| Chapter 1: | The Traditional Story, the Revisionist Story, and the Story |
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Catholic powers abroad offering the Derby earl the crown and also, as required by law, Hesketh’s own passport for the earl to approve and sign. Specialist historians differ a bit as to whether Earl Ferdinando and Hesketh spoke briefly at that exact time. In any event, Hesketh was put off for a few days, with Ferdinando citing his “sorrows” for the delay.4 Ferdinando asked Hesketh to join him for a visit at Brewerton, forty miles south of New Park, on 2 October, and Hesketh of course kept the date. After his arrival, in the evening, Hesketh wrote letters to his wife Isabel and his brother Bartholomew explaining that he would be delayed in reuniting with them because Ferdinando apparently delighted in his company and wanted more of it. On the next day, 3 October, Ferdinando told him he desired yet more of his company, asking Hesketh to leave with him immediately for Windsor Castle, where he was going to visit the Queen. Hesketh soon realized that he was actually under arrest.
Ferdinando turned him over to the Queen and her authorities, telling her that Hesketh had brought him a treasonous letter from Stanley and Worthington abroad offering him the crown. Hesketh was moved around for a brief period, during which time he was interrogated by Sir Robert Cecil, Lord Burghley’s son (and successor), who turned him over to the government’s main “cracker” and clerk to the Privy Council, William Wade (Waad), who greeted Hesketh on 15 October with the words, “Her majesty is informed that you had a letter unto the earl of Derby.”5 Hesketh at first protested his innocence but soon confessed to everything, agreeing, in what he hoped would be a clemency deal, to write two letters to high-placed Catholic exiles abroad containing Crown disinformation. As he did so, he told the authorities how to disguise the letters (by predating and other means) so that his recipients would believe them to be genuine and not written under duress. He was soon telling everything he knew, all too cheerfully proclaiming himself now to be “Her majesty’s honest spy.”6 On 5 November, Wade interrogated Trumpeter Baylie, who testified that he had first met Hesketh at the Bell Inn in Canterbury shortly after their arrival and had agreed to go into hire as Hesketh’s man, whereupon Wade seemed satisfied and Baylie was released. Hesketh was speedily tried and sentenced to death. On 29 November, he was executed by hanging.