The Fugger Newsletters

A Conspiracy against the Queen

Antwerp, 6 September 1586

London letters of the 2th ult. recently received announce that Drake the pirate has arrived in London from India with fifty to sixty ships. He is said to have brought great wealth with him, but the ships are not yet unloaded. They also write of an important case of treason against the Queen's life. Monsieur de Guise had arranged with certain nobles to come to England, but the conspiracy was discovered and some sixty persons, many of high birth, have been imprisoned. A man who came here from England recently says that this plot took place before his departure from London, and that an Englishman shot at the Queen. But before he fired, the bullet, without his noticing it, fell out of the pistol, so he missed her. Nevertheless the Queen's hair seems to have been singed. The Earl of Leicester is stated to have pitched his camp between Utrecht and Amersfoort.