Constitutional History of England Volume I Part 12

[225] An almost incredible specimen of ungracious behaviour towards a Roman catholic gentleman is mentioned in a letter of Topcliffe, a man whose daily occupation was to hunt out and molest men for popery. "The next good news, but in account the highest, her majesty hath served G.o.d with great zeal and comfortable examples; for by her council two notorious papists, young Rockwood, the master of Euston Hall, where her majesty did lie upon Sunday now a fortnight, and one Downes, a gentleman, were both committed, the one to the town prison at Norwich, the other to the country prison there, for obstinate papistry; and seven more gentlemen of worship were committed to several houses in Norwich as prisoners; two of the Lovels, another Downes, one Beningfield, one Parry, and two others not worth memory for badness of belief.

"This Rockwood is a papist of kind [family] newly crept out of his late wardship. Her majesty, by some means I know not, was lodged at his house, Euston, far unmeet for her highness; nevertheless, the gentleman brought into her presence by like device, her majesty gave him ordinary thanks for his bad house, and her fair hand to kiss: but my lord chamberlain n.o.bly and gravely understanding that Rockwood was excommunicated for papistry, called him before him, demanded of him how he durst presume to attempt her royal presence, he, unfit to accompany any Christian person; forthwith said he was fitter for a pair of stocks, commanded him out of the court, and yet to attend her council's pleasure at Norwich he was committed. And to dissyffer [sic] the gentleman to the full, a piece of plate being missed in the court, and searched for in his hay-house, in the hay-rick, such an image of our lady was there found, as for greatness, for gayness, and workmanship, I did never see a match; and after a sort of country dances ended, in her majesty's sight the idol was set behind the people who avoided; she rather seemed a beast raised upon a sudden from h.e.l.l by conjuring, than the picture for whom it had been so often and so long abused. Her majesty commanded it to the fire, which in her sight by the country folks was quickly done to her content, and unspeakable joy of everyone but some one or two who had sucked of the idol's poisoned milk.

"Shortly after, a great sort of good preachers, who had been long commanded to silence for a little niceness, were licensed, and again commanded to preach; a greater and more universal joy to the countries, and the most of the court, than the disgrace of the papists: and the gentlemen of those parts, being great and hot protestants, almost before by policy discredited and disgraced, were greatly countenanced.

"I was so happy lately, amongst other good graces, that her majesty did tell me of sundry lewd papist beasts that have resorted to Buxton," etc.

Lodge, ii. 188, 30 August 1578.

This Topcliffe was the most implacable persecutor of his age. In a letter to Lord Burleigh (Strype, iv. 39), he urges him to imprison all the princ.i.p.al recusants, and especially women, "the farther off from their own family and friends the better." The whole letter is curious, as a specimen of the prevalent spirit, especially among the puritans, whom Topcliffe favoured. Instances of the ill-treatment experienced by respectable families (the Fitzherberts and Foljambes), and even aged ladies, without any other provocation than their recusancy, may be found in Lodge, ii. 372, 462; iii. 22. But those farthest removed from puritanism partook sometimes of the same tyrannous spirit. Aylmer, bishop of London, renowned for his persecution of nonconformists, is said by Rishton de Schismate, p. 319, to have sent a young catholic lady to be whipped in Bridewell for refusing to conform. If the authority is suspicious (and yet I do not perceive that Rishton is a liar like Sanders), the fact is rendered hardly improbable by Aylmer's harsh character.

[226] Strype's _Life of Smith_, 171; _Annals_, ii. 631, 636; iii. 479; and Append. 170. The last reference is to a list of magistrates sent up by the bishops from each diocese, with their characters. Several of these, but the wives of many more, were inclined to popery.

[227] Allen's _Admonition to the n.o.bility and People of England_, written in 1588, to promote the success of the Armada, is full of gross lies against the queen. See an a.n.a.lysis of it in Lingard, note B. B. Mr.

