The Black chamber

The babington plot

Since she abdicated from the throne of Scotland in 1567 and fled to England, Mary, Queen of Scots, the Roman Catholic claimant to the throne of England, came under the custody of the protestant Queen of England, Elizabeth I. Mary became the focus of many plots and intrigues against the Queen and because of this threat, she was imprisoned for eighteen years.

Anthony Babington, a member of the Catholic gentry, led and organized the English Catholics against Elizabeth. Understanding he couldn't depose Queen Elisabeth without murdering her, he began to plot against her in 1586.

The conspirators were agreed that the Babington Plot, as it became known, could not proceed without the blessing of Mary, but there was no apparent way to communicate with her. Babington compiled a detailed letter in which he outlined his scheme:

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,[...], there be six noble gentlemen, all my private friends [...]

The message was put inside a beer barrel in order to sneak it past Mary's guards. As an extra precaution, Babington enciphered his letter so that even if it was intercepted by Mary's jailer, it would be indecipherable and the plot would not be uncovered. He used a cipher which was not a simple substitution, but rather a nomenclator.

The responsibility of conveying the message was given to Gilbert Gifford, a young catholic who was clever enough to use aliases and his numerous contacts within the Catholic community to travel the country without suspicion.

But Gifford was actually a double agent. Back in 1585, he had written to Sir Francis Walsingham, Principal Secretary to Queen Elizabeth, offering his services as a spy. Each time Gifford collected a message to or from Mary, he would first take it to Walsingham.

The vigilant spymaster would then break the seal on each letter, make a copy, and then reseal the original letter with an identical stamp before handing it back to Gifford. The apparently untouched letter could then be delivered to Mary or her correspondents, who remained unaware to what was going on.

Walsingham easily broke the cipher, and willing to know the names of allthe conspirators, he encoded and sent back a forged message to Babington, impersonating Mary:

"I would be glad to know the names and qualities of the six gentlemen which are to accomplish the designment..."