Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 2/Chapter 15
Chapter XV.
REIGN OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.—(Continued.)
The assassination of Murray greatly disconcerted the policy of Elizabeth. The wily diplomatist who had such strong reasons for securing her co-operation in detaining the Queen of Scots from the throne, being gone, there was a serious danger of the two parties combining, and, by the aid of France, placing Mary, if not on the throne, at least at their head during the minority of her son.
Place of Imprisonment in the Tower.
The Hamiltons, Maitland, Herries, Huntley, and Argyll were all on the side of the Queen of Scots, and Morton and his associates were in no condition of themselves to resist them. They were on the march to secure the castles of Dumbarton and Edinburgh; the French were already on the Clyde; the Kers and Scots, friends of Mary, had burst across the border, accompanied by the refugee Earl of Westmoreland; and an emissary from the Duke of Alva had arrived, bringing money, and promise of substantial help from Philip. It was necessary to sow instant dissension in Scotland, and for this purpose Elizabeth dispatched that subtle intriguer. Sir Thomas Randolph, to that country only three days after Murray's death, and resolved to recommend Lennox, whom the Hamiltons hated, as regent. The young king, indeed, was his grandson, and, therefore, he had a natural claim to that position, if his abilities had been adequate to its responsibilities.
Fortune seemed to favour Elizabeth. At the very moment that Cecil was recommending these measures, Lord Hundson, the governor of Berwick, wrote to inform her that Morton was anxious to secure her support, and that nobleman lost no time in waiting on Sir Henry Gates and Sir William Drury, who had arrived on a mission to Murray, just before he was killed. He represented that his party trusted to the Queen of England not to liberate the Queen of Scotland, or the foreigners would soon possess the chief power in Scotland, but to send them Lennox aa regent, and assist them as she had assisted Murray, and they would pledge themselves to pursue the same policy. Randolph, on his arrival, promised them the queen's aid, and encouraged them to refuse any connection with the Hamiltons, who had warned them to acknowledge no authority but that of the queen. Morton and his friends replied by a proclamation, maintaining the rights of the king, and forbidding any one, on pain of treason, holding communication with the Hamiltons. As they wanted a clever head, they liberated Maitland from the castle; and on his declaration of innocence of the murder of Darnley—a notorious untruth—they reinstated him in his old post of secretary, and made Morton chancellor. Randolph assured them of Elizabeth's determination to increase the rigour of the imprisonment of the Queen of Scots, and promised them both money and soldiers on condition that they should take care that the young king should not be carried off to France; that they should maintain the Protestant religion, and deliver up Westmoreland and Northumberland. These conditions were readily accepted, and letters were dispatched to hasten the arrival of Lennox. Place of Imprisonment in the Tower.
On the queen's side were now ranged the whole power of the Hamiltons, the Earls of Argyll, Huntley, Atholl, Errol, Crawford, and Marshall; Caithness, Cassillis, Sutherland, and Eglinton; the Lords Home, Seaton, Ogilvy, Ross, Borthwick, Oliphant, Yester, and Fleming; Herries, Boyd, SomervLlle, Innermeith, Forbes, and Gray; but more than all their strength lay in the military abilities of Kirkaldy of Grange, and the diplomatic abilities of Maitland, who was no sooner at liberty than he went over to them. On the side of the king were Lennox, Mar, the governor of his youthful majesty, Glencairn, Buchanan, and the Lords Glammis, Ruthven, Lindsay, Cathcart, Methven, Ochiltree, and Saltoun.
The friends of Mary, encouraged by promise of support from Spain and France, liberated Chateiherault from the castle of Edinburgh, and compelled Randolph to fly to Berwick. They then addressed a memorial to Elizabeth, calling upon her to put an end to the miseries of Scotland by liberating the queen. But Elizabeth was in no humour to listen to such requests. She had excited all Mary's friends at home and abroad, and a perpetual succession of intrigues, plots, and menaces of invasion kept her in no enviable condition.
London Street on a Rainy Day, in days of Queen Elizabeth.
The intrigues of Norfolk for obtaining Mary, the successive rebellions in the northern shires, the invasions of the borderers under Buccleuch and Ferneyhurst—who had announced the death of Murray before it took place—and the constant romours of expeditions from France or Spain, wrought her to such a pitch, that, on pretence of seizing her rebels Northumberland and Westmoreland, she sent the Earl of Sussex into Scotland at the head of 7,000 men, the real object being to take vengeance on the allies of Mary, and to devastate the country with fire and sword.
It was in vain that the Bishop of Ross and the French ambassador remonstrated vehemently against this unjustifiable invasion; that Maitland assured Cecil that the English ravages would compel all parties to unite for protection.
Sussex advanced, and first repaid the "rout" lately made by Buccleuch and Ferneyhurst, by destroying fifty castles and 300 villages in the fine districts of Teviotdale and the Merse.
So far it was but fair retaliation, but that did not content the irate queen. She ordered Lord Scroope to invade the western border and then lay waste the lands of the Lords Herries and Maxwell, the partisans of Mary, which he desolated with fire; whilst Lennox and Sir William Drury were to advance to Edinburgh with 1,200 foot and 400 horse. There they formed a junction with Morton and his party, dispersed the queen's friends, who were besieging the castle of Glasgow; and then made a terrible march into the country of the Hamiltons. They burnt and destroyed Clydesdale and Linlithgowshire; razed the castles, destroyed the villages, and left the whole country a black and terrible desert. The palace of Hamilton, and the castles of Lialithgow and Kinneil, belonging to Chatelherault, and the estates and houses of all his friends and kinsmen, were so completely destroyed that the house of Hamilton was reduced to the verge of ruin.
This excessive fury so roused the indignation of all parties in Scotland, and such loud remonstrances were made by Maitland, the Bishop of Ross, and the French ambassador, that Elizabeth began to fear that she had gone too far, and, instead of ruining Mary's party, had created her one out of her old enemies. She wrote to Sussex commanding him to stop the siege of Dumbarton, and to Randolph, ordering him to proceed again from Berwick to Edinburgh, and to inform the two parties that, having reasonably chastised her rebels, she had listened to the request of Mary's ambassador, the Bishop of Ross, and was about to arrange at Chatsworth for the liberation and restoration of the Queen of Scots. On this Sussex retired with his forces, and the commissioners for the adjustment of the terms with Mary proceeded to the Peak. Cecil and Mildmay were then the agents of Elizabeth; the Bishop of Ross, that of Mary. The Scottish queen, who had been removed about four months to this palace of the Peak, then one of the houses of the Earl of Shrewsbury, her keeper, during these negotiations showed herself a complete match for the deep and practical diplomatists of Elizabeth; but, of course, she was under the necessity of complying with many things which she would never have listened to at liberty. Elizabeth expressed herself quite satisfied; still, the assent of the two parties in Scotland had to be obtained, and that was not at all likely, so that Elizabeth's offer could appear fair, and even liberal, with perfect safety. Morton, the head of the opponents to Mary, advocated the right of subjects to depose their sovereigns where they infringed the rights of the community—a doctrine which was abominable to the ears of Elizabeth, and called forth her unqualified censure. On the other hand, the guarantees to be given by and on account of the Queen of Scots wore such as never could be settled, from Elizabeth's fears of the resentment of Mary if once she became free. Thus the discussion was prolonged till Cecil found a way out of it without the liberation of the Scottish Queen. He represented that if Elizabeth were to marry a French prince, she would almost entirely annihilate any hopes of the English crown in Mary: for, if she had issue, her claims would be superseded; if she had not, then the French would be directly interested in keeping Elizabeth firm on her throne. The Duke of Anjou was the prince this time proposed, and Elizabeth appeared, as she generally did at first, to listen with pleasure to the proposal. No sooner was this scheme entertained than she caused the commissioners on the part of the King of Scotland to be dismissed for the present, on pretence that they were not furnished with sufficient credentials, by which she left herself at liberty to renew the treaty if necessary, or to take no further notice of it, if she came to an arrangement with the French prince.
No sooner had the Scottish commissioners withdrawn than Elizabeth summoned a Parliament, in which she proceeded to the enactment of severities against both Romanists and Protestants. Pope Pius V. had had the folly to cause a bull of excommunication against Elizabeth to be published. This now effete instrument of Papal vengeance could only serve to enrage the heretic queen, and to cause her wrath to fall heavily on some zealous unfortunate. The lawyers being amongst those who clung the longest to the old faith, a search was made in the inns of court for copies of the offensive paper. One was found in the chambers of a poor student, who, being stretched on the rack to force a confession from him of the party from whom he had received it, to save himself from torture, confessed that it was given to him by John Felton, a gentleman living near Southwark. Felton was seized, and confessed to the fact of delivering the bull to the student; and to force a revelation of his accomplices from him he was tortured, but to no purpose—he would confess nothing more. He was committed to the Tower on the 23th of May, and kept till the 4th of August, when he was tried at Guildhall on a charge of high treason, condemned, and executed with the disgusting cruelties of being cut down alive, and then embowelled and quartered, in St. Paul's Churchyard, before the gates of the palace of the Bishop of London. Felton displayed a spirit and a magnanimity in his death which might have shamed his haughty persecutor. His wife had been maid of honour to Mary, and a friend of Elizabeth's; and, though thus cruelly treated, Felton drew from his finger, at the place of execution, a diamond ring worth £400, and sent it to the queen as a token that he bore no resentment. A number of gentlemen of Norfolk, friends of the imprisoned duke, resenting his treatment, had formed a plan to seize on Leicester, Cecil, and Bacon, by inviting them to a dinner. They intended to demand not only the release of the duke, but the expulsion of the numerous French, Flemish, and Dutch Protestants who had recently sought refuge in this country, and who were considered to injure the trade of English Romanists here. This design being discovered, they were hanged, drawn, and quartered. The victims were John Throckmorton of Norwich, Thomas Brook of Rolesby, and George Redman of Cringleford. In their proclamation they had denounced the profligacy of the Court and the domineering spirit of the newly-risen courtiers.
On the 2nd of April, 1571, Parliament met at Westminster. A subsidy of two shillings and eightpence in the pound was granted by the Commons, and of five shillings in the pound by the clergy, towards defraying the charges of suppressing the rebellion in the North, and of pursuing the rebels and their abettors into Scotland. This obtained, a bill was introduced to make it high treason for any one to claim a right to the succession of the crown during the lifetime of the queen, or to say that it belonged to any other person than the queen. It went on to say that it was high treason to call the queen a heretic, a schismatic, a tyrant, or a usurper, or to deny that Parliament had a right to determine the succession. What is extraordinary was that it enacted that any one, by writing or printing, mentioning any heir to the queen, except the natural issue of her body, should suffer a year's imprisonment, and for the second offence incur the penalty of premunire. This phrase, the "natural issue," excited much ridicule and comment, as it implied that the queen either had, or was likely to have, natural issue, which she contemplated making her heir; and this was the more noticed because, in the negotiation for the restoration of the Queen of Scots, the like phrase had been introduced, and Mary's commissioners had insisted that the word lawful should be used before "issue," to which Elizabeth's commissioners had strenuously objected, and only at last conceded that it should stand "any issue by any lawful husband," which seemed to imply that, if she had living issue by Leicester, she would then marry him. What still more confirmed the public in this belief was that Leicester himself, in writing to Walsingham, mentioned the queen being in indifferent health, having had several fainting fits, having been "troubled with a spice or show of the mother," which had, however, turned out to be not so.
A second bill was passed this session enacting that any one was guilty of high treason who not merely obtained any bull from, or entered any suit in, the Court of Rome, but who was merely absolved by the Pope, or by means of any Papal instrument; and that all persons should suffer the pains of premunire who received any Agnus Dei, cross, bead, picture, which had been blessed by the Pope, or any one deriving authority from him; and their aiders and abettors the same. All persons whatsoever, of a certain age, were bound to attend the Protestant worship, and receive the sacrament as by law established; and all such as had fled abroad in order to escape this most despotic state of things, were ordered to return within six months and submit themselves under penalty of suffering the forfeiture of all property or rents from laud. Spite of the fanatic zeal of the Commons, however, the compulsory enforcement of the sacrament on the Papists was given up as at once impracticable and dangerous. The rest of these intolerable measures were passed.
But if Parliament was disposed to annihilate all religious freedom in one direction, they were as prompt to extend it in another—that is, towards themselves. A great party had sprung up in the House of Commons and the nation, already known by the name of Puritans, and destined to become far more known hereafter.
This sect of severe religionists Elizabeth had done all in her power to force upon Scotland; but she was by no means desirous of having them herself in England. As Knox in Scotland, so the leaders of the Puritans in England, who had been driven out during the persecutions in Mary's reign, had many of them visited Geneva, and imbibed the hard and persecuting spirit of Calvin. Though they were ready to fight for their own liberties, they were not a whit more inclined to allow any religious freedom to others. Whether in the Commonwealth of England, when in power, or in the new regions of America, we shall find them displaying, with all their virtues, this intolerant spirit. Elizabeth and the Puritans were wide as the poles asunder in their ideas of a reformed religion, though they were of precisely the same spirit in maintaining those ideas. They were determined as much as possible to have their own way. The Puritans were for the utmost simplicity in the externals of religion. They thought the Reformation had stopped half way. They would have no images, no crucifix. The ring in marriage, the observance of times and seasons, of festivals, chanting of psalms, church music, and robes and surplices for the clergy, they declared were the masks and livery of the beast.
On the other hand, Elizabeth had never gone far out of the regions of Popery. Like her father, she rather resisted the Papal power than the Papal spirit. Her cardinal religious tenet was that Elizabeth must do as she pleased in ecclesiastical as in temporal matters. She had always kept the great silver crucifix in her chapel, though she had in 1559 issued an order for the removal of all crucifixes from everybody else's churches and chapels. She kept candles burning before her crucifix to the end of her life, and was fond of all sorts of gorgeous robes and ceremonies—so that no one would readily perceive the difference betwixt her Protestantism and Popery, except that she had not absolutely the celebration of mass. In her hatred of the marriage of the clergy she was a thorough Papist, and never would repeal the statute of her sister Mary for the maintenance of clerical celibacy.
Though the clergy submitted to be brow-beaten and insulted concerning their marriages, their wives regarded as more concubines, and their children actually bastardised, the Puritans showed no such moderation. They spoke out with their usual boldness, and denounced the celibacy of the clergy as a rag of the woman of Babylon. An ill feeling grew quickly betwixt Elizabeth and them: each of them were intolerant, but Elizabeth had the power, and exercised it, with the certain result on such a people of provoking a daring and unsparing retaliation. They attacked with right good will her favourite doctrine of the royal supremacy, declared that the Church was in its nature independent of the State, and that the simple Presbyterian form of Church government was the true one, and not the episcopal, with its proud bishops and dignitaries, in all their semi-Popish gear. Thomas Cartwright, the Lady Margaret professor of divinity at Cambridge, preached vehemently against the anti-Christian institution of bishops, whom he characterised as merely the tools of the State, and against all the Papistical rites and ceremonies of the Church as maintained by Elizabeth. And, in these crusades against the Anglican Church, undaunted reformers found much secret support from the ministers of Elizabeth themselves, at the very time they seemed to be conforming most obediently to her model. Bacon, Walsingham, Sadler, Knollys, the Earls of Bedford, Warwick, and Huntingdon, were all forerunners, in secret, of the Puritans. Leicester especially patronised and made use of them. He was particularly fond of Cartwright, who shouted from his pulpit, in the loudest tones, that "princes ought to submit their sceptres, to throw down their crowns, before the Church; yea, as the prophet speaketh, to lick the dust of the feet of the Church." These ministers found it very convenient, when they could not themselves persuade the queen to moderation, to rouse the Puritans, who made a popular commotion, and rendered it necessary to draw in. Leicester had no more efficient means of thwarting any scheme of foreign marriage for the queen than by rousing the Dissenters against such Popish schemes.
The House of Commons was almost wholly leavened with the Puritans, and this Session they brought in no less than seven bills to carry forward their ideas of the thorough reformation of the Church. These projected reforms were so many attacks on the favourite rites, tenets, and ecclesiastical pomps of Elizabeth, and she was thrown into a passion of amazement by their audacity. William Strickland, an old sea-captain, was the introducer of these bills. Though they were strongly supported by the House, Elizabeth, in her rage, sent a message commanding Strickland to cease to meddle with matters which concerned her prerogative as supreme head of the Church; but Strickland replied, "The salvation of their souls was concerned, to which all the kingdoms of the earth were nothing in comparison." Enraged at this bold conduct, the queen sent for Strickland to appear before her in Council, and ordered him to appear no more in the House of Commons. But the House was of another temper to that which it had shown in her father's time. It called Strickland to its bar, and demanded what was the reason that he absented himself from his duties. Strickland stated the cause, nothing loth; and the House then declared that its privileges had been invaded in his person; that such proceedings could not be submitted to without a betrayal of its trust to the people; that the queen could neither make nor break the laws; and that the House, which had the authority to determine the right to the crown itself, was certainly competent to treat of all matters concerning the Church, its discipline, and ceremonies.
The Speaker, after a consultation with some of the ministers, proposed to suspend the debate; but the next morning Strickland appeared in his place, and was greeted by the acclamations of the House. Elizabeth took the hint, and suffered the matter to pass; but she did not forget it. On dismissing Parliament at the end of the Session, she ordered the Lord Keeper Bacon to inform the members that their conduct had been strange, undutiful, and unbecoming; that as they had forgotten themselves, they should be otherwise remembered; and that the queen's highness did utterly disallow and condemn their folly in meddling with things not appertaining to them, nor within the capacity of their understandings.
But the example of independence had been shown, and it was not lost. This stern resistance to the will of the monarch in Parliament, in fact, constituted a new era. To the spirit of the Puritans we owe the establishment of the supremacy of Parliament, and its defence against the encroachments of the sovereign, however powerful; for the battle that commenced was continued with various but advancing success, till it terminated in the expulsion of the Stuarts, and the passing of the Bill of Rights. Not the less, however, did Elizabeth rage against it; and if she found Parliament invulnerable, she attacked the liberties of the subject in detail, by her Court of High Commission—a mere variation of the High Court of Star Chamber. This court consisted of a number of commissioners, with Parker, the primate, at their head, who were empowered to inquire, on the oath of the person accused, and on the oaths of witnesses, into all heretical, erroneous, and dangerous opinions; into absence from the public worship and the frequenting of conventicles; into the possession of seditious books, libels against the queen, her magistrates, and ministers; into adulteries, and all offences against decency and morals; and to punish the offender by spiritual censures, by fine, imprisonment, and deprivation. As there was no jury, it was clearly a breach of Magna Charta, and wholly unconstitutional, and was a species of inquisition liable to great abuses, and to become an instrument to the grossest injustice. Its powers were first turned against the Papists, but the sturdy character and acts of the Puritans very soon brought them under its notice, and they became ere long the first objects of its oppressive rigour. This rigour only tended to drive so high-spirited a class of subjects into open schism, and to the conventicles which sprang up fast and far. These Parker attacked with fury. At a meeting at Plumber's Hall more than a hundred persons were seized and brought into the High Commission Court, and of these twenty-four men and seven women, who refused to confess themselves guilty of any offence, were punished with twelve months' imprisonment. This course was now pursued towards the Dissenters everywhere. They were driven out of their meetings, and subjected to insult and imprisonment, some of them for life. Parker, with his bench of bishops and delegates, grew more and more ferocious. He declared that the Puritans were cowards, and that they would soon succumb to a strong hand; but, like many another persecutor, whilst he thought he was destroying, he was only disseminating the obnoxious principles; and the cowards, as he called them, in two more reigns, laid the monarch in his blood, and the throne in the dust. Had the primate been a man of any deep insight into human nature, the hardy answer of Mr. Wentworth, one of the most eloquent debaters of the House of Commons, would have caused him to reflect. He called him before him to interrogate him regarding certain omissions in the Thirty-nine Articles, which the Commons had taken upon themselves to make. "He asked me," said Wentworth, "why we did put out of the book the articles for the homilies, consecration of bishops, and such like. 'Surely, sir,' said I, 'because wo were so occupied in other matters that we had no time to examine them how they agree with the word of God.' 'What!' said he 'surely you mistake the matter: you will refer yourselves wholly to us therein.' 'No, by the faith I bear to God,' said I, 'we will pass nothing before we understand what it is; for that were put to make you Popes. Make you Popes who list,' said I, 'for we will make you none.'"
In the January of 1571 the queen went in great state to dine with Sir Thomas Gresham in the City, who had invited her to open the new Exchange which he had built at his own expense on Cornhill. After the ceremony, she dined with the great merchant at his house in Bishopsgate Street, where she was accompanied by La Mothe Fenelon, the French ambassador. After dinner she indulged herself in her favourite topic in private—that of marrying—though she hated nothing more than to have this subject broached to her in public by her Parliament. "Among other things," Fenelon says, "she told me that she was determined to marry, not from any wish of her own, but for the satisfaction of her subjects, and also to put an end, by the authority of a husband or by the birth of offspring, if it pleased God to give them to her, to the enterprises which she felt would be perpetually made against her person and realm if she became so old a woman that there was no longer any pretence for taking a husband, or hope that she might have children. She added that, 'in truth, she greatly feared not being loved by him whom she might espouse, which would be a greater misfortune than the first, for it would be worse to her than death, and she could not bear to reflect on such a possibility.'"
The ambassador, of course, flattered, and recommended to her one of the French princes—the Duke of Anjou. Elizabeth was fain to listen to this proposal, because she thought that so long as she could amuse the French Court with the project, she should be safe from any movement on its part for the Queen of Scots. Yet this could only be temporary, for assuredly Elizabeth never seriously contemplated marrying; but a flirtation, either public or private, was to her always an irresistible fascination. Besides Leicester, she had now another favourite, Christopher Hatton, who, having casually appeared at the palace amongst the gentlemen of the Inns of Court at a masque, so charmed the queen by his fine form and fine dancing, that she at once placed him on her band of pensioners, the tallest and handsomest men in England. Soon after she dined with Sir Thomas Gresham she made Cecil Lord of Burleigh; his uncle, Lord William Howard, lord privy seal; the Earl of Sussex chamberlain—that office being vacated by Lord William Sir Thomas Smith, principal secretary of state; and Hatton, who was a lawyer, captain of the guard: rising, however, in Elizabeth's regard, she afterwards made him vice-chamberlain, and finally lord chancellor. Gray, the poet, has humorously alluded to the fortunes of Lord Chancellor Hatton, and their cause, in his "Long Story:"—
"Full oft within the spacious walls,
When he had fifty winters o'er him,
My grave lord-keeper led the brawls,
And seals and maces danced before him.
