Anthony Babington (1561-1586) was an English conspirator famous for being the leader of a plot to murder Queen Elizabeth, known afterwards as “The Babington Plot.” He was born October of 1561 and secretly raised a Roman Catholic. He went on to Sheffield to serve under Mary Queen of Scots, with whom he developed a close relationship. While remaining close to Mary, he and his father, John Ballard, led an April 1586 plot to Murder Queen Elizabeth to start a Catholic uprising against England and liberate Mary. Robert Poley and Nicholas Skeres, known for the murder of Christopher Marlowe, were described as “chief actors” in the Babington Plot. Later, letters were intercepted by Sir Thomas Walsingham; Babington was caught and convicted of treason. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London for about a month before being executed in Lincoln’s Inn Fields on September 19th, 1586. As some scholars note, the Babington plot had much influence on Marlowe’s writing of Tamburlaine, one of Marlowe’s most famous plays.
Babington, Anthony