A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century Part 20

The idea of entrusting Don John of Austria, the victor of Lepanto, with the restoration of Catholicism in West Europe had been at that time adopted in Rome. His was a fiery nature pervaded by Catholic principles, and seized with the most vivid ambition to be something in the world and to effect something. The Irish wished him to be their king; he was to free Mary Stuart from prison, vindicate her rights alike in Scotland and in England, and at her side ascend the throne of the British kingdoms now united in Catholicism. Mary gladly acceded to this, as she had already long wished for a marriage with the Spanish house. It was probably to give this combination a firmer basis that she proposed, in case her son did not prove to be a Catholic, to transfer her claims on the throne of England to the King of Spain, or to any of his relatives whom he should name in conjunction with the Pope.[241] But whom could she mean by these last words but Don John himself, who then stood in close connexion with the Guises, whom she also recommended most pressingly to the King. But she had at the same time directed her aim towards Scotland. There her enemies Murray and Lennox had perished by a.s.sa.s.sination; under the following regents, Mar and Morton, Mary had still nevertheless so many partisans, that they never could have ventured, as they were requested to do from England, to allow Mary to come to Scotland and be put on her trial: their own power would have been endangered by it. Mary too believed herself to have prepared everything there so well for an enterprise by Don John that, as she says, an overthrow of the Scotch government would infallibly have ensued if Philip II had only put his hand to the work.

And how closely were his interests bound up with it! Without a conquest of the island-kingdom, as his brother represented to him, the Netherlands could never be subdued. But even now he shunned an open rupture. Besides this his brother's restlessness and thirst for action, and his political intrigues which were already reacting on Spain, were disagreeable to him; he could not make up his mind to take a decisive step.

He had again and again been vainly entreated to interest himself in the population of Ireland, in which national and religious antagonism contended against the supremacy of England. One of the confidential agents secretly sent thither a.s.sured him that he was implored by nine-tenths of the inhabitants to take them under his protection and save their souls, that is restore them the ma.s.s, which they could no longer celebrate publicly: they appealed to their primeval relationship with the Iberian people, to ancient prophecies which looked forward to this, and to the great political interests at stake.

Philip was not disinclined to attempt the enterprise; but he required the co-operation of France, without doubt to break the opposition of this power in the affairs of the Netherlands; a condition which could not be made acceptable to the French by any interposition of Rome.

And so, if Pope Gregory XIII wished to undertake anything against Ireland, he had to do it himself. Men witnessed the singular spectacle of an expedition against Ireland being fitted out on the coasts of the States of the Church. A papal general from Bologna came to the a.s.sistance of the powerful Irish chief, Fitzmaurice. They commanded the Irish districts far and wide, and made inroads into the English: for a long time they were very troublesome, although not really dangerous.

King Philip was then busied in an undertaking which interested him still more closely than even that of the Netherlands: he made good his hereditary claim to Portugal, without being obstructed in it either by the opposition of a native claimant or by the counter-working of the European powers.

In the face of this success, by which the Spanish monarchy became master of the whole Pyrenean peninsula and its many colonies in East and West, it was all the more necessary for the other two powers to hold together. Many causes of quarrel indeed arose between them. How could the shocking event of the night of St. Bartholomew fail to awaken all the antipathies of the English, and indeed of Protestantism in general! Elizabeth did not let herself be prevented by her treaty from supporting the French Protestants in the manner she liked, that is without its being possible to prove it against her. Under Charles IX she contributed to prevent them from succ.u.mbing, under Henry III she helped them in recovering a certain political position: for this very object the Palsgrave Casimir led into France German troops paid with English money. Catharine Medici often reproached her with observing a policy like that of Louis XI. But the common interest of the two kingdoms was always more powerful than these differences; frequent and long negociations were carried on for even a closer union. The marriage of Queen Elizabeth with Catharine's youngest son was once held to be as good as certain: he actually appeared personally in England. We refrain from following the course of these negociations. The interest they awaken constantly ends in disappointment, for they are always moving towards their object without attaining it. But perhaps it will repay our trouble to consider the reasons which came into consideration for and against the proposed connexion.

The main reason for it was that England must hinder an alliance between Spain and France, especially one in favour of the Queen of Scots. And certainly nothing had stood the English policy in Scotland in such stead as the good understanding with France. But much more seemed attainable if France and England were united for ever. They would then be able to compel the King of Spain to conclude a peace with the Netherlands which would secure them their liberties; and, if he did not observe it, they would have grounds for a common occupation of a part of the Provinces. If there should be any issue of the marriage, this would put an end to all attacks on Elizabeth's life, and greatly strengthen the attachment of her subjects.

