We know that Lopez had bragged about the opportunities he'd had to poison others. In addition:

Lopez wrote to one of the double agents in prison promising to help get him released. This was produced at the trial as evidence of his involvement with the group.

Stephanus Ferreira, one of the double agents, claimed (under torture) that Lopez promised to kill the Queen for 50,000 ducats.

David Katz claims there was no sign of anti-Semitism because there was no mention of Lopez being Jewish in the trial. In addition:

The stays of execution were a response by the Queen to pleas for Lopez's life from his relative, Judah Serfatim, in Constantinople. The Jewish community were the only English allies in Constantinople and Serfatim was the most important person in the Jewish-Turkish world. She may also have delayed execution out of embarrassment that she'd been duped by someone so close to her and hoped the publicity to die down.

It is possible that the Queen's action towards Sarah Lopez (Roderigo's wife) was purely a magnanimous gesture rather than an expression of a belief that Lopez was innocent.

Postscript

Lord Burghley died of old age and his son succeeded him. The Lopez affair established Essex as an expert in interrogation and conviction of traitors so he achieved the success he'd desired... until he himself was executed for treason in 1601.

Evidence

There's a report of the letter written by Lopez to a member of Andrada's gang but the letter itself isn't in the archives.

The confessions of the two members of Andrada's gang, specified the extent of Lopez's involvement in the plot.

The 1571 Treason Act makes it clear that even imagining the death of the Queen was an offence.

David Katz argues that there is plenty of evidence that Lopez was a spy and that the motive was money.

The act of taking money in return for poisoning the Queen was enough to convict him, whether he planned to carry out the murder or not. Even today taking a reward for promising to assassinate the Queen would be against our laws.

David also believes that the trial was fair because two of the judges were anti-Essex, so they could only have been convinced of Lopez's guilt by the evidence. David himself finds the evidence consistent, so the story can't have been concocted.

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