So Robert lived through his gloomiest hour. He felt in that moment that death would have been preferable to the plight in which he found himself.

When Robert was suffering in the Netherlands, news of the Babington Conspiracy swept through England. Babington, a young man fascinated by the charm of the Queen of Scots when he had been a page in her household, had been persuaded by a group of men to communicate with the Queen with a view to effecting the assassination of Elizabeth and the setting of Mary upon the throne.

Mary had lost none of her impetuosity during the years and, to her, plotting was an exciting pastime.

The conspirators had forgotten what elaborate spy-systems had been set in motion by the alert Walsingham.

Walsingham understood what was happening in the early stages of the plot, for a priest, Gilbert Gifford, having been sent to England secretly to work against Protestantism with the help of the great Catholic families, was captured. Walsingham promised to spare his life if he would become his spy.

This the priest agreed to do and, when Mary was removed from Tutbury to Chartley, Gifford arranged with the brewer who supplied the Chartley beer to convey letters to and from Mary. These were wrapped in waterproof cases and put through the bunghole of the kegs—letters going to Mary in full kegs, hers coming out in empty ones. Gifford took these letters and, before passing them on to those for whom they were intended, handed them to Walsingham, who, putting them into the hands of an expert decoder, learned their contents and was able to follow every twist and turn of the plot.

It was arranged that six men should assassinate Elizabeth. One of the six was to be Babington. If the deed were successfully carried out, these men believed that it would be a simple matter to set Mary on the throne.

Walsingham, as one of the leaders of the Protestant Party, had always deplored the fact that Mary had been allowed to live; and as soon as Mary’s letter to the conspirators—in which she gave her full support to the assassination of Elizabeth—was in his hands, he lost no time in arresting the men and laying the whole plot before the Queen and her Council.

All England rejoiced as soon as the news was made known. Bonfires were lighted; in the country there was dancing on the village greens; in the towns there was singing in the streets. The beloved Queen had narrowly escaped, and at last the Jezebel of Scotland was shown to her most merciful Majesty for what she was. There were services in the churches and on street corners.

Elizabeth noted these expressions of love and loyalty with deep gratification; but she knew that the people were demanding the death of Mary.

Seven of the conspirators whose names had appeared in the letters were placed on hurdles and dragged through the City from Tower Hill to St. Giles’ Fields. Anthony Babington was one of the seven. After these seven had been hanged, they were cut down alive and disemboweled while still living. Such cruelties had been frequently witnessed during the reign of the great Henry; they were rarer in these days.

The agonized screams of tortured men were heard beyond St. Giles’ Fields, and many thought, as they listened, of the wicked woman whom they held responsible for the terrible suffering of these men whose crime was that they had attempted to serve her.

The next day seven more men were condemned to die in the same terrible manner; but Elizabeth, who knew the mood of the people, and who knew too that they expected clemency from her, commanded that the men should not be cut down until they were dead. The mutilations of their bodies should be performed after death.

There remained Mary; and Elizabeth knew that she must die, Queen though she was.

She was taken from Chartley to Fotheringay and there tried before the commissioners of peers, privy councillors and judges; and in spite of her protestations of innocence, her repeated cries that Walsingham had forged the letters which he had laid before the Queen and her ministers, she was found guilty of plotting against Elizabeth and condemned to die.

Elizabeth was even now reluctant to sign the death warrant. That Queens were above the judgment of ordinary men was a maxim she wished to preserve; but great pressure was brought upon her. The situation vis-à-vis Spain was recalled to her mind, and eventually she was prevailed upon to sign the warrant. But she did not dispatch it; and as Walsingham was at that time indisposed, the responsibility for sending the warrant to Fotheringay fell upon a secretary, William Davison.

One February morning, Mary, dressed in black velvet, her crucifix in her hand, went to the hall of the castle of Fotheringay where the block and the executioner were awaiting her. Calmly she bade farewell to her servants.

“Weep not,” she told them, “for thou hast cause rather to joy than to mourn, for now thou shalt see Mary Stuart’s troubles receive their long-expected end.”

The whole Catholic world was talking of the wicked Walsingham’s forgeries, of the evil act of the Jezebel of England whose hands were red with the blood of her enemies.

Walsingham and Burghley would snap their fingers at their enemies. Not so the Queen. The threat of war was moving nearer; in the Spanish harbors work was going on apace in the building of that Armada which was to conquer the world; and its first victim was to be Elizabeth’s England.

The Queen sought to placate her enemies. Her great desire was to hold off the evil day. Time was her ally—now as ever.

She chose William Davison as her scapegoat. She declared she had never meant the warrant to be sent to Fotheringay. She mourned her sister of Scotland. She had never wished for Mary’s death.

She had Davison sent to the Tower. He was to pay a fine which would impoverish him. But she told him before he went that she would continue to pay his salary while he was a prisoner and, as he fell on his knees before her, she let one of her long slender hands pat his shoulder.

The Queen’s reassuring touch told Davison that he was merely the scapegoat she was offering to Spain; and she herself hated Spain as fiercely as any in her realm.

As it turned out, Davison continued to receive his salary, for the Queen kept her word; and when he was shortly afterward released, she did not forget to reward him.

