well brought up in learning," on whom the Queen of Scots might thoroughly depend, and through whose assistance she might correspond with himself [Morgan] and with her other friends in England and elsewhere. The cask came in weekly. The box re-inclosed in the empty barrel would carry out her answers, and the chain of communication was at once complete. The brewer had been purchased by high and complicated bribes. He was first paid by Walsingham; next he was assured of lavish rewards from the Queen of Scots, which to secure her confidence it was necessary to permit him to receive. Lastly, like a true English scoundrel, he used the possession of a State secret to exact a higher price for his beer. Phillipps came to reside at Chartley, under the pretence of assisting Paulet in the management of the household. Every letter conveyed to the Queen of Scots and every letter which she sent in return was examined and copied by him before it was forwarded to its destination, and Morgan's introduction of Gifford, which betrayed her into Walsingham's hands, was the first on which he had to exercise his skill.

Six persons only were in possession of the full secret. Elizabeth and Walsingham, by whom the plot had been contrived; Gifford and the brewer, who were its instruments; Phillipps, by whom the ciphers were transcribed and read; and Paulet, whom it had been found necessary to trust. All the rest were puppets who played their part at the young Jesuit's will. The ciphers threatened at first to be a difficulty. Phillipps was a practised expert, and with time could perhaps have mastered all of them. But time was an element of which there was none to spare, where a correspondence was to be watched but not detained, and where a delay in the transmission might lead to discovery. The over-confidence of Morgan, however, in Gifford's probity deprived the unlucky Mary of this last protection. Fearing that his old ciphers might have been discovered, he drew fresh tables, not for his own use only, but for the whole party of the Paris conspirators, for Guise, for Mendoza, for the Archbishop of Glasgow, for Paget, and for Arundel; and he forwarded duplicates to the Queen of Scots. The key of his own, which unlocked the rest, he gave to Gifford to carry to her, and the very first letter which she availed herself of her recovered opportunity to write, was in this identical cipher." (Froude's "History of England," vol. xii. p. 216-219.)

The Gilbert Gifford referred to was the mainspring of the scheme. We shall have occasion hereafter to enter more specially into his antecedents. For the present, it is enough to say that he was the third son of an uncompromisingly Catholic family of Staffordshire, the head of which had been imprisoned for recusancy; and of the elder members of which, one, George, is described by Mr. Froude as "a Jesuit in the Seminary at Rheims, where he was a priest and reader of Divinity;" the other was in the Queen's Guard, on service at the Palace. In Gilbert himself, Mr. Froude tells

us,

the Jesnit training produced a character of a different type. He was taken from England when he was eleven years old, and the order, therefore had him entirely to themselves, to shape for good or evil. In age, he was by this time about twenty-five, and looking younger, with a smooth, beardless face. He had been ordained deacon, and had been a reader of philosophy at the seminary; but being a good linguist, he had travelled on the business of the order, and had made acquaintance with Morgan in the Bastile, with Charles Paget, his cousin Throgmorton, and the Archbishop of Glasgow. Having been at a later period of his life discovered in a brothel, he perhaps formed other connections also there of a yet less reputable kind, and either as an effect of looseness of life, or from inherent scoundrelism of temperament, he offered his services and the opportunities at his command to the English Goverment. In the spring of 1585 he was communicating in a tentative manner with Sir Edward Stafford, the English ambassador. A little after we find him engaged with Walsingham.

So far as possessing the confidence of the ultra-Catholics he was everything that could be desired. His father was a confessor. One of his brothers was the confidant of Parma and aspiring to regicide. Another was in a position, if he could be prevailed on, to assist in striking the blow. He himself was dextrous, subtle, many-tongued, and a thoroughly and completely trained pupil of the Jesuit school. He had already gained the regard of Morgan. To be trusted by Morgan was to be trusted by the Queen of Scots. On all sides he was exactly suited to Walsingham's purpose. ("History of England," vol. xii. pp. 210, 211.)