"His bushy heard and shoe-strings green,
His high-crowned hat and satin doublct,
Moved the stout heart of England's queen,
Though Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it."
So rapid and extravagant grew Elizabeth's passion for the handsome and capering Hatton, that Leicester could not avoid attempting to ridicule his rival by offering to introduce to her a dancing-master who excelled Hatton in all the dances which he so much charmed her in. But his project was not lucky. Elizabeth, after hearing him, exclaimed, "Pish! I will not see your man: it is his trade." She gave way to the most ridiculous fondness for her new favourite. They corresponded together in the most fond and foolish style, of which the shelves of the State Paper Office bear heaps of proof. Nothing could be too much or too good to bestow upon him. He fell in love with the house and gardens of the Bishop of Ely, on Holborn Hill, then open, and celebrated for its pleasantness and flowers, and Elizabeth called on the bishop to give them up. He was not at all inclined to do so, on which the love-sick queen wrote to him in a style rather different to that in which she addressed Hatton:—
Proud Prelate,—You know what you were before I made you what you now are. If you do not immediately comply with my request, I will unfrock you, by God! Elizabeth.
The bishop lost no time in resigning his pleasant palace and gardens, with the gatehouse of his palace, on Holborn Hill—and several acres of land are since called Hatton Garden—only reserving a right of way through the gatehouse, of walking in the garden, and of gathering annually twenty bushels of roses.
The royal lover who was now proposed by his mother, Catherine de Medicis, to supplant the two private lovers, was a youth of sixteen, whilst Elizabeth had arrived at the age of thirty-eight. His figure was diminutive, his features excessively ugly; he had a remarkably large nose, and his face was dreadfully scarred with the small-pox. His mind was as deformed as his body—and this was the suitor at this moment recommended to Elizabeth by Catherine! This was not, in fact, the Duke of Anjou, but of Alençon, his younger brother. Long negotiations had taken place for the match with Anjou, but every one of Elizabeth's ministers had opposed it; and, finally, the youth had declined it himself. Cecil used all his influence against the match. He declared that not only Anjou, but the whole Royal family of France, were so bigotedly Papist, that the proposal was perilous to the Protestant religion. When he could not prevail on that argument, he even endeavoured to persuade her to marry Leicester, who, he declared, would be far more acceptable to the whole realm. But Elizabeth was now bent on carrying on this courtship, at least for a time, and complained to the Ladies Clinton and Cobham of the opposition of her ministers. Lady Cobham spoke in favour of Anjou, only she observed that it was a pity he was so young. Elizabeth said the difference was only ten years, though it was really nearly twenty. But, unfortunately for Elizabeth's vanity, the young Anjou, who was one of the handsomest princes in Europe, positively refused to have her, declaring that he would not marry "an ugly old creature who had a sore leg." This news of the sore leg he had learned from Fenelon, who had informed his Court that, like her royal father, she had been laid up with a sore leg all the summer.
From Norris, her ambassador at Paris, Elizabeth obtained so flattering an account of the beauty and grace of Anjou, that she asked Leicester to contrive that he should make a pleasure cruise on the Kentish coast, where she would betake herself, "and so that they could see each other as by accident: but even this the ungallant prince bluntly refused, for he did not wish to see her at all.
Early in April, however, of this year, Guido Cavalcanti arrived in England with a joint letter from Charles IX. of France and Catherine de Medicis, making a formal offer of the Duke of Anjou's hand. Elizabeth appeared to receive the proposal with so much satisfaction, that the French ambassador really thought her this time sincere. She ran over, in great self-complacence, all the list of her royal and noble lovers, including the Kings of Spain and Sweden, the Prince of Denmark, and the son of the emperor; and, after all, professed to like the idea of the handsome Anjou best. But the ambassador made demands, in case of marriage, which, had Elizabeth been ever so sincere, would have effectually stopped the way. First and foremost, he was to enjoy free exercise of his religion: that Elizabeth determined nobody should exercise. Next, he was to enjoy joint power with her; Elizabeth would never let go a particle of her power. Either of these items was enough to defeat the whole scheme. Besides, Elizabeth had heard of the prince's making jests at her expense, and she took care to let the ambassador know it. She told him "that it had been said in France that monsieur would do well to marry an old creature who had had, for the last year, the evil in her leg, which was not yet healed, and never could be cured; and that, under pretext of a remedy, they would send her a potion from France of such a nature that he would find himself a widower in six mouths, and then could please himself by marrying the Queen of Scotland, and remain the undisputed sovereign of the united realms."
The First Royal Exchange, erected by Sir Thomas Gresham. See page 472
Fenelon pretended to be extremely shocked at such abominable falsehoods, as he termed them; and demanded the author of them, that he might be punished. She replied it was time enough yet to name the author, but she would let them know more about it; and the next time she gave audience to the ambassador, she let him know that, "notwithstanding the reported state of her leg, she had not failed to dance on the preceding Sunday at the Marquis of Northampton's wedding; so that she hoped monsieur would not find himself cheated into marrying a cripple, instead of a lady of proper paces."
At this crisis, when Elizabeth was wreaking her resentment on her ungracious royal lover, she was suddenly startled by Walsingham informing her that Anjou was actually proposing for the Queen of Scots; that the French Court was earnestly seconding it, and that an application was already made to the Pope, who had promised a dispensation. He added that it was determined, if the treaty for the restoration of Mary did not succeed, France should fit out an expedition and take her from England by force. Elizabeth heard this intelligence with uncontrollable rage. Whilst she was affecting to reprimand the prince for his freedoms of speech regarding herself, that he should actually show such contempt for her as to be wooing her rival—her captive, whom she could at any moment destroy—was a deep stroke to her pride. She is said to have wreaked her mortification on, the unfortunate Mary, whose treatment became sensibly more rigorous and unkind. This treatment was, indeed, so cruel and vindictive, that the King of France ordered his ambassador to intercede on her behalf; and in doing this he added a menace which confirmed all that Walsingham had heard. He said "that unless Elizabeth took means for the restoration of the Queen of Scotland to her rightful dignity, and in the meantime treated her in a kind and honourable manner, he should send forces openly to her assistance.'
Elizabeth justified her conduct to Mary by accusing her of constant plots against her crown and life, not only with her subjects, but with France, Rome, Flanders, and Spain; and, to turn the tables on the French Court, she immediately began to favour a proposal of marriage which was made her by the Emperor Maximilian for his eldest son, Prince Rodolph. About the same time she had an offer, also, of the hand of Prince Henry of Navarre, afterwards the famous Henry IV. These offers Elizabeth played off against the French Court, but especially that of Prince Rodolph, boasting that she was about to send to Spain a secret mission, whose object was an alliance with Philip, based on her marriage with his relative. Prince Rodolph.
By these acts she succeeded in alarming the French Court, and resuming the negotiation on account of the Duke of Anjou. The greater part of this year was consumed in these coquetries betwixt Elizabeth and the Court of France; for it could scarcely be said to be Anjou himself, as he continued to make no scruple of his disgust at the prospect of the connection. His mother, Catherine de Medicis, was greatly disconcerted by this obstinacy of her son. She complained to Walsingham and Sir Thomas Smith, Elizabeth's ambassadors, that she was afraid Anjou listened to all the scandalous stories of the queen with her favourites Leicester and Hatton, and, in truth, these stories were extraordinary, and in every one's mouth. The Earl of Arundel, and other nobles at her Court, 
Trial of the Duke of Norfolk.(See page 479.)
represented the freedoms used by Leicester as a disgrace to the crown, and that neither the nobles nor the people at large ought to allow of such proceedings. They charged Leicester with using his privilege of entrée into the queen's bed-chamber most disreputably, asserting that he went in and out there before she rose; they also accused him of "kissing Her Majesty when he was not invited thereto."
But whilst Anjou hung back from this great alliance, Elizabeth seemed only the more bent on it. She appeared to forget her pride, and to do all the wooing herself. She sent her portrait to the prince, declared her full determination to have him, and that he should enjoy the private exercise of his religion in England. The ungallant Anjou replied that he would not go there unless he could enjoy it publicly too. That he might no longer believe her lame or invalid, she gave over going to the chase in her coach, but rode upon a tall horse. She shot a large stag with her own hand, and sent it to the French ambassador to show how vigorous and robust she was; and she herself filled her work-basket with fine apricots, and desired Leicester to forward them to the prince, that he might see that England had a climate fine enough to produce beautiful fruit. But all those condescensions failed to move the oblurate Anjou, who, though he sometimes made fair speeches as a matter of courtesy, steadily recoiled from her offered hand, and would not even come over to England to gratify her with a view of him. At length, perceiving that her attentions were wholly thrown away on Anjou, she broke off the negotiation in disgust, declaring that the prince's adherence to his demand for the public exercise of his religion rendered the alliance impossible, and, therefore, the thought of it must be dismissed. The French ambassadors, at the suggestion of Burleigh, hastened to remove her mortification, which was in secret shown to be excessive, by offering the hand of the younger brother, the Duke of Alençon; and Elizabeth, though well aware of his mean person and as mean mind, pretended to listen to it, and, as we shall see, commenced a show of negotiation on that subject which lasted for some years; and, that there might appear no sign of chagrin or resentment on her part, she signed a treaty of perpetual peace and alliance with France on Sunday, the 15th of June, 1572, the Duke de Montmorenci and M. de Foix signing it on the part of Charles IX.
The course of these love affairs Elizabeth had diversified by an execution. In June of the last year she caused one of her most bitter and determined enemies to be executed. This was Dr. Storey, who, during the reign of her sister Mary, had strenuously recommended her being put to death as the great root of all heresies and seditions. On her accession he had prudently left the kingdom, and entered the service of Philip, where he was said to have cursed Elizabeth every day before dinner as the most acceptable part of his grace. He was captured on board an English ship, in which, for some purpose or other, he was making his way to England, and was condemned as guilty of treason and magic. The Spanish ambassador claimed him as a subject of Philip, to which Elizabeth replied that His Majesty was welcome to his head, but that his body should not quit England. A much greater victim was now to suffer the penalty of her resentment. The Duke Of Norfolk, both by his religion and by his earnest attachment to the Queen of Scots, excited her deepest resentment. She had cast him into prison, but even there he was a terror to her. The whole body of the Roman Catholics, indeed, was in a state of irritation and disaffection. They were excluded from all places of honour or profit, from the Court down to the City corporation, and even to the constable of the most remote and obscure village. This expulsion of them from patronage, at the same time that they were persecuted otherwise for the retention of their faith, was most impolitic. It converted them into one great mass of enemies; and as they had little to do, and were many of them at once men of family, of education, and of narrow means, they were anxious for some revolutionary demonstration, because they could lose little in it, and might chance to gain everything: they might avenge their injuries, and achieve liberty and government employment. If Elizabeth had studied how best she might add to this spirit of restless fermentation, she could not have hit on a more successful plan than that of introducing the beautiful Queen of Scots into the midst of them as an object of admiration for her person and accomplishments, and of deep sympathy on account of her sufferings, her unjust thraldom, and her oppressed religion. She was the very apple of discord which the most calculating enemy would have thrown into the centre of the teeming mass of resentments, wounded conscience, crushed hopes, and political abasement. Elizabeth had fixed her there herself by her perfidious and relentless detention, and she now reaped the punishment in perpetual plots and alarms of treason amid her very Court. All the disaffected looked still to the Duke of Norfolk as worthy, by his rank—being nearly connected in blood with the crown—by his sufferings and affection for the Queen of Scots, to be their head.
In the month of April, 1571, Charles Bailly, a servant of the Queen of Scots, who was coming from Brussels to Dover, was arrested at the latter place, and upon him was discovered a packet of letters which, being written in cipher, created suspicion. The Bishop of Ross, Mary's staunch and vigilant friend, who knew very well whence they came, on the first rumour of their seizure, contrived to obtain them from Lord Cobham, in whose hands they were, from a pretended curiosity to read them before they were sent to the Council. Having obtained his desire, he dexterously substituted others, and very innocent ones, in their place, in a like cipher: but Bailly, being sent to the Tower and placed on the rack, at length confessed that he had written the letters from the dictation of Rudolfi, of Brussels, formerly an Italian banker in London, and then had been commissioned by him to convey them to England. He further confessed that they contained assurances from the Duke of Alva of his warm sympathy with the cause of the captive queen, and approved of the plan of a foreign invasion of England; that if his master the King of Spain authorised him, he should be ready to co-operate with 30 and 40. Who these 30 and 40 were Bailly said he did not know, but that all that was explained by a letter enclosed to the Bishop of Ross, who was requested to deliver them to the right persons.
One of these persons was immediately believed to be the Duke of Norfolk. When he had been ten months a prisoner without any matter having been brought against him of more consequence than that of his having desired to marry the Queen of Scots, provided the Queen of England was willing—which was no treason—and had been brought to no trial, he petitioned to be liberated, contending that though he was wrong in not communicating everything fully to the queen, yet that he had neither committed nor intended any crime, and that his health and circumstances were suffering greatly from his close imprisonment. In consequence, he was removed from the Tower, on the 4th of August, 1570, to one of his own houses, under the custody of Sir Henry Neville. He certainly then obtained sufficient variety of prisons, but no more liberty, for he was repeatedly removed from one house to another. He petitioned to be restored to his seat in the Council, but was refused; and in August of 1571 circumstances transpired which occasioned his return to the Tower.
A man of the name of Brown, of Shrewsbury, on the 29th of August, carried to the Privy Council a bag of money which he said he had received from Hickford, the Duke of Norfolk's secretary, to carry to Bannister, the duke's steward. The money, on being counted in presence of the Council, was found to amount to £600. But besides the money there were two papers in cipher; and on this suspicious appearance Hickford, the secretary, was at once arrested and ordered to decipher the notes, which then showed that the money was intended to be sent to Lord Herries, in Scotland, to assist in making fresh efforts on behalf of Mary. Here was treason, or something like it, if it were true, and the duke was immediately sent back to the Tower in the custody of Sir Ralph Sadler, Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Henry Neville, his old keeper, and Dr. Wilson. The duke denied all knowledge of it; but Bannister, and Barker, another secretary of Norfolk's, being now apprehended, as well as the Bishop of Ross, the rack was set to work to force a confession from them. Of evidence so obtained we all know the value. Sir Thomas Smith, one of the commissioners in the case, writing to Cecil, says:—"We think surely we have done all that at this time may be done. Of Bannister with the rack, of Barker with the extreme fear of it, we suppose to have gotten all. Bannister, indeed, knoweth little."
It appears that before Bannister would confess anything, they were compelled to rack him; but Barker was terrified at the very sight of the ugly machine. Smith admits, with that candour in such disclosures amongst one another which, coming to our hands in the State Paper Office, have stamped those ministers of Elizabeth with such deserved infamy, that they were cooking the evidence thus obtained, to make it tell against the duke. They make Barker say that he had ordered one William Taylor, a carpenter at the "White Lion Inn," in Aldersgate Street, to bury a bag of the duke's papers, which contained letters from the Scottish queen; that the duke had not only corresponded with the Queen of Scots, but with the Duke of Alva on her behalf, through Rudolfi, and with her adherents in Scotland through the Bishop of Ross; and though Smith confessed to Cecil that Bannister had disclosed little, yet they so tampered with the evidence as to make Bannister confirm that of Hickford and Barker.
The Bishop of Ross, when questioned, stood upon his privilege of ambassador as being no subject of the Queen of England; and he strengthened his case by a very unpleasant reminder that when Randolph and Tamworth, the emissaries of Elizabeth, were convicted of actually supporting rebellion in Mary's dominions by both money and counsel, Mary had contented herself with ordering them to quit the kingdom. But Ross had to do with very different people to Mary. Cecil and Elizabeth were not inclined to let him off so easily; but he was told that he must either make a full answer to their questions, or they would force it from him by the rack. Ross was not only terrified by the threat of torture, but was told that his confessions wore not intended to criminate any one, but merely to satisfy the mind of Elizabeth. He gave way, and made such revelations, that when the Duke of Norfolk, who had hitherto stoutly denied everything laid to his charge, saw the depositions of the bishop, of Hickford, and Barker, he exclaimed that he had been betrayed and ruined by those in whom he put confidence. On comparing the various answers of these men and of the duke, it would appear that several plans had been in agitation for the liberation of the Queen of Scots; that Norfolk, though he would confess to nothing of the kind, had taken active part in them; that the money lately taken from Hickford had been sent from France for the Scotch friends of Mary. But by far most fatal to the duke was the revelation of the mission of Rudolfi, who had, it appeared, been sent by him to Alva, to the King of Spain, and to the Pope—or, rather, by Mary, with the cognisance and approbation of the duke. On his return, Rudolfi had found the duke at Howard House, smarting under his restraint, and the refusal of his request to resume his place at the Council board.
Both Mary and Norfolk, who had waited the issue of the negotiation betwixt her commissioners and those of Elizabeth for her restoration to no purpose, now deemed it the only chance for her liberation to seek the aid of foreign powers. Ross seems to have been the suggester to Mary of the mission of Rudolfi. He contended that both Philip and the Popo must be ready to adopt the same means against Elizabeth which she had always been employing against them—the incitement to rebellion amongst their subjects; that it only wanted the authority of Mary and of Norfolk to succeed. Certain instructions were afterwards exhibited as those furnished by Mary to Rudolfi; but their genuineness is doubtful, and Norfolk never would set his hand to any written document of the kind. According to these instructions Mary declared that all her hopes of accommodation with her subjects through Elizabeth were at an end, and she appealed to France and Spain for help. She declared that she could have been happy with Don John of Austria; and that the offer of the Duke of Norfolk to restore the Roman Catholic faith, and to send her son to Spain for security and education, made her marriage with him appear the more advisable.
With these instructions, Ross, Rudolfi, and Barker waited on Espés, the Spanish ambassador, who is described as a sanguine, credulous man, very unfit for his office; and he, satisfied of their authenticity, gave them letters of introduction to Philip and the Duke of Alva. Alva received Rudolfi at Brussels, but declared that he could do nothing, being only a servant, and that he must see the king himself. The English exiles there, however, gave Rudolfi an enthusiastic reception, and promised wonders. These promises were contained in the letters in cipher betrayed by Hickford to the Council; and from that moment the spies of Cecil were upon Rudolfi's track. From Flanders he proceeded to Rome, avoiding the French Court, which at the moment was engaged in the negotiation for the marriage betwixt the Duke of Anjou and Elizabeth.
The Pope placed a sum of money at the disposal of Mary, and accompanied it by a letter to Norfolk, regretting that he could send him no further aid this year. Thence Rudolfi hastened to Spain, and reaching Madrid on the 3rd of July, 1571, he delivered his letters to Philip. Meantime Philip had received letters from both the Pope and Alva. The Pope urged him to accept the enterprise, and rescue England from heresy. The more astute Alva advised him to have nothing to do with it, for he had no faith in the men engaged in it, nor in the soundness of their plans. Philip, however, listened to the scheme, and was so much impressed by it as to determine to undertake the expedition, and to appoint Vitelli its commander. Rudolfi assured the king that he would find plenty ready to co-operate with his forces in England; that he might calculate on an army of 20,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry meeting his troops on landing, led on by the Duke of Norfolk, the Earls of Worcester and Southampton, the Lords Montague, Windsor, and Lumley, with many others; that it was intended to dispatch Elizabeth whilst on a visit to some country house, and also to destroy with her Cecil, Bacon, Leicester, and Northampton. All this Rudolfi wrote to communicate; but the scheme was suddenly scattered to the winds by the discovery of his money and letters.
The alarm in the country on the rumours which now broke out was intense. The Duke of Alva, it was said, was coming with an army to burn down London and kill the queen. The Pope was sending over money to carry on the enterprise and nothing was heard of but the Pope, Alva, the King of Spain, and legions of foreign Papists on the way to murder and destroy all good Protestants. More bloody and frightful than all the rest was the disclosure of a plot by one Herle, for the assassination of Cecil, and others of the Privy Council. The first intimation of this plot was in a voluntary confession by letter from Herle to Cecil, dated January 4th, 1572, as follows:—"Of late I have, upon discontent, entered into conspiracy with some others to slay your lordship; and the time appointed, a man with a perfect hand attended you three several times in your garden to have slain your lordship; the which not falling out, and continuing in the former mischief, the height of your study window is taken towards the garden, minding, if they miss these means, to slay you with a shot upon the terrace, or else in coming late from the Court, with a pistol."
Having made this singular confession, Herle hopes to be duly rewarded for not having done it! The two miscreants who, he said, were his accomplices, were one Kenelm Barney and Edmund Mather. These men mutually accused each other, and appear to have been low vagabonds led on by Herle, and who had talked in public-houses of "dancers and carpet knights," meaning Leicester and Hatton, who "were admitted to the queen's privy chamber;" of liberating the Duke of Norfolk, and of the promotion to be expected under a new sovereign. Mather swore that he was on the point of informing of Herle and Barney, but that Herle had been too nimble for him. The whole affair bore the impression of a sham conspiracy got up by Cecil through Herle, and this became still more clear when Barney and Mather were drawn from the Tower to Tyburn, and there hanged, embowelled, and quartered, whilst Herle was taken into Cecil's service.
At length the queen determined to bring Norfolk to the bar. She named the Earl of Shrewsbury high steward, and he summoned six-and-twenty peers, who were in the first place chosen by the ministers, to attend on the 16th of January, 1572, in Westminster Hall. Thither Norfolk was brought by the Lieutenant of the Tower and Sir Peter Carew, and was charged with having compassed and imagined the death of the queen, and levying war upon her within the realm—1st. By endeavouring to marry the Queen of Scots, and supplying her with money, well knowing that she claimed the crown of England. 2nd. By sending sums of money to the Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland, and other persons concerned in the rebellion in the North, enemies to the queen, and attainted of high treason. 3rd. By dispatching Rudolfi to the Pope, Alva, and the King of Spain, recommending them to send forces to depose the queen, and set up the Queen of Scots in her place; he himself marrying the said Queen of Scots.
