The Watchers (34 page)

Suddenly, at this critical juncture, Babington disappeared. On Tuesday, 2 August no one other than Poley, who after leaving Barn Elms had gone off to London, knew where he was. Phelippes was worried. He was waiting for Babington's reply to the ‘bloody letter'. Babington had told the courier – Phelippes's man – that he would have it ready that very day. But there was no sign of either the letter or Babington. Phelippes wrote urgently to Walsingham to say that they had been ‘cozened', or deceived.

Phelippes suspected that Babington had ridden out of London. Perhaps he had gone to Lichfield in Staffordshire, where, not bothering with the London courier, he intended to post the letter himself to Chartley. Perhaps he had panicked. Phelippes, more used to sitting for hours over complicated secret ciphers, sprang into action. Something had to be done. Probably Babington had indeed gone off to Lichfield. There, as Phelippes knew, Babington would discover that the ‘bloody letter' had not been posted from the town. Surely then he would suspect a trap. Babington had to be stopped, and Phelippes prepared to ride out in pursuit. He asked Walsingham for a couple of ‘lusty [vigorous, strong] geldings' and a ‘lusty fellow' of Sir Francis's staff. They would set out next day at one o'clock to find Anthony Babington.

In fact Thomas Phelippes had no need for Sir Francis Walsingham's geldings. Phelippes's heroic ride to Lichfield never happened, more is the pity. Anthony Babington had not ridden out to Staffordshire. He was in London, safely under observation, if not yet under arrest. Some time at night on Tuesday, 2 August an informant told Phelippes that if he went to Robert Poley's lodgings he could take Babington and a whole knot of his friends. Phelippes went there, finding no one. Perhaps, he thought, the informant had mistaken Babington for someone else. ‘I marvel,' Phelippes wrote to Walsingham, ‘what mystery there is in this matter.'

As Phelippes had suspected, Anthony Babington was troubled by Walsingham's postponement of their meeting, but Poley was able to convince him that if he went to Walsingham to make a ‘discovery' of the conspiracy he could save his life and secure his freedom. Poley even hinted at a royal audience for Babington, and the naive young man, excited by the thought, saw to his wardrobe, getting ready his best clothes. He said he now knew everything about the plot. He showed Poley his deciphered copy of the ‘bloody letter', the text Babington and his friend Tycheborne had laboured at together. He gave no hint to Poley that he would send a reply to Mary. Instead he wanted to tell the whole story of the plot to Walsingham. Babington had no idea that he had moved one step nearer to the hangman's rope.

A little before eight o'clock on Wednesday morning, 3 August, a messenger came from Phelippes to tell Mylles that Babington was still in the city but had taken new lodgings outside London's walls in Bishopsgate Without, on the road to the village of Shoreditch.

Information could travel only as quickly as a messenger on foot in London or a courier galloping out from the city to the court at Richmond Palace. So it was that on Wednesday morning Walsingham, at Richmond, was the last to know that Babington had not slipped the net. He was sure that Babington had panicked and run, and hoped that Poley, whom he was expecting for a meeting early that morning, would be able to offer some explanation of what was going on. Walsingham was disappointed at how events had turned out. What nagged him was the thought that the forged postscript Phelippes had added to Mary's letter had ‘bred the jealousy [suspicion, mistrust]' in Babington. Still, John Ballard was quite as important as Babington.

Within hours the situation had changed. Phelippes alerted Walsingham to the facts as quickly as he could. Babington was in London; it seemed he had changed his lodgings. Now Walsingham considered a question he had not had the luxury to be able to ask a few hours earlier. Was it better to have Babington in custody or to wait a little longer in the hope of intercepting his promised reply to the ‘bloody letter'? Walsingham wrote to Phelippes: ‘it is a hard matter to resolve. Only this I conclude: it were better to lack the answer than to lack the man.'

