The Babington Plot was an incident in which Anthony Babington and the Plough Group planned to assassinate Elizabeth I, install Queen Mary of Scots onto the throne, and restore Catholicism to England.
In 1570, Pope Pius V declared the Protestant Elizabeth a heretic, despite her relative tolerance towards Catholics throughout the kingdom. She was excommunicated via papal bull: “we do out of the fullness of our apostolic power declare the foresaid Elizabeth to be a heretic and favorer of heretics, and her adherents in the matters aforesaid to have incurred the sentence of anathema and to be cut off from the unity of the body of Christ” (Regnans in Excelsis). This authorization of Elizabeth’s metaphorical dismemberment was also taken literally by the Pope’s followers, some of whom sought to carry out this sentence.
What made the Babington Plot interesting to scholars is the fact that most of the intelligence came from not the conspirator – but the government. More specifically, Spymaster Francis Walsingham saw an opportunity to gather conspirators all at once by leading them to believe that they had a chance at actually vanquishing the Queen.
While dubbed “The Babington Plot,” by many scholars, Anthony Babington wasn’t the brains behind the operations; if anything, Babington serves as a scapegoat for the masterminds behind the plan.
Curiously, many feel that Babington was only half convinced that the plan had merit, or if it would work it all. While he had believed in the idea of bringing Catholicism back to England and felt that the Queen was too popular among her citizens, he did not spearhead this assassination plot.
His friend and co-plotter, Thomas Salisbury, urged Babington to stay away from the leader of the Plough Group, John Ballard, who subsequently devised the assassination plot.
Father John Ballard was a priest from Rheims College that had been working to squelch the anxieties that English Catholics felt towards Rome. Although Ballard was born in England, he studied at Rheims College and became a Catholic missionary (Nicholl).
Being a Catholic missionary was almost guaranteed to garner attention from the Church of England, so Ballard had several public different disguises. “Captain Fortescue” was one of his better-known aliases, and one he used in his attempts to de-throne the “heretic” Queen Elizabeth.
At Rheims, Ballard vowed to remove Elizabeth from power, and his supporters, including Gilbert Gifford among others, cemented his ambition. Around March 1586, Ballard hired John Savage to assassinate the Queen. This may have been the first step in a more complex plan to help Spain and other European Catholic allies take control of England.
In early 1586, disguised as his favorite alias “Captain Fortescue,” Ballard went to France to meet with Spanish Ambassador Don Bernadino de Mendoza in the hopes that Spain would invade England, and help convert the country back to Catholicism. The details surrounding Ballard’s conversations with Mendoza are hazy, but in May 1586, Ballard would get the news that a strike force of 60,000 Spanish, French, and Italian troops were set to attack England by the end of that summer.
However, this invasion appears to have relied upon Elizabeth’s death, and once the so-called Babington Plot was thwarted, this uprising never took place (Nicholl 149).
Robert Poley (coincidentally present at Marlowe’s death,) Barnard Maude, and Gilbert Gifford (working as a double-agent) were all hired as intelligencers (spies) for Sir Francis Walsingham. It is believed that Poley spied on Babington, Maude spied on Ballard, and Gilbert Gifford had his sights on John Savage.
Meanwhile, Babington was serving Ballard as a messenger, carrying a letter detailing the plot to Mary, Queen of Scots. When the letter was intercepted, Babington was brought to Walsingham. Babington hoped that he would escape a conviction for treason in exchange for information relating to the plan. This is precisely what Walsingham wanted as well – an admission that Queen Mary of Scots was actively conspiring against the throne.
Once Walsingham obtained the letter, Mary denied all involvement.
At first, Babington thought to persuade Walsingham that his intentions were to come clean about the conspiracy later down the line – instead, he headed to St. John’s Woods where he would spend 8 days, filthy and starving, hiding away from officials.
However, as Walsingham only copied a version of the letter, the validity of the document ended up being highly controversial between Mary’s defenders and the government. Mary denied any involvement with any sort of letter, but her secretaries reportedly confirmed that it was her handwriting. With current evidence, we don’t truly know if, and to what extent, the letter was tampered with.
In August of 1586, Ballard, Savage, Tichbourne, and Tilney were arrested for high treason.
On September 13, 1586, Ballard, who could barely walk due to intensive interrogations, Savage, Salisbury, Babington, Tichbourne, Barnwell, and Dunne were charged with high treason and sentenced to death two days later.
One should remember that Walsingham was not necessarily overreacting when searching out Catholic plots against his Queen. In 1570, Pope Pius V claimed that Elizabeth was an apostate, and papal bull excommunicated Elizabeth for reforming England back to Protestant roots. The Queen’s 1558 Act of Supremacy declared the Church of England’s independence from Rome and the 1559 Act of Uniformity restored the 1552 Book of Common Prayer back into common practice. (Bennett and Jeromski)
The first day of execution had been horrifically gruesome – Elizabeth even commented that the executioners needed to act more dignified during the next execution session, as the executioners had mutilated, and disemboweled most of the conspirators.
Elizabeth dealt with a great deal of emotional turmoil pondering what should be done with her cousin, as she lived most of her life believing Mary would never commit such an atrocity. She laters rationalized the execution of Queen Mary of Scots with “ne feriare, feri,” suffer or strike; strike in order not to be struck (Loades 233).
Works Cited
Bennett, Kristen Abbott and Andrew Jeromski. “‘The Glory of Our Sexe’: Elizabeth I and Early Modern Women Writers.” Women Writers in Context, Northeastern University, May 2020, wwp.northeastern.edu/context/#bennett.glory.xml.
Rutter, Tom. The Cambridge Introduction to Christopher Marlowe. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Nicholl, Charles. The Reckoning: the Murder of Christopher Marlowe. University of Chicago, 1995.