Norfolk replied by asking for counsel, which was not allowed him, and he then complained that they dealt hardly with him; that he had been called on all at once to prepare his defence, not fourteen hours being granted him in the whole, including the night, and that totally without books, or so much as a breviate of the statutes. He declared that he was brought to fight without his weapons. He represented himself as an unlearned man, whose memory, never good, had been sorely decayed by heavy troubles and cares. He displayed, however, a memory, a readiness of resources, and a knowledge of the law which astonished his judges. He pleaded that the Queen of Scots was no enemy or competitor of his own queen; that she had abandoned the title of Queen of England on the death of her husband, Francis II., and, so far from Elizabeth treating her as an enemy, she had for ten years been on very friendly terms with her, standing godmother to her child. Therefore, in wishing to marry the Queen of Scots, he could have committed no treason. That he had never spoken with Rudolfi but once, when the interview was on account of some banking business; but that Rudolfi did at the same time inform him that he was seeking aid to obtain the release and restoration of the Scottish queen, but with no intention of hostility to England, as far as he could learn. He denied having sent any aid to Westmoreland and Northumberland during their rebellion in the North, but admitted remitting money since to the Countess of Westmoreland, his own sister, to assist her in her distress; and that he had in like manner given his advice as to the distribution of some money sent by the Pope to the English refugees in Flanders, on the same principle. Moreover, that he had received a letter from the Pope, which he had resented, having nothing to do with the Pope or his religion. From all that could be brought against him, it did not appear that the duke was guilty of any participation in an attempt to dethrone or even distress Elizabeth, but that his sole object was to many the Queen of Scots. That other parties, of whom Rudolfi was the agent, had designs against the Government of Elizabeth, there exists no doubt; but from the duke's character as an honest and loyal nobleman, it is probable that they kept these ulterior views out of his sight. But his enemies had determined to destroy him, and brought against him a number of his servants and others with prepared charges; and when he denounced them as false and wicked, the counsel for the Crown rudely told him that the evidence of the witnesses on oath was far more deserving of credence than his denial of them. He demanded to have the witnesses brought face to face with him; but this, with one exception, was refused. The exception was ono Richard Candish, or Cavendish, a tool of Leicester's.
When he was brought up, the duke treated him with much ironic severity, saying, "You are an honest man!" reminding him that he had been the bearer of letters betwixt himself, Leicester, and Throckmorton; and that he had intruded himself without invitation to his house in Norfolk, and then gone mysteriously away. The man seemed to shrink under the scornful eye of the duke, and was glad to get away; yet the queen's serjeant pronounced his evidence as good and sufficient. There was next an attempt to get the Bishop of Ross to appear in court, and confirm the evidence drawn from him under terror of the rack: but he steadfastly refused, declaring that he never heard the duke utter a word contrary to his duty and allegiance to his sovereign, and that he would declare this before the whole realm if they brought him up.
A letter said to have been written by the duke to Murray, and one from Murray to the duke, were put in and read, which, if true, certainly criminated Norfolk; but no evidence of the authenticity of these letters was produced, and there is little doubt that they were only a portion of the many forgeries committed for the purpose of destroying the prisoner. As if all this was not enough, the queen interfered in a direct and most unconstitutional manner to secure his condemnation. She sent a message by the solicitor-general that the ambassador of a foreign prince had communicated to her that the whole of the plot had been disclosed by Rudolfi in Flanders, with the duke's participation in it; and that the Lords of the Privy Council had heard it all, and would in secret communicate the particulars to the Peers who sat in judgment, as there were names concerned which must not there be mentioned. These strange judges retired, and heard this new evidence against the prisoner without communicating a word of it to him; and then, after an hour's consultation, gave a verdict of guilty. Amongst the Peers sat Leicester, who had encouraged Norfolk in the project of this marriage, and now voted for his death. The lord steward pronounced sentence that he should be drawn from the Tower to Tyburn, there be hanged till half dead, then taken down, his bowels taken cut, and burnt before his face; his head then to be struck off and his body quartered, the head and quarters to be set wherever Her Majesty pleased.
On hearing this barbarous sentence—more barbarous than most of those of Henry VIII., for he was generally satisfied with beheading his victims—the duke exclaimed.—This, my lord, is the judgment of a traitor; but (striking himself hard upon the breast) I am a true man to God and the queen as any that liveth, and always have been so. I do not now desire to live. I will not desire any of your lordships to make petition for my life. I am at a point; and, my lords, as you have banished me from your company, I trust shortly to be in better company. This only I beseech you, my lords: to be humble suitors to the queen's majesty that it will please her to be good to my poor orphan children, and to take order for the payment of my debts, and to have some consideration for my poor servants. God knows how true heart I bear to Her Majesty and to my country, whatsoever this day hath been falsely objected against me. Farewell, my lords."
He spoke with some passion, as a man incensed at being wrongfully accused and suspected, yet with a certain dignity—in nothing forgetting his station, and his whole bearing that of a man who was a genuine Englishman at heart, who had been fascinated by the charms of the Scottish queen, but had never conceived a treasonable thought against the English one. On his return to the Tower, Elizabeth pressed him by her ministers to confess and disclose the guilt of his colleagues. Norfolk replied in a long letter, which breathes the spirit of a true-hearted and really noble man. Whilst entreating earnestly for his orphan children, he refused to implicate any one else. "The Lord knoweth," he said, "that I myself know no more than I have been charged withal, nor much of that; although, I humbly beseech God and your majesty to forgive me, I know a great deal too much. But if it had pleased your highness, whilst I was a man in law, to have commanded my accusers to have been brought to my face, although of my own knowledge I knew no more than I have particularly confessed, yet there might, perchance, have bolted out somewhat to mine own purgation, and your highness have known that which is now concealed." He then adds, in regard to the queen's desire to draw from him accusations of others, "Now, an if it please your majesty, it is too late for me to come face to face to do you any service; the one being a shameless Scot, and the other an Italianised Englishman (the Bishop of Ross and Barker), their faces will be too brazen to yield to any truth that I shall charge them with. Though the one was my man, yet ho will now count himself my master; and so, indeed, he may, for he hath, God forgive him, mastered me with his untruth." And again—"Alas! an if it please your majesty now to weigh how little I can say for your better service, and how little credit a dead man in law hath, I hope your highness, of your most gracious goodness, will not command me that which cannot, I think, do you any service, and yet may heap more infamy upon me, unhappy wretch! which needs not be, for they will report that, for abjectness of mine, or else thereby to seek pardon of my life, I was contented to accuse by suspicion when I had no other ground thereto."
Failing to draw anything from the staunch-hearted nobleman, on Saturday, the 8th of February, Elizabeth signed the warrant for his execution on the Monday; but late on Sunday night she sent for Cecil—now more commonly called Burleigh—and commanded the execution to be stayed, revoking the warrant, to the great disappointment of the good citizens of London, who had seen all the preparations made for the spectacle. Elizabeth soon after signed a fresh warrant, which, as the time of execution approached, she also revoked. Some historians attributed Elizabeth's hesitation to her feelings and to qualms of conscience—the duke, as she said, being so near a kinsman, and of such high honour; but others interpreted her proceedings as deep policy. She was determined to shift as much of the odium, of Norfolk's death from her as possible, and allow other parties to saddle themselves with the responsibility. It was precisely the course which she afterwards pursued in the case of the Queen of Scots.
House of Sir Thomas Gresham on Bishopsgate Street.
As she herself hung back, the preachers and the Commons took it up, and demanded the duke's death for the security of both the sovereign and the State. When the public excitement had reached its height, then the subtle queen slowly and reluctantly yielded, and issued a third warrant, which she did not revoke, for now it was become the act of the nation rather than her own.
On the 2nd of June, at eight o'clock in the morning, the duke was brought out of the Tower to a scaffold on Tower Hill, the drawing to Tyburn and all its revolting accompaniments being remitted on account of his high rank. He was attended by Dean Nowel, of St. Paul's, and Fox, the martyrologist, who had formerly been his tutor. He addressed the people, confessing the justice of his sentence, though he still denied all treason. On being offered a handkerchief to bind his eyes, he refused, saying he was not afraid of death; and after a prayer, he stretched his head across the block, and it was severed at a stroke. The people witnessed his death with great emotion, for he was very popular amongst them, being extremely affable and liberal. They looked on him with great respect as the descendant of the hero of Flodden, and the son of the gallant Earl of Surrey, whose head fell in the same place five-and-twenty years before.
The death of Norfolk had been pursued with eager avidity; but it was for the sake of removing him out of the way of the Scottish queen. She was the great object which they desired to come at, and to put an end to. The minds of the Protestant party were perpetually haunted by fears of the rising of the Roman Catholics, of the Scots, of the foreign powers, for the rescue of Mary; and both ministers and Parliament represented to Elizabeth that there was no stability for her throne whilst she lived. Elizabeth, however, replied, with an air of great magnanimity, that she could not find it in her heart to put to death the bird which had flown into her bosom for protection; both honour and conscience, she said, forbade it. But her wily minister, Burleigh, knew that she only wanted a sufficient pressure from the public; and he induced the two Houses to present strong memorials, urging the necessity of putting both the Queen of Scots and the Earl of Northumberland beyond chance of injuring her. Elizabeth resisted the demand for the Queen of Scots; but she yielded part of their request, and surrendered Northumberland to his fate.
We have seen that this nobleman had sought refuge in Scotland; and commands had been sent to Murray to deliver him up. Murray, however, avoided this disgraceful breach of hospitality; but, after lying more than two years a prisoner in Lochleven Castle, Morton, one of the most abandoned of men, one who had been deep in the murders of Rizzio and Darnley, now drove a double bargain, for the life and for the death of the earl. The Countess of Northumberland agreed, through Douglas of Lochleven, to pay £2,000 for his release, and this money she deposited at Antwerp to be paid on his enlargement. Meantime, Morton made another bargain with Elizabeth for the same sum. In the early days of June, the earl was put on board a vessel to convey him, according to the assurance of his gaolers, to Flanders; but he soon found himself approaching the English coast, and on the 7th of June he was detained at Coldingham. on the Scottish side of the border, till the money was paid over at Berwick. Lord Hunsdon, the governor of Berwick, received him at Aymouth, and then sent him on to York, under the charge of John Foster, who had obtained the earl's estates in Northumberland—a nice refinement of cruelty. At York, after being subjected to a searching interrogation, to draw from him matter against others, he was beheaded without any pretence of a trial. He died, as he had lived, a staunch Romanist; and, as he felt no respect for the queen or her Government, he honestly refused to make any such sycophantic speeches on the scaffold as were expected from the most innocent victims of those times. He would neither utter any prayer for Her Majesty, nor declare that he felt his sentence just.
John Fox, the Martyrologist.
The Papists were delighted, as well they might be, at the independent bearing of their northern chief; and the Protestants, alarmed at the boldness of the victim, and the applauses of his admirers, called loudly for the blood of other traitors and idolaters.
To the Queen of Scots these were sorrowful days. In England and in Scotland her stoutest supporters were perishing, and her cause everywhere unsuccessful. She was now, after various removes, confined at Sheffield Park, a seat of the Earl of Shrewsbury's. The Countess of Shrewsbury, a masculine and domineering woman, who was familiarly known as Bess of Hardwick, treated Mary with uncommon harshness and rigour.
She was grown extremely jealous of the earl's attentions to his captive, Shrewsbury seeming to have been a gentle and humane man. Sir Ralph Sadler was now added to her gaolers, a man who had spent his life as a commissioner of murder under three monarchs on the Scottish border, and had had a negotiating hand in the bloody deaths of Cardinal Beaton and Darnley. In Sadler's letters to Burleigh he himself informs us of the manner in which he tormented the captive queen, whom he was anxious, as a tool of Burleigh's, to see put to death as soon as possible. He says that he took care to let Mary know all that transpired on the trial of Norfolk, and of his condemnation, and when he could not get access to her, he tormented her through the Countess of Shrewsbury. He seemed to gloat with pleasure over Mary's grief for the trouble and death of Norfolk. He says she wept and mourned bitterly. "All the last week this queen did not once look out of her chamber, hearing that the duke stood upon arraignment and trial;" and he adds, "My presence is such a trouble to her, that, unless she comes out of her chamber, I come little at her, but my lady is seldom from her." To the death of Norfolk was added that of Northumberland, and of the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, in Scotland. There all seemed going against her. The civil war still raged fiercely, but her party was gradually declining before her enemies.
Lennox, the regent, attainted Maitland in Parliament for the murder of his son, and directed his plans of vengeance against the Hamiltons for their resistance to the Government of the king. Alarmed at this demonstration, the Duke of Chatelherault, Lord Claude Hamilton, the Earl of Huntley, and Scott of Buccleuch, made a night assault upon Stirling, where the regent lay, and were masters of it without opposition. They rushed to the castle, forced their way into the rooms of the lords of the Lennox faction, and seized them, with Lennox himself. They were on the point of carrying off their prisoners to Edinburgh Castle, when a rumour of an attack from the Earl of Mar put them to flight. Before going, however, one of them, crying vengeance for the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, shot the regent through the head. This done, they fled loaded with plunder. Morton, in the confusion, made his escape, and once more raised the banner of opposition under the auspices of the Queen of England. Mar was appointed regent on the part of the faction of the young king, and thus the country continued rent asunder. The power of Elizabeth might be said to be the paramount one in Scotland, though the castle of Edinburgh and the Highlands were still in the hands of Mary's adherents.
Meantime, Elizabeth had been making a gay procession amongst her subjects, and had been royally feasted at the castle of her favourite, Leicester, at Kenilworth, and was at Woodstock, on her return towards town, when she was met by one of the most horrible pieces of news which ever flew across affrighted Europe. This was the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
The pacification which had been patched up betwixt the Romanists and the Huguenots in France had no sincerity in it. All the old hatred and resentment were fomenting beneath the surface. The Huguenots had no faith in the Papists, and the Papists longed to annihilate the Huguenots as heretics. None thirsted so much for their blood as the queen-mother, Catherine de Medicis. She entered into the most subtle and daring schemes for their destruction, and the imbecile Charles IX. was mere wax in her hands. Without letting him know the real aim of their plots, his authority was used to effect them.
At the head of the Huguenots was the young King of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV.; and his right hand was the able and experienced Admiral Coligny. It was the most earnest object of the party of Catherine to obtain possession of Coligny, as the soul and mainspring of the Protestant party. To this end, after the pacification, he was invited to Court, but declined to go, from his suspicion of the real design of Catherine. He remained at Rochelle, where the King of Navarre, Condé, and the elite of the Huguenot nobles, resided. But the plans of the Medici party were conducted with the most profound and perfidious skill. The hand of the sister of Charles IX. was offered to Henry of Navarre, as the pledge of a thorough union of parties, and Coligny was invited to take the command of an army intended to invade Flanders, and join the Prince of Orange against Philip of Spain. Still Coligny hesitated, but during the summer, Charles IX. contrived to press him to come to Court, where he promised him the highest favour. Charles wrote to him with his own hand, and sent Coligny's son-in-law, Teligny, who also carried the strongest entreaties from the admiral's own relatives that he would avail himself of the Royal regard. The king talked in such a manner as to induce many to believe that he was really more inclined to Protestantism than to the ancient faith.
At length, overcome by all these circumstances, the admiral went to Blois, where the king was keeping his Court, and was received with the highest honours. Charles testified the most remarkable regard for him, called him his father, restored all his forfeited employments, and even showed his sincerity by warning him of the latent malice of his mother and her Italian followers. At the same time the Huguenots saw with the deepest alarm this coalition of Coligny and the king. They could not believe that there was any real good-will towards the admiral—no, not even in the king himself. They warned Coligny to be on his guard.
Yet everything were an aspect of progressive alliance, and cohesion of the heads of the parties. The marriage of Henry of Navarre and the sister of the king was determined, and on the 18th of August, 1572, it was celebrated at Paris with great gaiety and state. Coligny and many Protestant noblemen were present, and, during four days of festivity, Coligny and the king appeared on the best of terms. On the last of these days, as he was returning from the tennis-court, whither he had gone with the king, the Duke of Guise, and a number of the nobles, he was shot at from a house belonging to Guise, and wounded in two places, but not mortally. On this the Huguenots rose furiously together, declaring that the attempt had been made by the order of Guise, in revenge for the death of his father, who had been killed by Poltrot, the Huguenot, at the siege of Orleans, and, as the Roman Catholics insisted, at the instigation of Coligny.
The king, the queen-mother, and the Duke of Anjou, attended by a crowd of courtiers, hastened to the house of Coligny, as if to sympathise with him; and Coligny requesting to speak with the king alone, Charles ordered his mother, his brother, and the rest to withdraw to a distance. Probably Coligny had a shrewd idea whence the mischief came; but when he began to speak passionately, Catherine, who was the real author of the deadly deed, fearing, probably, some revelation to her disadvantage, advanced and drew the king away.
This took place on Friday, the 22nd of August; and the next day, the eve of St. Bartholomew, Catherine and her murderous associates held a secret conclave at the Louvre, the result of which was that about noon she entered the king's apartment, followed by Anjou, Guise, and other nobles, when they assured the weak and horrified king that the Huguenots, thirsting for revenge of the attempt on Coligny, were about to massacre him and all the Royal family, and that the only means of safety was to anticipate them by allowing the people to defend him and destroy their rabid enemies.
The king, greatly terrified, gave a reluctant consent; and Guise, Anjou, Aumale, Montespan, and Marshal Tavannes, were sent out to do the work of carnage. On Sunday, the 24th of August, 1572, the festival of St. Bartholomew, at the tolling of a bell, the infuriated Papists, headed by the chief princes and nobles of the realm, rushed forth and commenced the butchery of the capital. That the whole had been carefully and completely planned, was shown by the like outburst and bloody massacre taking place in Rouen, Lyons, and other cities simultaneously. The first thing done in Paris was to rush in a crowd to the house of Coligny, and, bursting in, massacre him and every soul that was in it. The murderers threw the bodies of the admiral and his family out of the windows into the midst of the brutal mob, where they were trampled on and treated with every species of indignity. Charles IX. is said to have been induced to give the first signal for the massacre by firing a gun from his palace window; and then he and his wicked mother went out and stood on the balcony to watch the progress of the carnage.
The tocsin sounded from the Parliament house; and the Papists, yelling with the fury of anticipated blood, rushed along the streets crying, "Down with the Huguenots! Kill every man of them! Kill! kill! kill!" And with that cry commenced a terrible carnage. Men, women, children, without regard to age, sex, or rank, were butchered in cold blood, with every circumstance of devilish cruelty. All day the massacre went on, many a man seizing the opportunity to murder the object of his hatred, whether Protestant or no. Towards evening the king proclaimed by sound of trumpet that the destruction should cease. But it was much easier to let loose such a mob of assassins than to stop them: and the slaughter went on through the night and the two succeeding days. There have been many different estimates of the numbers which perished in this horrible massacre. La Popilione calculates them at 20,000; Adriani, De Serres, and De Thou, at 30,000; Dairla, at 40,000; Sully, at 70,000; and Péréfixe, at 100,000! In Paris alone 500 persons of rank and 10,000 of a lower grade fell; and probably the total, in the capital and the provinces, is not far short of Sully's estimate, which is the received one.
When the terrible deed was perpetrated, the king became overwhelmed by the magnitude of the crime. He exclaimed, "Whether I sleep or whether I wake, every moment I am haunted by visions of murdered men, all covered with blood, and hideous to behold." In the letters written to the provinces, the cause was ascribed to the ancient feud of the houses of Guise and Coligny; but the Duke of Guise would not accept so large a share of the infamy; and the king was obliged in Parliament to avow that he had himself signed the order for the death of Coligny, and for the commencement of the massacre.
A sensation of horror was diffused all over Europe by the news of this unexampled atrocity of bigotry, which was greatly augmented in England by the crowds of Protestants who fled thither for refuge. The body of the nation called for instant war, to avenge on the sanguinary French Government this infamous treatment of the Reformed church. La Mothe Fenelon hastened to apologise to the Queen of England for what he termed this unfortunate accident. Elizabeth hesitated for a day or two to receive the ambassador, who was greatly disconcerted by his position in the midst of a people who denounced, in just terms, this frightful transaction. At length, when she had had time to array herself and her Court in deep mourning, she gave him an audience in the presence of her Council and the chief ladies of the realm. The deepest silence accompanied his entrance, and the queen, after a pause, advanced ten or twelve paces to meet him, solemn and stern, but with her accustomed courtesy. She then led him to a window, and asked him whether "it were possible that the strange news which she had heard of a prince whom she so much loved, honoured, and confided in, could be true."
Fenelon confessed that he was overwhelmed by the tidings of this sad accident, but that an accident it was; that his Royal master had not the slightest idea of such an event till the evening before it, when it was disclosed to him that the admiral and his party had formed a design to make themselves master of the Louvre, to seize the Royal family, and put to death the Duke of Guise and the other leaders of the party; that in the hurry and excitement of the moment he had given orders to the Duke of Guise and his friends to prevent the traitorous design by putting to death the admiral and his friends; and that nothing could exceed his regret that the ungovernable passions of the populace had produced such a catastrophe, which had pained him as much as if he had cut off his arms to save his whole body.
Elizabeth declared herself influenced by this favourable view of the case, but expressed an earnest hope that the king, whom, though she had not been able to accept him as a husband, she still continued to love and revere as if she were his wife, would be able to satisfy the world that it was not by any premeditation of his own that this catastrophe had happened, but by some strange accident which time would elucidate.
The ambassador, who had approached this interview with great misgiving, was wonderfully reassured by this language of the queen, and did not hesitate, in the very midst of an audience burning with indignation at the commission of a wholesale murder of a people by their king which has no parallel in history, to present her with a love-letter from the Duke of Alençon, which she accepted graciously, and read with apparent satisfaction.
Burleigh hastened to impress upon Elizabeth the necessity of the death of Mary as "the only means of preventing her own deposition and murder;" and Sandys, the Bishop of London, sent in a paper of necessary precautions to be adopted, the first and foremost of which was to "forthwith cut off the Scottish queen's head." This exemplary bishop of Christ's Church wrote to Burleigh, who was with the Court at Woodstock, that "the citizens of London in these dangerous days needed to be prudently dealt withal." He was very much afraid that the young preachers, in their zeal, "being unskilled in matters political," might say things which would not be relished across the Channel, but offered to take such a course with them as should prevent this danger. "Sundry," he said, "had required fast and prayer to be had for the confounding of these and other cruel enemies of God's gospel; but this I will not consent to without warrant from Her Majesty." A specimen of a political bishop, who, in the presence of murder, and the most revolting crimes again?* God and man, could keep his soul untouched by a feeling of righteous indignation, and think only of keeping up political relations!