Butler fully acknowledges, what indeed the whole tenor of historical doc.u.ments for this reign confirms, that Allen and Persons were actively engaged in endeavouring to dethrone Elizabeth, by means of a Spanish force. But it must, I think, be candidly confessed by protestants, that they had very little influence over the superior catholic laity. And an argument may be drawn from hence against those who conceive the political conduct of catholics to be entirely swayed by their priests, when even in the sixteenth century the efforts of these able men, united with the head of their church, could produce so little effect. Strype owns that Allen's book gave offence to many catholics, iii. 560; _Life of Whitgift_, 505. One Wright of Douay answered a case of conscience, whether catholics might take up arms to a.s.sist the king of Spain against the queen, in the negative. _Id._ 251; _Annals_, 565. This man, though a known loyalist, and actually in the employment of the ministry, was afterwards kept in a disagreeable sort of confinement, in the Dean of Westminster's house, of which he complains with much reason. Birch's _Memoirs_, vol. ii. p. 71 _et alibi_. Though it does not fall within the province of a writer on the const.i.tution to enlarge on Elizabeth's foreign policy, I must observe, in consequence of the laboured attempts of Dr. Lingard to represent it as perfectly Machiavelian, and without any motive but wanton malignity, that, with respect to France and Spain, and even Scotland, it was strictly defensive, and justified by the law of self-preservation; though, in some of the means employed, she did not always adhere more scrupulously to good faith than her enemies.

[228] 23 Eliz. c. 1 and 29 Eliz. c. 6.

[229] Strype's _Whitgift_, p. 117, and other authorities _pa.s.sim_.

[230] Camden, Lingard. Two others suffered at Tyburn not long afterwards for the same offence. Holingshed, 344. See in Butler's _Mem. of Catholics_, vol. iii. p. 382, an affecting narrative, from Dodd's _Church History_, of the sufferings of Mr. Tregian and his family, the gentleman whose chaplain Mayne had been. I see no cause to doubt its truth.

[231] Ribadeneira, _Continuatio Sanderi et Rishtoni de Schismate Anglicano_, p. 111; Philopater, p. 247. This circ.u.mstance of Sherwood's age is not mentioned by Stowe; nor does Dr. Lingard advert to it. No woman was put to death under the penal code, so far as I remember; which of itself distinguishes the persecution from that of Mary, and of the house of Austria in Spain and the Netherlands.

[232] Strype's _Parker_, 375.

[233] Strype's _Annals_, ii. 644.

[234] _State Trials_, i. 1050; from the _Phoenix Britannicus_.

[235] _Id._ 1078; Butler's _English Catholics_, i. 184, 244; Lingard, vii. 182, whose remarks are just and candid. A tract, of which I have only seen an Italian translation, printed at Macerata in 1585, ent.i.tled "Historia del glorioso martirio di diciotto sacerdoti e un secolare, fatti morire in Inghilterra per la confessione e difensione della fede cattolica," by no means a.s.serts that he acknowledged Elizabeth to be queen _de jure_, but rather that he refused to give an opinion as to her right. He prayed, however, for her as a queen. "Io ho pregato, e prego per lei. All' ora il Signor Howardo li domand per qual regina egli prega.s.se, se per Elisabetta? Al quale rispose, Si, per Elisabetta." Mr.

Butler quotes this tract in English.

The trials and deaths of Campian and his a.s.sociates are told in the continuation of Holingshed, with a savageness and bigotry which, I am very sure, no scribe for the Inquisition could have surpa.s.sed. P. 456.

But it is plain, even from this account, that Campian owned Elizabeth as queen. See particularly p. 488, for the insulting manner in which this writer describes the pious fort.i.tude of these butchered ecclesiastics.

[236] Strype, ii. 637; Butler's _Eng. Catholics_, i. 196. The Earl of Southampton asked Mary's amba.s.sador, Bishop Lesley, whether, after the bull, he could in conscience obey Elizabeth. Lesley answered, that as long as she was the stronger he ought to obey her. Murden, p. 30. The writer quoted before by the name of Andreas Philopater (Persons, translated by Cresswell, according to Mr. Butler, vol. iii. p. 236), after justifying at length the resistance of the League to Henry IV., adds the following remarkable paragraph: "Hinc etiam infert universa theologorum et jurisconsultorum schola, et est certum et de fide, quemcunque principem christianum, si a religione catholica manifeste deflexerit, et alios avocare voluerit, excidere statim omni potestate et dignitate, ex ipsa vi juris tum divini tum humani, hocque ante omnem sententiam supremi pastoris ac judicis contra ipsum prolatam; et subditos quoscunque liberos esse ab omni juramenti obligatione, quod ei de obedientia tanquam principi legitimo praest.i.tissent, posseque et debere (si vires habeant) istiusmodi hominem, tanquam apostatam, haeretic.u.m, ac Christi domini desertorem, et inimic.u.m reipublicae suae, hostemque ex hominum christianorum dominatu ejicere, ne alios inficiat, vel suo exemplo aut imperio a fide avertat."--P. 149. He quotes four authorities for this in the margin, from the works of divines or canonists.

