Ambassadors, even criminal ambassadors, were protected by diplomatic immunity “infallibly within the sanctuarie of the Lawe of Nations”. So what satisfaction would they give a Privy Council baying for Mendoza’s blood? Both, too – via relationships with royal favourite Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester – were recognised at Court. Both born in 1552, they held academic posts in Oxford colleges. They solicited the advice of two of Europe’s most prestigious experts in international law, Alberico Gentili and Jean Hotman.īoth of them were resident foreigners – one, Italian, the other French – who had come to England some five years earlier as Protestant asylum seekers. Elizabeth’s Privy Council wanted Mendoza tried for treason, but they weren’t sure of the legality of this move. By replacing Elizabeth on the throne with her Catholic cousin Mary Queen of Scots, the plan was to restore Protestant England to Catholicism. Elizabeth I faced just such situation in 1584, when the Spanish ambassador in London, Don Bernardino de Mendoza, was implicated in the Throckmorton Plot to assassinate her. Sometimes these hostile foreign agents are under diplomatic cover. These are questions the UK government has asked time and time again when dealing with hostile foreign agents operating on British soil – most recently following the attempted murder of former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal and his daughter. In its aftermath, Her Majesty’s government asks her expert advisers what is the appropriate level of response and what action should be taken against murderous foreign agents and state-sponsored terrorism. A foreign state sponsors a political assassination on English soil.
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