Ridolfi plot
The plot was hatched and planned by Roberto Ridolfi, an international banker who was able to travel between Brussels, Rome and Madrid to gather support without attracting too much suspicion.
Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, a Roman Catholic with a Protestant education, a second cousin of Queen Elizabeth's and the wealthiest landowner in the country, had been proposed as a possible husband for Mary since her imprisonment in 1568.
[2] Pope Pius V, in his 1570 papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, excommunicated the Protestant Elizabeth and permitted all faithful Catholics to do all they could to depose her.
[4] Roberto Ridolfi, a Florentine banker and ardent Roman Catholic, had been involved in the planning of the Northern rebellion and had been plotting to overthrow Elizabeth as early as 1569.
[5] With the failure of the rebellion, he concluded that foreign intervention was needed to restore Catholicism and bring Mary to the English throne, and so he began to contact potential conspirators.
[6] The plan was to have the Duke of Alba invade from the Netherlands with 10,000 men, foment a rebellion of the northern English nobility, murder Elizabeth, and marry Mary to Thomas Howard.
Ridolfi's co-conspirators, some of them mentioned above, played an important role in the plot to overthrow Elizabeth: Don Guerau de Espés: Spain's ambassador to England, who was expelled after the discovery of his involvement.
She wrote to Ridolfi denouncing the French and soliciting Spanish aid, while simultaneously professing friendship and loyalty to Elizabeth I and England.
Giving her consent to the plot in March 1571, her role was to marry the Duke of Norfolk, with the plan that when the troops arrived in London she would be returned to the Scottish throne.
"[11] Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba, who was the leader of the Spanish army stationed in the Netherlands and was to lead more than 10,000 men to Harwich or Portsmouth.
By gaining the confidence of Spain's ambassador to England, John Hawkins learned the details of the conspiracy and notified the government so as to arrest the plotters.
Browne grew suspicious of the bag's weight, opened it, and discovered 600 pounds in gold from the French ambassador, destined for Scotland on Mary's behalf, and ciphered letters.
[15] According to historian Cyril Hamshere, retrospective critics of the conspiracy cited a number of reasons why the Ridolfi Plot would have been doomed to fail even if it had not been discovered prematurely.
Pope Pius was, apparently, willing to grant Mary an annulment of her marriage to her imprisoned husband,[14] but the notion of two thrice wed royals leading England back to Catholicism is somewhat problematic, nonetheless.
