This conversation took place as the father and son were making their way to a house in Westminster, where Antony Babington's wife was with her mother, Lady Ratcliffe. It had been a match made by Lady Shrewsbury, and it was part of Richard's commission to see and confer with the family. It was not a satisfactory interview. The wife was a dull childish little thing, not yet sixteen; and though she cried, she had plainly never lived in any real sympathy or companionship with her husband, who had left her with her parents, while leading the life of mingled amusement and intrigue which had brought him to his present state; and the mother, a hard-featured woman, evidently thought herself cheated and ill used. She railed at Babington and at my Lady Countess by turns; at the one for his ruinous courses and neglect of her daughter, at the other for having cozened her into giving her poor child to a treacherous Papist, who would be attainted in blood, and thus bring her poor daughter and grandchild to poverty. The old lady really seemed to have lost all pity for her son-in-law in indignation on her daughter's account, and to care infinitely less for the saving of his life than for the saving of his estate. Nor did the young wife herself appear to possess much real affection for poor Antony, of whom she had seen very little. There must have been great faults on his side; yet certainly Richard felt that there was some excuse for him in the mother-in-law, and that if the unfortunate young man could have married Cicely his lot might have been different. Yet the good Captain felt all the more that if Cis had been his own he still would never have given her to Babington.
CHAPTER XXXII. WESTMINSTER HALL.
Beneath the noble roof of Westminster Hall, with the morning sun streaming in high aloft, at seven in the morning of the 14th of September, the Court met for the trial of Antony Babington and his confederates. The Talbot name and recommendation obtained ready admission, and Lord Talbot, Richard, and his son formed one small party together with William Cavendish, who had his tablets, on which to take notes for the use of his superior, Walsingham, who was, however, one of the Commissioners.
There they sat, those supreme judges, the three Chief-Justices in their scarlet robes of office forming the centre of the group, which also numbered Lords Cobham and Buckhurst, Sir Francis Knollys, Sir Christopher Hatton, and most of the chief law officers of the Crown.
"Is Mr. Secretary Walsingham one of the judges here?" asked Diccon. "Methought he had been in the place of the accuser."
"Peace, boy, and listen," said his father; "these things pass my comprehension."
Nevertheless Richard had determined that if the course of the trial should offer the least opportunity, he would come forward and plead his former knowledge of young Babington as a rash and weak-headed youth, easily played upon by designing persons, but likely to take to heart such a lesson as this, and become a true and loyal subject. If he could obtain any sort of mitigation for the poor youth, it would be worth the risk.
The seven conspirators were brought in, and Richard could hardly keep a rush of tears from his eyes at the sight of those fine, high- spirited young men, especially Antony Babington, the playfellow of his own children.
Antony was carefully dressed in his favourite colour, dark green, his hair and beard trimmed, and his demeanour calm and resigned. The fire was gone from his blue eye, and his bright complexion had faded, but there was an air of dignity about him such as he had never worn before. His eyes, as he took his place, wandered round the vast assembly, and rested at length on Mr. Talbot, as though deriving encouragement and support from the look that met his. Next to him was another young man with the same look of birth and breeding, namely Chidiock Tichborne; but John Savage, an older man, had the reckless bearing of the brutalised soldiery of the Netherlandish wars. Robert Barnwell, with his red, shaggy brows and Irish physiognomy, was at once recognised by Diccon. Donne and Salisbury followed; and the seventh conspirator, John Ballard, was carried in a chair. Even Diccon's quick eye could hardly have detected the ruffling, swaggering, richly-clad Captain Fortescue in this tonsured man in priestly garb, deadly pale, and unable to stand, from the effects of torture, yet with undaunted, penetrating eyes, all unsubdued.
After the proclamation, Oyez, Oyez, and the command to keep silence, Sandys, the Clerk of the Crown, began the proceedings. "John Ballard, Antony Babington, John Savage, Robert Barnwell, Chidiock Tichborne, Henry Donne, Thomas Salisbury, hold up your hands and answer." The indictment was then read at great length, charging them with conspiring to slay the Queen, to deliver Mary, Queen of Scots, from custody, to stir up rebellion, to bring the Spaniards to invade England, and to change the religion of the country. The question was first put to Ballard, Was he guilty of these treasons or not guilty?
Ballard's reply was, "That I procured the delivery of the Queen of Scots, I am guilty; and that I went about to alter the religion, I am guilty; but that I intended to slay her Majesty, I am not guilty."
"Not with his own hand," muttered Cavendish, "but for the rest-"
"Pity that what is so bravely spoken should be false," thought Richard, "yet it may be to leave the way open to defence."
Sandys, however, insisted that he must plead to the whole indictment, and Anderson, the Chief-Justice of Common Pleas, declared that he must deny the whole generally, or confess it generally; while Hatton put in, "Ballard, under thine own hand are all things confessed, therefore now it is much vanity to stand vaingloriously in denying it."
"Then, sir, I confess I am guilty," he said, with great calmness, though it was the resignation of all hope.
The same question was then put to Babington. He, with "a mild countenance, sober gesture," and all his natural grace, stood up and spoke, saying "that the time for concealment was past, and that he was ready to avow how from his earliest infancy he had believed England to have fallen from the true religion, and had trusted to see it restored thereto. Moreover, he had ever a deep love and compassion for the Queen of Scots. Some," he said, "who are yet at large, and who are yet as deep in the matter as I-"
"Gifford, Morgan, and another," whispered Cavendish significantly.
"Have they escaped ?" asked Diccon.
"So 'tis said."
"The decoy ducks," thought Richard.
Babington was explaining that these men had proposed to him a great enterprise for the rescue and restoration of the Queen of Scots, and the re-establishment of the Catholic religion in England by the sword of the Prince of Parma. A body of gentlemen were to attack Chartley, free Mary, and proclaim her Queen, and at the same time Queen Elizabeth was to be put to death by some speedy and skilful method.
"My Lords," he said, "I swear that all that was in me cried out against the wickedness of thus privily slaying her Majesty."
Some muttered, "The villain! he lies," but the kindly Richard sighed inaudibly, "True, poor lad! Thou must have given thy conscience over to strange keepers to be thus led astray."
And Babington went on to say that they had brought this gentleman, Father Ballard, who had wrought with him to prove that his scruples were weak, carnal, and ungodly, and that it would be a meritorious deed in the sight of Heaven thus to remove the heretic usurper.
Here the judges sternly bade him not to blaspheme, and he replied, with that "soberness and good grace" which seems to have struck all the beholders, that he craved patience and pardon, meaning only to explain how he had been led to the madness which he now repented, understanding himself to have been in grievous error, though not for the sake of any temporal reward; but being blinded to the guilt, and assured that the deed was both lawful and meritorious. He thus had been brought to destruction through the persuasions of this Ballard.