Series 3 > Mary Queen of Scots and the Babington plot

INTRODUCTION
clxxxv
ment as far as he could. But his attention having been
fixed on the earlier parts of the letter, he now passes the
postscript unmentioned (below, pp. 77-9).
Eventually he attested all the letters and the cipher-
key mechanically in almost exactly the same terms.1
The eight councillors who were conducting his examina¬
tion immediately countersigned his signature to each
letter: and this sham authentication has established
the text without the postscript, as we now know it. In
his readiness to oblige, Babington had been gradually led
to overlook an omission of grave importance for the
authenticity of the evidence.
To give greater eclat to their copy the government
report states that Babington, before subscribing, had
corrected ‘ two or three words mistakenly copied,’ and
also that he had signed ‘ every page ’ of the letters, whereas
all the available copies of that day show that he only
subscribed each letter.2 In this way was Babington’s
engaging frankness made to shroud the dark treasons of
Walsingham and his scoundrels.
Early in September Lord Burghley began to examine the
secretaries on the captured papers. At first an attempt
was made to frighten them. From the point of view of
Elizabeth’s councillors (as we have heard Phelippes say)
their lives were certainly forfeit, and this was constantly
dinned into their ears. But to threats they would not yield.
Before the 4th of September, however, we see from a
note of Lord Burghley’s that another method had been tried
1 The cipher-key is now, Domestic Elizabeth, cxciii. 54, attested 1
September. The other attestations are not dated ; but they were shown
to Curll and Nau, 2 September. The cipher-key may be the copy kept
by Curll; if not, it is the copy made by Phelippes. For Babington’s
authentications, see pp. 23, 30, 46.
2 R.O., Mary Queen of Scots, xviii. 51 ; xix. 9 ; Yelverton, xxxi. 206,
etc.; Caligula, C. ix. 238; Caligula, B. v. 164; Boyd, viii. 587; Labanoff,
vi. 394; Hardwicke State Papers, i. 233.