_Plot in favour of Mary._--More deep-laid machinations were carried on
by several catholic laymen at home and abroad, among whom a brother of
Lord Paget was the most prominent.[247] These had in view two objects,
the deliverance of Mary, and the death of her enemy. Some perhaps who
were engaged in the former project did not give countenance to the
latter. But few, if any, ministers have been better served by their
spies than Cecil and Walsingham. It is surprising to see how every
letter seems to have been intercepted, every thread of these
conspiracies unravelled, every secret revealed to these wise counsellors
of the queen. They saw that while one lived, whom so many deemed the
presumptive heir, and from whose succession they anticipated, at least
in possibility, an entire reversal of all that had been wrought for
thirty years, the queen was as a mark for the pistol or dagger of every
zealot. And fortunate, no question, they thought it, that the detection
of Babington's conspiracy enabled them with truth, or a semblance of
truth, to impute a participation in that crime to the most dangerous
enemy whom, for their mistress, their religion, or themselves, they had
to apprehend.