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,
6th Parliament of Queen Elizabeth I as possible but finally signed the death warrant on 1 February 1587. Even then she belatedly attempted to call it back but by then Mary had been executed at Fotheringhay Castle on 8 February 1587. Once Parliament had resumed sitting, the debate ill-advisedly turned towards matters of religious reform led by the Puritans Anthony Cope and Peter Wentworth, both of whom were immediately committed to the Tower for several weeks for ignoring Elizabeth I's ecclesiastical prerogative. After being advised to treat Puritans and sectaries as equal to Jesuits in their ability to undermine the stability of both church and realm