ixed on the
secure conspirators. He held a thread which vibrated to their every
motion, and he was patiently awaiting the moment of their complete
entanglement to spring forth and seize his victims.

To the queen, and to her only, he communicated the daily intelligence
which he received from a spy who had introduced himself into all their
secrets; and Elizabeth had the firmness to hasten nothing, though a
picture was actually shown her, in which the six assassins had absurdly
caused themselves to be represented with a motto underneath intimating
their common design. These dreadful visages remained however so
perfectly impressed on her memory, that she immediately recognised one
of the conspirators who had approached very near her person as she was
one day walking in her garden. She had the intrepidity to fix him with a
look which daunted him; and afterwards, turning to her captain of the
guards, she remarked that she was well guarded, not having a single
armed man at the time about her.

At length Walsingham judged it time to interpose and rescue his
sovereign from her perilous situation. Ballard was first seized, and
soon after Babington and his associates. All, overcome by terror or
allured by vain hopes, severally and voluntarily confessed their guilt
and accused their accomplices. The nation was justly exasperated against
the partakers in a plot which comprised foreign invasion, domestic
insurrection, the assassination of a beloved sovereign, the elevation to
the throne of her feared and hated rival, and the restoration of popery.
The traitors suffered, notwithstanding the interest which the extreme
youth and good moral characters of most or all of them were formed to
inspire, amid the execrations of the protestant spectators. But what was
to be the fate of that "pretender to the crown," on whose behalf and
with whose privity this foul conspiracy had been entered into, and who
was by the late statute, passed with a view to this very case, liable to
condign punishment?

This was now the important question which awaited the decision of
Elizabeth, and divided the judgements of her most confidential
counsellors. Some advised that the royal captive should be spared the
ignominy of any public proceeding; but that her attendants should be
removed, and her custody rendered so severe as to preclude all
possibility of her renewing her pestilent intrigues. Leicester, in
conformity with the baseness and atrocity of his chara