At nine o’clock the next day, Wednesday 15 October 1586, Mary appeared at her trial, dressed in black velvet and a white cap and veil. She limped in, barely able to walk, and her steward Melville and her doctor Bourgoing had to take her arms. Her maid took her train and her surgeon, apothecary and three women came with her, including her favourite, Jane Kennedy and her secretary’s sister, Elizabeth Curle. It was the most intimidating court – with a large throne at one end, symbolising Elizabeth, and rows of men watching her. Opposite the throne was Mary’s own scarlet velvet chair. Thirty-six noblemen sat in judgement over her fate, including Cecil and Walsingham, as well as Talbot. As Mary moved forward, she presumed she was to sit on the large throne and when she was directed otherwise, she cried out, ‘I am a queen by right of birth and my place should be there under the dais.’ As she sat down, she noted how there were ‘many counsellors here, but not one for me’.1
The Lord Chancellor laid out why the court had been convened. Mary refuted once more that the court could rule over a queen and also reminded the peers that she had entered voluntarily ‘under promise of assistance and aid, against my enemies and not as a subject’, which she said she could prove if she had her papers. The Lord Chancellor denied that Elizabeth had ever promised Mary anything. Strictly speaking, he was right.
Mary refuted the accusations that she had known of the plot and agreed to it, and the further accusation that she had shown the plotters ‘the ways and means’. She put on a brilliantly strong defence, saying that ‘I knew not Babington. I never received any letters from him, nor wrote any to him. I never plotted the destruction of the queen. If you want to prove it, then produce my letters signed with my own hand.’
When the counsel informed her that they had letters between her and Babington, Mary asked to see them and declared that they could have been forged – as had happened so often in her reign. She felt utterly sure of her position. She said that she could not be blamed for the ‘criminal projects of a few desperate men without my knowledge’.
But then the counsel produced copies of the letters: Babington’s letter to Mary requesting assistance and offering ‘all my private friends, who for the zeal they bear the Catholic cause and your Majesty’s service, will undertake that tragical execution’.2 And then her return, her letter to Babington in which she replied to assent, expressing her concern that the Catholics in England were losing power and her desire to help them ‘rise again’, making it clear she wished for a Spanish invasion – including the dubiously added postscript asking for names and other information of Babington’s friends, the ‘six gentlemen’. Their final flourish, their pièce de résistance, Walsingham’s master stroke: the copy of Mary’s letter that the cunning Phelippes had translated back into the code. This was the shock. It showed Mary and the whole court that he and Walsingham had known all. Every time that Mary and her secretaries congratulated themselves, wrote a letter in their careful codes, folded it up in the beer keg – it had been for nothing. Walsingham’s men had known every symbol of the code that Mary and her secretaries had produced with such care.
Mary’s shock was terrible. Quickly, she understood that someone had betrayed her. But she still fought back and thought on her feet. For the list of ciphers had been taken from her drawers in Astley – it would be easy enough for anyone to forge a letter using one of these. She turned directly to Walsingham and accused him of forgery. He defended himself by saying, ‘I have done nothing unbeseeming an honest man.’3 Mary took it as his acknowledgement that any act of forgery was wrong (really, he was saying that he would do anything for the safety of the queen). Mary burst into tears and cried, ‘I would never make shipwreck of my soul by conspiring the destruction of my dearest sister.’4 She thought that her argument of forgery was succeeding.
The court adjourned for lunch at one, after which the most damning evidence appeared: the words of Mary’s secretaries. Mary was shocked and surprised but defended herself with gusto, saying that additions to her letters could have been made – and that she should not be convicted on the words of those who worked for her. And as her secretaries had not been called as witnesses for cross-examination, how could this be fair? The letter had not been written by her hand, either in draft or in code. She suggested that Nau had sometimes added further material of his own to her letters. She generously excused them for ‘I see plainly what they have said is from fear of torture and death. Under promise of their lives and in order to save themselves, they have excused themselves at my expense, fancying that I could thereby more easily save myself . . . not knowing the manner in which I am treated.’ In other words, her secretaries could never have imagined she would be put on trial. Her words were clear and brilliantly convincing: ‘I am not to be convicted except by mine own word or writing.’5
Mary’s self-defence was strong, confounding at a stroke all John Knox’s arguments about women’s weaker understanding. She even raised the possibility that Walsingham had fabricated the entire case and intrigued with Ballard and the rest, prompting a somewhat equivocal defence from the spymaster: ‘as a private person, I have done nothing unworthy of an honest man, and as a Secretary of State, nothing unbefitted of my duty’. But his audience would have known it not impossible for Walsingham to have invented the whole thing – and Mary sowed some seeds of doubt in their minds.
The queen was surrounded by hostile men on all sides but she kept her dignity, challenging them on every point. Where was their gallantry? And why be so threatened by a middle-aged lady who was in constant pain? As she pointed out, she could barely walk and ‘I spend most of my time confined to bed with sickness’. She declared that her age and her poor health ‘both prevent me from wishing to resume the reins of government. I have perhaps only two or three years to live in this world, and I do not aspire to any public position, especially when I consider the pain and desperance which meet those who wish to do right.’6 Most poignantly, she said she barely knew how to be a queen, since she had not reigned for twenty years.
The counsel carried on in trying to prove that she had known and understood and agreed to the death of Elizabeth when she wrote ‘then shall it be time to set the six gentlemen to work taking order, upon the accomplishment of their design, I may suddenly be transported out of this place’. The argument turned specific, with Mary claiming she did not know what ‘work’ the men would be embarked upon. But the very fact that she talked of ‘forces in readiness, inside and outside the realm’ was enough to prove that she desired an invasion, and she connected it to her freedom – and this was sufficient.7
Mary was accused again of having pronounced herself Queen of England, and she said once more that it was done in her youth.
