The Murder of Queen Elizabeth I of England
Catholic Conspiracies to Overthrow the Virgin Queen
Nov 5, 2009
The chief conspirator, Robert Ridolfi, a Florentine banker working in London, was also an agent of Pope Pius V. In 1570, the Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth, so making her a heretic. This meant that murdering the Virgin Queen incurred no penalty for any Catholic who did the deed. Once Elizabeth was dead, her Catholic cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, would replace her on the throne of England
Queen Mary Imprisoned by Elizabeth
At the time the Ridolfi Plot was spawned, Mary, Queen of Scots was Elizabeth’s prisoner. In 1568, when her nobles rebelled against her, Mary fled to England and sought Elizabeth’s protection. Elizabeth placed the Scots queen under house arrest in various castles in central and northern England where she was closely watched
Ridolfi joined forces with Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, a second cousin of Queen Elizabeth and a Catholic sympathizer, who had been imprisoned in 1569 for scheming to marry Queen Mary. Ridolfi linked Norfolk’s marriage plans to his own plot but it foundered after he was discovered distributing large sums of Spanish money to English Catholics
Questioned by Elizabeth’s formidable spymaster, Francis Walsingham, Ridolfi confessed everything. Even so, he convinced Walsingham that the distributed money was simply part of his regular banking activities. Subsequently, Ridolfi returned home to Florence, where he died in 1612. Meanwhile, the Duke of Norfolk, executed for treason in 1572, paid the price for Ridolfi’s plot. Walsingham now placed Mary under even more strict surveillance.
Mary and Another Plot Against the Virgin Queen
In 1583 the Catholic Francis Throckmorton joined a plot hatched by a French aristocrat, Henri, Duc de Guise and financed by the Pope and King Philip II of Spain. De Guise planned to invade England and Scotland, depose Elizabeth and put Queen Mary on the English throne. However, Throckmorton was arrested after one of Walsingham’s spies identified him as an agent of Queen Mary
Incriminating papers were found in his house, but Throckmorton claimed they had been planted on him. Throckmorton was sent to the Tower of London, to be tortured on the rack, a fiendish device that dislocated the joints by stretching. He was racked twice before he finally confessed. Throckmorton was executed in 1584
By this time, Francis Walsingham was intercepting all letters written to and from Mary, Queen of Scots. Among them was correspondence sent to Sir Anthony Babington who belonged to a wealthy family of English Catholics and was a great admirer of the Scots queen. In 1586, Babington was caught up in a plot masterminded by the Spanish ambassador in Paris, Bernardino de Mendoza. The ingredients - invasion, Elizabeth’s overthrow and death - were the same as before.
The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots
Also as before, Walsingham read the subsequent correspondence between Babington and Queen Mary. Babington was arrested, together with five other conspirators and was imprisoned in the Tower of London. At their trial, Babington and the others were all sentenced to suffer the punishment reserved for high treason: hanging, drawing and quartering
The Babington Plot sealed Mary’s doom, for she represented too much danger to Elizabeth. After months of prevaricating, the Virgin Queen, who was loth to execute another sovereign, signed Mary’s death warrant. Mary was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire on February 8, 1587.
Nevertheless, Philip II of Spain resolved that this time, the direct attack on England would still take place. This was why a fleet of 108 vessels, the Spanish Armada, set sail from Spain on July 2, 1588 and headed north, bound for the English Channel and the invasion of Elizabeth’s kingdom.
Sources:
Routh, C.R.N. and Holmes Peter, Who’s Who in Tudor England 1485-1603 (Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, 2002) ISBN-10: 0811716392/isbn-13: 978-0811716390.
Warnicke, Retha, Mary, Queen of Scots (Florence, Kentucky: Routledge c/o Taylor and Francis Inc.) ISBN-10: 0415291836/ISBN-13: 978-0415291835.
Website: The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots
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