But now the hour of Mary’s doom was approaching.  A plot was set on foot for the assassination of Elizabeth, into which Anthony Babington, whose name it bears, was drawn.  Walsingham, possessed of complete information from the beginning, through his spies, nursed the plot carefully; letters from Mary were systematically intercepted and copied till the moment came for striking; the conspirators were arrested, and suffered the extreme penalty of the treason laws; and Elizabeth consented to have Mary herself at last brought to trial.  She was refused counsel; the commission condemned her.  Parliament demanded the execution of the death sentence.  Elizabeth had her own misgivings.

She was afraid of the responsibility.  Leicester suggested poison, but Burleigh and Walsingham stood by the law.  A special embassy of remonstrance came from France; Mary wrote a dignified letter, not an appeal for her life, which moved the queen to tears; protests from the King of Scotland only aroused indignation; Elizabeth was frightened by rumours of fresh plots and of a French invasion.

At last she signed the death warrant, brought to her by Secretary Davison; the Chancellor’s seal was attached, and the council, fearing some evasion on Elizabeth’s part, issued the commission for Mary’s execution without further reference to the queen; she was kept in ignorance of the fact till the tragedy was completed.  She was furious with the council, but powerless against their unanimity.  She could venture to make a scapegoat of Davison, and made a vain attempt to clear herself of responsibility in a letter to James, which failed to soothe the burst of indignation with which the news was received in Scotland.  But the one thing she feared—­a coalition of France, Spain, and Scotland—­was made impossible by the antagonisms of the former and the weakness of the last.

Another crisis was at hand.  Philip of Spain, claiming the throne of England as a descendant of John of Gaunt, was preparing the great Armada; Pope Sixtus V. was proclaiming a crusade against the heretic queen.  Drake sailed into Cadiz harbour, and “singed the don’s whiskers,” but the vast preparations went on.  A lofty spirit animated the queen and the people.  London undertook to provide double the number of ships and men demanded from her.  The militia was gathered at Tilbury, under Leicester.  Howard of Effingham was Lord Admiral, with Drake as vice-admiral; in the enthusiasm of the moment, Elizabeth bestowed knighthood on a valorous lady, Mary, the wife of Sir Hugh Cholmondeley.

A report that the Armada had been destroyed by a gale, which actually drove it into Corunna for repairs, caused Elizabeth, with her usual parsimony, to order four great vessels to be dismantled; Howard retained them instead, at his own charges.  On July 19, 1588, the Armada was sighted off the Lizard, and for eighteen days the naval heroes were grappling with that “invincible” fleet.  Elizabeth herself visited the camp at Tilbury, rode through the lines, wearing a corselet and a farthingale of amazing dimensions, while a page bore her helmet, and addressed her soldiers in stirring words.