ABSTRACT
Mary Queen of Scots in England after her Scottish defeat in 1568 led to a long series of conspiracies. Northumberland was in sympathy with a group of his friends who tried in vain to free Mary from South Wingfield Manor in Derbyshire in summer 1569. Mary’s future rapidly shaped a crisis in Court politics in 1568–1569. The plan for a marriage between the Duke of Norfolk and the Scottish queen made him the central figure in a conspiracy that gained the support of a group of substantial nobility. The Court conspiracy and the Northern Rebellion were only tenuously linked; the uncertainty and confusion when Elizabeth outwitted the former provided just sufficient encouragement to activate the latter. News of the abortive rising inevitably reached the Earl of Sussex, who as president of the Council of the North was responsible for the security of the northern counties.
