Editing Babington Plot (section)

==Correspondence==
[[File:Hayez - Marie Stuart protestant de son innocence à la lecture de sa condamnation à mort, 1832, RF 2012 23.jpg|thumb|''[[Mary Stuart Proclaiming Her Innocence]]'' by [[Francesco Hayez]], 1832]]
Babington wrote to Mary:<ref>Robert Hutchinson, ''Elizabeth's Spymaster: Francis Walsingham and the Secret War that saved England'' (London: Phoenix, 2007), p. 128.</ref>
{{quote|Myself with ten gentlemen and a hundred of our followers will undertake the delivery of your royal person from the hands of your enemies. For the dispatch of the usurper, from the obedience of whom we are by the excommunication of her made free, there be six noble gentlemen, all my private friends, who for the zeal they bear to the Catholic cause and your Majesty's service will undertake that tragical execution.<ref>Pollen, p. 21.</ref><ref>John Hosack, ''Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Accusers'', 2 (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1874), p. 351.</ref>}}

This letter was received by Mary on 14 July 1586, who was in a dark mood knowing that her son had betrayed her in favour of Elizabeth,<ref>John Hosack, ''Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Accusers'', 2 (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1874), p. 358.</ref> and three days later she replied to Babington in a long letter in which she outlined the components of a successful rescue and the need to assassinate Elizabeth. She also stressed the necessity of foreign aid if the rescue attempt was to succeed:

{{quote|For I have long ago shown unto the foreign Catholic princes, what they have done against the King of Spain, and in the time the Catholics here remaining, exposed to all persecutions and cruelty, do daily diminish in number, forces, means and power. So as, if remedy be not thereunto speedily provided, I fear not a little but they shall become altogether unable for ever to rise again and to receive any aid at all, whensoever it were offered. Then for mine own part, I pray you to assure our principal friends that, albeit I had not in this cause any particular interest in this case... I shall be always ready and most willing to employ therein my life and all that I have, or may ever look for, in this world."<ref>For the full text of the letter, see Pollen, pp. 38–46. The spelling is modernised for clarity.</ref><ref>John Hosack, ''Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Accusers'', 2 (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1874), pp. 359–360.</ref><ref>Conyers Read, [https://archive.org/details/b2897993x/page/32/mode/2up ''Bardon Papers'' (London: Camden Society, 1909), pp. 33–40]</ref>}}

Mary, in her response letter, advised the would-be rescuers to confront the [[Puritan]]s and to link her case to the Queen of England as her heir.

{{quote|These pretexts may serve to found and establish among all associations, or considerations general, as done only for your preservation and defence, as well in religions as lands, lives and goods, against the oppressions and attempts of said Puritans, without directly writing, or giving out anything against the Queen, but rather showing yourselves willing to maintain her, and her lawful heirs after her, not naming me.<ref>John Hosack, ''Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Accusers'', 2 (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1874), p. 362.</ref>}}
Mary was clear in her support for the murder of Elizabeth if that would have led to her liberty and Catholic domination of England. In addition, Queen Mary supported in that letter, and in another one to Ambassador Bernardino de Mendoza, a Spanish invasion of England.

The letter was again intercepted and deciphered by Phelippes. But this time, Phelippes, on the direction of Walsingham, kept the original and made a copy, adding a request for the names of the conspirators:<ref>Lisa M. Barksdale-Shaw, "That You Are Both Decipher'd: Revealing Espionage and Staging Written Evidence in Early Modern England", Katherine Ellison & Susan Kim, ''A Material History of Medieval and Early Modern Ciphers: Cryptography and the History of Literacy'' (Routledge, 2018), pp. 122–124. {{doi|10.4324/9781315267449}}</ref><ref>Jessie Childs, ''God's Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England'' (Oxford, 2014), p. 127: Conyers Read, [https://archive.org/details/b2897993x/page/128/mode/2up ''Bardon Papers'' (London: Camden Society, 1909), pp. 129–133]</ref>

{{quote|I would be glad to know the names and quelityes of the sixe gentlemen which are to accomplish the dessignement, for that it may be, I shall be able uppon knowledge of the parties to give you some further advise necessarye to be followed therein; and even so do I wish to be made acquainted with the names of all such principall persons ... as also from time to time particularlye how you proceede and as sone as you may for the same purpose who bee alredye and how farr every one privye hereunto.<ref>Sheila R. Richards, ''Secret Writing in the Public Records'' (London: HMSO, 1974), pp. 54–55.</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/spies/transcript/ma2_t.htm|title=National Archives (UK) transcript of the forged postscript|access-date=9 February 2007| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070302162943/http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/spies/transcript/ma2_t.htm| archive-date= 2 March 2007 | url-status= live}}</ref><ref>Cf. Pollen, pp. 45–46.</ref>}}

Then, a letter was sent that would destroy Mary's life.

{{quote|Let the great plot commence.<br>Signed<br>Mary}}