On the continent a very different spirit prevailed. The Protestant princes of Germany spoke out their unmitigated horror of so murderous and perfidious a government, and took the field in defence of their fellow Protestants at the head of 20,000 men; and then Elizabeth, in her peculiar way, sent them secret aid. So far as she could by private means excite disturbance in neighbouring countries, she had no objection; but on the surface she maintained an unruffled show of friendship and alliance. She still kept up her unmeaning coquetry with Alençon, and in the course of a few months stood as godmother to an infant daughter of this homicidal Charles IX.! She did indeed recommend to him to afford protection to the persons and worship of the French Protestants, and the profligate Catherine de Medicis replied for him ironically that her son could not follow a better example than that of his good sister, the Queen of England; and, therefore, like her, he would force no man's conscience, but, like her, would prohibit in his dominions the exercise of every other worship besides that which he practised himself. It is to the honour of the people of England of that time that they denounced in unsparing terms this gigantic horror, and that many of the nobility shared fully in the feeling. The French ambassador described in his letters to his master his mortifying position in England, where, on every side, he heard the massacre of St. Bartholomew described as the most enormous crime perpetrated since the death of Jesus Christ, and declared that no one would speak to him but the queen, who treated him with her accustomed urbanity. Whilst the people of England were musing in deep wrath over this outrage on humanity committed by the French Government, Elizabeth, the queen of this great nation, was occupied in an interesting correspondence on the best means of eradicating the scars of the small-pox from the face of her previously sufficiently ugly lover, Alençon. She recommended a London quack, who could do wonders, and expressed her astonishment that Catherine de Medicis had not sooner adopted means to remove these mortifying scars. Catherine had been too busy with planning the murder of her subjects.
Burleigh, and numbers of the enemies of Mary, urged upon Elizabeth that the murder of the Protestants in France was only one demonstration of the existence of a universal Roman Catholic league for the extirpation of Protestanism; that she would be aimed at next; her deposition or murder would follow, unless she provided for her safety; and the surest means was to strike the first blow, and in the Queen of Scots destroy their centre of unity in these kingdoms. Elizabeth listened to the advice, but was too politic to imbrue her hands in the blood of the Queen of Scotland, without exerting herself first to transfer the odium to some other shoulders. Killigrew was, therefore, sent down to Scotland to see if the execution of the queen could not be effected there. His ostensible mission was to arrange, if possible, the terms of an armistice betwixt the adherents of Mary and those of the young king in Scotland, at the head of which parties were Huntley and Morton. But the private and real object was to lead the Protestant lords to the point of removing Mary from the hands of Elizabeth, "to receive that she had deserved by order of justice."
Killigrew was to work on their fears by representations of the Roman Catholic league, to make the most of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and to warn them, as on good information received in England, to look to themselves, to see that none of them were seduced by bribes, none made away by poison, not to allow the young king to go out of the realm, on any plea, and, if hard put to it, to rely on the instant and energetic co-operation of Elizabeth for the defence of the reformed creed, and the tranquillity of the kingdom. Having operated thus far, Killigrew was next instructed to approach the great object of his mission, but not in any way to implicate the queen. He was to represent the great peril of detaining Mary in England, from the number of fiery zealots always plotting for her escape, and that it would be much better for them to have her in their own hands, where they could more readily and more justly take prompt measures at any moment for preventing the disturbance of the present Government. If this was listened to, he was then to see what bargain for this purpose he could strike with Morton, a man steeped in crime, and not at all averse to murder.
Killigrew, in his private letters, represents himself as recoiling with disgust from this odious office, but not daring to incur the Royal displeasure by declining it. It does not appear that Morton was at all averse to the proposal, for so late as January of the next year, the negotiation was still on foot with her; but it failed from the resolute opposition of a far more honourable man, the regent Mar. Mar was anxious, like a real patriot, to heal the wounds of his country, to reconcile the contending factions, and make the Government strong and independent by union. He contended that there could be no difficulty in arranging the interests of Mary and her own son, for the benefit and harmony of both. He sent away Randolph, who had been for years the diligent source of discord and mischief for Elizabeth, and made overtures to the adherents of the queen, by which, under proper guarantees for her benefit, she was to surrender the castle of Edinburgh.
But this honourable endeavour was so contrary to the base motives and unprincipled spirit of the age, that it brought speedy destruction on the regent. Morton, one of the most thorough villains of the time, invited him to a banquet at Dalkeith, before the treaty could be signed, and Mar was taken so ill at the dinner, with every symptom of poison, that he rode away as fast as he could to Stirling, and there died in a few days. This occurred on the 8th of October, and on the 9th of November, Morton, by the influence of Elizabeth, was elected regent in Mar's place. Thus Elizabeth had obtained the appointment of the man to be the guardian of the young king who had for many years been in her pay, prompt to work any wickedness which was demanded by her policy. Both Mary and her son might now be said to be in her hands. No sooner was he in power, than he managed, through the influence of Elizabeth, who had always weighty persuasions at hand, to bring over Mary's chief friends, the Hamiltons, and Huntley's people, the Gordons, and he demanded the immediate and unconditional surrender of the castle of Edinburgh. Kirkaldy, Maitland, and Hume, who held it, refused, however, to give it up, and thus put them at the mercy of their enemies. On this, Elizabeth ordered Drury, the marshal of Berwick, to advance to Edinburgh with a strong force furnished with a powerful battering train, and, if necessary, lay the castle in ashes. In this extremity, the besieged lords, and Mary from her prison in England, implored the King of France to hasten to their assistance, and not to allow Elizabeth to extinguish the last spark of opposition in Scotland; but Charles replied that it was quite out of his power: for Elizabeth, on the very first movement, would send a fleet to Rochelle, where he was besieging the Huguenots.
The castle was consequently compelled to surrender on the 9th of June, 1573, after a siege of thirty-four days. Elizabeth insisted that the leaders should be put at her disposal. In a few days Maitland, who had now exhausted all his shifts and subtleties, died of poison, as some assorted—and amongst them Mary, who charged it boldly in a letter to Elizabeth—from the ready hand of Morton; as others believed, by his own hands. The brave Kirkaldy of Orange was hanged and quartered as a traitor on the 3rd of August, though a hundred persons of the Kirkaldy family offered to Morton twenty thousand pounds Scots, and an annuity of three thousand marks, for his life. Maitland, like Morton, was one of the murderers of Darnley; but Morton, the most hardened of them all, had seen the last of his confederates, and, for a time, held the supreme power. There, at present, we leave him, to trace the proceedings of Elizabeth in other quarters.
Though the French king had refused to assist Mary's party in Scotland in their last extremity, for fear of Elizabeth's affording aid to the Huguenots besieged in Rochelle by the Duke of Anjou, that did not prevent Elizabeth assisting the Rochellais. She allowed a strong fleet of Englishmen, under the nominal command of the Count de Montgomery, to assemble in Plymouth for the relief of that place, and she promised them further aid. To avert this, Charles IX. endeavoured to flatter Elizabeth into neutrality. He requested her to stand god-mother to his infant daughter, as we have seen. The French Protestants, however, were so incensed at Elizabeth's compliance, which they regarded as an act of apostacy, that they attacked the squadron which conveyed the English ambassador, Elizabeth's proxy, seized one of his ships, slew some of his attendants and put his own life in peril. Charles IX. saw in this a favourable opportunity for inducing Elizabeth to cause the Plymouth fleet to disperse. He therefore dispatched an ambassador before the queen's anger could cool, requesting her refusal of a promised loan to these audacious Rochellais, and to disperse the hostile fleet at Plymouth. But Elizabeth referred the envoy to her ministers on that point, who assured him that they had no power whatever to impede the sailing of the fleet, for that Englishmen sailed on the plea of traffic wherever they pleased; and if they committed any acts of hostility on friendly powers, they were at the mercy of those powers to seize them and treat them as pirates.
Elizabeth was soon, however, punished for this flagrant equivocation. Montgomery sailed in April; but, on discovering the strength of the French fleet moored under the forts and batteries of Rochelle, he was seized with terror, and returned to Plymouth without striking a blow. Elizabeth, indignant at his failure, then sent him word that she was highly displeased at his presuming to unfurl the English flag, and forbade his access to any of the English ports. In June of the next year he was taken prisoner in Normandy, and on the 26th of that month he was executed as a traitor in Paris. The bravery of the people of Rochelle, however, and the election of the Duke of Anjou to the throne of Poland, saved that city. A new pacification was entered into, but the peace of France was again disturbed by a coalition betwixt the heads of the Huguenots and the Marshals Montmorency, De Cossé, and Damfont, the Papal leaders called the Politicians. This league was formed to get possession of the king, whoso health was now fast failing, remove Catherine and the Duke of Guise from power, and proclaim Alençon as the successor to the crown in the absence of Anjou in Poland. Elizabeth was actively engaged in all these movements, especially in advising Alençon to place himself at the head of affairs. But the watchful genius of Catherine discovered and defeated the plot: Montmorency and Cossé were committed to the Bastille, Alençon and the King of Navarre were so closely watched that they were stopped in five attempts to escape, and numbers of the inferior actors were put to death.
In May, 1574, Charles IX. of France died a miserable death, full of remorse and horror, worn out with consumption, in the twenty-sixth year of his age. By the management of Catherine, the throne was secured by her next son, Anjou, notwithstanding his being absent in Poland. Anjou ascended the French throne under the title of Henry III., detested by all the Protestants for his share in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. In the following year a new plot was formed betwixt the Protestant council at Milland in Rovergue and the Romanists under Damville, to place Alençon on the throne—a scheme cordially supported by Elizabeth, in favour of her present lover, Alençon. Alençon effected his escape from Court in September, 1575; and Elizabeth, notwithstanding her recent renewal of the treaty of Blois, advanced him money to raise him an army of German Protestants. In February, 1575, the King of Navarre also escaped, and the two princes called on Elizabeth to declare war in their favour; but the demand was overruled in the Council, and Elizabeth offered herself as mediatrix betwixt the king and his brother Alençon, who was grown jealous of the ascendency of Navarre.
On the 21st of April a treaty was concluded by which the exercise of the Protestant religion was permitted to a certain extent; the king promised to call an assembly of the States to regulate the affairs of the kingdom, and Alençon succeeded to the appanage of his eider brother, and henceforward was styled Anjou. This settlement of the differences of creeds was of very short duration. The Protestant league of Millaud stimulated the Roman Catholics to counter-leagues, which entered into obligation under oath to maintain the ascendency of the ancient faith, and to resist all the encroachments of the Protestants. Henry III., who beheld his own authority usurped by these leagues, determined to place himself at the head of a great combined league of the Catholics, which he did in February, 1577, the deputies of the assemblies of the States, for the most part, following his example, and annulling the bulk of the privileges lately conceded to the Protestants. The consequence was another religious war, followed by as short-lived a peace, by which the privileges revoked were again restored.
Bear-baiting, as practised in the time of Queen Elizabeth.
But our narrative of the French contests betwixt the two parties has passed ahead of the disturbances in the Netherlands. A furious war had been raging there betwixt the Protestant and Papist interests, which also represented the interests of the native Netherlanders and Spain. The Duke of Alva had waded through oceans of blood to maintain the bigoted and cruel power of his master, Philip; but the natives had found a resolute and skilful champion in the Protestant Prince of Orange. He succeeded in establishing the independence of Holland and Zealand; and Philip, angry with Alva for his want of success, recalled him, and treated him with a stern neglect, which, however ungrateful in the king, was perhaps the best reward for the commission of such crimes as Alva had given himself up to work for him. In the place of Alva, Philip dispatched Zuniga, commendator of Requescens, who adopted a more conciliatory policy towards the people, and thus weakened the influence of the Prince of Orange.
In these circumstances, Orange applied to Elizabeth for help; but, since he had assumed the government of Holland and Zealand, Elizabeth had begun to regard him with jealousy. She felt sure that, from his connection with the Protestants of France, he would seek for their assistance, and this once gained, would offer a pretext for Henry III. invading that country; and the extension of the sway of France into the Netherlands by no means offered a pleasing prospect to the commerce and tranquility of England. Instead of affording aid to the struggling Protestants of Flanders, she withdrew her forces from Flushing, and entered into negotiations with the Spaniards. Requescens rejoiced at this change, conceded all in his power, agreed to expel the English refugees from the Netherlands, and obtained, in return, an order to arrest all the vessels of the insurgents in her ports, and for their exclusion from England.
This change of policy greatly mortified the Prince of Orange and the Protestant interests in the Netherlands, but Elizabeth represented it as her object to mediate betwixt them and France. The Prince of Orange, however, would listen to no such mediation, till the civil war breaking out again in France put an end to all hope of assistance thence. To effectually secure the aid of Elizabeth, the prince sent over deputies to make her an offer of the sovereignty of Holland and Zealand, as the 
Reception of Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth Castle. (See page 482.)
About a month after this decision, Requescens died, and was succeeded towards the end of the year by Don John of Austria, the bastard brother of Philip, attended by all the reputation of his victory over the Turks at the great battle of Lepanto. He was compelled to ratify an accommodation which had just taken place betwixt Holland and Zealand and the Popish states of the Netherlands, which was styled the Pacification of Ghent, and provided that no foreign soldiers should be permitted in the states, and that they should help each other against all opponents. This treaty was known as "the perpetual edict," but it appeared very likely to be broken immediately. Don John, without a foreign army, found himself impotent to contend with the independent Belgians. He therefore sent for the Spanish army from Italy, and the Prince of Orange appealed to Elizabeth for men and money to resist this direct violation of the edict. Elizabeth contented herself with recommending both parties to abide by that contract, as calculated at once to preserve the rights of the sovereign and the people; but the Prince of Orange, hopeless of any justice or toleration with a Spanish army in the country, threatened to transfer the sovereignty of his estates to Alençon, Elizabeth's suitor, now Anjou. He moreover dispatched an envoy to communicate a grand design of Don John of Austria against England. Ho represented that Don John was of a restless and ambitious character, that he had been disappointed of becoming King of Tunis by the commands of Philip, and that he now found that he had conceived a plan for making himself monarch of England and Scotland. This plan had already received the sanction of the Pope, who had engaged to aid him with 6,000 mercenaries on pretence of assisting the knights of Malta. The prince assured her that the recall of the Spanish army was for the invasion of her realm; that the Pope's reinforcement was to meet them at sea, and together they were to land in England, and, aided by the friends of the Queen of Scotland, to liberate that princess, who was to marry Don John, and they were to reign as John and Mary, King and Queen of England and Scotland.
Elizabeth must have credited the reality of this design, for she agreed to guarantee a loan of £100,000 to the states, and to furnish 1,000 horse and 5,000 foot, on condition that they should not make peace without her approbation, nor allow her rebels to find an asylum amongst them. This was not a defence of her own country, but an invasion of her ally Philip's; and she was obliged to assure him that she had no hostile intention but to compel the observance of the pacification of Ghent, and to defend her own territory against the designs of his brother, Don John. Philip affected to hope that her mediation might be successful, but probably trusted to the talents of Don John and the army from Italy to subdue the insurgent people, spite of the English aid. The Netherlanders, notwithstanding the money which they had raised on Elizabeth's guarantee, wanted yet more; and they put into her hands the jewels and plate which Matthias of Austria, the brother of the Emperor Rudolph, and nominal governor of the states, had pledged to them. On this pledge Elizabeth advanced them £50,000. Animated by this supply, the Dutch proceeded to attack the army of Don John, but were defeated in the great battle of Gemblours, an overthrow which spread consternation throughout the Netherlands. Once more they appealed to Elizabeth, to the Protestant princes of Germany, and to the Duke of Anjou.
Cassimir, brother of the Elector Palatine, marched across the Rhine with 12,000 men, paid with English gold, and Anjou also advanced at the head of 10,000. The Protestant followers of Cassimir, however, seemed to act rather as invading an enemy's country than as come to succour friends, and the people, wherever they came, declared that they had better remain under Philip than under such allies. Anjou for some time appeared to carry all before him. He took Binche by assault, and induced Maubeuge to open its gates; but there his progress ceased, and he attributed this to the jealousy of Elizabeth, who dreaded the Netherlands falling under French influence; and probably this was true. As for Cassimir, he does not seem to have done much besides living at free cost; for, coming face to face with the army of Don John, he did not venture to give battle. The Prince of Orange, despairing of being able to resist such commanders as Don John and Farnese, Duke of Parma, formed a confederation of the northern states alone, afterwards known as the United Provinces; and Don John dying on the 1st of October, 1578, the Duke of Parma won over the Walloon States to Philip by promising to observe the perpetual edict, and replacing the foreign army by native troops.
Matters being thus arranged, the Duke of Anjou, whose troops, being only engaged for three months, were now disbanded, sent over his favourite, Simier, to prosecute his suit with Elizabeth. Simier was a man of courtly manners, great wit and gallantry, and very soon won the confidence of Elizabeth. He was admitted thrice a week to her private parties, and she treated him with such familiarity that even scandal became busy about them. Simier persuaded Elizabeth that his master was actually dying of love for a woman now fifty save one. To remove the main obstacle to her marriage he soon perceived was to break the influence of Leicester; and he not only made her acquainted with his loose amours, but greatly astounded her by the information that he had recently married the widow of the Earl of Essex, being strongly suspected of having first removed the earl by poison. Elizabeth was greatly enraged; and notwithstanding her confidante, Mrs. Ashley, did all she could to screen Leicester, Elizabeth refused to listen to his protestations of innocence, and placed him in confinement at Greenwich.
But though the influence of Leicester was for a time weakened, Simier found that he made little progress. The public were averse to the match, and it was vehemently assailed from the pulpit. On the 16th of June, 1579, Simier, therefore, demanded a final answer; and Elizabeth, employing her old artifice, that she could not marry a man whom she had never seen, suddenly found herself taken at her word. The duke, in September, landed at Greenwich, without any previous notice, and in disguise. Notwithstanding the accounts of his ugliness, and the late ravages of the small-pox, Elizabeth was not only surprised but enchanted at his presence. He was young, lively, and showed the most devoted attention to her; and after a few days of ardent courtship he had made such an impression that he took his leave with the fullest hopes of success both as to his marriage and to his claims on the Netherlands.
On the 2nd of October, 1579, Elizabeth summoned a council, and submitted to them the question of her marriage. Such a proposition at one time would have thrown the Council and Parliament into ecstacies; but that time was long gone by. There were now no anxious and importunate prayers that she should make up her mind. The queen was nearly fifty, and there was no longer any hope of offspring. Men had pretty well settled in their own minds who would be the heir, and were in no hurry, even for the queen's life, to subject themselves to a foreign prince, and a Roman Catholic. The Council, therefore, deliberated for a week, and came to no conclusion; and Elizabeth, perceiving what was the prevailing opinion, became greatly chagrined, and shed many passionate tears. This has been considered a proof that Elizabeth was at last really in love, and vexed to see any coldness shown towards her chosen husband; but we attribute her tears to a very different cause. All her life she had been fond to distraction of flirtation with some fresh prince; but in every case, as at last in this, she dismissed her lover with some frivolous excuse. She was from her youth wedded to the love of undivided power—a love which could admit of no rival: but what mortified her now was to perceive that her councillors and subjects no longer deemed her marriage of any consequence. Their indifference implied that there was no chance of heirs from her, but that the law of succession had pointed out what she herself never would—the heir in another quarter. From that source, undoubtedly, flowed her tears.
Her ministers, to keep up some degree of appearance of interest in the affair, diligently prosecuted with Simier the particulars of the matrimonial contract.
Meantime the contest in the Netherlands went on. On March 15th, 1580, Philip published a ban, offering 25,000 crowns for the head of the Prince of Orange; and Anjou, on the other hand, prosecuted his claim to the Netherlands. Elizabeth, who probably was now looking for a plausible excuse for dismissing Anjou, professed to doubt how far, if he succeeded in making himself master of those provinces, she could keep her engagement to marry him, as it would, probably, be dangerous to the trade and independence of England; and, moreover, if she did marry Anjou, would not such a marriage be as hateful to her subjects as that of Mary with Philip? Yet, immediately afterwards, she consented to his acceptance of the government of the Netherlands, and made him a present of 100,000 crowns, by means of which he put his army in motion. In April, 1581, in consequence of this return of regard for Anjou, a distinguished embassy was sent over from France, and was received by the nobles and the City authorities with great éclat. The ambassadors persuaded themselves that this time success would attend them; but they were greatly astonished to find that the queen had now discovered a new objection to the match: that it would involve her in a war with Philip, who had lately become additionally formidable by the acquisition of Portugal, and proposed to enter, instead of marriage, into a league, offensive and defensive, with France. By the perseverance of the ambassadors, however, those scruples were also overcome, and the marriage was definitively settled to take place in six weeks, provided that the league of perpetual amity were signed within that time. The six weeks expired, and Elizabeth still continuing undetermined, Anjou, who had crossed the frontier with 10,000 men, and expelled the Prince of Parma from the siege of Cambray, hastened over to settle his wavering mistress.
Elizabeth received him with every demonstration of affection, and great rejoicings and discharge of fireworks testified that the public ceased to regard the match with aversion. Elizabeth exacted a written promise from the duke, and gave him a similar one in return, to look on each other's enemies as their own, to assist each other in all emergencies, and that neither of them should make a treaty with the King of Spain without the consent of the other. This being done, she took a ring from her finger, and placing it on that of Anjou, in the presence of the foreign ambassadors and of the English Court, she pledged herself by that ceremony to become his wife, and ordered Walsingham, Bedford, Leicester, Hatton, the Bishop of Lincoln, and the Earl of Sussex, to draw up a programme of the rites to be observed, and the contract to be signed on the occasion. Anybody would have deemed the matter settled at last; and so satisfied were the foreign ambassadors, that Castelnau posted a despatch to France, and St. Aldegonde to the Netherlands, that all was finally arranged; and at Brussels the marriage was celebrated as if already accomplished, by the discharge of artillery, by fireworks, and all the usual demonstrations of rejoicing.
Nothing, however, was farther from completion. The next day the duke received a message from the queen, requesting him to go to her, when he found her pale and drowned in tears. She declared that she had passed the night in the greatest anguish from the determined opposition of her ministers and the grief and alarm of her ladies; that she found the prejudices of her people against her marriage insuperable, and that, much as she loved him, she must give it up. Hatton, who was present—showing that this was not meant for a private interview—supported her view of the case with various arguments; and the duke, returning to his apartment in high dudgeon, flung the ring from him, and swore that the Englishwomen were as fickle and capricious as their climate.