By now Walsingham and Phelippes were playing an extraordinarily delicate game. Relieved that Babington was in the city and determined to have him under lock and key, Walsingham needed Robert Poley to keep Babington calm. At their meeting at Richmond that Wednesday morning, Sir Francis told Poley that once again he would have to postpone his interview. The queen had been sick in the night, he said, and the Privy Council was busy with Irish affairs; he could not leave court. Walsingham now proposed to meet Babington at Barn Elms in three days' time. In the meantime, Sir Francis wanted Babington, through Poley, to make a plain report of the conspiracy. Once again it was a ruse: the purpose of the postponement was to give Phelippes plenty of time to make Babington's arrest.

Poley, showing a surprising loyalty to Babington, spoke persuasively to Walsingham on the young conspirator's behalf. He assured Sir Francis of Babington's devotion to ‘the public service'. Poley told Walsingham what Babington had told him. A man called Ballard, ‘a great practiser in this realm with the Catholics', was plotting to stir
a rebellion, ‘set on' by the ambassador of Spain and Charles Paget. This was hardly startling news to Walsingham, but, playing along, he asked Poley to thank Babington for the information.

But could he rely upon Poley? Sir Francis reflected that his agent had not dealt with him dishonestly, yet he was loath (as he wrote to Phelippes) ‘to lay myself any way open unto him'. Robert Poley was not a man to be entirely trusted. At Richmond Walsingham had told Poley only as much as was necessary to provoke what was needed from Babington. Poley's task was to keep Babington occupied with the prospect of Walsingham's favour while Mylles and Phelippes organized his arrest. Indeed Walsingham ordered that Babington's apprehension should be delayed no longer than Friday, 5 August. Francis Mylles was ready with a new arrest warrant signed by Lord Howard of Effingham. Mylles and Phelippes were determined to cover up any trace of the part Secretary Walsingham had played in breaking up such a terrible conspiracy against the queen.

Poley returned from Richmond Palace to his lodgings, where he found Babington and gave him Walsingham's message about the second postponement of their meeting. Babington was worried, but Poley was able once again to reassure him of Sir Francis's friendship and favour.

The gloom of early Wednesday morning, 3 August, quickly lifted. If Walsingham and his men could not secure Anthony Babington's answer to the Queen of Scots's letter they would at least get Babington. He was under surveillance: with Babington in his new lodgings in Bishopsgate Without, in the north-east corner of London, he was watched by Walsingham's agent Nicholas Berden, who lodged nearby in the precincts of Bethlehem hospital.

Berden followed Babington and his friends, hoping to see John Ballard. Babington and some of his co-conspirators met at the Royal Exchange at about seven o'clock in the evening, where for half an hour or so they ‘had some earnest discourse'. After talking, they went to the Castle tavern (their usual haunt) for supper. After supper Berden followed each gentleman to his lodging, hoping but failing to see Ballard. It was midnight when he went off duty.

Within hours, however, John Ballard, priest and conspirator, was a
prisoner. The day was Thursday, 4 August. At Poley's lodgings in the morning Babington had spoken to John Savage. Between eleven o'clock and twelve noon Poley's chambers were raided by a party consisting of a city official and two royal pursuivants, bearing a warrant for Ballard's arrest signed by Lord Admiral Howard. Neither Francis Mylles nor Thomas Phelippes was anywhere to be seen. Ballard was promptly escorted under guard to the Counter prison in Wood Street. It was not a surprising thing to happen to one of the many Catholic priests in the lodging houses and taverns of London. There was not a hint that he was a principal conspirator in a plot to murder Elizabeth. In fact the city official was the father of Phelippes's servant Thomas Cassie, and the pursuivants had been stationed with Francis Mylles for days. The raiding party was made up by Nicholas Berden's brother-in-law. Mylles's and Phelippes's intricate plan had worked perfectly.

Francis Mylles reports the capture of John Ballard, 4 August 1586.

