In our last Tudor post, we looked at Elizabeth I’s increasingly dangerous relationship with the Pope and how, in 1570, Pope Pius V excommunicated the English queen and declared that her subjects were no longer bound to obey her.
Credit: Mary, Queen of Scots in captivity, after Nicholas Hilliard, inscribed 1578. Via Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain.
But what happened when those religious tensions moved beyond words?
Within a year, Elizabeth’s government uncovered a conspiracy involving Mary, Queen of Scots, one of England’s most powerful noblemen, Spain and a Florentine banker with connections across Europe.
Today I want to look at the Ridolfi Plot of 1571, because it raises a rather unsettling question. How close did Elizabeth actually come to being removed from the throne?
By this point, Mary, Queen of Scots had been in England for several years. She had been forced to abdicate the Scottish throne in 1567 and fled to England the following year, hoping Elizabeth might help restore her. Instead, she found herself kept under increasingly close supervision.
Credit: Queen Elizabeth I, the ‘Darnley Portrait’, unknown continental artist, c.1575. Via Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain
Mary was not simply an inconvenient royal cousin. As a Catholic with a strong claim to the English throne, she became a natural focus for those who wanted Elizabeth replaced.
That did not mean England’s Catholics were all plotting against Elizabeth. Many remained loyal to their queen. But Mary’s presence created something potentially dangerous: an alternative monarch around whom Elizabeth’s enemies could gather.
Then came Roberto Ridolfi.
Ridolfi was a Florentine banker who had worked in London and moved comfortably through diplomatic and financial circles. He was also a committed Catholic, with the contacts and freedom to travel between some of the most powerful people in Europe.
The plan that developed around him was extraordinarily ambitious.
Elizabeth would be removed from power. Mary would be freed and placed on the English throne, and she would marry Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, one of the highest-ranking noblemen in England.
But the conspirators needed more than supporters inside England.
They needed soldiers.
Ridolfi travelled through Europe seeking support from the Pope and from Philip II of Spain. The hope was that Spanish troops based in the Netherlands could cross into England while supporters of Mary rose against Elizabeth from within.
And this is where our previous post about Elizabeth and the Pope becomes so important.
Only the year before, Pope Pius V had declared Elizabeth excommunicated. Now a conspiracy was developing that looked towards Catholic powers abroad and planned to place the Catholic Mary on Elizabeth’s throne.
For Elizabeth and her government, religion, foreign policy and the Queen’s own survival were becoming almost impossible to separate.
But the plot had one enormous weakness.
Too many people knew about it.
In 1571, Charles Baillie, a messenger connected with Mary’s supporters, was arrested at Dover carrying suspicious letters. Elizabeth’s government began piecing together the conspiracy. Messages were intercepted, servants were questioned and evidence slowly led investigators towards Norfolk.
Norfolk tried to distance himself from what had happened, but the evidence against him mounted.
He was arrested, imprisoned in the Tower of London and tried for high treason. He was found guilty and executed on Tower Hill on the 2nd of June 1572.
Ridolfi himself escaped. He was abroad when the conspiracy collapsed and never returned to England.
But there was one person whose position became considerably more dangerous.
Mary, Queen of Scots.
Elizabeth did not have Mary executed after the Ridolfi Plot. Mary would remain alive for another fifteen years. Elizabeth repeatedly hesitated over taking the life of another anointed queen, and proving exactly how far Mary had personally agreed to every part of the conspiracy was not straightforward.
But the Ridolfi Plot changed the atmosphere around her.
Mary was no longer simply the former Queen of Scots living under English supervision. She had become the figure around whom plots to replace Elizabeth could form.
And there would be more.
The Throckmorton Plot followed in 1583, and then the Babington Plot in 1586 would finally give Elizabeth’s government the evidence it needed to move directly against Mary.
Looking back, the Ridolfi Plot feels almost like a warning of everything that was still to come. Elizabeth had survived religious division and challenges to her legitimacy. Now she faced the possibility that her enemies were prepared to seek foreign military support to remove her.
Perhaps the most interesting question is not why Elizabeth became more suspicious afterwards.
It is how she could possibly have avoided becoming suspicious.
Do you think Elizabeth should have acted against Mary, Queen of Scots after the Ridolfi Plot, or was she right to keep her alive?
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