The Throckmorton Plot

Posted on April 28, 2023 by JuliaH

The Throckmorton Plot of 1583 was named after Sir Francis Throckmorton. He was the cousin of Bess Throckmorton, a lady-in-waiting who married Sir Walter Raleigh, demonstrating that families can arrive at very different religious viewpoints. Francis’ father John Throckmorton was a prominent Catholic during the reign of Queen Mary. It should be noted though that John conformed outwardly to the change in faith after Mary’s death even though his sons were raised as Catholics. Bess Throckmorton’s father Nicholas was raised in the household of Catherine Parr and had leanings towards the reformation as a consequence. He was also part of Edward VI’s circle as well as a friend of Elizabeth from her childhood.

It was planned that the Spanish would back a French invasion led by the Duke of Guise. Having subdued the heretic protestants and killed Elizabeth the plan was to put Mary Queen of Scots on the throne. Guise was not popular in Protestant Europe. He played a leading role in the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572 – which Sir Francis Walsingham (pictured at the start of the post) witnesses as he was in Paris at the time.

In 1579 Nicholas Throckmorton was suspended from the office of Chief Justice of Chester and fined. His beliefs had become a problem. He died the following year. But Francis now began to be involved in Catholic conspiracies against Elizabeth when he journeyed to France in 1580 with his brother Thomas and were recruited by the Catholic exiles Charles Paget and Thomas Morgan.

The latter was the Earl of Shrewsbury’s secretary and had made contact with Mary Queen of Scots who was in the earl’s custody. Morgan acted as the Scottish queen’s go between until 1572 when he was sent to the Tower for three years before going to France. He continued to correspond secretly with the queen. Throckmorton was not the only English Catholic that Morgan was involved with. He would be involved with the Babington plot in 1585.

When Francis returned to London from Paris he carried messages to Mary and to Bernadino Mendoza, Philip II’s ambassador in London. All the messages passed through the French embassy which was headed by Michelle de Castelnau.

One of Walsingham’s spies in the French embassy alerted him to Throckmorton’s involvement. Francis was arrested in November 1583 along with a list of Mary’s Catholic supporters and a letter to Mary that he was in the process of encoding. Nor was he alone in the Tower. Another man, George More, was also arrested but he arrived at an agreement with Walsingham and was released. Throckmorton, who wasn’t really a key player, was racked until he provided names and admitted that Mary was involved.

Mendoza could not be arrested because he had diplomatic immunity but in January 1584 he was invited to leave England. There would be no more Spanish Ambassadors in England during Elizabeth’s reign. Throckmorton was put on trial in May and execution on 10 July 1584. He was the only one of the plotters to be executed. His brother Thomas who was also involved managed to escape.

In many respects the plot was as inept as the earlier plans to topple Elizabeth and restore Catholicism. However, the 1571 Treason Act made it illegal to deny that Elizabeth was queen of England and since the 1570s trained Jesuit priests had been arriving in England encouraging the Catholic population to hold firm to their beliefs. In 1581 it had become more difficult for Catholics not to attend church on a Sunday. If they persisted the recusants, as they were called, could be fined £20 per month and imprisoned.

Mary’s imprisonment became ever more restrictive. She was sent to Chartley in Staffordshire. Walsingham and William Cecil drew up the Bond of Association. All its signatories agreed that if anyone attempt to usurp the throne or to assassinate the queen that they should be executed as should anyone who benefitted from the queen’s death i.e. Mary Queen of Scots. Mary signed the bond even though it was effectively her own death warrant.

Francis Throckmorton’s execution on 10 July 1584 coincided with the murder of William of Orange, the leader of the Dutch Protestants. He was assassinated by a Catholic. In part the Bond of Association was a response to the murder of the Dutch leader.

Elizabeth had stated that she did not wish ‘to make windows into men’s souls’. Her way had been a middle way but the Catholic plots and threats to her life and realm which had gradually escalated meant that men like Walsingham were increasingly convinced that Mary had to die.

Thomas and Charles Paget

Posted on March 2, 2014 by JuliaH

Sir William Paget (pictured here), Henry VIII’s advisor, had three sons – Henry, Thomas and Charles. Both the older brothers succeeded Sir William as the second and third Baron Paget of Beaudesert respectively. The Pagets were a Catholic family and did not initially become Protestants as so many of their contemporaries had done.

Once Elizabeth came to the throne in 1559 Henry found himself travelling around Europe. History knows of his travels because he was a childhood friend of Lord Robert Dudley and wrote to him often. It is from one of Paget’s letters that historians know that Mary was habitually called Queen of England following the quartering of her arms with those of England. Henry eventually returned from his travels which included Venice and Turkey but died in December 1568. He left a widow and a baby daughter called Elizabeth.

Thomas Paget now succeeded to the title. He was married to Nazareth Newton and his life was troubled both by his wife and by his religious beliefs. Thomas and his younger brother Charles had both studied at Cambridge. They left without taking their degrees which was a normal element of noble education before being accepted into the Middle Temple where they practised law. Both brothers were at Cambridge during Elizabeth I’s visit of 1559 and initially their catholicism did not seem to be a bar to their careers; certainly they had supporters at court who pleaded their case. However, Thomas became more devout. He refused to take the Oath of Supremacy and found himself, on one occasion, under house arrest at Windsor where he was forced to undergo a course in the doctrine of the Church of England. The archives contain letters from him to Walsingham pleading to be allowed not to attend church services in St Paul’s. There are other letters directed to Cecil where he justifies his decision to separate from his wife who eventually turned state evidence against him. It is perhaps telling that his son, the next Baron Paget, was a Protestant. So far, so sad – religious belief seems to lie at the heart of Thomas Paget’s troubles. After his wife died he fled to the continent where he eventually gained a pension from Philip II and it appears that he hoped to be restored to his title in the event of the Armada being a success. Thomas’s story is complicated by his love-life and his beliefs but it is a fairly straightforward story.

