Charles Paget (–1612) was a Roman Catholic conspirator, involved in the Babington Plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I of England. Family Charles Paget, born about 1546, was a younger son of the statesman William Paget, 1st Baron Paget, and his wife, Anne Preston, the daughter and heir of Henry Preston. Paget had three brothers, Henry, Thomas, and Edward (died young), and six sisters who married well. Education Paget left University of Cambridge on 27 May 1559 as a fellow commoner of Caius College. When Paget's father died in 1563, Paget inherited the lordship of Weston-on-Trent in Derbyshire. The following year he was present when Queen Elizabeth visited Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Like many other students he left the university without taking a degree, and although he was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1560, he never practised law. Exile Like many other members of his family, Paget was a zealous Catholic, and in 1581 he went into exile, and for seven years lived principally in Paris, but also in Rouen. While in Paris he became closely associated with Thomas Morgan, an agent of Mary, Queen of Scots. Paget and Morgan endeavoured to keep Mary informed of events in France and other parts through correspondence with her two secretaries in England, Claude Nau and Gilbert Curle, and it was said that 'they four governed from thenceforth all the queen's affairs at their pleasure.' Paget and Morgan also helped Mary's ambassador to the French court, James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, administer Mary's income from her dower lands in France (said to have been thirty million crowns a year), from which all three were granted pensions. According to Holmes, although Morgan and Paget's enemies accused them of fraud, 'the degree of control which they were able to exercise over Mary's finances was probably quite slight', and it is known that in 1586 Mary herself concealed from Paget the fact that she had received funds from Philip II of Spain, because she owed Paget 4000 crowns. Paget and Morgan were involved in several plots against the English government. In 1582 the Jesuit Robert Persons and William Allen conceived a plot which would have had Henry I, Duke of Guise, Philip II of Spain, and Pope Gregory XIII work in concert with Scottish and English Catholics to bring about a successful invasion of England with the objective of releasing Mary, Queen of Scots, and deposing Elizabeth.