Unknown to History: A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland

"My Lords," he said, "I swear that all that was in me cried out against the wickedness of thus privily slaying her Majesty."

Some muttered, "The villain! he lies," but the kindly Richard sighed inaudibly, "True, poor lad! Thou must have given thy conscience over to strange keepers to be thus led astray."

And Babington went on to say that they had brought this gentleman, Father Ballard, who had wrought with him to prove that his scruples were weak, carnal, and ungodly, and that it would be a meritorious deed in the sight of Heaven thus to remove the heretic usurper.

Here the judges sternly bade him not to blaspheme, and he replied, with that "soberness and good grace" which seems to have struck all the beholders, that he craved patience and pardon, meaning only to explain how he had been led to the madness which he now repented, understanding himself to have been in grievous error, though not for the sake of any temporal reward; but being blinded to the guilt, and assured that the deed was both lawful and meritorious. He thus had been brought to destruction through the persuasions of this Ballard.

"A very fit author for so bad a fact," responded Hatton.

"Very true, sir," said Babington; "for from so bad a ground never proceed any better fruits. He it was who persuaded me to kill the Queen, and to commit the other treasons, whereof I confess myself guilty."

Savage pleaded guilty at once, with the reckless hardihood of a soldier accustomed to look on death as the fortune of war.

Barnwell denied any intention of killing the Queen (much to Diccon's surprise), but pleaded guilty to the rest. Donne said that on being told of the plot he had prayed that whatever was most to the honour and glory of Heaven might be done, and being pushed hard by Hatton, turned this into a confession of being guilty. Salisbury declared that he had always protested against killing the Queen, and that he would not have done so for a kingdom, but of the rest he was guilty. Tichborne showed that but for an accidental lameness he would have been at his home in Hampshire, but he could not deny his knowledge of the treason.

All having pleaded guilty, no trial was permitted, such as would have brought out the different degrees of guilt, which varied in all the seven.

A long speech was, however, made by the counsel for the Crown, detailing the plot as it had been arranged for the public knowledge, and reading aloud a letter from Babington to Queen Mary, describing his plans both for her rescue and the assassination, saying, "he had appointed six noble gentlemen for the despatch of the wicked competitor."

Richard caught a look of astonishment on the unhappy young man's face, but it passed into hopeless despondency, and the speech went on to describe the picture of the conspirators and its strange motto, concluding with an accusation that they meant to sack London, burn the ships, and "cloy the ordnance."

A shudder of horror went through the assembly, and perhaps few except Richard Talbot felt that the examination of the prisoners ought to have been public. The form, however, was gone through of asking whether they had cause to render wherefore they should not be condemned to die.

The first to speak was Ballard. His eyes glanced round with an indomitable expression of scorn and indignation, which, as Diccon whispered, he could have felt to his very backbone. It was like that of a trapped and maimed lion, as the man sat in his chair with crushed and racked limbs, but with a spirit untamed in its defiance.

"Cause, my Lords?" he replied. "The cause I have to render will not avail here, but it may avail before another Judgment-seat, where the question will be, who used the weapons of treason, not merely against whom they were employed. Inquiry hath not been made here who suborned the priest, Dr. Gifford, to fetch me over from Paris, that we might together overcome the scruples of these young men, and lead them forward in a scheme for the promotion of the true religion and the right and lawful succession. No question hath here been put in open court, who framed the conspiracy, nor for what purpose. No, my Lords; it would baffle the end you would bring about, yea, and blot the reputation of some who stand in high places, if it came to light that the plot was devised, not by the Catholics who were to be the instruments thereof, nor by the Lady in whose favour all was to be done,—not by these, the mere victims, but by him who by a triumph of policy thus sent forth his tempters to enclose them all within his net—above all the persecuted Lady whom all true Catholics own as the only lawful sovereign within these realms. Such schemes, when they succeed, are termed policy. My Lords, I confess that by the justice of England we have been guilty of treason against Queen Elizabeth; but by the eternal law of the justice of God, we have suffered treachery far exceeding that for which we are about to die."

