| Chapter 1: | The Traditional Story, the Revisionist Story, and the Story |
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trust him more than they currently did to be neither a crypto-Catholic nor (much more importantly) a plotting usurper. If he accepted it, they would at last know the truth about his beliefs, they would have proven him to be an archtraitor, and they could then almost immediately try and execute him and thus be done with him at last.
Hesketh arrived at the earl’s palace at New Park on 25 September, a Tuesday. He learned that the earl (Henry) had just died that morning. He decided that it would be inappropriate to disturb the household with his petty business, so he went to visit his brother Bartholomew for two days. Then, on Wednesday or Thursday, he went back to New Park and knocked on the door. He was met by Sir Edward Stanley, the late earl’s brother, who looked over his passport and letter and said he would show them to his grieving nephew, Ferdinando, the Earl of Derby now for only two days. Hesketh, having done his obligatory duty, waited briefly for the earl to sign his passport and return it to him. Instead, he was asked to stay over for a few days, and he readily agreed; in a subsequent letter to his wife, he seemed very surprised and flattered that the earl had taken a liking to him and desired his company.
But, just as in the mainstream version of the story, Hesketh was wrong. Ferdinando took him to the Queen at Windsor and turned him in, telling her that Hesketh had brought a letter from abroad offering him the crown if he would agree to turn Catholic and lead an uprising to take the throne from her. Thus far, the mainstream account and the revisionist account of what happened are fairly close, except for the element of the Waterworth/Hickman letter. Then, however, the stories begin to differ. The Catholic version says that the letter, which Ferdinando had presented to the Queen, was quickly destroyed (or perhaps hidden away) in order that it could not later be proved to be a forgery. It also adds the theory, presented as fact, that Ferdinando was told to go home and that from that day forward, he was kept totally out of the investigation—in order to implicate his complicity during these proceedings without his bothersome presence and contradictory testimony.
Later that year, according to Devlin’s reading, Burghley wrote that Hesketh had “persuaded” Ferdinando to take the throne. Devlin asserted