Series 3 > Mary Queen of Scots and the Babington plot

INTRODUCTION
Ixxxv
and had afterwards implicated his Grace in a certain false
charge of incontinency, of which (so far as we can now see)
the Archbishop was certainly not guilty, though he weakly
consented to pay Mawde and his confederates hush-money
to prevent the affair being made public. Nevertheless, it
leaked out; and Sandys was then obliged'to defend himself
before the Privy Council. He did so, however, to such
good purpose that Bernard Mawde, ‘ gentleman,’ and the
rest, were found guilty on the 8th of May 1583. Of him
the Court of Inquiry stated that he ‘ had lately served the
said Archbishop, and upon sundry misbehaviours and
abuses by him committed, was put out of his service, in
respect whereof he was become a malicious enemy against
the said Archbishop,’ and had been the prime-mover in
fabricating the false charge. His sentence was to give
back to the Archbishop all the money obtained by fraud,
to pay to the Queen £300, and to be imprisoned in the
Fleet for three years. Had he not ‘ humbly submitted
himself and confessed his offence,’ his ears would have
been slit ‘ as he had well deserved.’ 1
Three years’ imprisonment to run from the 8th of May
1583 should have kept this mischief-maker out of the way
of doing harm until the middle of May 1586. But already
in the middle of March he is sitting at table with Ballard
in the Plough Inn without Temple Bar ; and it was surely
not the first day that he had sat in that company. The
conclusion is obvious, that he had been let out in order
to spy upon the catholics. Walsingham knew there was
mischief afoot.
Mawde was eventually the only one of the agents 'pro¬
vocateurs, whose treachery the conspirators discovered. It
is mentioned by Babington in his last letter to Mary, and
1 John Le Neve, Protestant Bishops of the Church of England, ii. 42,
prints the above decree, etc.