7<D ON THE MANOR HOUSE OF SOUTH WINFIELD. 



But the multiplicity of attendants and guards favoured con- 

 spiring, and no sooner was the royal captive established here for 

 the second time, than plans were made for her removal. Dethick, 

 the ancient seat of the Babington family, is only some four miles 

 to the north-west of Winfield, and there seems no doubt that 

 communications were now entered into between the Queen and 

 Anthony Babington or his allies. But plans for her rescue came 

 to naught. Oral tradition, 'that I have collected in the vicinity 

 of Dethick, gives many a curious detail of the plotting and 

 counter-plotting that went on ; two points being specially insisted 

 on (i) that Anthony Babington obtained personal access to the 

 Queen disguised as a gipsy, with his face stained with walnut 

 juice, and (2) that a secret subterranean passage led from Dethick 

 Hall to a place near this manor house, and that it was by this 

 route that the rescue was to be attempted. The first of these 

 traditions may have some truth in it, but seems a corruption of 

 the fact of a similar disguise when Babington was trying to escape in 

 1586. A would-be circumstantial bit of evidence, to prove the truth 

 of this tale, was given me by an old man living at Ryber, viz. : — 

 that a large walnut tree now growing in the inner court sprang 

 from a nut that Anthony Babington dropped out of his pocket, 

 when he had penetrated there as a gipsy to find out the Queen's 

 special apartments. Much more could be said both from un- 

 published authentic papers, and local tradition as to the Queen 

 of Scots and this her charming prison-house, but time will not 

 permit. Suffice it then to say that the Queen was finally removed 

 from here, much to her chagrin, on January 13th, 1585, on her 

 way once more to Tutbury, the project for conveying her to 

 Melbourn being at last abandoned. 



The system of espionage of one family upon another, or of 

 different members of the same family, and the bribing of servants 

 and retainers for possible evidence, were probably never carried 

 to such a pitch of perfection in any court of any age as they were 

 by Lord Burleigh and others of the Privy Council of Elizabeth. 

 The relentless persecution of the Roman Catholics that was 

 continued throughout Elizabeth's reign, was specially violent in 



