Babington Plot (1586): The Conspiracy to Kill Elizabeth I

The Babington Plot was a Catholic conspiracy in 1586 to assassinate Elizabeth I of England and put Mary, Queen of Scots on the throne. Its leaders believed they were writing to Mary in secret, but every letter passed through the hands of Elizabeth’s secretary of state, Sir Francis Walsingham, whose code-breaker read them all. The plot failed completely and gave the English government the evidence it needed to try and execute Mary.

Background: a queen in captivity

Mary, Queen of Scots had fled to England in 1568 after being forced to abdicate in Scotland. As a Catholic great-granddaughter of Henry VII, she was the strongest claimant to Elizabeth’s throne, and for many English Catholics and foreign powers she was the rightful queen. She spent eighteen years in custody, moving between castles and manor houses in the Midlands and the north.

The religious stakes had risen sharply after 1570, when Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth in the bull Regnans in Excelsis and released her subjects from obedience. A series of conspiracies followed, including the Ridolfi Plot (1571) and the Throckmorton Plot (1583), each aiming to free Mary. In 1584 Elizabeth’s councillors organised the Bond of Association, and Parliament’s Act for the Queen’s Safety (1585) allowed anyone in whose favour a plot was made to be tried if they were privy to it.

By 1585 Mary was held at Tutbury and then at Chartley Manor in Staffordshire under a strict Puritan keeper, Sir Amias Paulet. Her correspondence with the outside world had been almost entirely cut off.

The secret channel

Walsingham, who ran an extensive network of informers in England and abroad, decided to give Mary a hidden line of communication that he controlled. The key agent was Gilbert Gifford, a young English Catholic trained for the priesthood on the Continent, who had been arrested on his return to England in December 1585 and agreed to work for Walsingham.

Gifford arranged for letters to be carried into and out of Chartley inside a watertight case placed in the beer barrels delivered by a local brewer from Burton. Mary’s secretaries wrote in a cipher known as a nomenclator, which combined substitute symbols for letters with code signs for common words and names. Each packet went to Walsingham’s office, where Thomas Phelippes, a skilled linguist and decipherer, copied and decoded it before it was resealed and sent on.

The plot takes shape

Meanwhile a separate conspiracy was forming in London. John Ballard, a Catholic priest who had travelled in disguise, encouraged a group of young Catholic gentlemen to support an invasion supported by Spain and the Catholic League in France. Anthony Babington, born in 1561 to a wealthy Derbyshire family, had once served as a page in the household of the Earl of Shrewsbury, Mary’s keeper, and had earlier helped carry her letters.

The plan combined four elements: a foreign invasion, a rising of English Catholics, the rescue of Mary, and the killing of Elizabeth by six gentlemen with access to the court. One of them, John Savage, a former soldier, had already sworn to kill the queen.

Around 6 July 1586 Babington wrote a long letter to Mary setting out the scheme, including the “dispatch of the usurper”. On 17 July Mary replied. In her letter, as deciphered by Phelippes, she approved the enterprise and gave detailed advice on how the invasion and her rescue should be organised, while asking to be informed when the six gentlemen were ready to act. Phelippes is said to have marked the copy he sent to Walsingham with a small drawing of a gallows.

The forged postscript

To uncover every conspirator, Phelippes added a postscript to Mary’s letter, written in her cipher, asking Babington for the names of the six gentlemen. This forgery is well documented from the surviving papers. Babington never sent the names, but by then the government already knew enough.

Arrests, trials and executions

Ballard was arrested on 4 August 1586. Babington, realising he was suspected, fled with several companions and hid in St John’s Wood north of London and then near Harrow, where they were caught in mid-August. Church bells were rung in London to celebrate.

On 11 August Mary was invited to go hunting and was instead taken to nearby Tixall, where she was held for about two weeks while her rooms at Chartley were searched and her papers and secretaries were seized.

Babington and his associates were tried in September 1586. On 20 September seven of them, including Babington, Ballard and Savage, were hanged, drawn and quartered in St Giles’s Fields, Holborn. The brutality of the executions caused public disgust, and Elizabeth ordered that the seven men executed on 21 September be left hanging until dead before the remainder of the sentence was carried out. One of the condemned, Chidiock Tichborne, wrote a celebrated short poem, known as his Elegy, in the Tower of London before his death.

Key people

• Anthony Babington (1561–1586): the young Catholic gentleman who coordinated the conspirators and wrote to Mary.
• Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587): the captive queen whose approval of the plot sealed her fate.
• Sir Francis Walsingham (c. 1532–1590): Elizabeth’s principal secretary and spymaster, who controlled the channel and timed the arrests.
• Thomas Phelippes (c. 1556–1625): Walsingham’s decipherer, who decoded the letters and forged the postscript.
• Gilbert Gifford (c. 1560–1590): the double agent who ran the beer-barrel post; he later returned to France and died in prison in Paris.

Consequences

The plot gave Walsingham and Lord Burghley what they had long wanted: written evidence, in Mary’s own cipher, that she had approved a plan against Elizabeth’s life. Under the Act for the Queen’s Safety, Mary was tried at Fotheringhay Castle in October 1586 and condemned, leading to the Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots in February 1587.

Mary’s death removed the Catholic alternative to Elizabeth inside England and made Philip II of Spain the leading champion of a Catholic restoration. It added to the reasons for the Spanish Armada of 1588.

Myths and facts

“Mary’s cipher was broken by brilliant code-breaking alone.” Phelippes was skilled, but the main advantage was that Walsingham controlled the channel from the beginning, with access to every packet and to captured key material.

“The plot was invented by Walsingham.” The conspiracy was real and was organised by Catholic exiles and English Catholics. Walsingham’s role was to watch it develop, feed it through his own post and choose the moment to strike.

Timeline

• 1585, December: Gilbert Gifford is detained in England and agrees to work for Walsingham; Mary is moved to Chartley.
• 1586, January: The beer-barrel post to Chartley begins operating under Walsingham’s control.
• 1586, c. 6 July: Babington writes to Mary outlining the plot.
• 1586, 17 July: Mary replies in cipher, approving the plan.
• 1586, 4 August: John Ballard is arrested in London.
• 1586, 11 August: Mary is taken to Tixall while her papers are seized.
• 1586, mid-August: Babington and his companions are captured near Harrow.
• 1586, 20–21 September: Fourteen conspirators are executed in St Giles’s Fields.

Why it matters

The Babington Plot is a classic case in the history of espionage and cryptography: a cipher system was only as safe as the courier who carried it. Politically, it ended the long stalemate over Mary, Queen of Scots, leading directly to her execution and pushing England and Spain closer to open war.