This breach was still, however, kept private. Elizabeth, who probably really liked the duke, though she could not find in her heart to marry him, still entreated him to remain, as she might prevail over her difficulties, and effect the marriage. She displayed every sign of the warmest attachment in public and in private, and did everything possible to amuse him. Three months went over in this extraordinary manner, the public out of doors all the time deeming the matter a settled one, and venting its dislike in all manner of ways. The people asked how it was that the queen had so soon forgotten St. Bartholomew, and heaped all sorts of abuse on both the devoted Anjou and the French nation at large; whilst in France the Catholics were equally violent at one of their princes marrying a heretic, and the grand supporter and promoter of heresy.
Elizabeth, roused to a pitch of terrible wrath by vile reports, which her enemies spread abroad concerning her and her favourite, let her vengeance fall on the author of a pamphlet called "The Gaping Gulf," showing the dangers of this marriage. The author was one John Stubbs, a student of Lincoln's Inn. Elizabeth laid hold on him, his printer and publisher, and had them condemned in the Court of Queen's Bench to have their right hands cut off. The printer was suffered to depart, but the sentence was executed on Stubbs and his publisher in the market-place of Westminster, by driving a cleaver through the wrist with a mallet. What would our authors and publishers say to such treatment now-a-days? The foolish Stubbs, the moment his hand was off, waving his cap with the left, cried—"Long live the queen!"
At the end of three months Anjou grew weary of this silly farce, and announced his determination to depart. Even then Elizabeth would not permit him to go without exacting a promise that he would soon return. She stormed, she raved, she called the states of the Netherlands, which summoned him to his duties there, des coquins, and accompanied the duke to Canterbury, where she parted from him weeping like a girl.
Truly did the great Elizabeth present a very undignified figure before the nation at this moment. As Anjou pursued his journey thence to Sandwich, she sent after him constant messengers to inquire after his health and comfort; and scarcely had he got on board his ship when the Earl of Sussex appeared with a passionate request that he would return. On her journey home, Her Majesty carefully avoided the very sight of Whitehall, lest it should remind her of the happy hours she had spent there with the beloved Anjou.
On his arrival in the Netherlands, Anjou found plenty of employment in contending with the genius and the forces of the Prince of Parma. He found, also, that the real authority in the country was centred in the Prince of Orange, and resolving to make himself the actual master of it, he laid a plan of seizing all the chief towns in the states on the same day. He failed. The Dutch, resenting the attempt, attacked his troops on all sides, and soon compelled him to fly back to France, where he terminated his existence at Chateau Thierry, in June, 1584, not without suspicion of poison. So great was Elizabeth's fondness for this prince, whom she might have married, and would not, that even at this period no one dare for some time inform her of his death, which she appeared to bewail with all the symptoms of real and deep grief.
Within one month of the death of Anjou there fell a far more noble and important man. The Prince of Orange, the great champion and founder of the independence of Holland, perished by the hand of an assassin. The ban of Philip had not failed to operate, though at a distance of four years. Balthazar Gerard, impelled by fanaticism and the 25,000 crowns offered by Philip, shot him on the 10th of July, 1584.
It is now necessary to trace the course of events in Ireland and Scotland during the years we have just passed over. A great work had been going on in the former, the object of which was to reduce the turbulent native chiefs to obedience, and to establish English settlers in the lands of those who were driven out or exterminated.
The most distinguished of those chiefs was Shane O'Neil, the Earl of Tyrone. Henry VIII. had granted the succession to Matthew, an illegitimate son of the old earl's; but Shane, the eldest legitimate son, would not submit to this arrangement. He was supported in his claims by the people, and vindicated his rights. By the persuasion of the Earl of Sussex, at that time governor, he was induced to appear at the Court of Elizabeth in 1502. He laid his claims before her, and excited a great sensation by appearing in his native costume, attended by a guard armed with battle-axes and clad in saffron-coloured vests. Elizabeth did not grant all his requests, but expressed herself highly pleased with his presence, and made him great promises. But Shane was too sensitive and independent in his feelings and ideas to be a very orderly subject. Frequently he did essential service as the ally of the English Government, but more frequently was compelled to seek vengeance for injuries and encroachments. In 1565, in three years after his appearance at the English Court, he was driven into open rebellion; and after a severe struggle was compelled to seek refuge in the wilds of Ulster amongst the Scots. There, at the instigation of Piers, an English officer, ho was assassinated, his estates confiscated, with those of all his followers, comprising one-half of Ulster, and the name and dignity of O'Neil abolished for ever.
That which was done in Ulster had to be done in every other province of Ireland. Whenever insurrection broke out and was suppressed, the lands were forfeited to the Crown. But so long as the Crown held nominally these lands, the natives continued to hold them really. To remedy this and to ensure a certain forfeiture to the rebels, and a reward to the English conquerors. Sir Thomas Smith proposed that these lands should be granted in various portions to English settlers, who, in prosecution of their own claims, would drive out the rebel natives and cultivate the country. It needs no reflection to perceive that this system must be fruitful beyond conception in crimes, murders, and miseries. Lands were granted to a bastard son of the projector's, and to numerous other adventurers. They drove out the Irish, and these came back in infuriated numbers, with fire and desolation. Under this frightful system the country soon became a desert. To put an end to these sanguinary scenes, Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, represented that it needed only a sufficient force on the part of the English. He offered to bring under subjection, and to colonise, the district of Clanhuboy in Ulster. His proposals were that the queen and himself should furnish equal shares of the charge, and the colony being organised, should be divided equally between them. The courtiers who had envied him his favour with Elizabeth, pretended to promote his design till he had embarked all his fortune in it, when they threw all possible obstacles in his way. Through these hindrances, it was late in the summer of 1573 before he arrived in Ireland, and then only to find that the Lord-deputy Fitzwilliam questioned his powers; and on proceeding to the lands of Clanhuboy, Phelim O'Neil and his adherents contended with him for its possession fort by fort. He maintained his ground, however, through the winter, though grievously suffering from the bad quality of the provisions furnished by the queen's contractors, and from the ill-armed condition of his troops—for the evils which mowed down our army in the Crimea, were among the most ancient evils of the English Government. Essex is said to have invited Phelim O'Neil to a banquet, and there assassinated him and his attendants; but this did not mend his position. The Lords Dacre and Rich, and many gentlemen, abandoned the enterprise and returned home. Though deserted and unable to conquer his own allotted territory, he assisted the lord-deputy to suppress the rebels in other parts of the island. He returned to England in 1575, and was appointed Earl Marshal of Ireland, but with no adequate force; and ultimately died, September 22nd, 1576, at Dublin, as it was asserted, by poison administered to him at the instigation of Leicester. That villain noble, the great favourite of Elizabeth, who had murdered his first wife, Amy Robsart, next married, or pretended to marry, Douglas Howard, the widow of Lord Sheffield. After having a son by her he repudiated the marriage, and, as she herself asserted, attempted to poison her so that her hair and nails fell off, and commenced an intrigue with the wife of Essex, by whom he is said to have had two children whilst Essex was absent in Leland. On the death of Essex, Sir Francis Knollys compelled him to marry his daughter, Essex's widow; which marriage, as we have seen, Simier, the ambassador of Anjou, revealed to Elizabeth, who from that day hated the lady, one of the handsomest and most charming women of her time, with a deadly and undying hatred.
After the death of Essex, the system of planting Ireland, as it was called, still went on. The destruction of the O'Neils all the other clans regarded as only preliminary to their own. They therefore appealed to the Kings of Spain and France for assistance; and on their declaring themselves unable, from their own dangers and insurrections at home, to assist them, they implored the protection of the Pope, Gregory XIII. His holiness launched a bull at the heretic queen, declaring Ireland forfeited, as previous bulls had declared England and Wales forfeited. Under his encouragement two adventurers, Thomas Stukely and James Fitzmaurice, set out to proclaim the bull, and to carry the arms of his holiness all over Ireland. Stukely, however, having obtained a ship of war, 600 soldiers, and 3,000 stand of arms, carried them to the service of the King of Portugal, and died fighting in his wars against the Moors. Fitzmaurice, a brother of the Earl of Desmond, and a deadly enemy of the English invaders, was more faithful; and after suffering shipwreck on the coast of Galicia, landed at Smerwick, in Kerry, in June, 1579. He had with him, however, only eighty Spanish soldiers, and a few Irish and English refugees; and his expedition proved an utter failure, for the inhabitants had no faith in so insignificant a knot of adventurers. Fitzmaurice being killed in a private quarrel, his followers fled into the territories of his brother, the Earl of Desmond.
The Earl of Desmond professed himself a loyal subject; but he was suspected of favouring the insurgents, and the English marched into his demesnes and plundered them. Another detachment from the Pope, however, landed at Smerwick, the port which Fitzmaurice had made. It consisted of several hundred men, having a large sum of money, and 5,000 stand of arms, under the command of San Guiseppe, an Italian. Lord Grey de Wilton, the new lord-deputy, had recently suffered a defeat in the vale of Glandaclough; but he managed to besiege this foreign force in their newly-erected fort, whilst Admiral Winter blockaded them on the sea side. After three days' resistance, the handful of Italians and Spaniards put out a flag of truce, and offered to surrender on condition that their lives were spared. Foreign writers all assert that this was granted them; but Sir Richard Bingham, who was present, says that they surrendered one night at the pleasure of the lord-deputy, to have mercy or not, as he willed. Sir Walter Raleigh and Spenser, the poet, were in Grey's army, and their conduct reflects no honour upon them. Sir Walter Raleigh entered the fort to receive their arms, and then ordered them all to be massacred; and this proceeding Spenser endeavours to vindicate. He was Lord Grey's secretary; and whilst he styles him "a most gentle, affable, loving, and temperate lord," he gives this account of his act:—"The enemy begged that they might be allowed to depart with their lives and arms according to the law of nations. He asked to see their commission from the Pope or the King of Spain. They had none: they were the allies of the Irish. 'But the Irish,' replied Grey, 'are traitors, and you must suffer as traitors. I will make no terms with you; you may submit or not.' They yielded, craving only mercy, which it not being thought good to show them, for danger of them, if being saved, they should afterwards join the Irish, who were much emboldened by those foreign successes, and also put in hope of more ere long. There was no other way but to make that short end of them as was made."
This was a fatal precedent to the French and Spaniards, against whom our own countrymen were fighting in the very same manner by the orders of Elizabeth, in France, in the Netherlands, and in South America; and whilst we denounce the savage slaughter of English adventurers in the transatlantic lands of Spain wherever they were found without mercy or quarter, we are bound to remember that we thus set them the example, and furnished them with warrant.
After this butchery, Grey and his myrmidons combined to chase Desmond from spot to spot through his mountain fastnesses. Three years afterwards a party of the English, attracted by a light, entered a hut, where they found a venerable old man lying on the hearth before the fire, quite alone. On their demanding who he was, he replied, "The Earl of Desmond," when Kelly of Moriarty instantly struck off his head, which he sent as a grateful present to Elizabeth, by whom it was fixed on London Bridge. With Desmond fell for some time the resistance of the hunted natives in Ireland. From the forfeited lands of these immolated Irish, Sir Walter Raleigh received 42,000 acres, other gentlemen from 5,000 to 18,000, and Spenser, the poet, 3,000 and a castle of the unfortunate Desmond's—Kilcolman—which the exasperated natives burnt over his head, and with it one of his children. Spenser's concern in this bloody affair proved, in fact, his ruin. Returning to England, we find that Elizabeth during this period had been persecuting every form of Christianity which did not agree with her own. There were three parties against whom she felt herself aggrieved, the Puritans, the Papists, and the Anabaptists; and she set to work resolutely to squeeze them into the mould of her orthodoxy or to crush them.
The French Ambassador at the Court of Queen Elizabeth, after the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. (See page 483.)
Many of the Puritans who had imbibed the sternest spirit of Geneva had got into the pulpits of the State Church, and refused to wear the robes, to perform the rites, or to preach the exact doctrines as prescribed by law. If they did not accord with that Church, they certainly had no business there, and had no right to complain that Elizabeth turned them out. The time to complain was when she had expelled them and they set up a Church of their own, which she would not allow. Their freedom was their birthright; but the queen would not suffer them to exercise it. She had but one word in her religious vocabulary—conform; and this rigid conformity was carried out ruthlessly by the very ministers and clergy who had so manfully complained of compulsion in the last reign. They purged one diocese after another by expelling Puritan clergy. These acts of arbitrary power were loudly denounced in the House of Commons, where there was a strong Puritan party, and numerous bills were brought in to advance the Reformation. Out of doors, Parker, the old Archbishop of Canterbury, faithfully executed the will of the sovereign; and opinion, suppressed in the Church and in Parliament, where the queen even sent personal and most dictatorial messages stopping all religious discussion, now burst forth through the press. Pamphlets of a most inflammatory nature and abusive style issued in shoals; and one Burchet, a student of the Middle Temple, became so inflamed by zeal, that he murdered Hawkins, an officer, mistaking him for Hatton, the queen's new favourite. In prison he also killed his keeper under the delusion that he was Hatton; and though palpably insane, he was hanged for murder.
Edmund Spenser. From the Original Picture in the Collection of the Earl of Kinnoul.
Parker, who died in 1575, was succeeded by Grindall, whom Elizabeth soon discovered was too much of a Puritan himself to persecute them severely, and she suspended him, and harassed him to such a degree that he died in 1583. To him succeeded Whitgift, a man after Elizabeth's own heart, who framed a test of orthodoxy which he put to all clergymen or others whom he suspected, which consisted of these three notable dogmas—the queen's supremacy, the perfection of the Ordinal and Book of Common Prayer, and the complete accordance of the Thirty-nine Articles with the Scriptures. All those clergymen who refused to subscribe to this he expelled; and in defiance of clamour and intrigue in council or Convocation, he held on his way immovably. Nor did the queen long satisfy herself with mere expulsion. Thacker and Copping, two Brownists, were indicted for objecting to the Book of Common Prayer, which was treated as an attack on the Royal supremacy, and were put to death. The persecution of the Romanists was still more severe than that of the Puritans. Elizabeth, although she retained the crucifix and the lights in her private chapel, was glad to avail herself of the plea that the Roman Catholics were idolaters, because she hated and dreaded them as naturally partisans of the persecuted Queen of Scotland.
So early as 1563 the Emperor Ferdinand had remonstrated against the treatment of Roman Catholics in England. As the persecution under Elizabeth became more intolerable, many sought to find a more unmolested retreat on the Continent; but Elizabeth could not bear the idea of their thus escaping her oppression, and their property was immediately confiscated and sold, or bestowed on her favourites at Court. Those who ventured to remain at home were compelled to attend the established form of worship, according to the queen's notion that it was but a civil duty, and then worshipped in their own way in private; or they refused to attend, and came under the name of recusants, who were looked after with all assiduity and rancour, and were at the mercy of every informer, or ill-disposed or mercenary neighbour who chose to report them. They could be called up at any moment and put to their oath whether they had attended the reformed worship, and how often; when and where they had received the sacrament, and whether they had any private chapel for celebration of mass. Private houses were continually searched for such private oratories or for priests; and the foreign ambassadors complained that their privileges were violated by such inquisitions. Amongst those imprisoned and fined for such offences were Hastings, Lord Loughborough, Sir Edward Waldegrave, Sir Thomas Fitzherbert, Sir Edward Stanley, Sir John Southworth, and the Ladies Waldegrave, Wharton, Carew, Brookes, Morley, Jarmin, Browne, Guildford, &c. The Bishops of London and Ely recommended the torture, to compel the priests taken at private chapels to discover their hearers!
As the Papists wore neither allowed to educate nor ordain priests, William Allen, a clergyman of an ancient family in Lancashire, and formerly principal of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, proposed the establishment of the afterwards celebrated college at Douay, in France, and became its first master, so that within the first five years he sent into England a hundred qualified missionaries. This gave such offence to the English Court, that the missionaries were pursued with the utmost rigour of the law. Cuthbert Mayne, a priest of Cornwall, was accused of saying mass at the house of a Mr. Tregean, near Truro. Mayne was put to death as a traitor, and Tregean was shut up m prison, where no entreaties could induce Elizabeth to liberate him during her lifetime. After an incarceration of eight-and-twenty years, for the simple fact of worshipping God, as Daniel did, in spite of Royal command, he was released by James at the request of the King of Spain.
Persecution, of course, produced its invariable consequences: the Roman Catholics became more resolute, the men in power more rancorous. In 1578 every gaol in the kingdom had its Popish prisoners; and twenty of rank and fortune perished of an infectious disease in the Castle of York. Nelson, a priest, and Sherwood, a layman, were hanged, drawn, and quartered for denying the queen's supremacy.
In 1580 other prisoners died of the gaol fever in Newgate; and, in fact, not only then, but down almost to our time, the condition of the gaols was so horrible, from want of drainage and proper accommodation, that it amounted to capital punishment to put any one in them. Thousands of untried prisoners—perhaps we might say hundreds of thousands—have perished in our prisons from filth, crowding, and lack of ventilation. In 1577 two judges, the sheriff, under-sheriff, four magistrates, most of the jurors, and many of the spectators were seized in the court at Oxford with fatal sickness whilst trying a bookseller.
The fury of persecution in England stimulated the Roman Catholics abroad to a corresponding enthusiasm of martyrdom. Gregory XIII. followed the example of Allen, and established a second English seminary in the hospital of Santo Spirito, in Rome, and emissaries were also sent thence into the heretical kingdom. First and foremost the general of the Jesuits selected in 1580 two Englishmen of distinguished abilities, and sent them from this college. Robert Persons and Edward Campion arrived with a reputation, and with rumours of the dark conspiracy in which they were engaged, which roused all the alarm and the vigilance of the Government. Rewards were offered for their discovery, and menaces of punishment issued for remissness in tracing them out. The queen sent forth a proclamation, calling on every person who had children, wards, or relatives gone abroad for education to make a return of their names to the ordinary, and to recall them within three months; and all persons whatsoever who knew of any Jesuit or seminarist in the kingdom, and failed to give information, were to be punished as abettors of treason.
As soon as Parliament met in January of 1581, still more stringent laws were passed for the punishment of Roman Catholics. It was made high treason merely to possess the power of absolution. Saying mass incurred a fine of 200 marks, or a year's imprisonment; hearing it, only 100 marks, or the same imprisonment as for saying it; absence from church was made punishable at the rate of twenty pounds per month, and, if prolonged to a whole year, besides the penalty, the offender must produce two securities for his good behaviour of £200 each. The concealment of Roman Catholic tutors, schoolmasters, or priests incurred a year's imprisonment, a priest or tutor, also, being amenable to the same punishment, and the employer of them to a fine of ten pounds per month. There was but one step possible beyond this outrageous despotism, and that was to the stake, as in Mary's time; but the very fury of legal punishment defeated its own object.
Persons and Campion put into the hands of their friends written statements of their objects in coming into the country, which they declared to be solely to exercise their spiritual functions as priests, not to interfere with any worldly concerns or affairs of state; but they declared that all the Jesuits in the world had entered into a league to maintain the Catholic religion at the risk of imprisonment, torture, or death. This announcement excited the greatest alarm, and the most fiery persecution burst forth on the whole body of the Romanists, whilst every means was exerted to discover and secure these missionaries. The names of all the recusants in the kingdom, amounting to 50,000, were returned to Government, and no man included in that number had any longer the least security or privacy in his own house. The doors were broken open without notice given, and the pursuivants, rushing in, spread themselves in different divisions all over the dwelling. Cabinets, cupboards, drawers, closets, were forced and ransacked, beds torn open, tapestry or wainscot dragged down, and every imaginable place explored, to detect by vessels, vestments, books, or crosses, the evidence of heretical worship. The inmates were put under strict watch, till they had been searched and interrogated; and many were driven nearly or wholly out of their senses by the rudeness and the insults they received from brutal officers. Lady Neville was frightened to death in Holborn, and Mrs. Vavasour was deprived of her reason at York.
In July, Campion was taken at Lyfford, in Berkshire, and was committed to the Tower; and Persons, seeing no prospect of long escaping pursuit, contrived to get over again to the Continent. Campion was repeatedly racked, and under the force of torture and the promises that no injury should be done to his entertainers, he related the whole course of his peregrinations in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Denbigh, Northampton, Warwick, Bedford, Buckingham, &c., and the names of those who had given him hospitality. No sooner, however, had the Council the names than they summoned all those who had harboured him up, and fined some and imprisoned others.
In November Campion, with twelve other priests and a layman, were put upon their trial, and were charged with a horrible conspiracy to murder the queen and to overturn Church and State. Rome and Rheims were declared to be the places where this direful plot had been organised. The astonishment of the prisoners, several of whom had never been out of England, was extreme. Not an atom of evidence was produced to authenticate these charges, yet the whole were pronounced guilty. One of them was saved by an alibi established by Lancaster, a Protestant barrister; the rest were executed as traitors, except those who were still kept prisoners. On the scaffold Campion lamented that the weakness of the flesh on the rack had forced him to disclose the names of some of his entertainers, by which they had been brought into trouble.
The Anabaptists, who had created great scandals and disturbance in Germany, made repeated visits to London under pretence of belonging to the Dutch Church. They denied the propriety of infant baptism; that Christ assumed the flesh of the Virgin; believed it wrong to take an oath, or to accept the office of a magistrate. In some of these tenets they resembled the Society of Friends which afterwards rose, and their creed did not necessarily interfere with the quiet of the State; yet numbers of them were imprisoned, ten of them were sent out of the kingdom, and two, Peeters and Turwert, were burnt in Smithfield in July, 1575. Again, in 1579, Matthew Hammond, a ploughman, was burnt at Norwich.
From these persecutions we come back to the captive Queen of Scotland. Elizabeth had long felt punishment for her faithless and unjust conduct to Mary. By detaining her she had, so far from securing her own tranquillity, surrounded herself with perpetual disquiets and alarms. Mary, who, restored to her throne and supported there by the powerful co-operation of her English cousin, might have contributed to her strength and glory, now existed inevitably as the centre of plots and conspiracies. Elizabeth was never free from alarms and suspicions of all around her. She was compelled to maintain an incessant and expensive system of espionage, and grew so sensitive that she was fearful of even those who directed the movements of her spies. Though the Earl of Shrewsbury had proved himself so safe a gaoler, Elizabeth was continually in terror lest the much-vaunted fascinations of the Scottish queen should seduce him from his duty. She was always urging fresh vigilance, always devising fresh measures of safety, and placing spies on all his actions, not only in the neighbourhood, but in his very establishment. The unfortunate nobleman, with all his houses, could not be said to possess a home, or a moment's privacy. His fine mansions and castles were converted into so many gaols, and he saw men constantly about him, at his board, whom he knew that he maintained to keep strict watch over his every action and look, and report them to the queen. So much was this the case, that when his daughter-in-law was confined, he christened the child himself, lest he should be accused of admitting a stranger in the person of the clergyman.