So Mary Stuart died; but the Spanish menace grew and Elizabeth knew that the whole of England was threatened.

When Robert returned from the Netherlands he was greeted rapturously by the Queen. It was a year since she had seen him, and she felt a great and tender pity touch her as she looked into his face.

How he had suffered! His dignity was lost, and the great position for which he had longed was taken from him. She had heard that he was ill in the Netherlands and needed his English doctors. She had at once had them sent to him, for when she heard of his illness all her rancor had disappeared. Lettice was blatantly unfaithful with that young and handsome Christopher Blount. So how could Elizabeth scold him at such a time? How could she do anything but take him under her wing? He had lost dear Philip Sidney, that handsome and most clever young man. Life had suddenly turned cruel to Robert; and seeing this, the Queen knew the height, depth and breadth of her love which had flickered and flamed for nearly forty years and which, she knew, nothing could ever entirely extinguish.

Now she would keep him by her side. She would make up to him for the loss of his beloved nephew, for the loss of his honor, and for the unfaithfulness of his wife. Dear Robert, once the conquering hero, was now the conquered.

Elizabeth had believed that it would be impossible for her to love a man who was no longer handsome, who was no longer the most perfect, the most virtuous; nevertheless she found that she could not cease to love Robert.

The whole country was in a state of tension.

All along the south coast the watchers were alert for the first sight of a sail. The bonfires were ready. In Plymouth Sir Francis Drake was impatient to get at the enemy. Lord Howard of Effingham was begging the Queen for more supplies. The ships, even in the little harbors, were being hastily made ready all through the nights by the light of flares and cressets. The coastal fortifications were being strengthened at fever-heat; and off the Devon coast Ark and Achates, Revenge and Rainbow, Elizabeth Bonaventure and Elizabeth Jonas with their fellow escorts were waiting.

Burghley and Walsingham were frantically counting the cost of the preparations, demanding of one another whence the money was coming to pay for this and that. The Queen, who was always reluctant to spend money, was refusing permission to victual the ships, refusing the money to pay her seamen.

Elizabeth knew that she now faced the greatest peril of her reign, of her life; if her gallant sailors failed to beat off the invader, England would suffer worse than death. Elizabeth loved her country with a great maternal love, with a passion she had never given to any person. Her one idea had been to bring it through peace to prosperity; and this she had done; and this she would have continued to do had that tyrant of the Escorial allowed men and women to follow the religion of their choice. Let him have his priests and his Holy Inquisition—that unholy band of torturers—let him burn his own subjects at the stake; let him torture them on the chevalet; let him tear their limbs with red hot pincers in the name of the Holy Catholic Church; Elizabeth cared not that this should be. If they chose to follow such a Faith and such a King, let them.

But it was not as easy as that. They were sailing now steadily toward her shores—Andalucian, Biscayan, San Felipe, San Juan, and many others; they brought the Spanish dons, the Spanish grandees, the Spanish soldiers and sailors; but they brought more than these: they brought their priests, their inquisitors; they brought the instruments of torture from their dark chambers of pain. They hoped to bring, not only conquest, but the Inquisition.

She had been afraid, but she would overcome that fear. How could she lose? How could England be beaten? It was impossible. She had her men—her beloved men—who in the service of the goddess, the perfect woman, the Queen, the mistress, the mother, could never fail.

There was Lord Howard of Effingham, that fine sailor; there was the incomparable Drake; there was Frobisher, Hawkins; and there were all her dear friends: her Spirit, her Moor, her old Mutton and Bellwether—all those whom she loved; and above all there was Robert.

She had shown her confidence in him, and the return of all her love in this great emergency. He was forgiven the terrible calamity in the Netherlands for which she knew she must accept part of the blame; for if Lettice had not thought of joining him as his Queen, would Elizabeth have felt so insistent on robbing him of his new office, of destroying Flemish trust in England?

She had appointed Robert Lieutenant and General of her Armies and Companies. That would show everyone what she thought of him. That would make it clear that in adversity they stood together, as they had stood when Amy Robsart had died and he had been accused of her murder.

She trusted him; he was her beloved; he was again her Eyes; he was the only man she would have married if she had decided to take a husband.

Robert had divided his forces into two armies—one of which he had stationed at St. James’s, the other at Tilbury. They would be ready, those soldiers of his, to defend their country if the dons dared to land. But Howard and Drake and their men were determined they should never land. Would English seamen give the victory to English soldiers? Never! England owed her prosperity to her seamen—so said Drake—and he was bent on capturing the credit for himself.

Elizabeth wished to be with her armies at such a time—and was not Robert at the head of those armies? She sent a dispatch to him, telling him of her determination to see and talk with her soldiers.

His answer came back.

“Your person,” he wrote, “is the most sacred and dainty thing that we have in the world to care for, and a man must tremble when he thinks of it …”

He would have preferred her, he said, to have stayed in the safest place in England.

“Yet I will not that in some sort so princely and so rare a magnanimity should not appear to your people and the world as it is …”

She read the letter through many times; she kept it with her; she kissed it often, as she used to kiss his letters in the early days.