special order from Elizabeth,  who write a most loving letter of gratitude to “My Amyas.” Gifford fled to France on the eve. All Mary’s papers and goods were seized at Chartley. She was separated from the body of her attendants. The plot was let loose, piecemeal, upon London, and the popular commotion carefully fomented. From Tixall Mary was taken again to Chartley. The scene of her reentering Chartley ,  even as told by Poulet to Walsingham, makes the heart ache, but the reader must consult the letters themselves. Indeed many a scene henceforth in what was left of her life makes the heart ache, the more so that her unexampled courage and greatness of soul rise high above all her evil fortunes, shining down on and beautifying their darkness. Now came the test time. She knew nothing of the seizures of her papers. How would she bear herself when she found that all was lost? Were she guilty of the accusation of abetting at Elizabeth’s assassination, surely some inking of it must have broken through even her courage. She weeps when she meets her old friends, the tenants of Chartley. She is not made of stone. She reenters Chartley to find all her papers gone: surely a terrible blow to a woman who had plotted assassination. Poulet was told to describe all the scenes, and here is his description: “Then this lady, finding that her papers were taken away, said in great choler, that two things could not be taken from her, her English blood and her Catholic religion, which both she would keep until death.”(p. 276.) It is choler at an insult, not fright at a crime discovered. Such a crime never entered her head:----

     “The minutes of Mary’s letter to Babington were not found among her papers at Chartley, neither the French minute by Nau, nor the English one by Curle, nor her own autograph draft, if, as Nau says, she made one. In the letter to Phelippes of the 4th September, Walsingham says again, ‘The minute of her answer is not extant.’ But though the minutes were not found, there was the cipher which Burghley noted was to be taken to Fotheringay, and there was the cipher made by Phelippes for Walsingham as soon as the letter reached his hands; and neither of these was produced at Mary’s trial or is now forthcoming. The argument does not need to be strengthened.(p. 281.)….It is noteworthy that while in the earlier interrogations Nau swore that he wrote Mary’s letter to Babington from a minute in her own hand, in the examination of September 21, of which we have only an imperfect account drawn up by Phelippes, Nau is made to say that Mary dictated the letter to him by word of mouth, and Curle, for the first time, states that he burnt the English copy by Mary’s order.” (p. 284.)   

Nau and Curle, Mary’s  secretaries, most important witnesses for her prosecution, are in Walsingham’s hands, and he is resolved to make the best use of them:---

     “I pray you take care to find out such minutes as have been drawn by Nau, who is not so deeply charged as Curle is, who wrote the letters to [Sir erased] Englefield and to Charles Paget, which by subscription he hath acknowledged to be his; but that  the minutes were first drawn by the Queen, their mistess. Both he and Nau are determined to lay burden upon their mistress. By no means: they will yet be brought to confess that they were acquainted with the letters that passed between Babington and her. I would to God those minutes were found.” (p. 284.)

So writes Walsingham to Phelippes, and the tenor of the dispatch materially damages the after confessions of Nau and Curle. But why is he so anxious to obtain the minutes “first drawn by the Queen,” and at the same time prevent the secretaries from laying “the burden upon their mistress.”  Clearly, he cannot have sufficient material yet to convict Mary of connivance at or approval of the assassination clause in Babington’s letter. Why not? Because she had never seen it or never approved of it. If the minutes drawn up by her were retained by her and produced at the trial, and if, as Mary alleged when she asked that they be produced (thinking, doubtless, that they were found among her papers), they contained no mention of or hint at a proposed assassination of Elizabeth, they would be fatal to Walsingham’s plan for conviction, as on this very point the whole case turned. It was natural, therefore, on this account that he should so desire the possession of these minutes, wither to destroy, manipulate, or hold as proof positive in Mary’s own handwriting that she was guilty of the only crime that could bring her under the Act of Association as conspiring against Elizabeth’s life. Failing this, all that he could fall back upon was the confession of her secretaries that they were fully acquainted with the whole Babington affair and wrote from dictation, not from minutes “drawn up” for them in Mary’s hand. That it why he would “by no means” allow them to throw the blame on her, as in that case it was necessary that her minutes be produced and compared with what they had written, it being very possible that they had exceeded their instructions. In any case , were the copies made by Phelippes exact, there was neither reason to fear production of Mary’s minures, nor to be so anxious for their recovery, as they could not fail to correspond with the letters of her secretaries, as deciphered by Phelippes.

