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,
William FitzWilliam (Lord Deputy) allowed to resign his office. After his return to England in 1575 FitzWilliam was appointed governor of Fotheringhay Castle, where he supervised the execution of the death sentence on Mary, Queen of Scots. In 1588 FitzWilliam was again in Ireland as Lord Deputy, and although old and ill he displayed great activity in leading expeditions, and found time to quarrel with Sir Richard Bingham (1528–1599), the new President of Connaught. He relied heavily on the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Sir Robert Gardiner, and refused his pleas to be allowed to retire on health grounds, saying that Gardiner was so