Series 3 > Mary Queen of Scots and the Babington plot

INTRODUCTION
cxci
Curll will seem quite incredible. ‘ They did show me the
two very letters written by me in cipher, and received by
Babington, with the true decipherments of both, word by
word.’ What can be clearer than that Curll thought that
the two original cipher-letters to Babington, which he,
Curll, had Englished, and put into cipher-characters, were
in the hands of the prosecution, together with the decipher¬
ments ? And yet it was only by gross deception that both
Curll, and also Nau, can have been separately brought to
that opinion. For Babington was told to burn them, and
no doubt he did so. Nor was it the secretaries only who
were deceived. Holinshed says, ‘ It were needless to ex¬
press more particularly the contents of his and her letters,
the originals themselves being extant and surprised.’ 1
How the deception was effected we cannot say. Perhaps
the artful edition with Babington’s signatures and those of
the Council played part in it; perhaps also Phelippes’s
copy of the ciphers, for his hand was not unlike that of
Curll, and he was fully primed with the malice necessary
to play the trick, for which his letter of 4 September 2
may have prepared the way. Anyhow, both secretaries
had now fallen, and were henceforward pliable at Wal-
singham’s will. They, too, * attested the Babington
correspondence, though slowly and against the grain.
‘ Then must I, and do confess to have deciphered the
like of the whole above written,’ wrote Curll on the 5th of
September, with similar forms for the other letters. Nau
on the 6th wrote, ‘ Je pense de vray que c’est la lettre
escripte par sa Majeste a Babington, comme il me souvient.’
The statement made at the trial, that both confessed
voluntarily, when they saw the papers, is a gross falsehood.
They were, and with reason, in fear for their lives ; and
they spoke only under constraint and after long resistance ;
1 Holinshed, Chvonicles, ed. 1808, iv. p. 925.
2 Above, p. clxxxviii.