Series 3 > Mary Queen of Scots and the Babington plot

Ixxxiv MARY STUART AND THE BABINGTON PLOT
London were privy thereto. Divers dined with him in Fish
Street, at the King’s Head, the day of his departure from
London.’1
Babington, being cross-examined over this, gave the
following slightly different account:
‘ In the last Lent this examinate took his leave with Ballard
at the Plough without Temple Bar, the night before Ballard’s
going. At which time there was in this examinate’s companie
Mr. Tiehborne and Mr. Barnewell. With Barnewell there was
Anthony Tunstall, Mawde, Dunne, and one Donnington, whom
this examinate knew not.’ {Below, p. 95.)
Mawde was an emissary of Walsingham. At this feast,
which was meant to throw the secretary off the scent, his
representative has found a place at the board !
6. Bernard Mawde.
Ballard started off for France, it being then about the
middle of Lent (about 13th to the 21st of March, O.S.), and
arrived at Rouen, where he took up his lodgings near the
Church of St. Nicaise, in company with the same Mawde,
whom Babington has just enumerated among the guests
at the Plough. This was the man whom Walsingham
says he ‘ used towards Ballard.’ 2 Evidently, therefore,
the secretary even at this early date knew that ‘ the grand
practitioner,’ as Gilbert afterwards styled him, was a
source of danger, and had already gone so far as to place
a special spy at his side. We must therefore describe
Mawde’s modus operandi, and seek for some explanation
of his present from his previous history.
Bernard Mawde had once been a ‘ gentleman in the house¬
hold ’ of Edwin Sandys, Protestant Archbishop of York,
1 Tyrrell’s Confession, R.O., Mary Queen of Scots, xix. 69.15 ; Boyd, viii.
653. On the last line of the page last mentioned, for Wade read Mawde.
2 Boyd, viii. 589.