"I marvel that they let the fellow speak so far," was Cavendish's comment.

"Nay, but is it so?" asked Diccon with startled eyes.

"Hush! you have yet to learn statecraft," returned his friend.

His father's monitory hand only just saved the boy from bursting out with something that would have rather astonished Westminster Hall, and caused him to be taken out by the ushers. It is not wonderful that no report of the priest's speech has been preserved.

The name of Antony Babington was then called. Probably he had been too much absorbed in the misery of his position to pay attention to the preceding speech, for his reply was quite independent of it. He prayed the Lords to believe, and to represent to her Majesty, that he had received with horror the suggestion of compassing her death, and had only been brought to believe it a terrible necessity by the persuasions of this Ballard.

On this Hatton broke forth in indignant compassion,—"O Ballard! Ballard! what hast thou done? A sort of brave youth, otherwise endowed with good gifts, by thy inducement hast thou brought to their utter destruction and confusion!"

This apparently gave some hope to Babington, for he answered—"Yes, I protest that, before I met this Ballard, I never meant nor intended for to kill the Queen; but by his persuasions I was induced to believe that she being excommunicate it was lawful to murder her."

For the first time Ballard betrayed any pain. "Yes, Mr. Babington," he said, "lay all the blame upon me; but I wish the shedding of my blood might be the saving of your life. Howbeit, say what you will, I will say no more."

"He is the bravest of them all!" was Diccon's comment.

"Wot you that he was once our spy?" returned Cavendish with a sneer; while Sir Christopher, with the satisfaction of a little nature in uttering reproaches, returned—"Nay, Ballard, you must say more and shall say more, for you must not commit treasons and then huddle them up. Is this your Religio Catholica? Nay, rather it is Diabolica."

Ballard scorned to answer this, and the Clerk passed on to Savage, who retained his soldierly fatalism, and only shook his head. Barnwell again denied any purpose of injuring the Queen, and when Hatton spoke of his appearance in Richmond Park, he said all had been for conscience sake. So said Henry Donne, but with far more piety and dignity, adding, "fiat voluntas Dei;" and Thomas Salisbury was the only one who made any entreaty for pardon.

Speeches followed from the Attorney-General, and from Sir Christopher Hatton, and then the Lord Chief Justice Anderson pronounced the terrible sentence.

Richard Talbot sat with his head bowed between his hands. His son had begun listening with wide-stretched eyes and mouth, as boyhood hearkens to the dreadful, and with the hardness of an unmerciful time, too apt to confound pity with weakness; but when his eye fell on the man he had followed about as an elder playmate, and realised all it conveyed, his cheek blanched, his jaw fell, and he hardly knew how his father got him out of the court.

There was clearly no hope. The form of the trial was such as to leave no chance of escape from the utmost penalty. No witnesses had been examined, no degrees of guilt acknowledged, no palliations admitted. Perhaps men who would have brought the Spanish havoc on their native country, and have murdered their sovereign, were beyond the pale of compassion. All London clearly thought so; and yet, as Richard Talbot dwelt on their tones and looks, and remembered how they had been deluded and tempted, and made to believe their deed meritorious, he could not but feel exceeding pity for the four younger men. Ballard, Savage, and Barnwell might be justly doomed; even Babington had, by his own admission, entertained a fearfully evil design; but the other three had evidently dipped far less deeply into the plot, and Tichborne had only concealed it out of friendship. Yet the ruthless judgment condemned all alike! And why? To justify a yet more cruel blow! No wonder honest Richard Talbot felt sick at heart.

CHAPTER XXXIII

IN THE TOWER

"Here is a letter from Mr. Secretary to the Lieutenant of the Tower, Master Richard, bidding him admit you to speech of Babington," said Will Cavendish. "He was loath to give it, and nothing but my Lord Shrewsbury's interest would have done it, on my oath that you are a prudent and discreet man, who hath been conversant in these matters for many years."

