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 rebelled against Henry III late in 1220, and in January the following year captured Fotheringhay Castle, installing his own garrison. He attacked several other castles the same month, but the capture of Fotheringhay was Forz's only success. According to a royal letter he "furtively and seditiously seized the castle of Fotheringhay ... devastating and plundering our land and violently disturbing and infringing our peace and that of our kingdom". Faced with a massing royal army, Forz fled north and Henry III took Fotheringhay and Castle Bytham. Henry III retained control of the castle, and it remained in royal possession until