Elizabeth I of England Plot of 1586, Elizabeth's spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and the royal council keenly assembled a case against her. At first, Elizabeth resisted calls for Mary's death. By late 1586, she had been persuaded to sanction her trial and execution on the evidence of letters written during the Babington Plot. Elizabeth's proclamation of the sentence announced that "the said Mary, pretending title to the same Crown, had compassed and imagined within the same realm divers things tending to the hurt, death and destruction of our royal person." On 8 February 1587, Mary was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire. After Mary's execution,
Fotheringhay Castle writing in 1540, Langley spent a great deal on Fotheringhay Castle. Langley died in 1402 and was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward. He died without children of his own in 1415, so his property passed to his nephew Richard. Fotheringhay Castle was a favoured residence of Richard, who became Duke of York and a powerful magnate. Married to Cecily Neville of the House of Neville, an influential family in northern England, he fathered two future kings: Edward IV and Richard III, and the latter was born at Fotheringhay Castle in 1452. On 27 March 1454, Richard, Duke of York