The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History Of Elizabeth's Court - Plot & Excerpts
Moody planned to gain access to the court, lay a trail of gunpowder to Elizabeth’s Bedchamber and under the Queen’s bed, and blow her to pieces.2 Having been apparently won over to the plot, William Stafford drew in Chateauneuf, the French ambassador and his secretary Leonard des Trappes. He told the ambassador of his ‘intention of killing the Queen on religious grounds and in order that the Queen of Scotland might ascend the throne’. When the French ambassador pointed out that the plan to kill Elizabeth in her Bedchamber would also involve blowing up Stafford’s own mother, ‘as she and the Queen both slept in one room’, Stafford agreed instead that it would be better to kill the Queen by stabbing.3 With the revised plan in place, early in the New Year, William Stafford reported the whole affair to Walsingham describing how a ‘graceless’ man has gone to kill the Queen, and ‘her Majesty should take good heed to herself as to who comes near her’.4 William Stafford, Moody and des Trappes were swiftly arrested and confined in the Tower and Chateauneuf placed under house arrest.
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