"Yea, and that long before you were, Master Will," said Richard, always a little entertained by the young gentleman's airs of patronage. "However, I am beholden to you."

"That you may be, for you are the only person who hath obtained admission to the prisoners."

"Not even their wives?"

"Mrs. Tichborne is in the country—so best for her—and Mrs. Babington hath never demanded it. I trow there is not love enough between them to make them seek such a meeting. It was one of my mother's matches. Mistress Cicely would have cleaved to him more closely, though I am glad you saw through the fellow too well to give her to him. She would be a landless widow, whereas this Ratcliffe wife has a fair portion for her child."

"Then Dethick will be forfeited?"

"Ay. They say the Queen hath promised it to Raleigh."

"And there is no hope of mercy?"

"Not a tittle for any man of them! Nay, so far from it, her Majesty asked if there were no worse nor more extraordinary mode of death for them."

"I should not have thought it of her."

"Her Majesty hath been affrighted, Master Richard, sorely affrighted, though she put so bold a face upon it, and there is nothing a woman, who prides herself on her courage, can so little pardon."

So Richard, sad at heart, took boat and ascended the Thames for his melancholy visit. The gateway was guarded by a stalwart yeoman, halbert in hand, who detained him while the officer of the guard was called. On showing the letter from Sir Francis Walsingham, Mr. Talbot was conducted by this personage across the first paved court to the lodgings of the Lieutenant under so close a guard that he felt as if he were about to be incarcerated himself, and was there kept waiting in a sort of guard-room while the letter was delivered.

Presently the Lieutenant, Sir Owen Hopton, a well-bred courteous knight, appeared and saluted him with apologies for his detention and all these precautions, saying that the orders were to keep a close guard and to hinder all communication from without, so that nothing short of this letter would have obtained entrance for the bearer, whom he further required to set down his name and designation in full. Then, after asking how long the visitor wished to remain with the prisoners—for Tichborne and Babington were quartered together—he called a warder and committed Mr. Talbot to his guidance, to remain for two hours locked up in the cell.

"Sir," added Sir Owen, "it is superfluous to tell you that on coming out, you must either give me your word of honour that you convey nothing from the prisoners, or else submit to be searched."

Richard smiled, and observed that men were wont to trust his word of honour, to which the knight heartily replied that he was sure of it, and he then followed the warder up stone stairs and along vaulted passages, where the clang of their footsteps made his heart sink. The prisoners were in the White Tower, the central body of the grim building, and the warder, after unlocking the door, announced, with no unnecessary rudeness, but rather as if he were glad of any comfort to his charges, "Here, sirs, is a gentleman to visit you."

They had both risen at the sound of the key turning in the lock, and Antony Babington's face lighted up as he exclaimed, "Mr. Talbot! I knew you would come if it were possible."

"I come by my Lord's desire," replied Richard, the close wringing of his hand expressing feeling to which he durst not give way in words.

He took in at the moment that the room, though stern and strong, was not squalid. It was lighted fully by a window, iron-barred, but not small, and according to custom, the prisoners had been permitted to furnish, at their own expense, sufficient garniture for comfort, and as both were wealthy men, they were fairly provided, and they were not fettered. Both looked paler than when Richard had seen them in Westminster Hall two days previously. Antony was as usual neatly arrayed, with well-trimmed hair and beard, but Tichborne's hung neglected, and there was a hollow, haggard look about his eyes, as if of dismay at his approaching fate. Neither was, however, forgetful of courtesy, and as Babington presented Mr. Talbot to his friend, the greeting and welcome would have befitted the halls of Dethick or Tichborne.

"Sirs," said the young man, with a sad smile irradiating for a moment the restless despair of his countenance, "it is not by choice that I am an intruder on your privacy; I will abstract myself so far as is possible."

"I have no secrets from my Chidiock," cried Babington.