But against it was the fact that this marriage would bring the Queen into disagreeable personal relations; and the country would be as unwilling to see a French king as it had once a Spanish one. And how would it be, if a son sprung from the marriage, to inherit both the French and the English throne? was England to be ruled by a viceroy?

What an opposition the world would raise to the union of these mighty kingdoms, into what complications might it not lead! Scotland would again attach itself to the French: the Netherlands and the German princes would be alienated.

The members of the Privy Council, after they had weighed all these considerations, at last p.r.o.nounced themselves on the whole against it.

They recommended the continuance of the present system,--the support of the Protestants, especially in France, a good understanding with the King of Scotland, and the maintenance of religion and justice in England: thus they would be a match for every threat of the King of Spain.[242]

But that sovereign had one ally against whom these precautions could not suffice, the Order of Jesuits and the seminaries of English priests under its guidance.

Young exiles from England, who were studying in the Universities of the Netherlands, to prevent the Catholic priesthood from perishing among the English at home, had been already in Alva's time brought together in a college at Douay, which was then removed to Rheims as the revolt spread in the Netherlands. Pope Gregory XIII was not content with supporting this inst.i.tution by a monthly subsidy; he was ambitious of imitating Gregory the Great and exercising a direct influence on England: he founded in Rome itself a seminary for the reconversion of that country. He made over for this purpose the old English hospital which was also connected with the memory of Thomas Becket. The first students however fell out with each other, and there was seen in Rome the old antagonism of the 'Welsh' and the 'Saxons'; in the end the latter gained the upper hand, it was mainly their doing that the inst.i.tution was given over to the Jesuits. Not long after its activity began. Each student on his reception was bound to devote his powers to spreading the Catholic doctrines in England; by April 1580 a company of thirteen priests was ready, after receiving the Pope's blessing, to set out with this object. The chief among them were Robert Parsons, who pa.s.sed into England disguised as a soldier, and Edmund Campion as a merchant. The first went to Gloucester and Hereford, the other to Oxford and Northampton: they and the friends who followed them found everywhere a rich harvest.[243] It was arranged so that they arrived in the evening at the appointed houses of their friends: there they heard confessions and gave advice to the faithful. Early in the morning they preached, and then broke up again; it was customary to provide them an armed escort to guard them from any mischance.

Withal the forms of the church-service in England had been so arranged that it might remain practicable for the Catholics also to take part in it. How many had done so hitherto, perhaps with a rosary or a Catholic book of prayers in their hands! The chief effort of the seminarist priests, on their return to the country, was to put an end to this: they dissuaded intercourse with the Protestants even on indifferent matters. The Queen's statesmen were astonished to find how much the number of recusants increased all at once; from secret presses proceeded writings of an aggressive, and exceedingly malignant, character; in many places Elizabeth was again designated as illegitimate, a usurper, no longer as Queen. On this the repressive system, which had been already set in motion in consequence of Pope Pius V's bull, was made more stringent; this is what has brought on the Queen's government the charge of cruelty. The Catholics too began to compose their martyrologies. One of the first priests whose execution they describe, Cuthbert Mayne, was condemned by the jury for bringing the Bull with him into other people's houses together with some _Agnus Dei_.[244] Young people were condemned for trying to make their way to the foreign seminaries. On the wish of the missionaries Pope Gregory XIII explained the bull so far, that the excommunication p.r.o.nounced in it against all who should obey the Queen's commands was meant to be in suspense till it was possible to execute it against the Queen herself on whom it continued to weigh.[245] This limitation however rather increased the danger. The Catholics could remain quiet till rebellion was possible, then it became a duty. The law-courts now sought above all to make the accused priests declare themselves as to the validity of the bull and its obligation. Men held themselves justified in extreme severity against those who 'slip into the country at the instigation of the great enemy, the Pope, and poison the hearts of the subjects with pernicious doctrines.'[246] On this ground Campion met his death; Parsons escaped. a.s.suredly there were not so many executed as the Catholic world wished to reckon, but yet probably more than the statesmen of England admitted. They persisted that it was not a persecution for religion: and in fact the controverted questions lay mainly in the region of the conflict between Papacy and Monarchy: those executed were not so much martyrs of Catholicism as of the idea of the Papal supremacy over monarchs. But how closely connected are these ideas with each other! The priests for their part believed that they were dying for G.o.d and the Church. But the effect which the English government had in view was, with all its severity, not produced. We are a.s.sured on Catholic authority that in 1585 there were yet several hundred priests actively engaged. From their reports it is clear that they were still always counting on a complete victory. They vigorously pressed for the attempt at an invasion, which they represented as almost sure of success; 'for two-thirds of the English are still Catholic; the Queen has neither strong places nor disciplined troops: with 16,000 men she might be overthrown.' This time also the house of the Spanish amba.s.sador, Bernardino Mendoza, formed the meeting-point for these tendencies; he kept up a constant communication with the emigrants who had been declared rebels, and with the discontented at home, with Mary Stuart and her friends in Scotland, with the zealous Catholics throughout the world, especially with the Guises, with whom Philip II himself now had an understanding.

