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Burghley invented a Spanish landing
Forcing the signature
Mary had been convicted, but Elizabeth would not sign. Parliament petitioned her for the execution, and she received the petition with icy contempt. Burghley then reached for dirty tricks. He told Elizabeth of yet another plot to assassinate her, though it was an old one that had gone nowhere and been foiled the year before, and he had kept it in reserve for exactly this moment. At the same time he fabricated a rumour that Spanish troops had landed in Wales and were marching on Cardiff, and he advised her to double her bodyguard because she was in mortal danger.
Acting behind her back
It alarmed her enough that on 1 February 1587 she signed the warrant. She still told Burghley not to use it yet. He gathered the privy councillors he trusted most at his house, and they agreed to go ahead behind her back, knowing the risk once she found out. The warrant went to Robert Beale, clerk of the Privy Council and Walsingham's brother-in-law, who galloped north to Northamptonshire with the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury.
The execution party
Shrewsbury, as Earl Marshal, was officially in charge of the execution, and he hated it. He had been Mary's jailer for fifteen years and had liked her so much that his wife, Bess of Hardwick, suspected an affair. Also travelling from London was the executioner, a man called Bull. Walsingham wrote ahead to Beale that the axe was packed in a trunk and that Bull would pass as a serving man.
Why did Elizabeth never name an heir?
Elizabeth refused to name a successor throughout her reign, partly because a named heir could become the centre of plots against her. Mary was the leading Catholic claimant, and her son James VI of Scotland was the next in line through the Tudor bloodline. James succeeded Elizabeth in 1603 and ruled England as James I.
Why was Wales a believable place for a landing?
Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire is one of the deepest natural harbours in Britain, and it sits on the western coast facing Ireland and the Atlantic. Henry Tudor had landed there in 1485 with a small force on his way to defeat Richard III at Bosworth. The memory of that landing made a foreign force arriving in west Wales a believable threat.
How did Mary's death lead to the Armada?
In 1586 Mary wrote that she would leave her claim to the English throne to Philip II of Spain. After her execution in 1587, Philip had both that claim and a justification for invasion. His armada sailed in 1588 with roughly 130 ships.
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