custody. But whether or no some conspiracies (I mean more active than usual, for there was one perpetual conspiracy of Rome and Spain during most of the queen's reign), had preceded these severe and unfair methods by which her ministry counteracted them, it was not long before schemes, more formidable than ever, were put in action against her life. As the whole body of catholics was irritated and alarmed by the laws of proscription against their clergy, and by the heavy penalties on recusancy, which, as they alleged, showed a manifest purpose to reduce them to poverty;[245] so some desperate men saw no surer means to rescue their cause than the queen's assassination. One Somerville, half a lunatic, and Parry, a man who, long employed as a spy upon the papists, had learned to serve with sincerity those he was sent to betray, were the first who suffered death for unconnected plots against Elizabeth's life.[246] _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.