The Throckmorton Plot, culminating under the Guise brothers in Paris, was a serious Catholic invasion scheme backed by the Pope and Spain, and recently discovered letters prove Mary, Queen of Scots was an active conspirator, not a passive tool.

47:03Geese are are terrible people. William Allen the head of the English Catholics in exile. >> No, he's a bad man. Yeah. uh the Pope's Nunio in Paris. Oh, >> come on. Gets worse. >> And um the Archbishop of Glasgow, a guy called James Beaton, who is effectively functioning as Mary Stewart's ambassador in Paris. So the Mary Mary Queen of Scots. >> What a chamber of horrors. >> Yeah. I mean, if you're Waltingham, this

47:28is all your nightmares in one room. So Geese has been hankering to invade England for ages. We talked about this earlier. You know, if he he's he's the cousin of Mary, Queen of Scot. So if he can marry um Mary, Queen of Scots, it would be brilliant. He'll become king of England and maybe king of Scotland as well. But what makes him push the venture now is that he has secured the

47:47backing of two crucial allies. The first of these is the pope. So hence the um the presence of the Nunio there, but also crucially of Mendoza who is the cheric and very aggressively anti-protestant Spanish ambassador in London who we met met earlier in this episode. So with the backing of the pope and the Spanish ambassador in England, things are looking very promising and a very detailed plan is drawn up at this

48:13meeting. And it's decided that 12,000 troops will set sail from France for northwest England. So that's a Lanasher, which is the most Catholic region of England. And funds will have been sent ahead of the invasion to encourage the Catholics in Lancaster to prepare themselves for revolt. And these funds are to be provided by geese himself but also by Philip II and by the pope. So the kind of unholy trinity from the

48:42point of view of uh Berley and Wilsingham. Meanwhile, a second smaller force will cross the channel and land in Sussex. So that is in southern England. And here they will team up with the elves of North Thumberland and Arendel who are both Catholic and both have castles located conveniently nearby the projected landing place for this invasion force. And the sign of how seriously Geese is taking all this, this

49:09isn't just a pipe dream. he really is intending that it should go ahead is that the following month after this meeting where the plans have been drawn up, he heads to Normandy where he is um you know he he he sets himself preparing for this channel crossing. Now none of this will work without good intelligence. And so at this stage of the preparations for the invasion, the

49:31plans are mostly being conducted in the shadows. And Geese is sponsoring a number of agents and some of these he is sending undercover across the channel and others are already resident in England and being controlled from the French embassy in London. And the key agent among these agents who are already in England is a young Catholic gentleman called Francis Throck Morton. He's very well born. He's wellconed. um his uncle

50:01had served Elizabeth as her ambassador to both Scotland and France. But unfortunately, Francis's own family has fallen on hard times. So Francis's father is a lawyer and a royal official, but he died in 1580 with um a kind of accusation of corrupt dealings hanging over his head and a massive fine that's been kind of levied against him. So this is a very bad patrimony for Francis to