For the purposes of the intrigue at Chartley, Gilbert Gifford had special qualifications.. It adjoined his father's residence. He was "familiar with house and grounds as boys only are, or can be. He knew where the walls could be scaled for birds' nests, and where there were hiding-places which would baffle Paulet's sentinels." A Gifford, "dear for his own sake, and dearer for his father's persecution, would find sworn friends in every peasant's cottage."*

By a coincidence, unlucky for the confederates, but, as Mr. Froude vehemently affirms, entirely uninfluenced by Elizabeth or her ministers, "the famous Babington Conspiracy organized itself into shape," just as the last details of this machinery for its discovery were brought to perfection. Mr. Froude traces the origin of the conspiracy to a knot of devout young gentlemen, who on Campian's coming to London formed themselves into a society for the protection and support of the Jesuits; one of whom was Anthony Babington, of Dethick, Derbyshire, a young man of considerable fortune; although Mr. Froude thinks the original instigator was John Ballard, "one of the two Jesuits who had sought and obtained

* Froude's "History of England," vol. xii. p. 217.

the sanction of Gregory III. for the Queen's murder, and who had since clung to his purpose with all the tenacity of a sleuthhound."* We need not enter into particulars regarding the other conspirators, who are in no way connected with our present purpose. It will be enough to state that they had bound themselves by a common oath to kill the Queen, if it were necessary, under the very cloth of State itself, and that the Queen having been dispatched first, Cecil, Walsingham Hunsdon, and Sir Francis Knollys were to follow. They waited only "till means should be provided for the escape or rescue of the Queen of Scots at Chartley, and till either the Prince of Parma or a fleet from Lisbon was ready to strike in at the moment of the confusion." †

Mr. Froude's account of the manner in which Mary was informed of the design is very precise and circumstantial. He affirms that Gifford, "although he accompanied Ballard from Paris to England, was personally ignorant of what was going forward." We shall see later how far this statement is sustained by evidence. At all events, it is certain that the letters which were conveyed through Gifford's instrumentality to the Queen of Scots at Chartley contained mysterious hints that there was "something in progress besides and beyond a mere insurrection."

In the beginning, Mr. Froude admits that there was nothing to connect Mary with any knowledge, much less any approval, of the details of the conspiracy Mr. Froude ascribes to Ballard the first suggestion that it should be communicated to her. He had at last informed Gifford of the design, and he now told him that, before anything could be done, he must obtain the Queen of Scots' hand and seal to allow of all that must be practised for her. For this purpose, Babington arranged to make use of the introduction to the Queen with which Morgan (the Queen of Scots' agent in Paris) had furnished him, and "Gifford was to convey her letter by the secret channel." The letter was written. It distinctly intimated that "for the dispatch of the usurper, from the obedience of whom they were by the excommunication of his Holiness made free, there were six noble gentlemen, his private friends, who, for the zeal they bore to the cause and her Majesty's service, were ready to undertake that tragical

* Froude's "History of England,” vol. xii. p. 227. Although Mr. Froude states this fact so positively, he himself admits in another place (vol. xi. p. 304) that Tyrrell, on whose confession, made in the Tower, the statement rests, afterwards recanted the confession, and although Tyrrell repeated it a second time, he was a person utterly unworthy of belief.

Froude's "History of England," vol. xii. p. 229.

execution." This letter was given to Gifford; it was examined by Walsingham; deciphered by Phillipps, who was in London, and dispatched by the usual road; and Phillipps returned to Chartley to watch the result. If Mary wrote in reply, she could not fail to commit herself fatally. "We attend," Phillipps wrote to Walsingham, on ascertaining that the letter had reached her, we attend her very heart in the next."

