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.