After Mary Queen of Scots stepped down from her throne in Scotland in 1567, the Babington Plot was hatched by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth. This plot would frame Mary for conspiring to kill Protestant Queen Elizabeth and reclaim England’s throne under the guise of making England a Catholic nation once again.
In 1584, the legal groundwork was laid to set up Mary’s future indictment with the introduction of a “Bond of Association.” Approved by Elizabeth’s Privy Council, it removed anyone from the line of succession who is accused of or has another individual plot against the Queen. It applied even if an individual claimed ignorance of the assassination attempt.
Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s present Secretary of State and head of espionage planned to accuse Mary of attempting to assassinate Elizabeth and have Mary executed. As a part of this attempt, Gilbert Gifford, an exile who worked to restore the monarchy’s Catholic status by plotting against Queen Elizabeth, was offered his freedom after his own arrest, if he became a spy for Walsingham.
Gifford’s main task was to re-start communications with Queen Mary because Walsingham broke off correspondence with her due to an earlier assassination plot she was suspected of in 1584.
Walsingham used Gifford to talk with Mary and her supporters because Gifford raised no suspicion. A town brewer acted as a mule to dispatch messages to Mary via a water-proof cover on beer barrels, protecting the message like a client portal protects information. Gifford coordinated this message system with Guillaume L’Aubespine, France’s ambassador, in England.
Under confinement, Queen Mary was informed by Thomas Philips, another double agent, to expect a message from Gifford. Future communication would be relayed through diplomatic correspondence, reaching L’Aubespine, then Gifford, then Walsingham.
Walsingham encrypted correspondence for Mary with the help of a linguist and cryptographer. The royal encryption and decoding system revolved around a two-prong approach. Encoding and decoding involved character replacement for less or more commonly used letters depending on the need. The message would then be deduced based on the general context.
Walsingham’s encryption methods enabled the crown to decrypt and duplicate the correspondence. Walsingham resealed each piece of correspondence and returned it to Gifford for concealment. Gifford handed it off to the town’s brewer who got it to Mary through “hidden” transportation. Mary’s correspondence followed the opposite series of steps.
Babington’s correspondence to Mary was seized and decoded before it reached Mary. She confirmed all of the assassination plot’s details, signaling her support of the importance of a foreign power to support a successful overthrow. This letter would serve as damning evidence to charge, convict and execute Mary and Babbington.
Babington eventually received Walsingham’s faked correspondence but was unable to respond because he was arrested under suspicion as a conspirator for the assassination of Queen Mary.
Along with her co-conspirators, Queen Mary was tried for the assassination conspiracy. She maintained her innocence at trial, despite incriminating correspondence with Gifford and was sentenced to death. Mary was beheaded in the presence of 300 of her countrymen and women.
People don’t get their heads chopped off anymore, but when security is breached during any transaction, they can lose their jobs – and have.