On the following day he writes that “Curle doth both testify the receipt of Babington’s letters, as also the Queen his mistress’ answer to the same, wherein he chargeth Nau to have been a principal instrument: “ —unfortunately for the value of this testimony; end even it, as will be seen by those who read this volume, is very lame.  Walsingham adds: “I took upon me to put him in comfort of favour in case he would deal plainly, being moved thereto, for that the minute of her answer is not extant, and that I saw Nau resolved to confess no more than we were able of ourselves to charge him withal.” The conclusion of the letter is in keeping and worth quoting; as, meager even as Curle’s testimony was, it renders that testimony valueless:--

     “If it might please her Majesty upon Curle’s plain dealing, and in respect of the comfort I have put him in to receive grace for the same, to extend some extraordinary favour towards him, considering that he isa stranger, and that which he did was by his Mistress’ commandment, I conceive great hope there might be things drawn from him worthy of her Majesty’s knowledge, for which purpose I can be content to retain him still with me, if her Majesty shall allow it.” (p. 285.)

Her Majesty did allow of it. Is it surprising that Mary’s demand at her trial to see these men, her secretaries, face to face, was denied? It is needless to ask why such denial was made. They would have been, were their testimony anything worth or to be relied upon, terrible witnesses against her.

In September, Mary, still under Poulet’s charge—for his request to be relieved of her, now that his work was done, had been disregarded—was conveyed to her last prison, Fotheringay Castle, where Poulet makes preparations for the reception of the Commisioners, among them Walsingham, who were to sit upon Mary’s case. They assembled on October 11th. The general details of the doings of that memorable Commission will probably be known to the reader. Mary’s defence was partly as indicated in the course of this article. “Without counsel or witnesses or papers,” says Mr. Hosack, “and armed with nothing but her own clear intellect and heroic spirit, she had answered, point by point, all their allegations.” The court was, by Elizabeth’s order, which order Walsingham regarded as a special mark of the divine wrath, adjourned to the Star Chamber, without sentence being pronounced. On the 25th they reassembled is the Star Chamber at Westminster, where nothing new, worthy the mention, was produced in evidence, and, with the exception of Lord Zouch, found Mary guilty “of having compassed and imagined, since the 1st of June aforesaid, divers matters tending to the hurt, death, and destruction of the Queen of England.” The death-warrant was not signed by Elizabeth until the 1st of February in the following year. Leaving those interested to trace the course of events in London up to this date, we return to Poulet and his prisoner.

Writing, soon after the adjournment of the Commission at Fotheringay, to Wlasignham, Poulet prays: “I pray you let me hear from you if it will be expected that I should see my charge often, which as I do not desire to do, I do not see that any good can come of it so long as I stand assured that she is forthcoming.” (p. 299.) This is not pity: it is hate, as the sequel will show.

Mary’s courage and calm in great trials s such an established fact and wonder of history, that it is superfluous to quote even Poulet’s frequent testimony thereto: “I see no change in her from her former quietness and security certified in my last letters,” he writes to Walsingham on Otober 24th. He adds in a postscript: “It seemth by all circumstances that this Queen hath had no intelligence of the prorogation of the late assembly, and that she is utterly void of all fear of harm.” (pp. 300, 301.)

Why should she fear harm, as far as harm meant sentence of death, on the evidence that broke down fatally before her single strength? She was not guilty of what she was accused of; and no man in all that Commission, where Walsingham and Burghley sat, could fix guilt upon her. But she was far from being unaware that proof of guilt in England was not always required to provoke sentence of death,-- a death that she had long ago expected. “She perfectly comprehended Elizabeth’s character,”  writes Mr. Froude; “that is to say, her irresolution and vacillation.”—Perfectly! “Look here, my lords,” she exclaimed at trial, drawing a ring from her finger, “at this pledge of love and protection which I received from your Mistress. Regard it well. Trusting to this pledge, I came amongst you. You all know how it has been kept.” Mr. Froude neglects to quote this passage, as did also Lord Burghley’s report. Poulet mistook her courage for confidence:--confidence in her own innocence, yes; but confidence in Elizabeth’s mercy, clearly no. Burghley’s also writes to Davison, in words already quoted, that the execution of the sentence on Mary “tends to the state of the Church.” We are informed  of Poulet’s gout again, and of Burghley’s also. Gout seemed an epidemic with these Puritan courtiers. Then come “our right trusty and well beloved councilor the Lord of Buckhurst, and our servant Beale, to acquaint the Queen, your charge, as well with the proceedings of the Commissioners since their departure from our Castle of Fotheringay, as also what hath been lately done in Parliament.” Poulet is directed to see Mary and speak with her, that she may give a report of her behavior to Elizabeth that she may “enjoy the reading.” He can only continue to report of her calmness. He grows more and more weary of his service and his captive, but is “much confirmed in this opinion and hope (of the short continuance of this service) by that late repair hither of the Lord of Buckhurst, and now I trust the next messenger will bring your (Walsingham’s) last resolution, which God grant, to whose merciful protection I commit you.” The story of the taking down of Mary’s second Cloth of Estate, and Poulet’s setting his hat on and sitting in her presence, is sufficiently known, and needs no fresh comment. Mary mounted, instead of her own arms, the Cross of her Saviour. Poulet’s description of the proceeding, given among these Letters, is quite new. He will not even allow his captive to write to Elizabeth, fearing lest she should thereby shake the resolve of his mistress. Elizabeth, meanwhile, who is sorely puzzled what to do with Mary, as she knows the final guilt of her death will fall upon her head alone, sends more loving messages to her ”right  trusty” Poulet, who seems to have been unmindful of that very old adage, “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.” Walsingham has retired from court in high dudgeon at not having received what he considered the fitting rewards of his services. Poulet doubles and redoubles his prayers to the Almighty that the happy event of Mary’s execution may speedily come to pass, “because,” as he writes to Leicester, “the felicity of Queen and country consisteth especially, next after God, in the sacrifice of justice to be duly executed upon this lady, my charge, the root and well-spring of all our calamities.” (p. 321.)

