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,
Roxburgh Castle castle was Edward III of England's base of operations during his 1334 winter campaign against the Scots. A Scottish siege in 1417 necessitated repairs. The Scots again besieged Roxburgh in 1460; in the course of the action metal fragments from the explosion of one of his bombards killed King James II of Scotland. However the Scots stormed Roxburgh, capturing it, and James' queen, Mary of Guelders, had the castle demolished. In 1545, during the Rough Wooing, the English garrison commanded by Ralph Bulmer built a rectangular fort on the site at the instigation of the Earl of Hertford. This was