the assassination of Queen Elizabeth I of England (Smith 1936, p. 216). Savage confessed "that through the persuasion of Doctor Gifford, and by the solicitation of Gilbert Gifford and one Hodgson he undertook to kill the Queen's majesty and for that purpose was sent from Rheims hither." When in England, Gilbert Gifford set up a means of communication between the imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots, and her allies, knowing that her letters would be intercepted by Elizabethan spies. The evidence of these letters – forged or otherwise – led to her execution in 1587 (Smith 1936). 'Afterwards, Failing in His Purpose' Before his death in prison in Paris in 1590, Gilbert Gifford wrote a letter to his brother Gerard dated 6 December 1588, which fell into the hands of the English authorities. This expresses Gilbert's 'affection' for Christopher Hodgson and reports that Hodgson had been lent £2000 by Charles Neville, 6th Earl of Westmorland. This Earl was exiled for his role in the pro-Catholic Rising of the North in 1569 (Sharp 1840). Dispossessed of all his estates, the Earl died in Flanders in 1601. Hodgson stayed at Rheims until 1589 when he left to teach philosophy and theology in a monastery in Dieulouard in Lorraine, aiming to become the Abbot. The last definite reference to him, in a letter by Jesuit Priest Robert Parsons (or Persons), gives the following account of his wanderings: "afterwards, failing in his purpose, and having no true spirit indeed, came out again, and after much wanderings up and down entangled with many ecclesiastical censures, came at length to such misery, and desperate resolution, as that when the assault should be given by the Spaniards to Calais in the year 1596, this man being there both ragged and torn, and in vagrant sort, told a certain grave man a little before the assault given, that he must be forced to enter also with the soldiers to snatch and catch as others did for his necessary relief, and what is become of him since I know not, nor whether he be dead or alive." (Catholic Record Society 1906, p. 205) Hodgson's impoverished arrival in Calais, and his request to pillage with the Spanish soldiers, seems to indicate that he might be trying to return to England. Whether he did or not we do not know. Nothing is known of Hodgson's life after 1596. References Bibliography Anstruther, Godfrey