Mr. Froude relates the result without suggesting the slightest doubt as to the truth of his story. Mary's answer, he says, came at last, after five days spent in composing it and other letters which she despatched by the same messenger. After a summary of the other letters, upon which we need not dwell, Mr. Froude proceeds :

---

Besides these, and probably composed before any of them, was the answer to "the distinguished Catholic," Anthony Babington himself, containing "her very heart," as Phillipps expected that it would. Babington had written to her as his sovereign. She addressed him in turn as "trusty and well-beloved." She applauded his zeal in the cause of herself and the Church. She bade him weigh well his resources, calculate the numbers that he could bring into the field, the towns that he could gain possession of, the succours on which he could rely from abroad. She advised that the Catholics should be told everywhere to collect arms privately, as if to defend themselves against some intended violence, and she bade Babington to learn from Mendoza when help might be looked for, and time movements accordingly.

"When all is ready," she then continued, "the six gentlemen must be set to work, and you will provide that, on their design being accomplished, I may be myself rescued from this place, and be in safe keeping till our friends arrive. It will be hard to fix a day for the execution; you must have a party, therefore, in readiness to carry me off. And you will keep four men with horses saddled, to bring word when the deed is done, that they may be here before my guardian learns of it. To prevent accident, let the horsemen choose different routes, that if one is intercepted another may get through. It will be well also to have the common posts and couriers stopped. Give the gentlemen all the assurances which they require on my part. You will consider and consult together whether if, as is possible, they cannot execute their particular purpose, it will then be expedient to proceed with the rest of the enterprise. If the difficulty be only with myself, if you cannot manage my own rescue because I am in the Tower, or in some other place too strong for you, do not hesitate on that account. Go on for the honour of God. I would gladly die at any time, could I but know that the Catholics were out of bondage. I will do what I can to raise Scotland and Ireland. Beware of traitors. There are even priests in the service of the enemy. Keep no compromising papers about you, and reveal as little of your intentions as you can to the French ambassador. He is a good man; but his master is too nearly allied with this Queen and may cross our purpose.

"There are three ways in which my escape may be managed. I ride sometimes in the open ground between this and Stafford. It is usually an entire solitude, and my guardian who attends me takes but eighteen or twenty horse with him, only armed with pistols. We could arrange a day, and fifty or sixty well-mounted men could carry me off with ease.

"Or you might fire the stables and farm-buildings here some midnight, and your people might surprise the house in the confusion. They might wear a badge to recognise each other.

"Or again, carts come in here every morning with stores. You might personate a driver, and upset one of the carts in the gateway; and the rest of you lying concealed among the bushes might rush in. The guard's lodgings are half a mile off.

"Burn this immediately.

A postscript adds :-"I would be glad to know the names and qualities of the six gentlemen which are to accomplish the designment, for that it may be I shall be able upon knowledge of the parties to give you some further advice necessary to be followed therein; and even so do I wish to be made acquainted with the names of all such principal persons, as also who be already as also who be-as also from time to time particularly how you proceed, and as soon as you may, for the same purpose, who be already, and how far every one is privy hereunto."

Phillipps, in sending the decipher of this letter to Walsingham, advised the arrest of the principal conspirators. But the Secretary was in no haste. He wanted more precise information, which was supplied by the inconceivable folly of the conspirators, who "had their portraits taken in a group as the deliverers of their country, with Babington in the midst of them." Soon afterwards, alarmed by discovering that a servant of Ballard's, who was deep in their secrets, had long been in the pay of Walsingham, Babington "instantly revealed the base material of which he was made, by writing to Pooley, one of Walsingham's secretaries, to tell the minister that there was a conspiracy on hand, and that he (Babington) was prepared to reveal it."* Even still no answer was returned, and any alarm which might have been created by the only step which was taken, the arrest of Ballard, was removed by his being arrested, not as charged with treason, but as a disguised seminary priest. With a view to obtain the further evidence which was required, it had become desirable to betray or force one of the party to confess; and it is no obscure indication of the nature of the courses which were considered permissible in such matters, that the Queen herself "suggested that a ciphered letter might be conveyed to Ballard, as if from one of the confederates, to which Ballard

* Froude's "History of England," vol. xii. p. 553.