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Walsingham's "Decypherer" forged this cipher postscript to Mary's letter to Babington. It asks Babington to use the—broken—cipher to tell her the names of the conspirators.

The Babington Plot was the event which most directly led to the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. This was a second major plot against Elizabeth I of England after the Ridolfi plot. It was named after the chief conspirator Anthony Babington (1561–1586), a young Catholic nobleman from Derbyshire.

[edit] Mary's Imprisonment

Mary in captivity, c.1578

Ever since Mary, Queen of the Scots and Roman Catholic claimant to the throne of England, came under the custody of her cousin, Elizabeth I, a year after her abdication from the throne of Scotland in 1567, she became the focus of numerous plots and intrigues to restore England to the Catholic fold. Because of this threat, she was imprisoned for eighteen years through a series of jailers, for the most part by the Earl of Shrewsbury. In 1580 her confinement was transferred to Sir Amias Paulet.

Because of increasing concern surrounding Queen Elizabeth's safety, in 1584 Elizabeth's Privy Council had signed a "Bond of Association"^[1], which stated that any one within the line of succession to the throne on whose behalf anyone plotted against the queen, even if the claimant is ignorant of the plot, would be excluded from the line and executed. This was agreed upon by hundreds of Englishmen, who likewise signed the Bond. As if to allay the Queen's suspicions, Mary likewise signed. The following year, Parliament passed the Act of Association^[2], which provided for the execution of anyone who would benefit from the death of the Queen if a plot against her was discovered. Whilst Mary had escaped formal reprimand as she had not actively participated in a plot, now she could be executed if a plot was initiated that would lead to her acceeding the throne of England.^[3]

However, in the aftermath of the Throckmorton plot, in January 1586, Mary found herself in the strictest confinement she had experienced in the eighteen years she had been imprisoned by the English. She was confined to Chartley Hall in Staffordshire, placed under strict observation, under the control of Sir Amias Paulet. Paulet was a Puritan, and although Mary had been able to win over her previous jailers, Paulet was able to resist her charms and kept her in extremely strict conditions. Having been instructed to watch the comings and goings of servants and visitors to Mary, he stopped all open correspondence.

Sir Francis Walsingham

Although Elizabeth was reluctant to act against Mary, some within the English government feared her status as a figurehead for English Catholics. Sir Francis Walshingham, Elizabeth I's Secretary of State and spymaster, together with William Cecil, Elizabeth's chief advisor, realised that if she could be implicated in a plot to assassinate Elizabeth, then Mary could be executed and the Catholic threat diminished. As he wrote to the Earl of Leicester:

Walshingham's opportunity came when in 1585, a Catholic exile named Gilbert Gifford (c. 1561–1590) was arrested in Sussex. While being interrogated, he confessed to having been involved in a Catholic plot against Elizabeth. Walshingham then offered to release Gifford if he was willing work as a double agent, to which Gifford agreed.^[5]

[edit] The plot

The plot grew out of two originally separate plans. The first involved a Spanish invasion of England with the purpose of deposing Elizabeth and replacing her with Mary; the second was a plot by English Catholics to assassinate Elizabeth. However, both plots were under the guidance of two of Mary's chief agents in Europe, Charles Paget^[6] and Thomas Morgan, the latter being Mary's chief cipher clerk for all her French correspondence. King Philip II of Spain and the Spanish ambassador to England Don Bernardino de Mendoza had been trying to regain Spanish influence in English affairs which was at least diminished by the death Mary Tudor in 1558, not the least through various marriage proposals to Elizabeth (including by Philip himself, who was Mary I's husband). As it became evident that Elizabeth was not inclined to accept such proposals, the only alternative would be to depose her and replace her with someone more receptive to their interests, and Mary was the best candidate.^[7] Ever since the issuance of the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis by Pope Pius V on February 25, 1570, Philip was always prepared to assist English Catholics who plotted to overthrow the English queen. It was thus with the support of the papacy and Spain that Morgan and Paget sought to find those within England who would be prepared to meet this objective.

[edit] Infiltration

In 1585 Morgan met with Gilbert Gifford and enlisted the latter to re-establish a line of correspondence with Mary, which was severed by Walshingham in the wake of the discovery of the Throckmorton plot in 1584. It was when Gifford arrived in England when he was arrested and subsequently enlisted as a double agent. As such, Gifford was assigned the alias "No. 4" and used many others in his espionage work, such as Colerdin, Pietro and Cornelys.^[8]

While Walshingham was able to cut off all communication between Mary and her supporters because of the Throckmorton plot, he recognized that she could hardly be guilty in plots of which she was unaware and therefore had not approved. Thus Walshingham, with the help of Gifford, decided to establish a new line of communication, one in which he can carefully scrutinize and yet would not incur any suspicion from Mary and her supporters. For this they arranged for a local beer brewer to facilitate the movement of messages between Mary and her supporters by placing them in a watertight casing that could be placed inside the stopper of the barrel. Gifford then approached Guillaume de l'Aubespine^[9], Baron de Châteauneuf-sur-Cher and the French ambassador to England and described the new correspondence arrangement and requested the first message that should be sent to Mary. (Mary, in turn, was informed by another double agent named Thomas Philips in prison of this arrangement.)^[5] All subsequent messages to Mary would be sent via diplomatic packets to de L'Aubespine, who then passed them on to Gifford. Gifford would then pass them on to Walshingham, who would have turned them to Thomas Phelippes, a cipher and language expert in his employ.^[10]The cipher used by Mary was a nomenclator cipher, which was broken by trial and error by starting with letter substitutions and using the frequency of common characters until a readable text was found, and then the rest was guessed at by the message context from what was decoded until the entire cipher was understood. Phelippes, or any in Walshingham's spy school who was familiar with the cipher would decode and make a copy of the letter. The letter was then resealed and given back to Gifford, who would then pass it on to the brewer. The brewer would then "smuggle" the letter to Mary. If Mary would try to send a letter to her supporters, it would go through the reverse course. In short order, every message coming to and from Chartley Hall were intercepted and read by Walshingham, who became aware of every plot and machination for and from Mary, which in some ways were encouraged by Gifford and other agents provocateurs. He only had to wait for Mary to incriminate herself in one of her letters.

[edit] Enter John Ballard and Anthony Babington

Paget began to consolidate the two plots. At the behest of Mary's French supporters, John Ballard, a Jesuit priest and Catholic agent, went to England to secure promises of aid from the northern Catholic gentry of the imprisoned Queen who would accept an insurrection against Elizabeth and replace her with Mary. In March of 1586, he met with John Savage, an ex-soldier who was involved in an separate plot against Elizabeth and who had sworn an oath to assassinate the queen.^[11]

But Babington's confession made it clear that Ballard had exaggerated the support of the Catholic League:

The cipher code of Mary Queen of Scots

The forged postscript read:

He was enlisted by John Ballard, a Jesuit priest and Catholic agent, persuaded Babington to become involved in a plot to overthrow and/or murder Queen Elizabeth I of England, replacing her on the throne with the Roman Catholic Queen of Scotland.

Robert Debdale^[14]

[edit] Notes and References