A HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE 



asked, and who objected, when told it had already been decided upon, that 

 the house was too small, and he wanted it for himself. It is described M8 

 * as low and unhealthy, and the water surrounding it as of such depth as 

 may stand instead of a strong wall,' and as having only one kitchen. 



Here Mary's health was very poor, so bad that an advocate of Eliza- 

 beth's harshest measures wrote of her that she was ' so sickly and impotent 

 her majesty thought it impossible she should be anyways able to annoy her 

 or to do her any great harm.' 



Walsingham was firmly convinced that Mary deserved death, and that 

 her death was necessary for the safety of England. He knew that Elizabeth 

 would not consent to her death unless she knew and could let the world 

 know that Mary had been plotting against her. At Tutbury Mary had had 

 no chance to plot because she was so rigorously guarded ; at Chartley she 

 was to have more scope, and the Babington conspiracy followed in the next 

 spring. 239 



The plot was given ample time to develop, and it was not until August 

 that the conspirators were seized, and it was then resolved to take stronger 

 measures. 



Mary's health had improved at Chartley, and one day Paulet proposed 

 a visit to Tixall, a house belonging to Sir Walton Aston a few miles 

 distant, to see a buck hunt. On their arrival a party of horsemen awaited 

 them, who poor Mary hoped were her friends at last come to rescue her. 

 But their leader rode forward with a warrant for her removal to Tixall, and 

 the sending of her secretaries to London, and she was forthwith hurried into 

 the house and kept there seventeen days. Paulet in the meantime hurried 

 back to Chartley, ransacked all Mary's papers, and sent every scrap to 

 Windsor for Elizabeth's perusal. This done Mary returned there. 240 



The conspirators were tried and executed in September, a commission 

 was appointed to try Mary in October, and she was removed to Fotheringhay 

 at the end of September. 



In the year of the Armada letters were sent to the lords-lieutenant of 

 several counties, including Staffordshire, for the training and mustering of 

 soldiers, 241 and from the abstract of the certificate returned from the lord- 

 lieutenant, the Earl of Shrewsbury, the following were the ' able trayned and 

 furnished men in the county, * reduced into bandes under Captaines, and 

 how they were soarted with weapons ' in April of that year. 843 



The ' ablemen ' numbered 1,910, the 'furnished' 1,000; there were two 

 companies of ' trained ' men numbering 200 each, and one company of 

 ' untrained ' men of the same strength. 



The captains of the two trained companies were Ralfe Sneade and 

 Thomas Horwood, and Ralfe Sneade commanded the untrained. 



138 Morris, Letters of Sir Amyas Paulet, 94. 



ro Innes, England under the Tudors, 335. It was at Chartley that the Queen of Scots received and 

 dispatched her letters in the false bottom of a barrel of beer which used to come every week from Burton; 

 and these Giffard read and betrayed. 



140 Hosack, Mary Queen of Scots and Her Accusers, ii, 385 ; Morris, Letters of Sir Amyai Paulet, 2506! seq. 

 Paulet gives us a glimpse of the wealth of the country gentlemen of the time : ' Sir W. Aston saith he hath 

 upon the point of a hundred persons uprising and downlying in his house'; Letters of Sir A. Paulet, 98. 

 Sir W. Aston was thanked for 'yielding his house* ; Acts ofP.C. 1586-7, p. 210. 



141 Acts of P. C. 1588, p. 1 6. 

 141 Harl. MSS. No. 168. 



