The letters, by Paulet's connivance, were thrust through a chink in the wall; and answers were returned by the same conveyance.
Ballard and Babington were at first diffident of Gifford's fidelity; and to make trial of him, they gave him only blank papers made up like letters; but finding by the answers that these had been faithfully delivered, they laid aside all further scruple, and conveyed by his hands the most criminal and dangerous parts of their conspiracy.
Babington informed Mary of the design laid for a foreign invasion, the plan of an insurrection at home, the scheme for her deliverance, and the conspiracy for assassinating the usurper, by six noble gentlemen, as he termed them, all of them his private friends; who, from the zeal which they bore to the Catholic cause and her majesty's service, would undertake the "tragical execution." Mary replied, that she approved highly of the design; that the gentlemen might expect all the rewards which it should ever be in her power to confer; and that the death of Elizabeth was a necessary circumstance, before any attempts were made, either for her own deliverance or an insurrection.[*] * State Trials, vol.i.p 135.

Camden, p.

515.
These letters, with others to Mendoza, Charles Paget, the archbishop of Glasgow, and Sir Francis Inglefield, were carried by Gifford to Secretary Walsingham; were deciphered by the art of Philips, his clerk; and copies taken of them.

Walsingham employed another artifice, in order to obtain full insight into the plot: he subjoined to a letter of Mary's a postscript in the same cipher; in which he made her desire Babington to inform her of the names of the conspirators.

The indiscretion of Babington furnished Walsingham with still another means of detection, as well as of defence.