Or had it? After a textbook raid, Mylles was as troubled as ever. First of all, he did not trust Walsingham's contact with Babington, Robert Poley. After searching Poley's chambers Mylles had little hesitation in writing to Walsingham that Robert Poley was ‘a notable knave' and could not be trusted. Mylles suspected that Poley was playing both sides for his own advantage.

Much more worrying was the effect of the raid upon Anthony Babington's nerves. Probably it was pure chance that he was there, and even if the raiding party knew who he was they could hardly do much about him: the whole purpose of the exercise was to arrest Ballard as yet another Catholic priest living secretly and illegally in England. But on 4 August Babington broke: disconcerted by the delays in meeting Walsingham, he was unnerved by Ballard's arrest. He wrote a final and remarkable letter to Robert Poley: ‘Robin … I am ready to endure whatsoever shall be inflicted … What my course hath been towards Master Secretary you can witness; what my love towards you yourself can best tell. Proceedings at my lodging have been very strange. I am the same I always pretended. I pray God you be and ever so remain towards me.' He said that the furnace was prepared to try their faith. He ended as ‘Thine how far thou knowest'. And then Anthony Babington ran for his life.

Thursday, 4 August became in official circles the formal date of the discovery of the conspiracy of John Ballard and Anthony Babington, the ‘principal managers and contrivers' of this latest plot against Elizabeth's life, and their seventeen ‘actors and assistants'. The object of the conspiracy of Babington and Ballard was to execute three treasons. Firstly, the destruction of the queen's person. Secondly, the encouragement of a foreign invasion and a domestic rebellion of Catholics and malcontents. Thirdly, the liberation of the Queen of Scots and the advancement of her claim to Elizabeth's throne. But on 4 August only John Ballard was in custody: Anthony Babington and many of his friends were free men.

On Friday, 5 August Walsingham made a report to the queen. Till this point he had kept her well briefed on the twists and turns of the
plot. She trusted his discretion in keeping everything he knew of the conspiracy to himself: in Walsingham's words, ‘both the depth and the manner of the discovery of this great and weighty cause'. Elizabeth clearly understood the implications of the Babington Plot, aware like her advisers of the Act for the Queen's Surety. She did not want to have set in motion the special commission to try the Queen of Scots. She did not want the blood of an anointed monarch, even one deposed and as dangerous as Mary, on her hands.

By now John Ballard was under heavy guard in the Counter prison. If he refused to speak, Walsingham thought that the best course of action was to take him to the Tower of London to be tortured for information. But Anthony Babington and all the other members of his group of conspirators had flown, so provoking the most urgent man-hunt of the whole of Elizabeth's reign. One eyewitness, a Jesuit priest living and working secretly in London, saw it at first hand: ‘all ways were watched, infinite houses searched, hues and cries raised, frights bruited in the people's ears, and all men's eyes filled with a smoke, as though the whole realm had been on fire'.

The authorities were furiously busy. Lord Burghley wrote a royal proclamation that called upon all subjects to search out and apprehend Babington and Chidiocke Tycheborne. Watchmen patrolled villages and towns near London. Witnesses to the activities of Babington and his companions, including their families and household servants, were closely interrogated. Pursuivants and constables searched houses throughout London. Thomas Phelippes worked tirelessly on the questions that would be put to Babington and the other conspirators when at last they were captured.

John Savage the would-be assassin was one of the first to be taken. He was interrogated by Walsingham and the queen's trusted vice-chamberlain, Sir Christopher Hatton. Of Savage's second examination, on 11 August, Phelippes made the following significant note:

Omitted by Savage in his confession in writing of that he delivered by speech to Master Vice-chamberlain and Secretary Walsingham.

That the Queen of Scots was made acquainted with the designs as well of invasion as attempt against Her Majesty's person by the letters
of Babington and that there came an answer from her touching her assent and advice but what it was the contents particularly he knew not.

That one of the guard about the said Queen of Scots being a brewer was corrupted and won to serve the Queen of Scots's turn for conveyance of letters.