The increasing power of his sovereign gained him also an ever-increasing consideration.

It was in these days that the Western and Southern Netherlands were again subdued by King Philip. After the death of his brother, his nephew Alexander Farnese of Parma had formed an army of unmixed Catholic composition, which had naturally from its inner unity gained the upper hand over the government of the States, which had called now a German and now a French prince to its head, and was composed of different religions and nationalities. First the seaports, then the towns of Flanders, and at last the wealthy Antwerp also, which by its mental activity and commercial resources had materially nourished the revolt, fell into the hands of the Spaniards. The Prince of Orange was a.s.sa.s.sinated by a fanatic. Alexander of Parma, who ascribed his victories to the Virgin Mary, pushed on his conquests gradually till they reached the Northern and Eastern Provinces.

The reaction of these events, even while they were still in progress, was first felt in Scotland. There the young King James VI after many vicissitudes had, while still under age, taken the reins of government into his own hands: and a son of his great uncle, Esme Stuart (who exchanged the t.i.tle Aubigny which he brought from France for the more famous name of Lennox, and was a great friend of the Guises and the Jesuits) obtained the chief credit with him. Lennox promoted Catholicism, which was not so difficult, as part of the n.o.bility still adhered to it, at least in secret; he too lived and moved in comprehensive plans for the re-establishment of the Church. Through the Guises he hoped to be placed in a position to invade England with a Catholic army of 15,000 men; if the English Catholics then did their duty, everything they wanted could be attained: for himself he was resolved to liberate Mary or die in the attempt. Mary was also to reascend the Scotch throne: her son was to be co-regent with her, provided that he himself returned to the bosom of the Catholic Church.

Mary Stuart with her indestructible energy was involved in these designs also. She commended them warmly to the Pope and the King of Spain: for it was precisely in Scotland that the universal re-establishment could best be begun.[247] She wished only to know on what resources in men and money her friends there might reckon. We must remember the situation and the peril of these schemes and preparations, if we would understand to some degree the violent measures on which the Protestant lords in Scotland resolved. As in a similar case of an earlier time in Germany, they closed the castle, in which King James was received, against his attendants: Lennox had to leave Scotland. But the young King was shrewd enough, and sufficiently well advised, to rid himself of the lords almost in the same way that they had taken him. He succeeded, chiefly through the help of the French amba.s.sador, a friend of the Guises. Hereupon too he seemed much inclined to favour the undertaking with which Henry Guise occupied himself in 1583, a scheme for a revolution in the affairs of both countries. Guise hoped, with the support of the King of Spain, the Pope, and the Duke of Bavaria, to be able to effect something decisive. James VI let his uncle know his full agreement with the proposed schemes. But, in fact, it did not seem to matter much whether he agreed or not. It was reported to Queen Mary, that the Catholic party in Scotland reckoned on having the most powerful king of Christendom on their side, with or against James' will; that Philip II was building so many vessels that in a short time he would become completely master of the Western ocean, and be able to invade whatever countries he pleased.

It is evident how dangerous for England these Scotch movements were in themselves: Queen Elizabeth thought herself most vulnerable on the side of Scotland: moreover she already saw herself directly threatened. A plan fell into her hands, in which the number of ships and men necessary for an invasion of England, the harbours where they were to land, the places they were to seize, even the men on whose help they could reckon, were enumerated.[248] She convinced herself that the plan came from Mendoza, who held out the prospect of his King's a.s.sistance for the purpose, as the attack was to be made simultaneously from the Netherlands and from Spain. This time too Elizabeth dismissed the hostile amba.s.sador; but how could she flatter herself with having thus exorcised the threatening elements? Now that the foe, with whom she had been for fifteen years at war--though not an open war yet one of which both sides were conscious--had become very much stronger, she was forced to take up a decisive position against him, to save herself from being overpowered.