By contrast his younger brother Charles Paget steered a far more difficult course which is fogged by conspiracy as well as the mists of time. Charles Paget scarpered to France in 1881 on account of his Catholicism. One version of events sees him making contact with an agent of Mary Queen of Scots called Thomas Morgan and entered the embassy of Archbishop Beaton in Paris – an out and out traitor to Elizabeth’s England in other words. For the next seven years history records Charles as working for Mary and even receiving a pension from her. This was not entirely surprising to his acquaintances at home in England. After all, the Paget family seat was in Staffordshire not far from Tutbury Castle. Charles had even spoken in Mary’s defence to Lord Howard.

Paget is first known to have plotted on Mary’s behalf in 1582. Cardinal William Allen of the English College at Douai was also associated. The plan was for the Duke of Guise to invade England with the financial backing of Philip II of Spain. Prior to the invasion English Catholics were rise up, depose Elizabeth and release Mary.

In 1583, the plot which came to be known as The Throckmorton Plot, was well underway. Paget went on a secret visit from France to England under the pseudonym Mope where he met the Earl of Northumberland and brother Thomas Paget who hadn’t yet fled from England. He is also known to have met with Lord Howard. Was it a meeting to transact family business; was Charles Paget warning his friends and family against involvement with the plot – he was known not to have approved of the whole plot – certainly that was what he wrote in a letter to Mary Queen of Scots- he objected to Spanish and Jesuit involvement. Or was he a double agent working for Walsingham all along?

Paget met with Walsingham in Paris in 1581 where he offered the spymaster his services. The Watchers by Stephen Alford suggests that Paget wasn’t a double agent using the evidence of Walsingham’s letter to Stafford at that time the English Ambassador in France saying that Paget was a ‘most dangerous instrument’ and fearing for the Earl of Northumberland if he continued to associate with the man. Another of Walsingham’s letter’s makes it clear that he regarded Charles as completely untrustworthy.

Whatever the case, honest man or double agent, Paget remained on Mary’s staff and was involved in the Babbington Plot which cost the Queen of Scots her life. Paget, unlike his older brother, had no great love for the Spanish and by 1599 he was in contact with another generation of English diplomats. He returned home on the accession of James I of England from whom he had a pension – for the support of his mother or the spying agains the Spanish he’d undertaken in Europe – history can’t be sure. He died in 1612 at home at his manor of Weston-on-Trent which had been given to him by James I.

Nazareth Paget

Posted on March 1, 2014 by JuliaH

Nazareth Newton was the daughter of Sir John Newton and a cousin to Sir Robert Dudley. Her first marriage was to Sir Thomas Southwell of Woodrising in Norfolk. The family was noted for its catholicism but this didn’t prevent the widowed Nazareth from serving Elizabeth I.

The link to Robert Dudley is a reminder that much of the Tudor court were related to one another somewhere along the line. Nazareth’s web of unexpected connections extends to another generation. One of her daughters with Southwell was called Elizabeth. She became the mistress of the Earl of Essex and gave birth to his illegitimate son Walter Devereux.

In 1570 Nazareth married Sir Thomas Paget, the Third Baron Paget. His father was Sir William Paget – Henry VIII’s close adviser and it was perhaps because of the link with the Dudleys that Nazareth married Paget or perhaps they met at court. In any event Nazareth’s second marriage was a disaster. She was not permitted to keep any servants from her home in Woodrising and her new husband grew steadily more firm in his recusancy to the extent that he organised a sermon by the Jesuit Edmund Campion and was forced to take a course in the doctrine of the Church of England whilst under house arrest in Windsor. It did no good. Paget attempted to avoid Protestant Church services and his servants interrupted an easter service. His career was ruined. His home life was even worse. In the end he wrote to Cecil explaining that he and his wife were parting because, in his words, of the ‘continual jars.’

David McKeen is less sympathetic to Nazareth as this quote shows:

Thomas Paget, son of the protector of Cobham’s youth, a cultivated nobleman in whose house William Byrd found employment and whose loss to England and “theCommonwealth of Learning” even that notable defender of the Elizabethan settlement William Camden deeply deplored, was informed against by his strident wife Nazareth Newton, whose perpetual demands had driven them to separate despite Burghley’s efforts
to reconcile them and Paget’s reluctance to leave the woman he so self-destructively loved. Paget felt that he had a reason to remain in England so long as there was hope of regaining his wife, but when she died in 1583 he too fled abroad.

From McKeen, David, A Memory of Honour; The Life of William Brooke,
Lord Cobham (Salzburg: Institut fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1986), p. 380:

Thomas was stripped of his title and eventually gained a pension from Philip II of Spain. The Duke of Parma consulted with him about the proposed Armada invasion of 1588.

Nazareth’s brother-in-law Charles was also a Catholic but his involvement with European intrigues was rather more complicated.