The first time William Parry was condemned to die, it was for breaking by night into the chamber of a creditor and grievously wounding him. The Queen granted him her pardon. Some years later, Parry was once more granted audience at court. He claimed to seek Elizabeth’s protection against a conspiracy laid against her life. The Queen heard him, bestowed her trust upon him, and entertained the thought of granting him a pension. According to the prosecution, this very proximity was what he had sought: he wished to approach the sovereign only to murder her.
Parry’s course cannot be reduced to that of a man who merely confesses and subsequently denies. At his trial, he initially assented to the indictment, authenticated letters, and reaffirmed his declarations; later, he asserted that his confession had been wrung from him by extortion and that he had never harboured the design to kill the Queen. Even at the foot of the gallows, he denied any homicidal intent. The chronicles of the age treat this contradiction as a mark of duplicity. It lies equally at the very heart of an affair wherein the confessions themselves became a field of battle.
Parry was born in Wales, the son of a petty innkeeper. Having learned to read and write, he entered the service of a Cheshire lawyer. He then departed for London, where he laid claim to an ancient lineage and gave himself out to have kinsmen of far greater consequence than his own. He married a widow wealthy enough to set him afloat, squandered her fortune, and contracted a second marriage with a woman of even greater means. The chronicler depicts a man who sought in marriage a deliverance from debt; such a moral portrait is his own, yet the pecuniary episodes he relates illuminate the unsettled nature of Parry’s life.
Debt brought him once more before the courts. Hugh Hare sued him for money owed. Parry took his revenge by entering Hare’s chambers in the Temple by night and wounding him so severely that his life was despaired of. For this violent burglary, he received sentence of death. By what cause did Elizabeth grant him her mercy? Borrow confesses he does not know. The clemency that spared his life remains therefore an open question in his history, rather than proof of any determinate favour.
Following his release, Parry spent time upon the Continent. He drew near to priests and Jesuits; in Paris, he met Thomas Morgan, an English exile, and discoursed upon the plight of the Catholics. In the relation he subsequently delivered to the authorities, Parry maintained he had consented to kill the Queen provided churchmen persuaded him the act was lawful and the Pope granted him absolution. Certain priests who were consulted contested this justification. One of them reportedly told him that murder was unjust; Parry nonetheless insisted he had received, through the Cardinal of Como, a letter approving the enterprise and exhorting him to carry it through.
This written confession imputes to him a hesitation that does not exonerate him. Having returned to England, he sought a private audience with Elizabeth and spoke to her of the design, so he said, to sound the alarm and unmask the enemies of the Crown. The Queen heard him out. Parry later wrote that she had assured him Catholics would not be molested for their faith alone, so long as they proved themselves dutiful subjects. She offered him a pension. Yet his narrative adds that he had carried a dagger and cast it aside whenever he found himself in her presence. The chronicle thus preserves the contrast between the trust bestowed by Elizabeth and the later confession of a man who acknowledged having contemplated regicide.
Edmund Nevil, a kinsman of Parry whom he sought to draw into the enterprise, ultimately broke his silence to the court. He reported that his cousin had laid before him several devices: to turn to account a walk taken by the Queen in a garden, to flee by boat and gain a vessel, or to assemble armed men who would strike down Elizabeth during an outing. Nevil claimed he had refused; he had let Parry speak solely to bear witness to his overtures. Parry, for his part, maintained that Nevil had accompanied him and had denounced their understanding out of sheer self-interest. The accusation rested thus upon two men bound by blood, each presenting the other as the traitor.
When Parry was questioned in the Tower of London, he at first denied all felonious design. He subsequently admitted having debated doctrine and the assassination of a prince with Nevil, yet maintained it was an abstract disputation, void of any plot against Elizabeth. In the course of successive examinations, the Crown confronted him with his letters and Nevil’s words. According to Borrow, on the 11th of February 1584, Parry penned a lengthy confession of his part: he recounted his travels, his dealings with Morgan and the clergy, the assurances received from Rome, and the plans he claimed to have broached with Nevil. He added that his scruples had faltered, but that he had pledged to persevere in the enterprise.
At Westminster Hall, toward the close of February, the trial took an unexpected turn. Being arraigned upon the indictment, Parry initially pleaded guilty in the very terms read out to him. He prayed for death, then confirmed before the court that his confession had been freely made. The papers were presented to him one by one; he examined them and acknowledged their hand or provenance. The letter from the Cardinal of Como was penned in Italian. Parry read it out himself, and then confirmed the English translation produced at the bar.
After this series of assents, Parry shifted his ground. He declared he had never intended to take Elizabeth’s life and asserted that his confession had been extorted. The commissioners and Crown prosecutors denied that he had been subjected to torture or menaces. Parry rejoined that he had been warned they would proceed with rigour should he refuse to speak; they maintained this signified only that he would be examined according to the ordinary forms of law. Amidst these conflicting declarations, he cried out that his blood would fall upon the Queen and his judges. The court reminded him that he had confirmed his confession in open session. He brought forward no new matter capable of overturning it.
The judges sentenced him to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, the punishment reserved for traitors. The proceedings were not confined to the plot laid to Parry’s charge. The Queen’s high officers seized upon the hearing to denounce the Pope, the Catholics, and the treatises that justified rebellion in their eyes. Parry had himself presented the undertaking as a response to religious restrictions and as a service rendered to the Church; the clerics whose authority he invoked did not all share his view. A singular arraignment was thus transformed into a stern admonition directed at an entire community.
On the 2nd of March, he was conveyed by barge from the Tower to Tower Hill, and thence drawn upon a hurdle through the city to the place of execution at Westminster. He had been permitted to prepare himself for death. There, he reiterated that he had never intended to kill the Queen. This final denial followed upon his confession before the court and the retraction thereof; neither could now avail to reopen his trial. He was executed pursuant to his sentence.