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,
Peterborough Cathedral were lost. The church survived by being selected as the cathedral of the Anglican Diocese of Peterborough. Henry's former wife, Catherine of Aragon, had been buried there in 1536. Her grave can still be seen and is still honoured by visitors who decorate it with flowers and pomegranates (her symbol). It carries the legend "Katharine Queen of England", a title she was denied at the time of her death. In 1587, the body of Mary, Queen of Scots was initially buried here after her execution at nearby Fotheringhay Castle, but it was later removed to Westminster Abbey on the orders