Series 3 > Mary Queen of Scots and the Babington plot

INTRODUCTION xxxiii
no doubt banished from his mind his responsibility for
the cruelties with which he was familiar; and he could
appeal with a calm conscience to the All-Knowing to
record his innocence. ‘ My mind is free from malice.’
That is to say he saw nothing amiss in the system of
violence, cant, and fraud in which he was the principal
agent. He encouraged, assisted, and ‘ recompensed the
pains ’ of his informers, and by so doing he clearly made
himself, in the sight of Him whom he invoked, responsible
for the treachery and lies, and wickedness of their multi¬
plied and prolonged plotting against the life of his victim.
2. Thomas Morgan and Charles Paget.
The efforts of these spies were favoured by many cir¬
cumstances, above all by the venturesome and pugnacious
character of Thomas Morgan. He had acquired Mary’s
favour by his activity in finding messengers for her corre¬
spondence, and in dunning the French government for
the payment of her dowry, and she had rewarded him by
giving him her confidence, and the control over a large part
of her income, which was a great source of power among
the poor catholic exiles. Amongst these there had arisen
a quarrel between the ‘ Welsh ’ and the ‘ English ’ party ;
and Morgan, as the leader of the ‘ Welsh,’ had undertaken
a fierce vendetta against Dr. Allen, Father Persons, and the
other leaders of the ‘ English,’ and, as will presently be seen,
he even troubled the discipline of the college at Rheims.
Whatever the merits of the quarrel, it could eventually
only tell in Mary’s disfavour.
The restraints of the Bastille contributed to the same
result. Had Morgan been free, and able to make personal
inquiries into the credentials of those whom we shall see
palming themselves off upon him as friends and sym¬
pathisers, he would not, I feel sure, have been befooled
c