The following paper, which is in the handwriting of Phillips, one of Walsingham's spies, is preserved in the Record Office under date September 1586. It is reproduced not because it is of any value, but rather to show the persistent and cunning efforts to entrap the Scottish Queen. It concerns the Babington Conspiracy, and is a wholly unauthenticated document. The papers Phillips refers to are from Mary's cabinets, seized on the day she was kidnapped; and in order to understand the object of the paper, we must keep in view that it assumes the accuracy of Mary's interpolated letter of 17th July to Babington. In short, it was Phillips, the writer of this paper, who was the copyist of these interpolations. Bereft of these, any plot against Elizabeth by Mary is the merest fable and cannot be proved; and what remains is a series of enterprises for the release _simpliciter_ of the Scottish Queen. Mary was connected only with schemes for her own liberty, and for that she cannot be blamed. This paper is a laboured and wicked attempt to induce posterity to believe that she was hatching plots for Elizabeth's murder and an invasion of England. There is no proof to defend this charge:— “Memorial showing how the ten parcels of extracts and copies of the Scottish Queen's intercepted letters delivered to Wotton are to be used. “For declaration of the attempt against the Queen's person (Elizabeth), invasion of the realm, and stirring rebellion within the land, proposed and wrought by Charles Paget, Ballard, and Babington, as is contained in the instructions with her acceptance and approbation of the whole. “The extract of the letters sent by Charles Paget to the Scottish Queen of the 29th May 1586 with her answer of the 27th July. “The copies of the letters between the said Queen and Babington, verified by Nau's confession, showing the manner of writing and making up all her despatches, and particularly proving the letters of the Queen to Babington have been penned by herself and taken out of a minute by her own hand (Nau's confession was got by the rack). The extract of the letters written from the Scottish Queen to Don Bernard de Mendoza, the Bishop of Glasgow, Sir Francis Englefeld, and Lord Paget, 27th July 1586, with sundry propositions. “That an overture had been made to her by the Catholics of England to join with foreign forces for the execution of an enterprise to the disturbance of the present State. “That she allowed and embraced the same (this was a plan for her own liberty). “That she thereupon made them an ample despatch (which was the letter to Babington), with directions for all things necessary for the execution of what was proposed. “That every one of them should give the best assistance they could for effecting the enterprise.