The court was manifestly unfair, but what did it matter? It was sham justice – and Mary had been pitched into it by her reluctance to create the same sham justice after the death of Darnley. She demanded to speak to a full Parliament or in an interview and ‘speak personally to the queen, who would, I think, show more regard of another queen’. She said God would judge her correctly.8
Everything turned on the evidence of the secretaries and it was clear to Cecil that, if the fig leaf of due process was to be preserved, then they would have to be questioned by the commissioners. Cecil was infuriated by Mary’s spirited defence and he did not want her there when the secretaries were questioned. For, confronted by their beautiful, dignified queen to whom both were still devoted, they might very well retract their confessions or claim they had been given under torture. Claude Nau had been with Mary since 1574 and might have been swayed by his old mistress. It would appear that Nau had not only been interrogated and threatened by Walsingham, but also that he had received promises of a safe future – for he would live with Walsingham’s family before returning to France. But promises were as nothing, and, with Mary face to face, Nau might have judged that the wrath of the King of France would be too great to risk and thus recant his testimony.
Mary’s defence was too effective. The trial turned chaotic as various lords shouted out accusations and Cecil decided to close matters for the evening.
Mary passed a poor night, and next morning asked if she could address the lords directly. She protested how she had suffered accusations from all sides on the previous day, attacked even for claiming the throne of England when she had been a teenager. The lords had broken their agreement, for she had assented only to answer on the point that she had tried to assassinate Elizabeth. As she made clear, it was no fair trial – she had been taken by surprise, deprived of her papers and secretaries and then given no indication of the accusations that would be ranged against her. Unlike her former trial, this time she was guilty, but still she had not been properly treated. She had been attacked and importuned with little other reason than to take her by surprise and try to wrong-foot her into inconsistencies and confessions. Mary’s address had an effect – and perhaps some of the gentlemen had thought better of their behaviour overnight. Cecil gave her a polite reply, and during the day’s proceedings, declared that while she was being questioned on the issue of the plot to kill Elizabeth, other evidence and issues must be admitted to elucidate the matter. But otherwise, there was nothing new and the lords ran over all the accusations they had posed on the previous day.
Again and again, Mary said she knew nothing of the plots and when Cecil asked her what she would have done in the event of a Spanish invasion, she said she was not responsible for Spanish acts or motivations. ‘I desired nothing but my own deliverance’, she reiterated. The court tried to accuse her of the blackest crimes – and she said all she had ever wanted was to be free. It did not look good for the government, and Cecil had been right not to stage the trial in London – as public opinion could have swelled in support of the queen. Mary was not above adjusting the truth in the promotion of her own image of a victim of her people’s ingratitude and England’s cruelty. As she said, she had given too much tolerance to Protestants. ‘It has always been the cause of my ruin for my subjects became sad and haughty, and abused my clemency.’9 The source of her ‘ruin’ was not tolerating Protestants. In truth, the lords had been used to so much power before her reign that they would have continued to do as they pleased. Although Moray had framed her, she had played into his hands; the source of ‘ruin’ was her reluctance to publicly chase down the killers of Darnley and put Bothwell on trial. Bothwell had indeed become sad and haughty and terrifically abused her clemency.
The argument dragged on, the watching knights shuffled their heels and Cecil worried that some of the lords might be swayed by Mary. He lost his patience and told her that everything that had happened to her – her period of house arrest, her imprisonment and now her trial – were all her own fault. He even made the outrageously untruthful argument that Elizabeth had been attempting to secure her freedom in conversation with James. ‘Ah, I see you are my adversary’, said Mary.10 She was coming to understand that he had been plotting against her all along.
Mary again requested that she be able to speak in front of Parliament and be allowed a private conversation with Elizabeth. She told the lords that she gave them her pardon and turned to give a few words to Walsingham, which did not please him. She faced the assembled lords once more and said that ‘I place my cause in the hands of God.’ She then departed the room, offering the table of lawyers her pardon as she passed.
Elizabeth had requested that the court did not pronounce before she had reviewed the evidence and Cecil suspended the commission and planned to reconvene more privately, without Mary – the fewer lords present, the less likely anyone would be to be won over by her. Mary, although sick and lame, was still a queen and an orator to rival her cousin. As Paulet complained, Mary had conjured ‘long and artificial speeches’11 in an attempt to throw blame onto the queen and council. She had succeeded in raising doubt in the minds of those around her.
Mary’s speeches and conduct at the trial had been incisive and skilled and she was justly proud of herself. She had done all she could – and she was hopeful she would be invited to speak to Parliament. As Bourgoing recalled, ‘I had not seen her so joyous, nor so constantly at her ease for the last seven years.’12
The commissioners attended the Star Chamber in Westminster on 25 October. Much of the legitimacy now depended on the secretaries, Nau and Curle, who had written the offending letter, and they were brought out in person and questioned at length. All of the nobles, save one, found Mary guilty of ‘compassing and imagining since June 1st matters tending to the death and destruction of the Queen of England’.13 Only Lord Zouche was brave enough to raise objections. Mary had not been allowed to examine the evidence against her or give a full defence against it or use her counsellors to cross-examine those who accused her or implicated her. Even Anne Boleyn, accused of adultery, had been allowed to defend herself. Ultimately, Cecil, the council and Elizabeth had been cowardly; trying Mary and examining her witnesses when she could not be there. It was a poor reflection on the English courts. And yet, unlike the previous show trial of the casket letters, Mary was guilty.