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.
