ke, which she had hitherto only encouraged underhand, or on certain
pretexts of retaliation; and she sent him with a fleet of twenty-one
ships, carrying above eleven thousand soldiers, to make war upon the
Spanish settlements in the West Indies.

But if all these measures seemed likely to afford her kingdom sufficient
means of protection against the attacks of a foreign enemy, it was
difficult for her to regard her own person as equally well secured
against the dark conspiracies of her catholic subjects, instigated as
they were by the sanguinary maxims of the Romish see, fostered by the
atrocious activity of the emissaries of Philip, and sanctioned by the
authority of the queen of Scots, to whom homage was rendered by her
party as rightful sovereign of the British isles.

During the festival of Easter 1586, some English priests of the seminary
at Rheims had encouraged a fanatical soldier named Savage to vow the
death of the queen. About the same time Ballard, also a priest of this
seminary, was concerting in France, with Mendoca and the fugitive lord
Paget, the means of procuring an invasion of the country during the
absence of its best troops in Flanders. Repairing to England, Ballard
communicated both these schemes to Anthony Babington, a gentleman who
had been gained over on a visit to France by the bishop of Glasgow,
Mary's ambassador there, and whose vehement attachment to her cause had
rendered him capable of any enterprise, however criminal or desperate,
for her deliverance. Babington entered into both plots with eagerness;
but he suggested, that so essential a part of the action as the
assassination of the queen ought not to be intrusted to one adventurer;
and he lost no time in associating five others in the vow of Savage,
himself undertaking the part of setting free the captive Mary. With her
he had previously been in correspondence, having frequently taken the
charge of transmitting to her by secret channels her letters from
France; and he immediately imparted to her this new design for her
restoration to liberty and advancement to the English throne. There is
full evidence that Mary approved it in all its parts; that in several
successive letters she gave Babington counsels or directions relative to
its execution; and that she promised to the perpetrators of the murder
of Elizabeth every reward which it should hereafter be in her power to
bestow.

All this time the vigilant eye of Walsingham was secretly f