In the growing misery of this jealousy of the Royal captive and of all around her in the mind of Elizabeth, the Scottish queen was subjected to ever augmenting rigour and indignity. The number of her attendants was reduced; allowance for her table was curtailed; almost every person, except her guards, was excluded from her presence; she was allowed to write and correspond only that her letters might be intercepted, and the motions of her mind and of her friends thus discovered. At Sheffield Park, where she now was, she was never suffered to quit her apartments except for a promenade in the courtyard or on the leads, for which indulgence she had to give an hour's notice, that the earl or countess might attend her. But at length there was no danger of her escaping, for the closeness and the anxieties of her confinement prostrated her health; and she was either confined to her bed, or only able to quit it for support in a chair, in which she was carried to and fro. Not even Burleigh, who would gladly have seen Mary in her grave, could preserve himself from suspicions of intriguing with Mary. Buxton, in the Peak of Derbyshire, had recently become celebrated for its waters in the relief of gout; and Burleigh, who was suffering from that complaint, made two journeys thither. Suddenly it flashed on the busy brain of Elizabeth, or was suggested by some of her host of spies, that the real object of her minister was not ease from the gout, but to carry on some scheme with the Scottish queen. She charged him roundly with the fact, and bade him take heed what he was doing, and long retained in her soul the appalling suspicion. That Burleigh did correspond with her keeper, Shrewsbury, unknown to Elizabeth, is proved by his letters in Lodge, where we find him detaining an epistle a whole week before he could, with all the means at his command, find a person in whom he had sufficient confidence to entrust it to.
In no quarter had Elizabeth for a long time any security except in Scotland. There Morton was her faithful ally, inasmuch as she held fast the King of Scots, and so guaranteed the chief means of his own tranquil enjoyment of power. But Morton's rule was not such as any country would long tolerate. He was essentially a base and selfish man, and his severity and rapacity alienated the public from him more and more. He debased the coin, multiplied forfeitures to enrich himself, appropriated to himself the estates of the Church, and at the same time was so subservient to Elizabeth, that the national pride resented it. In 1578, Atholl and Argyll made their way to the presence of the young king, who was now approaching thirteen years of age, and assured him that it was now quite time that he freed himself from the tutelage of Morton and ruled the country himself. James readily listened to them, and sent Morton an order to resign, and to attend a council at Stirling, where the friends of Atholl and Argyll were summoned.
Morton, though taken by surprise, appeared to obey with perfect acquiescence; but he lost no time in intriguing with the Erskines, and in three months had again possessed himself of the person of the king, and resumed his authority in the State. Atholl and Argyll mustered their friends to force the reins from the hands of Morton, who boldly met them in the field, when the ambassador of England appeared as a mediator, and persuaded them to a reconciliation. But it was not in the nature of Morton to forget the opponents of his power, although they now appeared as nominal friends. He invited Atholl, the chief actor in his late fall, to a banquet, from which he retired, as Mar had done, to die. Like Mar, he was poisoned. Secure as he now seemed, he let loose his vengeance on his enemies; and the Hamiltons, the friends of Mary, were compelled, spite of the treaty of Perth, to fly to England for security; and being freed from their restraint, he indulged freely his insatiable avarice at the expense of the country.
But justice reached this minister of evil when it was least expected. Esmé Stuart, the Lord of Aubigny, a son of the younger brother of the Earl of Lennox, who had become naturalised in France, returned to Scotland. With a handsome person and French accomplishments, he soon captivated the young monarch, who could not live at any period of his life without a favourite. He created Aubigny captain of the guard, first lord of the bed-chamber, and finally Duke of Lennox, being the nephew of the late earl, and cousin of Darnley. Associated with Lennox was another and far more deep and designing Stuart—James, commonly called Captain Stuart, the second son of Lord Ochiltree. He was also related to the king, and lent essential aid to Lennox, not only from his genius for intrigue, but because Lennox was suspected of being an emissary of the Duke of Guise. Lennox and his friend Stuart, who was now created by James Earl of Arran, instilled every possible suspicion into the king's mind against Morton, who, they averred, intended to convey him to England and give him up to Elizabeth. To seize Morton, and arraign him for the multitude of illegal acts which he had perpetrated in his position of regent, might not succeed, for the wily offender had taken care to procure bills of indemnity for whatever he had done. They determined, therefore, to accuse him of Darnley's murder, of which he was notoriously guilty in common with others.
One morning, therefore, Captain Stuart, now Earl of Arran, fell on his knees in the Council, and charged Morton to the king with the murder of his father. Morton, who was thunderstruck at this bold and sudden act, of course stoutly denied the charge, but he was ordered to be guarded in his own house, and soon after sent off to the Castle of Dumbarton. Morton dispatched a messenger to his trusty friend the Queen of England, who forthwith hastened away Randolph to intercede with the king, the Council, and the Parliament for the precious life of this vile murderer. Elizabeth, as she had not been ashamed to countenance and support him, so neither was she now ashamed to plead for him, and to beg that he might be set at liberty as a special favour to her, in recompense of the many services she had rendered Scotland. She accused Lennox of being in league with the French Government for the invasion of England, and Randolph produced documents to prove it. On examining these papers, the Council pronounced them forgeries, and the trial was ordered to proceed. On perceiving his failure with the king and Council, Randolph had recourse to his old arts of endeavouring to stir up sedition, and did his utmost to rouse Mar and the Earl of Angus to rise in arms for Morton's rescue. This becoming known, Randolph, who had been twice sent out of the country for his traitorous meddling, was now glad to flee for his life.
To save this execrable villain, but very useful tool, Elizabeth induced the Prince of Orange and the King of Navarre to support the exertions of her ambassador in his behalf, but all in vain. James was firm in following out the advice given him. Elizabeth ordered a body of troops to march to the border, as if she was resolved to invade Scotland for the rescue of Morton; but James, far from being intimidated, called all his subjects to arms, ordered Angus to retire beyond the Spey, Mar to surrender the charge of Stirling Castle, and demanded of Elizabeth whether she meant peace or war.
This bold attitude put an end to her bravado and her efforts. Randolph suddenly found out that Morton was accused of murder with a fair show of proof, and Elizabeth then pretended to think that if that were so it did not become her any longer to defend him. Deserted by his great patron Elizabeth, the hoary criminal was brought to trial, and charged not only with the murder of Darnley, but that of Atholl. Besides verbal and personal evidence of his guilt, his bond of manrent, or guarantee of indemnity for the murder, given to Bothwell, was exhibited, together with a paper purporting to be a confession of Bothwell made on his death-bed in Denmark, in which he accused Morton as a principal contriver of the murder, and exonerated the Queen of Scots. Whether this paper were genuine or not, there was abundant proof without it, and he was condemned by the unanimous verdict of the peers.
In prison, after his condemnation, Morton denied any active part in the murder, but confessed being fully aware of its preparation and his concealment of it, and also of having given Bothwell the bond of manrent, and another bond for him to marry the queen out of fear. So clear was his guilt, and the fact of his having been the chief mover in it, and that with the full knowledge of the Queen of England, that Mary, in a letter to Elisabeth, charged her roundly, upon the depositions of Morton on his trial, and on those of the witnesses brought against him, with being the author of all her misfortunes whilst in Scotland, which had been effected through the promises and suggestions of her agents.
Morton admitted on his trial that he had demanded of Bothwell a written proof, under the Queen of Scots' hand, that she was cognisant of and consenting to Darnley's murder; but that Bothwell had told him that he could not have it, for the murder must be perpetrated without her knowledge. Such an admission from such a man appears conclusive as human evidence can make it, that Mary really was innocent of any concern in that murder.
On the scaffold Morton flung himself on his face, and rolled about in paroxysms of agony, with direful groans and contortions. The day after his execution, his servant, Binning, who had been proved to have been employed in the murder, was also put to death; but his cousin and confidential friend, Archibald Douglas, who was also an active agent in the murder, escaped into England. Morton had made this man a judge of the court of session after his having become an assassin; and being asked on his trial how he could reconcile this fact with his professed horror of the murder, he was silent.
The fall of Morton and the display of independence in the young King James opened up the most extravagant hopes in the minds of the friends of Queen Mary, and of the Papists in general. They were ready to believe that James would soon show his regard for his mother, and a deep sense of her wrongs. Morton had been the stern adherent of Protestantism, scandalous as he was; but who should say that Aubigny, educated in France, and with many friends and relatives there, would not incline to favour the Papists, and that James, under his guidance, though educated by the disciples of Knox, might not, young as he was, return to the religion of his ancestors? Persons, the Jesuit, was enthusiastic in this behalf, and he dispatched Waytes, an English Popish clergyman, to Holyrood, and soon after Creighton, a Scottish Jesuit. These emissaries soon returned with the most flattering accounts of their reception by James and by his ministers. Probably, in prospect of no very friendly relations with Elizabeth, the advisors of James might adopt the policy of conciliating the Romanists, and thus securing the ancient support of France, and also of Spain. Be that as it may, James professed to feel deeply the justice in time by supporting instead of destroying the wrongs of his mother, and to cherish great filial affection for her. He assured them that he would always receive with favour such persons as came with an introduction from her, and he consented to receive an Italian Catholic into his Court as his tutor in that language.
Elated by these tidings, Persons and Creighton hastened to Paris in May of 1582. There happened to be present an extraordinary number of persons interested in the cause of Popery—the Duke of Guise; Castelli, the Papal nuncio; Tassis, the Spanish ambassador; Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow; Matthieu, the Provincial of the French Jesuits; and Dr. Allen, the provost of the seminary of Douay. They all agreed that Mary ought to be restored without deposing James; that they should reign jointly; and Persons was dispatched to Spain to solicit assistance, and Creighton to the Pope for the same object. Both missions were successful: Philip gave 12,000 crowns to relieve the necessities of James, and the Pope engaged to pay the expenses of his body-guard for twelve months. Both Mary and James assented to this proposal, Mary offering to leave all the exercise of power in James's hands.
Successful as this scheme appeared, every movement in it had been watched by the Court of England, and a counterplot of a most startling kind was set on foot. The Earl of Gowrie, the son of the murderer Ruthven, was induced to invite the young monarch to his castle of Ruthven, when he suddenly made him prisoner. The government was then seized by the Earl of Mar, the Master of Glamis, the Lord Oliphant, and others. Lennox, the king's chief minister, escaped to France, but died soon after, as was suspected, from poison. Arran, the successful destroyer of Morton, was thrown into prison. The pulpit was set to work to proclaim that there had been a plot to restore "the limb of Satan," the lewd Queen Mary, with all the ceremonial of the mass; and that Lennox was at the bottom of it, though he died professing himself a staunch Protestant.
The news of these changes was kept from Mary as long as possible, and her confinement rendered closer than ever. When, at last, it penetrated into her prison, she expected nothing less from the desperate character of his and her own enemies than that her son would be murdered to make way for the designs of England. Roused by her maternal solicitude, she wrote a letter to Elizabeth from the sick bed on which she was confined, speaking out plainly of her long series of wrongs. She retraced her injuries from the moment in which she fatally took refuge in England; the flagrant injustice of her continued and even aggravated captivity, although she had been pronounced guilty at York and Westminster. What had she done, she demanded, to Elizabeth? If there were any crimes which had not been already charged against her and refuted, she desired to know them. But, she added, she knew too well what was her real and only crime: it was being next heir to Elizabeth's throne. The queen had, however, no reason to be alarmed, for she herself was fast hastening to the grave. But was the same system of persecution to be continued to her son? She called on Elizabeth to stand in imagination, as she must one day stand in reality, with her before the throne of the Almighty, and to do justice in time by supporting instead of destroying the interests of her son, and liberating her, to end her days in retirement and peace.
But the position of affairs in Scotland was calculated to excite the utmost vigilance of both France and England. Henry III. saw with terror the young King of Scotland in the hands of the English faction, and dispatched thither La Motte Fenelon and Maigneville to encourage James to call together the estates, to insist by their means on his liberty, and on the liberation of his mother to govern with him. The English Court, on the other hand, instructed its agents, Bowes and Davidson, to demand the dismissal of the French envoys, and to show him the danger of the measures which they proposed. James appeared to listen to both parties; and in order, ostensibly, to consult on their advice, he summoned a council of the nobility to meet at the castle of St. Andrews. Once in their midst, James felt his freedom; and to prevent any contest on the question, published a pardon to all who had been concerned in the "Raid of Ruthven," as it was called, or the conspiracy of Gowrie. This bold stroke of the young king so took the English Court by surprise that Walsingham was sent, notwithstanding his age and important duties at home, to the Scottish Court. Walsingham must have been surprised at the small success which, attended his mission, for James received him with little consideration, appeared to regard his communications with indifference, and dismissed him with a paltry present on his departure. Elizabeth could not help complaining of the palpable slight to her ambassador, and the friends of Queen Mary drew fresh hope from the circumstance.
But little solid hope could be entertained of Mary's enfranchisement by any one who considered the real situation of affairs. The King of France was far from sincere in his wish for Mary's release. So long as she was in the hands of Elizabeth, he was secure from any further meddling of Elizabeth in the internal affairs of France. At any moment he could alarm her by rumours of designs to set the Scottish queen free, at the same time that James, as a young man, was open to influence from France against England. For these reasons a fresh conference in Paris on Mary's behalf came to nothing. The Duke of Guise, Castelli, the Archbishop of Glasgow, and Matthieu met again, this time with the addition of Morgan, a Welsh gentleman, one of the commissioners of her dower in France. They proposed that Guise should land in the south of England with an army, while James should simultaneously enter it at the north. James at once assented to the project; but Mary, who knew very well that her life would be sacrificed at once if there were a formidable attempt at her rescue, resorted to the hopeless course of endeavouring to persuade Elizabeth to treat with France for her release on safe terms. Elizabeth appeared to listen; but the rumours of the invasion speedily caused her to abandon any such negotiation, on the plea that, once at liberty, Mary could not be trusted. Revenge might induce her to ally herself with France and Spain, to the great peril of England.
William Cecil, Lord Burleigh. From the Original Picture in the Collection of the Earl of Burlington.
No situation in the world could be conceived more miserable than that of Elizabeth. The captive queen had become to her a source of perpetual alarms—alarms of invasions from France and from Scotland—alarm at insurrections amongst the Papists, whom persecutions kept in a state of the deepest disaffection. For two years the prisons had been crowded, the scaffolds drenched with the blood of Papists. They had been harassed, persecuted, and insulted till they must have been more than mortal to have felt no desire for revenge. Therefore the country swarmed with spies and informers; and Walsingham, as a man of a detective genius, was kept hard at work to trace, by his secret emissaries, every concealed movement of sedition. Both at home and abroad he had a host of agents under a multitude of disguises. The society of Jesuits never had a more expert and fearless general, nor a more varied army of informers. They presented themselves in the shape of travelling noblemen, of physicians, of students in Popish seminaries. They swarmed in seaports lying betwixt England and the different chief Continental routes. Scarcely a Roman Catholic gentleman or nobleman into whose house they had not found their way. To those whom they suspected of a leaning towards the Queen of Scots they professed to be confidential agents of her or of her adherents, and presented forged letters by which they might entrap the unsuspicious into answers. Merry England was truly at this period a deplorable country.
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Execution of Two Brownists. (See page 493.)
One of the most atrocious examples of the manner in which country gentlemen of distinction and large estate were treated in that day is that of Arden, a gentleman of an ancient Warwickshire family. He had incurred the resentment of Leicester by refusing to sell a part of his estate that the haughty favourite had set his covetous eyes upon. The conduct of Leicester in the case drove this independent man to defend his right as an Englishman not only to hold his own, but assert his privileges and position. He set Leicester at defiance, relied upon the law for protection, and refused to flatter the favourite's pride, like most of his neighbours, by wearing his livery.
The daughter of Ardeu was married to a neighbouring Roman Catholic gentleman of the name of Somerville. This Somerville became a maniac; and—his insane mind probably inflamed by remembrance of the injuries of the professors of his faith, and by the wrongs of his father-in-law—in one of his paroxysms he rushed out with a drawn sword, attacked two men that he met, and swore that he would murder every Protestant, and the queen at their head.
In ordinary times the unfortunate man would have been secured in an asylum, and there would have been an end of the affair; but the circumstance was seized upon by Leicester to wreak his vengeance on the Warwickshire Naboth who refused to this modern Ahab his vineyard. Not only Somerville and his wife and sister, but his father-in-law and mother-in-law Arden, wore arrested and lodged in the Tower, with Hall, a priest.
They were charged with a conspiracy against the queen; but being put upon the rack, the only thing which could be extracted from them by torture was, that Hall said he had once heard Arden say that he wished Elizabeth was in heaven. On that ridiculous evidence—for Arden would confess nothing but that he was perfectly innocent of any conspiracy—Hall, Somerville, Arden, and his wife were convicted and committed to Newgate. There the poor insane Somerville was found strangled in his cell within two hours, Arden was executed as a traitor the next day, and Hall, on account of his confession, escaped death.
This was a dreadful case of oppression and legal murder at the instigation of the favourite; and about the same time one Carter, a printer, was executed for having printed a book in which Judith was praised for cutting off the head of Holofernes. This was taken to mean that the queen was Holofernes, and ought to be killed; whereas the poor man asserted that no such idea had ever entered his head, but that it was, as it purported to be, a dissuasive against schism; and that, like Judith, all good Papists should refrain from it as she did from the food set before her by Holofernes.
A still more revolting trial and execution was that of Francis Throckmorton, the son of Sir John Throckmorton, Chief Justice of Chester, who had been dismissed from his office on some trifling plea, but most likely on account of his religion. Walsingham—who might be truly called the spider, for he had his lines stretched in all directions to catch unfortunate political flies, whilst he sat in his retired corner watching all the extremities of his web—intercepted letters, and by his spies made his way into every abode and company. He received from his trusty emissaries the information that Charles Paget, one of the commissioners of the Queen of Scots' dower—Morgan, just mentioned, being the other—had landed on the coast of Sussex, under the name of Mope. A letter of Morgan's was also intercepted, and from something in its contents the two sons of Sir John Throckmorton, Francis and George, were immediately arrested and committed to the Tower. The Earl of Northumberland, with his son, the Earl of Arundel, his countess, uncle, and brothers, were summoned before the Privy Council and repeatedly questioned. The Lord Paget, brother of Charles Paget, and Charles Arundel, escaped to the Continent, but sent a declaration that they had fled, not from any sense of guilt, but from the utter hopelessness of acquittal where Leicester had any influence. Northumberland and Lord Arundel, with their wives and relatives, stoutly denied all concern with plots or any species of disloyalty, and no proof could be brought against them. Meantime it was asserted that the Duke of Guise was proceeding with his scheme of invasion, and that many English noblemen and gentlemen were co-operating in it; that a letter had been intercepted from the Scottish Court to Mary, informing her that James was quite ready to perform his part of the scheme by invading the kingdom from the north, having had the promise of 20,000 crowns; but that he was desirous to know who were the influential parties in England that might be calculated upon for support. All this was soon wonderfully corroborated by the confession of Francis Throckmorton, in whose trunks were said to have been found two catalogues, one of the chief ports, and the other of the principal Romanists in the kingdom: that these were for the use of Mendoza, the Spanish minister; and that he had devised a plan with that ambassador to raise troops in the name of the queen through the Catholics, who were then to call on her to tolerate Catholicism, or to depose her. This was a strong case indeed against the prisoners and the fugitives; and Burleigh, with Throckmorton's confession in his hand, charged the Spanish ambassador with his breach of all the laws of nations and of his office. But Mendoza, so far from being confounded, replied to Burleigh, with boldness and evident astonishment, that the whole was false and groundless, and that the true fact was that Burleigh was the man who was continually guilty of the traitorous and unprincipled policy; that he had intercepted the messages of the King of Spain; had robbed them of the money in their charge; and had aided the Netherland rebels both by money on land and by pirates at sea. The charge was undeniable, and the two ministers parted in the highest anger at each other. Mendoza either was instantly ordered from the country, or departed of his own accord; and fixing himself at Paris, devoted himself to do all the damage possible to the interests of Elizabeth.
Throckmorton, on his trial, pleaded that his confession was of no power to convict him, because it required by the 13th of Elizabeth that the indictment should be preferred within six months of the commission of his offence; but the judges informed him that he was not indicted on that statute, but on that of treason, which was always in force, and required no witnesses. On this the whole scandalous truth came out. The telling story of the invasion had been obtained from Throckmorton by torture and the assurance that it could not convict him on account of the limitations of the statute. On hearing the judges statement, he cried out that he was deceived; that he had been racked three times, and then, to avoid further torture, at the same time that he was shown a way of escape, he was induced to sign this confession. He was condemned, but his life was spared till he again confessed his guilt, when he was hurried to execution; but on the scaffold he seized the opportunity to declare that his confession was totally false, having been in the first instance extorted by the rack, in the second by a promise of pardon.
Though it was proved on the clearest evidence, after the most careful inquiry, that there was no movement for the Duke of Guise's invasion, and that not a single soldier had been raised for the purpose, yet this mattered nothing; Francis Throckmorton was hanged at Tyburn, cut down and embowelled, with all the barbarities of the period.
At this time Elizabeth and her ministers were greatly disconcerted by the independent bearing of James of Scotland, and every art of Walsingham was exerted, backed by gold, to revive the power of the English faction there. Mar, Angus, and Gowrie, the chiefs of the "Raid of Ruthven," were again set on foot to raise soldiers; and the preachers were made to sound the alarm from the pulpits that the Reformation was in danger. James—or rather Arran, his minister—saw the danger, and took the field against the insurgents. Gowrie, after a sharp struggle, was secured and executed as a traitor. Mar and Angus fled at the approach of the Royal army, and many of their followers escaped to England. Elizabeth was preparing to support them by arms, but finding herself too late, negotiated through Walsingham for the return of the fugitives; but James refused to listen to her proposals, declared them rebels, and confiscated their estates.
