Note 39 — Chapter I

Mr. Tytler’s view is that one of the chief objects of Elizabeth and the English ministers in entering into the League was to make it easier to deal with the Queen of Scots. “Two months before,” he says, “her indefatigable minister, Walsingham, had detected that famous conspiracy known by the name of ‘Babington’s Plot,’ in which Mary was implicated, and for which she afterwards suffered. It had been resolved by Leicester, Burghley, and Walsingham, and probably by the queen herself, that this should be the last plot of the Scottish queen and the Roman Catholic faction; that the time had come when sufferance was criminal and weak; that the life of the unfortunate, but still active and formidable, captive was inconsistent with Elizabeth’s safety and the liberty of the realm. Hence the importance attached to this League, which bound the two kingdoms together, in a treaty offensive and defensive, for the protection of the Protestant faith, and separated the young king from his mother” (History of Scotland, viii. 288).