In 1584 her chief minister, William Cecil, now Lord Burleigh, High Treasurer of the kingdom, drew her attention to this necessity. He represented to her that she had nothing to fear from any one in the world except from Spain--but from Spain everything. King Philip had gained more victories from his cabinet, than his father in all his campaigns: he ruled a nation which was thoroughly of one mind in religion, ambitious, brave, and resolute; he had a most devoted party among the discontented in England. The question for the Queen was, whether she hoped to tame the lion or whether she wished to bind him.

She could not build on treaties, for the enemy would not keep them.

And, if he was allowed to subdue the Netherlands completely, no one in the world could avoid seeing to what object his power would be directed. He advises the Queen not to let things go so far--for those countries were the counterscarp of England's fortress--but to proceed to open war, to withstand the Spaniards in the Netherlands and attack them in the Indies. 'Better now,' he exclaims, 'while the enemy has only one hand free, than later when he can strike with both.'[249]

In August 1585 Antwerp fell into the hands of the Spaniards; in the capitulation the case is already taken into consideration, that Holland and Zealand also might submit. The Northern Netherlands were threatened from yet another side, as Zutphen and Nimuegen had just been taken by the Spaniards. In this extreme distress of her natural ally she delayed no longer. The sovereignty they offered her she refused anew, but she engaged to give considerable a.s.sistance, in return for which, as a security for her advances, the fortresses Vliessingen and Briel were given up into her possession. To prove how much she was in earnest in this, she entrusted the conduct of the war in the Netherlands to Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who was still accounted her favourite and was one of the chief confidants of her policy. In December 1585 Leicester reached Vliessingen; on the 1st of January 1586, Francis Drake appeared before St. Domingo and occupied it. The war had broken out by land and by sea.

NOTES:

[232] Randolph states that the promise was given before Darnley's death. Strype, Annals iii. i. 234.

[233] That this was thought of from the first is not to be supposed; the Queen had once previously declared herself against it. 'We fynde her removing either into this our realm or into France not without great discommodities to us.' Letter to Throckmorton, in Wright i. 253.

[234] Gonzalez, Apuntamientos 338. From the 'short memoryall' of 1569 in Hayne's State Papers 585 (though much in it is incorrect), we see that men believed in the union of both crowns against England, with 'the ernest desyre to have the Quene of Scotts possess this crown of England.'

[235] 'Sentenza declaratoria contra Elizabetta, che si pretende reina d'Inghilterra.' In Catena, Vita di Pio V, 309. The agreement of the bull (e.g. as to the 'huomini heretici et ign.o.bili,' who had penetrated into the royal privy council) with the manifesto of the last rebellion, is worth observing.

[236] The instructions which Mary and Norfolk gave their Italian agent for the Roman See are preserved in the Vatican archives and printed in Labanoff iii. 221. From Leslie's expression (Negociations, in Anderson iii. 152) that the duke negociated with Ridolfi through a Mr. Backer, 'because he had the Italian tongue,' and that then all the plans were communicated to _him_ ('the whole devises'), we might conclude that Norfolk was in general very much in foreign hands.

[237] Lo que se platico en consejo 7 Julio 1571. Some other weighty doc.u.ments are in Appendix V to Mignet's Histoire de Marie Stuart, vol.

ii.

[238] Already on the 16th April the French amba.s.sador, while speaking with Elizabeth on the conclusion of the treaty agreed on, remarks, 'qu'elle a quelque nouvelle offence contre la dite reyne d'Ecosse,'

which could have been nothing else but the first news of the seizure of one of Ridolfi's servants at Dover on the 10th April, who then under torture had confessed all.

[239] 'Vendran otras ocasiones en tiempo di V. M. per pagarle dios el celo, con que tam caldamente abraza este su negocio.' Contestation del duque di Alba, in Gonzalez 450.

[240] De la Mothe Fenelon au roi de France 22 Dec. 1571.

Correspondence diplomatique de Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon iv. 317.

[241] Sketch of a will, in Labanoff iv. 354. 'Je cedde mes droits, que je pretends et puis pretendre a la couronne d'Angleterre et autres seignuries et royaulmes en dependant au roy catholique ou autres des siens qu'il lui plaira, avesque l'advis et consentement de S. S.'

[242] Conference at Westminster touching the Queen's marriage with the Duke of Anjou 1579. Egerton Papers 78. Suss.e.x, who had previously given a somewhat different opinion, was one of those who signed.

[243] Sacchinus, Historia societatis Jesu iii. 1; vii. 1; viii. 96.

