immediately tried, condemned, and executed. No mercy whatever was shown to them; for Elizabeth seldom forgave her enemies.[188] But, in the death of these men, only one part of Elizabeth's vengeance was gratified. The wrongs and the merits of the Queen of Scots had been the means of imparting to this conspiracy a degree of respectability; and she, therefore, was regarded as the chief culprit. Walsingham had ascertained, that communications of some sort or another had passed between Mary's secretaries and the conspirators; and before she was aware that Babington's plot had been discovered, he sent down Sir Thomas Gorges to Chartley to take her by surprise, and endeavour to discover some additional grounds of suspicion. Sir Thomas arrived just as she was about to ride out in a wheeled carriage which had been procured for her, and, without permitting her to alight, he rudely told her of Babington's fate; then entering the Castle, he committed Naw and Curl into custody; and, breaking into the private cabinets of the Queen, he seized all her letters and papers, and sent them off immediately to Elizabeth. He took possession too of all her money, "lest she should use it for corruption." She herself was not allowed to return to Chartley for some days, but conveyed about from one castle to another. When she was at length brought back, and saw how she had been plundered in her absence, she could not refrain from weeping bitterly. "There are two things, however," she said in the midst of her tears, "which they cannot take away,--my birth and my religion."[189]