But the appearance of James's independence was deceitful. He had been educated under very unfavourable circumstances. The celebrated classical scholar, Buchanan, had been his tutor, and had stuffed much musty knowledge into his head, with very little idea of principle. When, in after years, Buchanan was upbraided with turning out such a ridiculous Royal pedant, he replied that if they had known the brains he had had to operate upon, they would only have wondered that he turned out anything at all. From the moment that George Buchanan let him out of his hands, he found himself surrounded by two parties, inspired by no higher sentiment than the seizure of power, and the aggrandisement of self; all was hollow, hard, treacherous, and even murderous. The only idea that this scene elicited from the word-stuffed cranium of James, was that the cunningest fellow was the wisest, and that the true art of life was to cheat the most cleverly. This precious philosophy, which had falsehood for its means and self for its end, he dignified with the name of kingcraft. We shall hereafter find him boasting of it, and indoctrinating his son with it. He cost Charles his head, and by the transmission of the same dogma, he destroyed the monarchy for a time, and the rule of his family for ever.
James, whilst appearing so independent and incorruptible to Elizabeth, was turning a very different face to the kings of France and Spain, to the Duke of Guise and the Pope. To them he professed to sympathise deeply with the misfortunes of his mother, to resent her treatment, to desire her restoration and joint rule. He declared a predilection for Popery—and for what object? merely to draw what money he could from them. But it may be said that Elizabeth would have been only too happy to furnish him with money. Undoubtedly, but that must have been on the understanding that Mary remained in her hands. The moment that he consented to such an arrangement, his game was played out with the Continental monarchs; he would show that he was indifferent to the fate of his mother, and none of her allies could any longer put faith in him. But whilst he courted the Roman Catholic monarchs and drew money from them, he was all the more desirable object of conquest to Elizabeth. The more she was alarmed at his favour with her rivals, the higher would be his power with her. When he had exhausted their funds or their patience, then he could have recourse to Elizabeth; and this time was now approaching. James received payment after payment, but he did nothing whatever, except make almost any promise required. His continental friends grew disgusted, and so he betook himself to the English queen.
There was another negotiation on foot for the release of his mother, and he ordered his favourite Gray, the master of Mar, to meet Nau, the secretary of Mary, and to treat with the English ministers, with the assistance of the French ambassador. The surface of the transaction appeared so fair, and all parties so much in earnest, that once more the hopes of Mary and of her friends were highly raised, only, as in all these cases, to be speedily dashed. Mar, like Morgan, Mary's commissioner, was a traitor; Morgan was in the pay, or ready to take the pay, of Burleigh. He was received by the queen and her ministers with chilling coldness on his arrival; but he possessed ample means to warm them up. He had been in Paris with a recommendation from the friends of Mary; had been admitted to the confidence of her chief friends there, Persons the Jesuit, and the Archbishop of Glasgow. From them he was initiated into all the secrets of their movements for the liberation of Mary, and these secrets he was ready to communicate to Elizabeth and her ministers for a proper return. He had his secret instructions, and, though professing to act with Nau, he soon found cause to dissent from him. On perceiving the value of the information which he held, the arms of the queen and her ministers were open to receive him, and they were soon on such terms that he actually proposed a marriage betwixt his boy king and the elderly lady Elizabeth. Probably he never expected that Elizabeth would depart from her uniform conduct in regard to matrimonial proposals, but he was well assured that nothing could flatter her so much; and he obtained a goodly sum of money, with a promise of more, the amount and the frequency of the favour to be regulated by the amount of service in return.
From that hour the doom of Mary was definitively sealed, and James became the obsequious tributary of the English Court. The effect was immediately seen. Creighton, a Jesuit of Scotland, and Abdy, a priest of that country, were seized by a Dutch cruiser, on their way home from France; and, in spite of Scotland and Holland being at profound peace, were conveyed, as an acceptable sacrifice to Elizabeth, to England. Creighton, on being taken, had torn up some papers and thrown them into the sea. Sufficient of these were collected to show that they contained plans for the rescue of the Scottish queen, and in the Tower the sight of the rack made him disclose much more. This exciting information was made the most of. An association was formed, under the influence of Government, by which all the members bound themselves to pursue and kill every person who should attempt the life of the queen, and every person for whose advantage it should be attempted. This palpably pointed at the Scottish queen. The bond of association was shown to Mary as a means of intimidating her. At the first glance she perceived that it was aimed at her life; but, after a moment of astonishment, she proposed to sign the bond herself, so far as she was concerned, which, of course, was not permitted, as it would have neutralised the whole intention; but it was industriously circulated for signature amongst those who dared not well do otherwise.
The same object was pursued in the Parliament, which met on the 23rd of November. After the clergy had granted an aid of six shillings in the pound to be paid in three years, and the Commons a subsidy and two-fifteenths, an Act was passed condemning as traitors any one who had been declared by a court of twenty-four commissioners cognisant of any treasonable designs against the queen; and Mary and her issue were excluded from the succession in case of the queen coming to a violent death. The Roman Catholics were also treated with increased severity, in consequence of the alleged plots. No Popish clergyman was to be allowed to remain in the kingdom; if found there after forty days, he was pronounced guilty of high treason; any one knowing of his being in the country, and not giving information within twelve days, was to be fined and imprisoned during the queen's pleasure; and any one receiving or relieving him was guilty of felony. All students in Popish seminaries were called on to return to their native country within six months after proclamation; parents sending their children to such seminaries without license were to forfeit for every such offence a hundred pounds; and the students themselves forfeited all right to the property of their parents.
On the third reading of this bill, an extraordinary circumstance took place, leading to strange results, which have never been fully explained, although they have engaged the consideration of all historians to throw some reasonable light upon them. One Dr. Parry, a Welsh civilian, rose and denounced the bill as "a measure savouring of treasons, full of blood, danger, and despair to English subjects, and pregnant with fines and forfeitures, which would go to enrich, not the queen, but private individuals."
This speech greatly astonished the House, both because it required a boldness or a rashness to make such an avowal which very few had, and still more because the man was notorious as one who had long been in the pay of Burleigh as a spy upon the Papists, and who had brought home from Italy accounts of the schemes for the assassination of the queen enough to create the utmost horror. He had been in the service of the Earl of Pembroke, then in that of the queen, and had been employed by Burleigh for some years on the Continent in collecting secret information. On his return he married a rich widow, spent her fortune, got into debt, attempted to murder his chief creditor, and only escaped death, as is supposed, by the influence of Burleigh. He then returned to the Continent again in the pay of Burleigh, and pretended to be a convert to Popery in order to worm out the secrets of eminent men of that faith. He addressed himself to the Jesuit Creighton at Lyons, to Parma at Venice, professing his desire to kill the queen if he could only be assured that it was lawful. He was introduced by Parma to the minister of the Pope, Campeggio; and, returning to France, broached the same design to Waytes and other English priests. On his return to England he assured Elizabeth, in the presence of Burleigh and Walsingham, that he had been solicited by the Pope to murder the queen, and produced a letter from Cardinal Como in proof of it. On the strength of this he demanded a pension; but was told that he had done nothing to deserve it, for the letter of Cardinal Como made not the most distant allusion to any such project.
It appears to have been at this crisis that he made his extraordinary statement in the House of Commons. He was tormented with debts and creditors; and had failed to induce the Government by his dirty employment on the Continent to rescue him from his difficulties. Can anything, therefore, be more likely than that his speech was the sudden outburst of his vexation with the Government, made probably in the hope that his opposition and the exposures it was in his power to make might compel ministers to do that for him out of policy which they would not out of good will?
He was at once given into custody to the sergeant by the House; but the next day was liberated by the command of the queen, who said he had partly explained his notions to her satisfaction. Most likely it had been thought best to close his mouth by a concession to some of his claims. But within six weeks he was again arrested on a charge of high treason, and conducted to the Tower. This time it appears to have been on the charge of an Edmund Neville, a member of the Westmoreland family, who had been employed to watch the Jesuit Persons at Rouen. Neville had returned to England to prosecute his right to the inheritance of the last Lord Latymer, in which he was opposed by the eldest son of Burleigh, who had got possession of it. As Neville and Parry had been associates, and had mutually tempted each other with the professed projects of murdering the queen, it is not at all improbable but that Parry might now be employed to criminate Neville, and thus get rid of his troublesome claims. But Neville turned the tables on Parry, denounced him as having endeavoured to incite him to assassinate the queen, and Parry at length confessing it, was sent to the Tower on the 1st of February, 1585.
Parry had failed to get rid of Neville and his troublesome opposition to the claims of Burleigh's son; but being now in custody, it would appear that it occurred to the ministers that he might be made a useful instrument at this moment in swelling the odium against the Roman Catholics. Accordingly, he made a confession in the Tower, the sum and substance of which was this:—That Morgan had instigated him to murder the queen; that Cardinal Como, in the name of the Pope, had approved of the design—(this, be it remarked, was the very thing which Elizabeth and her ministers, when he was at large, had declared was wholly unproved); that on seeing Elizabeth, he was so much struck by her glorious mind and person that he repented; yet again, reading the treatise of Dr. Allen in reply to Burleigh, on the right of subjects to resist and depose tyrannical sovereigns, he had been inspired afresh to her destruction, and had incited Neville to carry out that object.
So far from denying this on his trial, he pleaded guilty; his confession was read, and the chief justice prepared to pass sentence upon him. On this, in the greatest astonishment, like Francis Throckmorton, he exclaimed that he was deceived; that he was perfectly innocent; that the whole story contained in his confession was a tissue of lies, which had been extorted from him by threats and promises; that he had never really harboured a thought of murder; and that the Cardinal Como had never given any approbation of it. He demanded to be allowed to withdraw his plea, but was not permitted; sentence of death was pronounced upon him. It is quite clear that he had been promised his life if he would make a confession so damning to the Catholics, and was now thunderstruck to see that faith was not kept with him. He protested that if he perished his blood would lie on the head of the queen.
The discovery, by his extraordinary speech, that he was an unsafe man, who, being in possession of dangerous secrets, in a moment of discontent might let them out, was probably the cause of his being selected for the victim on this occasion. He had now done the work of Elizabeth and her ministers, and nothing could save him. On the scaffold, to which he was brought March 2nd, 1585, he again passionately protested his innocence. Topcliffe, the notorious pursuivant, asked him how then he explained the letter of the cardinal. Parry declared that there was nothing of the kind in the letter, and begged that it might be examined, but the only reply was a command to make an end. He had sent a letter to the queen, declaring that he was chiefly overthrown by her own hand. On the scaffold he protested again that he was her true servant; had never dreamt of harm to her, and that "in her own conscience she knew it." In the midst of his devotions the cart was drawn away, and after one swing he was cut down and butchered with the executioner's knife, giving a great groan when his bowels were taken out.
To avoid, if possible, the fate which the bill of this Session prepared for them, the Roman Catholics drew up an earnest and loyal memorial to the queen, declaring it as their settled and solemn conviction that she was their sovereign de jure and de facto; that neither Pope nor priest had power to license any one to lift their hand against her, nor to absolve them were such a crime committed, and that they renounced and abominated any one who held a contrary doctrine. It might have been thought that such a testimony would have been highly gratifying from her subjects; but those subjects knew too well the bigotry and violence of the queen, and it was not easy to find any one daring enough to present so reasonable a document. Richard Shelley, of Michael Grove, in Sussex, was patriotic enough to undertake the office, and his treatment justified the fears of all others.
All these transactions only tended to aggravate the situation of the Queen of Scots. She passed the winter of 1584-5 in the most excruciating anxiety. The signing of the bond of association had convinced her that fresh occasion was sought to destroy her. She regarded it as the signing of her death-warrant. There was a constant attempt to make it appear that she was an accomplice in every real or supposed plot for the overthrow of Elizabeth's Government. She was now taken out of the hands of the Earl of Shrewsbury, who had, by his sense of justice and benevolence, ameliorated her sorrowful captivity in some degree, and was consigned to the custody of Sir Amyas Paulet, a dependant of Leicester's, a man of a rigid, gaoler-like disposition, but not destitute of honour, as we shall anon discover. She was removed from Sheffield Park to the ruinous stronghold of Tutbury.
Finding that all appeals to Elizabeth and all protestations of her innocence of any participation in, and even ignorance of, the plots charged on different persons were alike disregarded, she turned to her son, but only to receive from that quarter a disregard still harder to bear. James coldly announced to her that he had nothing to do with her concerns, nor she with his: he was now, in fact, in the pay of Elizabeth. He bade her remember that she was only the queen-mother, and enjoyed no authority in Scotland, though she bore the empty title of queen.
This base and unnatural conduct in a son fell like a millstone upon her; and abandoning all hope of assistance from him, she now demanded of Elizabeth to liberate her on any conditions she pleased—she asked only liberty and life. But Elizabeth was now secure of James, and was relieved from any fears of his resenting even his mother's death. To give Mary some inkling of the fate which awaited her, a young Romish recusant, and supposed to be a priest, was brought prisoner to Tutbury, carried by force, and before her face, repeatedly to the Protestant service in the chapel, and then hanged before her window.
The condition of the Roman Catholics was now pitiable in the extreme. Their lives and fortunes were at the mercy of a swarm of spies and informers; and all who could, endeavoured to get out of the kingdom to enjoy their lives and religion in peace. But it was made a high crime and misdemeanour to try even to accomplish this voluntary expatriation. The Earl of Arundel was a man of a gay and even libertine life, and not likely to trouble himself about plots and insurrections; but Elizabeth was taught to distrust him; and finding that he was become an object of her displeasure, he contemplated a removal to the Continent. But Elizabeth was well aware of all his movements through her spies, and just as he was about to set out, made him a visit as of friendship, and, on retiring after dinner, bade him consider himself a prisoner in his own house.
Determining, however, to elude his tyrannical sovereign's power, he made a secret preparation for his departure, and left a letter to the queen explaining his motives for his conduct; declaring that it was come to that point with him that he must escape, or perish body or soul. After giving his letter to a messenger, he went on board and thought himself safe: in reality he had only gone voluntarily into a trap. Every movement had been watched, every word listened to, every scrap of writing perused; and he had not been long at sea when he saw two sail in full chase of the vessel in which he was. The pursuer was a pretended pirate of the name of Killaway. The master of the vessel in which he was had been secured by the ministers; and Arundel, after a vain resistance, was taken back and thrown into the Tower. His brother. Lord William Howard, and his sister, Lady Margaret Sackville, were also made prisoners. On his examination forged letters were produced against him, but so palpably so—purporting that he meant to invade England with a large army—that no overt act could be fixed upon him. Notwithstanding, he was fined £10,000 for attempting to leave the kingdom without licence, and for having corresponded with Dr. Allen, the principal of Douay College, and was detained in severe imprisonment for life.
The Earl of Northumberland was the next victim. As a Papist, he had long been secretly watched, and had for ten years been forbidden to quit the immediate environs of the metropolis. William Shelley, a friend of the earl's, being arrested on the charge of being an accomplice with Throckmorton, something was drawn from him which gave a plea for arresting the earl too, and he was thrown into the Tower. It may be presumed, however, that nothing could be proved against him, as he was never brought to trial; for, after being kept in close confinement more than a year, he was got rid of in a very extraordinary way. On the 20th of June, 1585, his ordinary keeper was removed, and replaced by one Bailiff, a servant of Sir Christopher Hatton's. The very next morning he was found dead, shot through the heart with three slugs. It was attempted to show that he had shot himself, and evidence was brought forward to prove that he had had the pistol and the slugs brought by one Pantin, and delivered to him by a servant named Price; but Price, though in custody, was never called to prove this; and, indeed, Sir Walter Raleigh, writing to Cecil, treats the fact as one well known to them both, that the earl was assassinated by the instrumentality of Hatton. It was, however, diligently propagated that he had killed himself to prevent the confiscation of his property, which would have taken place had he been convicted of treason. The whole transaction bears too many marks of a Government prison murder to leave any one in doubt upon the subject, especially from its following instantly the suspicious change of his keeper, as in the case of the children smothered in the Tower.
Whilst these persecutions were proceeding at home, Elizabeth was supporting Protestantism abroad. Henry of Navarre had become the next in succession to the crown of France, by the death of the Duke of Anjou. Being well known as a Protestant, the Roman Catholic party in France, with the Duke of Guise at their head, reorganised their league, and even compelled the King of France to subscribe to it. The King of Spain, a member of the league, promised it all his support. On the other hand, Elizabeth, anxious to see a Protestant prince on the throne of France, sent Henry large remittances, and invited him to make England his home in case his enemies should compel him to retreat for a time, when he could wait the turn of events. In all this there was nothing to complain of. Henry had a clear right to the throne of France, and justice as well as the reformed faith called upon her to support it; but not so honourable were her proceedings in the Netherlands. There she secretly urged the subjects of a power with whom she was at peace to insurrection, and maintained them in it by repeated supplies of money.
Court of Henry III. of France: Ball at the Palace. From a French Engraving of the period.
Sympathising as she did with the oppressed Protestants of the Netherlands, her course was open and clear. She could call on Philip to give to them free exercise of their religion, and if he refused, she had a fair plea to break with him, and to support the cause of the common religion. But Elizabeth had too much politic regard for the rights of kings openly to support against them the rights of the people; and, what was still more embarrassing, she was practising the very intolerance and persecution against her Roman Catholic subjects that Philip was against his Protestant ones.
The primate, when appealed to, stated broadly this fact, and declared that Philip had as much right to send forces to aid the English Roman Catholics, as Elizabeth had to support the Belgian Protestants. When, therefore, in June of this year, the deputies of the revolted provinces of the Netherlands besought Elizabeth to annex them to her own dominions, she declined; but in September she signed a treaty with them, engaging to send them 6,000 men, and received in pledge of their payment the towns of Brille and Flushing, and the strong fortress of Rammekins. This was making war on Philip without any declaration of it; but she still persisted that she was not assisting the Flemings in throwing off their allegiance to their lawful prince, but only assisting them to recover undoubted privileges of which they had been deprived.
But the fact was, that Elizabeth had long been warring on Spain, and it was the fault of Spain that it had not declared open war in return. In 1570 she had sent out the celebrated Admiral Drake, to scour the coasts of the West Indies and South America, on the plea that Spain had no right to shut up the ports of those countries, and to exclude all other flags from those seas. Under her commission, Drake and other captains had ravaged the settlements of Spain in the New World: had plundered Carthagena and Nombre de Dios, and almost every town on the coasts of Chile and Peru. They had intercepted the Spanish galleons, or treasure vessels, and carried off immense booty of silver and other precious articles. But as Drake had received special marks of Royal favour—the queen had dined on board his vessel, the "Golden Hind," when it lay at Deptford, and she had knighted him for his good services—and as there was no declaration of war, all these were clear cases of piracy; but Philip was too much engaged at home to defend these transatlantic possessions from the daring sea-captains of Elizabeth, and if he did declare war, he at once sanctioned Elizabeth's interference both in those seas and in the Netherlands.
Queen Elizabeth Knighting Francis Drake (see page 503)
To carry forward her operations in the Netherlands successfully, it was necessary to make quite sure of the King of Scotland. Elizabeth had discovered that the only power which would bind James was money. Moral principle he had none; but as money was the all-persuasive argument, they only were sure of him who gave the most. Elizabeth had already a majority of James's council in her pay, and might have had more if she could have calculated on them, but she found them ready to receive her cash and to betray her. She, therefore, sent thither Wotton to study the movements and movers of the Scottish Court, and having made himself acquainted with them, to strengthen her party. A border raid, in which Lord Russell, the son of the Earl of Bedford, had fallen, enabled Wotton to lodge a complaint, and demand that the asserted instigators of it, Arran and Fernihurst, should be given up to him. James did not consent to that, but arrested them both himself. Whilst the able Arran was thus withdrawn from Court, Wotton seized the opportunity to persuade the courtiers in the pay of Elizabeth to seize James and send him to England, or confine him in the castle of Stirling, by which the English faction would possess the chief power. Unfortunately for Wotton, his plot was discovered, and he fled; but he left behind him trusty friends who, inspired by English gold, contrived to work out his schemes. Arran had returned to power on the disappearance of Wotton, but the partisans of Elizabeth opposed him, and others returning across the border with plenty of English money, they mustered in numbers sufficient to surprise James in Stirling, and recover their influence and their estates. Under the circumstances James found it to his interest to conclude a treaty with Elizabeth, the ostensible object of which was to defend Protestantism, the real one—that which both Elizabeth and James had at heart—the firm exclusion of Mary from any hope of liberty, or of receiving any aid from abroad.
To conduct her campaign in the Netherlands, Elizabeth had appointed the Earl of Leicester; for since she had discovered his marriage with the Countess of Essex, she was sufficiently disgusted with him to send him out of her sight. The way in which he conducted himself there was not calculated to increase his reputation for honesty or military talent. No sooner did he arrive, than, without consulting the queen, he induced the States to nominate him governor-general of the United Provinces, with the title of excellency, and with supreme power over the army, the State, and the executive. In fact, his ambition rested with nothing short of being a king: with nothing but possessing all the title and authority enjoyed by the Duke of Anjou. When this news reached Elizabeth, that he had sent for the countess, and was organising a Court fit for a monarch, she flew into a terrible rage, charged him with presumption and vanity, with contempt of her authority, and "swore great oaths that she would have no more Courts under her abeyance than one;" desired him to remember the dust from which she had raised him, and let him know if he were not obedient to her every word, she would beat him to the ground as quickly as she had raised him.
The unfortunate States, who thought they were gratifying the Queen of England when they were honouring her favourite, were confounded at this discovery; but Leicester, as if he really thought that he could render himself independent of his royal patroness, remained lofty, insolent, and silent. Trusting to the position into which he had thus stepped, he left it to the ministers at home to pacify the queen. He had so long ruled her that he appeared to think he could still do as he pleased. The great Burleigh and the cunning Walsingham were at their wits' end to satisfy Elizabeth: the only letter which they got from Leicester being one to Hatton, so insolent and arrogant that they dared not present it till they had remodelled it. Meantime, Elizabeth continued to write to the new captain-general the most bitter reproaches and menaces, and to heap upon his friends fierce epithets which could not reach, or produced no effect on him. With all the airs of a great monarch, Leicester progressed from one city to another, receiving solemn deputations, and giving and receiving grand entertainments.
