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 with Edward IV of England to supplant his brother on the throne of Scotland. Mary, Queen of Scots, who had spent much of her 18 years of imprisonment at Sheffield Castle and Sheffield Manor, spent her final days at Fotheringhay, where she was tried and convicted of treason. In this time it was used as a state prison. She attended her own trial in the Great Hall on October 5, 1586, where it lasted two days. After waiting over two months for Elizabeth I of England to officially sign her death warrant, Mary was only given the verdict the day