[244] 'Perche contro alle leggi d'Inghilterra egli havesse portato seco una bollo papale, alcuni grani benedetti et agnus dei.' Martyrio di Cutberto Maino, in Pollini, Istoria eccl. delle rivolutioni d'Inghilterra p. 499. It is a pity that the eminent Hallam had not the first reports at hand.

[245] Facultates concessae Rob. Personio et Edm. Campiano 14 April 1580. 'Catholicos tum demum obliget, quando publica ejusdem bullae executio fieri poterit.'

[246] Execution of Justice in England. Somers Tracts i.

[247] Lettre a Don Bernardino de Mendoza 6-8 April 1582. 'La grande aparence, qu'il ha de pourvenir (parvenir) maintenant au dict restabliss.e.m.e.nt de la religion en ceste isle, comencant pour la Scotia (par l'Ecosse).' In Mignet App. 522.

[248] According to the Venetian accounts (Dis.p.a.ccio di Spagna, Marzo 1584) the King had sent an experienced soldier as a spy to England to investigate the possibility of a landing, 'havendo pensato di concertarsi bene con il re di Scotia, perche ancora egli a un tempo medesimo si movesse da quella parte.'

[249] The Lord Treasurers advise in matters of Religion and State.

Somers Tracts i. 164.

CHAPTER V.

THE FATE OF MARY STUART.

How completely the circ.u.mstances of these times are misunderstood, when they are measured by the rules of an age of peace! Rather they were filled with hostilities in which politics and religion were mingled; foreign war was at the same time a domestic one. The religious confessions were at the same time political programmes.

The Queen took up arms not to make conquests, but to secure her very existence against a daily growing power that openly threatened her, before it had become completely an overmatch for her: she provoked an open war: but she had not done enough when she now, as is necessary in such cases, took into consideration the training of soldiers, securing the harbours, fortifying strong places, improving the navy: the most pressing anxiety arose from the general Catholic agitation in the country.

Elizabeth's statesmen were well aware that the sharp prosecution of the seminarist priests was not enough to put an end to it. With reference to the laity, the Lord Treasurer, however strict in other respects, recommends to his sovereign quite a different mode of proceeding. We should never proceed to capital punishment of such men: we should rather mitigate the oath imposed on them: in particular we should never force the n.o.bles to a final decision between their religious inclinations and their political duties, never drive them to despair. But at the same time he gives a warning against awakening any hope in them that their demands could ever be satisfied, for this would only make them more obstinate. And on no consideration should arms be put into their hands. 'We do not wish to kill them, we cannot coerce them, but we dare not trust them.' Nothing would be more dangerous than to a.s.sume a confidence which was not really felt.

Even before this the Privy Council had recommended the Queen to employ Protestants only in the government of her State, and to exclude all Catholics from a share in it.[250] The before-mentioned 'Advice' of Lord Burleigh is remarkable for extending the Protestant interest and adding a popular one to it. He thinks it intolerable that the copyholders and tenants of the Catholic lords, even when they fulfil their obligations in all other respects, experience bad treatment from them on account of religion: it is impossible to let many thousand true subjects be dependent on such as have hostile intentions. The plan Henry VIII had once entertained, of diminishing the authority of the Lords, is now brought by the High Treasurer at this crisis once more into vivid recollection. The Queen is to bind the Commons to herself, to win over their hearts. And Burleigh advises allowing the followers of dissenting Protestant Churches, especially the Puritans, to worship as they please: in preaching and catechising they are more zealous than the Episcopalians, very far more successful in converting the people, and indispensable for weakening the popish party. We see how the necessity of the war acts on home affairs. The chief minister favoured the elements which were forcing their way out through the existing forms of the state.

In this general strain on men's minds their eyes once more turned to the Queen of Scots in her captivity. What would there have been at all to fear at other times from a princess under strong custody and cut off from all the world? But in the excitement of that age she could even so be still an object of apprehension. Her personal friends had from the first not seen a great mischance in her enforced residence in England. For by blameless conduct she refuted the evil report which had followed her thither from Scotland; and her right as heiress of the crown came to the knowledge of the whole nation.[251] In the days at which we have arrived we know with certainty that her presence in the country formed a great lever for Catholic agitation. A report found in the papal archives has been published, by which it is clear how much support men promised themselves from her for every resolute undertaking.[252] This doc.u.ment says that since she has numberless partisans, and although in prison has uninterrupted communication with them, she will always find means, when the time comes, of giving them notice of the approaching opportunity: she is resolved to encounter every hardship, nay even death itself, for the great cause.[253]