In the field his conduct was as contemptible as in the Government. He had an accomplished general, Alexander Farnese, the Prince of Parma, to contend with, and never did a British general present so pitiable a spectacle in a campaign as did Leicester. His great object appeared to be to avoid a battle, and the only conflict which he engaged in, which has left a name, is the attack upon Zutphen, because there fell the gallant and gifted Sir Philip Sidney, in the twenty-fifth year of his age.
As autumn approached, Leicester marched back his forces to the Hague, and was greatly disgusted and astonished to be called to account by what he pleased to name an assembly of shopkeepers and artisans. Not the less loudly, however, did the merchants and shopkeepers of the Netherlands upbraid him with the utter failure of the campaign, with the waste of their money, the violation of their privileges, the ruin of their trade, and the extorting of the people's money in a manner equally arbitrary and irritating. In a fit of ineffable disgust he broke up the assembly: the assembly continued to sit. He next resorted to entreaties and promises; it regarded these as little. He announced his intention to return to England, and in his absence nominated one of his staff to exercise the supreme government. The assembly insisted on his resigning that charge to them; he complied, yet, by a private deed, reserved it to himself; and thus did this proud, empty, inefficient upstart dishonour the queen who had raised him, the country which tolerated him, and which had long impatiently witnessed his arrogance, his lasciviousness, his abuse of the queen's favour, and his murders; and at length, on the approach of winter, obey the call of his sovereign and return home. Scarcely had he quitted the Netherlands, when the officers whom he had left in command surrendered the places of strength to the Prince of Parma, and went over to the Spaniards. The campaign was, from first to last, a scandal and a disgrace to our name and government.
On the arrival of Leicester, the Court and public mind were so engrossed by plots and rumours of plots for the assassination of Elizabeth and the liberation of the Queen of Scots, that his faults were to a great degree forgotten in the necessity for all the queen's friends uniting for the determination of the best course to pursue amid accumulating perplexities. The amount of truth and falsehood, in the assertion of all the schemes afloat in the great conflict which was going on betwixt the Protestant and Roman Catholic parties, it is difficult to determine. There were so many agents on both sides at work, so many of them, appeared to be such very dubious characters, apparently on one side, whilst they were in the pay of the other, and the intriguing genius of Walsingham and Burleigh raised up such false appearances, and so confounded the real with the imaginary, whilst they mined and worked in secret below, that it is the most arduous of endeavours to produce a clear detail of the proceedings of this time. The following is the nearest approach to fact or resemblance of it which we can make.
Amongst the rumours was one constantly growing of an intended invasion of the kingdom by the King of Spain, for the release of the Queen of Scots, the relief of the Papists, and for retaliation for the invasion of his kingdom of the Netherlands, and the excitement of his subjects to rebellion by Elizabeth. As this was not only very justifiable, but not improbable, it gave edge and force to all the other real or imaginary plots which revolved round Queen Mary. What tended to make these schemes more palpable was a strong disagreement betwixt Mary's own friends. Morgan and Paget, the commissioners of her dower in France, complained that the Jesuit missionaries had made the English Government more suspicious and vigilant; that Persons and his confederates had not only usurped the business of advocating Mary's cause in England, but also at foreign Courts; that by their injudicious zeal they had drawn much attention on their movements; that they had held communications with Gray, the master of Mar, who had notoriously betrayed Mary's cause; and that, in consequence, her affairs had been revealed by Holt in Edinburgh Castle, by Creighton in the Tower, and by Gray whilst acting officially for Arran and King James at Greenwich. The Jesuits retorted on Morgan and Paget, that they were the men who had betrayed their mistress; that they were notoriously connected with Walsingham; and especially Morgan, who seems to have been so thorough a traitor as to have excited the suspicious of both parties. Though he was undoubtedly employed by Walsingham, yet Elizabeth had the most mortal hatred of him, since Parry confessed that he had been urged by Morgan to murder her. So intense was her resentment that she declared she would give £10,000 for his head, and demanded his surrender from the King of France, at the same time she sent him the Order of the Garter. Henry would not give up the agent of Queen Mary, but he confined him in the Bastille, and sent his papers to Elizabeth.
This proceeding of Elizabeth's so embittered Morgan that he and Paget threw their energies more warmly into the cause of Mary; Morgan, though shut up, still finding a mode of communicating with his colleague Paget, and employing the silence of his prison to concoct a more deep revenge on Elizabeth. Thus was Morgan earnestly pursuing a great scheme for the destruction of Elizabeth, and Walsingham, the great diplomatic spider, spinning, in his bureaucratic corner, his webs for the life of Mary, with far greater genius, and far more numerous ramifications of his meshes. It could not be doubtful which would be triumphant in their murderous object. Let us trace a few of the more perceptible lines of Morgan's action.
He applied to Christopher Blount, a gentleman in Leicester's service, to co-operate in the scheme for the rescue of Mary; but Blount declined the office, and recommended one Pooley, a servant of Lady Sidney, the daughter of Walsingham. Had Morgan had the shrewdness of Walsingham, he would never have entrusted any communication to such hands, as they were sure to reach those of Walsingham. Yet Morgan gave him letters to Mary; and Pooley, thus accredited, offered his services to Mary, and was admitted to all the secret plans and proceedings of her friends. Thus did Walsingham make even Morgan play into his hands.
The next emissaries that Morgan engaged were still more absurdly selected. They were two English traitors, who having studied in the English Popish seminaries, thus obtained the confidence of that party, and then sold themselves to Walsingham. These men, Gifford and Greatly, were soon convicted of being in the pay of Walsingham, but they had the hardihood to assert that was purposely to have the opportunity of more effectually and safely serving Mary. Morgan was weak enough to believe them; though they had become greatly suspected in England, he recommended them as most valuable agents to Mary, from whom they received despatches for Paris, and brought back the answers, which they communicated to Walsingham.
A fourth agent in the cause of Mary appeared—an officer named Fortescue, who, on his way to different parts of England, was soon observed by Walsingham's spies particularly to visit the families of eminent Roman Catholic recusants. Walsingham directed one of his most consummately able spies, one Maude, to pay attention to Captain Fortescue; and he soon discovered, in the garb of Fortescue, the person of John Ballard, a priest, who was engaged in collecting information of the real state and strength of Mary's party, for the use of the exiles abroad. Maude so thoroughly won the confidence of Ballard, that he became his companion through the north and west of England, in Scotland, and thence through Flanders to Paris. At different points of the journey, Ballard had laid his plans and statistics before Allen of Douay, Morgan and Paget, and Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador. Mendoza premised to recommend the plan of invasion to Philip, but did not appear warm in the cause; and therefore Morgan and Paget resolved to attempt a party in England alone, to assassinate Elizabeth and liberate Mary. All this was duly forwarded to Walsingham by Maude.
Mary had now been removed, in the early part of this year, to Chartley Castle, in Staffordshire, under the care of Sir Amyas Paulet; and the gentlemen in England whom Morgan and Paget had pitched upon to carry out their plan, were a young enthusiastic Papist—Anthony Babington, of Dethick, near Matlock, in Derbyshire—and his friends and companions, all men of fortune, family, and education. Babington had long been an ardent admirer of the Queen of Scots, had corresponded with her whilst she was at Sheffield Park, and was ready to devote himself to the death in her cause. At the same time he had such an idea of the peril of meddling with the government of Elizabeth, that he despaired of accomplishing Mary's enfranchisement during Elizabeth's life. Ballard assured him that Elizabeth would be taken off; that Savage, an officer who had served in Flanders, and was exasperated at the death of Throckmorton, had determined to do it; and that the Prince of Parma would land simultaneously with that event, and set Mary at liberty. The fact was, that Walsingham, to whom all these movements and projects were as well known through Maude, Pooley, and others, had instantly, on learning the fact that Babington and his friends were to be instigated to this enterprise, conceived the scheme of bringing Mary into the plot through Babington, and thus effecting her and their destruction at once. Pooley was therefore put into communication with Babington, as a person earnestly favouring the design; and Babington, declaring that the death of Elizabeth was a matter of too imminent moment to be entrusted to foreigners, recommended Ballard and Savage to engage six trusty accomplices to pledge themselves to the death of Elizabeth, whilst he and his friends laboured for the liberation of Mary. The scheme was resolved upon, and Babington was the link of communication betwixt these two knots of conspirators. At first he found his companions averse to embark in an enterprise of so much risk, but by degrees his enthusiasm triumphed over their scruples, and they entered into it heart and soul.
Walsingham, thus successful, seeing these young gentlemen fall into his snare, took the necessary steps to intercept and possess himself of the whole correspondence betwixt them and Mary. For a long time he had had full command of the correspondence betwixt Mary and her party at large, through the means of Thomas Throckmorton and Gilbert Gifford, already mentioned, both of whom had been recommended to Mary by Morgan. Gifford, as we have shown, was an unscrupulous traitor, who resided near Burton, received Mary's letters, and transmitted them to Throckmorton at London; Throckmorton receiving those from abroad and forwarding them to Gifford, who sent them on to Chartley by a man of Burton styled "the honest man." This honest man was in communication with the brewer who supplied the castle of Chartley with beer, and who had agreed to carry letters to and from Mary, as it is said, by enclosing them in a water-tight little cask, or bottle, which floated inside the cask of beer intended for Mary, whilst the answers were deposited in a hole in the castle wall, which had outside a loose stone to cover it, whence the brewer took them. The brewer and probably "the honest man" were all the time in the pay of Walsingham, and in full understanding with Amyas Paulet, Mary's gaoler. The letters were all broken open, deciphered by Thomas Philips, the celebrated decipherer, and re-sealed by Arthur Gregory, a man pre-eminently skilled in counterfeiting seals, or restoring broken impressions.
With all this machinery in his hands, Walsingham patiently awaited the progress of the correspondence, till it should have ripened into sufficient flagrancy to become fatal to his dupes. That it might speed the faster, he seems to have applied a strong stimulus through his agent Pooley. About Midsummer he had obtained a letter from Babington to Mary, proposing in plain terms the murder of Elizabeth, and the liberation of herself, on receiving her unequivocal sanction to those two measures. The impression of this imprudent letter bears all the evidence of having been suggested by Walsingham himself through his agent Pooley, and this impression is rendered almost certain by the fact that, whilst Babington was transcribing this letter, "an unknown boy" begged an interview with him, and put into his hand a note in cipher, purporting to be from the Queen of Scots herself, complaining of not hearing from him, and requesting him to forward by the bearer a packet for her from foreign parts. The cipher, the knowledge of this packet just received, left not a suspicion on the mind of Babington. He forwarded his letter by the bearer, which, of course, was immediately conveyed to Walsingham.
That wily and unsentimental minister was, at this grand success, a little excited and thrown off his guard. Hitherto he had watched his game as a tiger watches his, without a motion or a moment's divergence of his whole attention from his intended prey; but now he could not forbear hastening with this letter in his hand to the queen. Elizabeth, on whom it came with a startling suddenness, was so alarmed at the danger which she saw herself in, that it was all that Walsingham could do to prevent her ordering the instant arrest of Babington, Ballard, and all their accomplices. With much ado he succeeded, however, in convincing the queen that the main portion of the game was not yet in their hands; that Mary had not yet committed herself, and prevailed on her to keep her patience and the secret till they had obtained that. For this purpose he at once dispatched Philips, the decipherer, and Gregory, the forger of seals, to Chartley; for Babington, naturally anxious for the important answer of the Queen of Scots, had fixed to be at Lichfield on the 12th of July to receive it.
There was some delay, owing to the want of punctuality both in Babington and "the honest man," during which Mary, to her great alarm, recognised Philips as a person who had been strongly recommended to her, and yet here he was visiting Paulet, and received with much hospitality. Notwithstanding this, Mary wrote her reply, both in English and French, which was put into cipher by her secretary, and conveyed to Babington, having, of course, passed through the hands of Philips. Mary does not appear to have entered at all into the question of Elizabeth's murder in her letter; there is not a word on the subject; but in the deciphered copy she is made to ask "how the six gentlemen mean to proceed," and to appoint the time when they should accomplish their design. So far as the evidence goes, it would appear that Walsingham was disappointed in her answer in this chief point of all, and that he had the necessary damning paragraph inserted; and that this was the fact was sufficiently proved on her trial, for her own letter was in the hands of the ministers, but they took care not to produce it, but only the deciphered copy.
Walsingham was now in possession of all the evidence that he was likely to get, for Babington soon discovered that he had been betrayed by somebody, whom he could not tell; and though he remained in London as though there were no danger, he made preparations for the escape of Ballard to the Continent, by procuring him a passport under a feigned name. Every moment might throw fresh light on the deception, and allow the escape of the victims. On the 4th of August, therefore, Babington found his house entered by the pursuivants of Walsingham, and Ballard, who had not got off, was there seized. Babington escaped for the moment, but was arrested on the 7th, and was taken to the country house of Walsingham, but escaped from the servants into whose charge he was given. With his friends and accomplices, Gage, Charnock, Barnewell, and Donne, he concealed himself in St. John's Wood, till they were compelled by hunger to make their way to the house of their common friend Bellamy, at Harrow, who concealed them in his outhouses and gardens. But the cunning Walsingham had his agents on their trail the whole time, and on the 15th they walked into the premises of Bellamy, secured the concealed conspirators, together with their host, his wife and brother, and conveyed them, amid the shouts and execrations of the populace, and the universal ringing of bells, to the Tower, whither also were soon brought Abingdon, Tichbourne, Tilney, Travers; the only one of the friends of Babington that escaped being Edward Windsor, the brother of Lord Windsor.
On the 13th of September, Babington, Ballard, Savage, Donne, Barnewell, and Tichbourne wore put upon their trial, charged with a conspiracy to murder Elizabeth, and raise a rebellion in favour of the Queen of Scots. They pleaded guilty to one or other of the charges, and seven others pleaded not guilty; but all were alike convicted, and condemned to the death of traitors. The greater part of them appear to have taken no part in the blacker part of the conspiracy, the design to murder Elizabeth; and some of them, as Tichbourne and Jones, declared that they had taken no part whatever, but merely kept the secret for the sake of their friends. Bellamy was condemned for merely affording them an asylum; his wife escaped through a flaw in the indictment. Pooley, the decoy, was imprisoned as a mere blind, and then liberated; and Gifford was already in prison in Paris, where, three years later, he died.
On the 20th and 21st they were executed in Lincoln's Inn Fields, because they used there to hold their meetings. Elizabeth betrayed a singular and most unworthy and unwomanly vindictiveness in their deaths. She desired that they might be executed, if possible, in some manner more lingering and excruciating than the usual death of traitors; though that was horrible enough, in all reason. But, besides that this was illegal, there was much sympathy excited on behalf of the sufferers, who were young men of a superior class, and led on by the chivalrous generosity of youth. Those who suffered the first day were put to death with the customary barbarity, being cut down alive; the seven who died the second day were merely hanged till they were dead.
Though no mention was made on the trial of any participation of the Queen of Scots in this conspiracy, nothing was farther from the intention of Elizabeth and her ministers than her escape. The deaths of these gallant but misguided young men were but the prelude to the tragedy. They had already prepared for her death by the bill passed empowering twenty-four or more of the Lords of the Council and other peers to sit in judgment on any one concerned in attempts to raise rebellion, or to injure the queen's person. To procure every possible evidence for this end, the following stratagem was used:—The Queen of Scots was kept in total ignorance of the seizure of the conspirators, and on the copy of her letter to Babington being laid before the Council, an order was sent down to Sir Amyas Paulet to seize all her papers, and keep her in more rigorous confinement. Accordingly, one morning, Mary took a drive in her carriage, accompanied, as was her custom, by Paulet, but with a larger attendance. When Mary desired to return, Paulet told her that he had orders to convey her to Tixall, a house belonging to Sir Walter Aston, about three miles distant. Astonished and alarmed, Mary refused to go, and declared that if they took her there it should be by force. She must have suspected the design of searching her cabinets during her absence; but, in spite of her protestations and her tears, she was compelled to proceed. There she was confined to two rooms only, was guarded in the strictest manner, and debarred the use of pen, ink, and paper. Meantime Sir William Wade arrived at Chartley, and proceeded to break open the cabinets and take possession of all her letters and papers, as well as those of her secretaries. A large chest was filled with these papers, amongst which were Mary's own minute of the answer to Babington, and the original letter to him composed by Nau. Wade then returned to London with these, and with Nau, Curio, and Pasquier.
On the 28th of August, Paulet conducted the outraged queen back to Chartley. As she proceeded from her house to her carriage, a crowd of poor people surrounded her path, hoping for her usual alms; but she seems to have been now quite aware of what had taken place, for she said, "Alas! poor people, I have nothing to give you: all has been taken from me, and I am a beggar as well as you." When she entered her rooms at Chartley, and saw her violated cabinets, she turned to Paulet, and, with much dignity, said, "There still remain two things, sir, which you cannot take from me: the royal blood in my veins which gives me the right to the succession, and the attachment which binds me to the faith of my fathers."
In London there was much deliberation on the mode in which Mary was to be got rid of. Elizabeth was now resolved that she should die. She declared that the Scottish queen had sought her life, and that one of them must quit the scene. No persuasions could move her, and yet she dreaded the public censure of so unexampled a deed. To obviate this, Leicester, who was an adept in poison, recommended that as the safest and least obtrusive; and even sent over a divine from Holland to prove its lawfulness. Walsingham and Burleigh, however, would have nothing but a public trial, the sentence of which should be ratified by Parliament, to lay the burden of responsibility upon the whole nation.
In preparation, her secretaries were called up and repeatedly examined. They were subjected to the terrors of menaced death, and were called on to confess all they knew; but as this did not include any proof of Mary's conspiracy to murder Elizabeth, they were called up again the morning after the execution of Babington and his accomplices, when fear of such punishment was likely to affect them, and an abstract of the principal points in the letter of Babington and the reply of Mary was laid before them, and they were desired to say whether they were correct. They are said to have admitted the fact; but this we have only on the faith of the Council bent on the death of Mary, and at the same time that the real letter of Mary drawn up by Nau, and her own minute for its preparation, were neither produced nor mentioned. These were the documents on which rested the whole charge against Mary—documents which, if they proved the charge, would have been triumphantly produced both there and at her trial, and which, not being so produced, is proof positive to the contrary. That this is the fact is clear from the record of the Council, which is as follows. Nau is made to enumerate the points in Babington's letter and Mary's reply as they were laid before them, and which they admitted to be correct:—"Yt is to say: first, yt Babington should examine deeplye what forces as well on foote as horseback they might rayse amt. 'em all; the
Sir Philip Sidney. From the original Picture in the Bedford Collection.
second, what townes, portes, and havens they asseur 'emselves of, as well in ye N., W., and S., and so through, as it is before set down at large in the Sc. Q.'s Itre to Babn., and concludeth or signeth his examn, with theis wordes in French: Je certifie les choses dessus dictés estre vrayes et par moy deposés. XXI° Sept., 1586. Nau." Curle follows in this manner:—"He sayeth the Itre directed by the Sc. Q. to Babn. had, amongst ors., theis points in it: The first, yt Babn. shold deeplye examine what forces on foote and horseb.; and so recieteth the cheif points of her letter in ye verie wordes as you have already read them heretofore, and concludeth: 'All theis things above rehearsed I doe well remember and confesse them to be true.' By me G. C., the xxith of September, 1586." Here is no mention of Mary's consent to the murder of Elizabeth, the greatest point of all, which we may therefore be assured had no existence.
Mary was now removed to Fotheringay Castle, in Northamptonshire, in preparation for her trial. It was first proposed to convey her to the Tower, but they feared her friends in the City; then the castle of Hertford, but that, too, was thought too near the capital; and Grafton, Woodstock, Coventry, Northampton, and Huntingdon were all proposed and rejected, showing that they were well aware of the seriousness of the business they contemplated.
Paulet, in executing his removal of Mary, pretended that it was necessary to give her change of air. Mary was by this time a miserable invalid. Her long confinement in wretched and unhealthy, half-ruinous castles, with her close confinement and her perpetual anxieties, had changed her from, the active and beautiful woman into the apparently aged and decrepit sufferer. This has been strikingly demonstrated by the exhibition of her various portraits made in London whilst these pages were being written.
Death of Sir Philip Sidney at the Battle of Zutphen.
She was racked and tortured by rheumatism and neuralgia. For months together she was not able to rise from her bed, and had lost the use of her hands. Sadler, who had been employed in his youth to undermine her throne, and of late to act as an extra guard upon her, reports about this time that she was greatly changed; that she was not able to set her left foot to the ground, "and to her very great grief, not without tears, findeth it wasted and .shrunk of its natural measure." This was the deplorable remnant of that beauteous and buxom woman who had ridden against her enemies with pistols at her side, and had stirred the hearts of all men—except it were those of the petrified Burleigh and Walsingham—that ever saw her. Paulet had no great danger, therefore, of resistance in now conveying her away; yet, for fear of her partisans, he had led her by bye-paths and unfrequented places from osfi gentleman's house to another, till he safely deposited her in her last abode, the low and damp castle of Fotheringay. He had in his pocket an order from the queen, if there here any attempt at her rescue on the way, to shoot her on the spot; and this order was renewed on his arrival there, enjoining him, if he heard any noise or disturbance in her lodgings, to kill her at once, and she had a narrow escape by her chimney taking fire one night and occasioning a confusion, during which Paulot, if he had been as keenly thirsting for her blood as the queen and her ministers had been for years, might have murdered her, much to the satisfaction of his superiors.
So delighted was Elizabeth to have her victim cooped safely up in the dungeon of her doom, that she wrote this enthusiastic letter:—"Amias, my most faithful and careful servant! God reward thee treblefold for thy most troublesome charge so well discharged." After breaking out into raptures of gratitude and praises of his faithful services, she promises him all sorts of honours and recompense. "If I reward not such deserts, let me lack what I have most needed of you," &c.
She then goes on:—"Let your wicked murderess know-how, with hearty sorrow, her vile deseits compel these orders [namely, to assassinate her, if there be any attempt to rescue her]; and bid her from me ask God's forgiveness for her treacherous dealings towards the saviour of her life many a year, to the intolerable peril of my own; and yet, not content with so many forgivenesses, must fault again so terribly, far passing woman's thought, much less a princess; instead of excusing. Whereof not one can sorrow, it being so plainly confessed by the authors of my guiltless death. Let repentance take place, and let not the fiend possess her, so as her letter part may not he lost, for which I pray with hands uplifted to Him that may both save and kill. With my most loving advice and prayer for thy long life, your most assured and loving sovereign, as thereby by good deserts induced,Elizabeth."