Mary is not allowed even the consolation of her chaplain. At length he is sent for, and Poulet takes occasion to inform Walsingham that—

      “This lady continueth In her former willful and wicked disposition. No outward sign of repentance, no submission, no acknowledging of her faults (which Elizabeth had so earnestly entreated), no craving of pardon, no mention of desire of life; so as it may be feared lest, as she hath lived, so she will die; and I pray God that this Popish ignorant Priest be not admitted unto her by his just judgment to increase her punishment, be very likely that he will rather confirm her in her stubbornness towards her majesty, and in all her other errors in matter of religion, than seek to reclaim her to a better disposition.” (pp. 326, 327.)—And so the story goes on.  

There is the account of a most interesting interview between Poulet, Sir Drew Drury, and Mary, which took place on the 17th December, and is given by Poulet himself. It would spoil this not being transferred wholly, and therefore it is left to the reader of the Letters. Nowhere is the contrast between the calm and lofty dignity of Mary, and the narrow, bitter bigotry of her keeper, more forcibly set forth. Her brief questions and close, pithy remarks cut clean to the bone. It is the longest letter in the book, and is in itself a dramatic study. Poulet went there purposely to taunt and “provoke her to utter her stomach,” to use his own graphic expression. It is left to common judgment to decide whether he retired the victor or the vanquished.

At last the desire of his heart is to be accomplished, and his is to be the hand chosen from the world to destroy from the face of the earth this woman who, in his eyes, blackens and pollutes it. Poulet himself is asked by Elizabeth “some way to shorten the life of that Queen.” (p. 359.) No more of the letter need be quoted.

Father Morris, Jesuit as he is, is of the opinion that, “though Poulet thought in his fanaticism that to put Mary to death would be to do God service, he was not capable of the degradation to which Elizabeth urged him.” So be it. Poulet, in his letters, has drawn his own character for us. Whether the man, whose course has been only partially traced in this article, was not capable of the degradation of a murder, which, judicially, he craved, is left for the reader to decide. For once we are rather inclined to side with Mr. Froude than with Father Morris. The professed admirer of Poulet can only say that “he was too shrewd to fall into the snare.” (XII, 349.) He refused to be the scapegoat of Elizabeth; and, as the fall of Davison showed, he was very wise in his generation. “God forbid,” he writes back, “that I should make so foul a shipwreck of my conscience, or leave so great a blot to my poor posterity, to shed blood without law or warrant.”

Yet this pious man never revolts against the service that would put such a task upon him.  It never occurs to him, as it has never occurred to Elizabeth’s champions, to remark that, of the crime of which Mary was falsely accused, Elizabeth was actually guilty, and not for the first time. In set terms she urged the assassination of her helpless prisoner, who was already condemned “by law.”  What crime ever laid at Mary’s door, had it even the foundation of truth, was to be compared with this? Poulet, like his class, seems not to have realized that the sin of blood-guiltiness is partaken of by some who have never actually spilt a drop blood.  Of such sin were he, his mistress, and her councilors—how often!—guilty, but never so heinously as in the death of Mary Queen of Scots.

The story of Mary’s last moments does not enter here, and even did it, it is so well known that every reader of English history could write it out from memory.  Father Morris very effectually spoils Mr. Froude’s “death-scene,” by stripping Mary of that famous “blood-red” dress that covered her “from head to foot.”  The “blood-red” dress happened to be a dark brown, though, had Mary so wised, she might have chosen Mr. Froude’s color, as such a dress entered in the inventory of her property.  These letters have been a happy discovery, and have fallen into happy hands in their able editor, whose complete mastery of the subject, arrangement of the missing links, and excellent commentary, given throughout in the best tone possible, tend very much to enhance their value as well as their interest.  They cannot fail to be quoted in future works dealing with this most interesting point in English history.  A secondary interest will also reward the reader in the side glimpses they exhibit of English Reformation.   May he long continue a work which, while it enlightens a portion of history that has been studiously darkened, tends not a little to the glory of that great faith that England threw away: the divine corner-stone rejected by the builders whose loss is beginning to be fatally felt in the rapid crumbling of a national edifice built on national apostasy!