Of the ability of Burghley there can be but one opinion, and it is extraordinary that he compromised himself with a scheme for the destruction of a defenceless and innocent woman for no other reason than to please Elizabeth. His attitude to Mary cannot be defended. Bourgoyne refers to him as a very vehement (very violent) man. That Burghley's private opinion was contrary to the attitude he was compelled to take up may, we think, be suggested. His conduct towards Mary was intelligible only as a stern command from his Sovereign. With Walsingham the case is different. He was a man evidently cast in a similar mould to that of his mistress, unscrupulous, unprincipled; and of all the villainy in connection with the Babington Conspiracy he may be said to have been the author: for in addition to intercepting and interpolating Queen Mary's letters by means of spies, and producing the material which accomplished her destruction, he executed in cold blood Anthony Babington and his eleven companions after a mock trial, or no trial at all, victims of a plot of his own creation, and because they were the only human beings who could prove Mary's innocence of this base and contemptible enterprise. Walsingham's character is thus given by an eminent writer:[1] He was ambitious, cunning, heartless, and a liar. He also ruined more innocent persons than the whole of Elizabeth's Privy Council. It was he who overwhelmed the Earls of Arundel and Northumberland, destroyed the Howard family, covered the sea and the Continent with English exiles, and spread over Europe a leprous spying; while he encouraged, led on, and ruined Babington. And another writer[2] says of him: He completely deceived Charles IX. and the house of Austria, fomented the insurrection of the Huguenots in France and the wars of the Low Countries at the time that he was trusted by both reigning houses. It is said that he employed in foreign courts fifty-three secret agents and eighteen spies, and that he had the wonderful art of weaving plots in which many people got so entangled that they could not escape. He obtained evidence of the setting out of the Armada by a copy of a letter written by Philip King of Spain to the Pope, procured him by a priestly spy, who bribed a gentleman of the Pope's bedchamber to steal the key of his Holiness' cabinet, and while the Pope slept to transcribe the letter and return the key. This summary of Walsingham's character fully corroborates his conduct to the Scottish Queen.