Babington, ANTONY

Babington, ANTONY, was born of an old Catholic family at Dethick, Derbyshire, in 1561. Young, handsome, rich, left an orphan at ten years of age, he had served for a short time as page to Queen Mary of Scotland, then a prisoner at Sheffield, when in 1586, some seven years after his marriage, he was induced by Ballard and other Catholic emissaries to put himself at the head of a conspiracy that had for its object Elizabeth's murder and Mary's release. Babington reserved the deliverance of Mary for his own share, entered into correspondence with her, and received from her letters approving of the assassination. The plot was betrayed, and after hiding in the depths of St John's Wood and at Harrow, he was taken, and with thirteen others condemned to die. His prayers for mercy, his explanation of the cipher letters, were all in vain, and on 20th September 1586, he followed Ballard to the scaffold.