This broad duty, however, of expelling a heretic sovereign, he qualifies by two conditions; first, that the subjects should have the power, "ut vires habeant idoneas ad hoc subditi;" secondly, that the heresy be undeniable. There can, in truth, be no doubt that the allegiance professed to the queen by the seminary priests and jesuits, and, as far as their influence extended, by all catholics, was with this reservation--till they should be strong enough to throw it off. See the same tract, p. 229. But after all, when we come fairly to consider it, is not this the case with every disaffected party in every state? a good reason for watchfulness, but none for extermination.

[237] Rishton and Ribadeneira. See in Lingard, note U, a specification of the different kinds of torture used in this reign.

The government did not pretend to deny the employment of torture. But the puritans, eager as they were to exert the utmost severity of the law against the professors of the old religion, had more regard to civil liberty than to approve such a violation of it. Beal, clerk of the council, wrote, about 1585, a vehement book against the ecclesiastical system, from which Whitgift picks out various enormous propositions, as he thinks them; one of which is, "that he condemns, without exception of any cause, racking of grievous offenders, as being cruel, barbarous, contrary to law, and unto the liberty of English subjects." Strype's _Whitgift_, p. 212.

[238] The persecution of catholics in England was made use of as an argument against permitting Henry IV. to reign in France, as appears by the t.i.tle of a tract published in 1586: "Advertiss.e.m.e.nt des catholiques, Anglois aux Francois catholiques, du danger ou ils sont de perdre leur religion et d'experimenter, comme en Angleterre, la cruaute des ministres, s'ils recoivent a la couronne un roy qui soit heretique." It is in the British Museum.

One of the attacks on Elizabeth deserves some notice, as it has lately been revived. In the statute 13 Eliz. an expression is used, "her majesty, and the natural issue of her body," instead of the more common legal phrase, "lawful issue." This probably was adopted by the queen out of prudery, as if the usual term implied the possibility of her having unlawful issue. But the papistical libellers put the most absurd interpretation on the word "natural," as if it was meant to secure the succession for some imaginary b.a.s.t.a.r.ds by Leicester. And Dr. Lingard is not ashamed to insinuate the same suspicion. Vol. viii. p. 81, note.

Surely what was congenial to the dark malignity of Persons, and the blind frenzy of Whitaker, does not become the good sense, I cannot say the candour, of this writer.

It is true that some, not prejudiced against Elizabeth, have doubted whether "Cupid's fiery dart" was as effectually "quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon," as her poet intimates. This I must leave to the reader's judgment. She certainly went strange lengths of indelicacy.

But, if she might sacrifice herself to the queen of Cnidus and Paphos, she was unmercifully severe to those about her, of both s.e.xes, who showed any inclination to that worship, though under the escort of Hymen. Miss Aikin, in her well written and interesting _Memoirs of the Court of Elizabeth_, has collected several instances from Harrington and Birch. It is by no means true, as Dr. Lingard a.s.serts, on the authority of one Faunt, an austere puritan, that her court was dissolute, comparatively at least with the general character of courts; though neither was it so virtuous as the enthusiasts of the Elizabethan period suppose.

[239] _Somers Tracts_, i 189; Strype, iii. 205, 265, 480. Strype says that he had seen the ma.n.u.script of this tract in Lord Burleigh's handwriting. It was answered by Cardinal Allen, to whom a reply was made by poor Stubbe, after he had lost his right hand. An Italian translation of the _Execution of Justice_ was published at London in 1584. This shows how anxious the queen was to repel the charges of cruelty, which she must have felt to be not wholly unfounded.

[240] _Somers Tracts_, p. 209.

[241] _State Trials_, i. 1160.

[242] _Somers Tracts_, 164.

[243] Strype, iii. 298. Sh.e.l.ley, though notoriously loyal and frequently employed by Burleigh, was taken up and examined before the council for preparing this pet.i.tion.

[244] P. 591. Proofs of the text are too numerous for quotation, and occur continually to a reader of Strype's 2nd and 3rd volumes. In vol.

iii. Append. 158, we have a letter to the queen from one Antony Tyrrel, a priest, who seems to have acted as an informer, wherein he declares all his accusations of catholics to be false. This man had formerly professed himself a protestant, and returned afterwards to the same religion; so that his veracity may be dubious. So, a little further on, we find in the same collection (p. 250) a letter from one Bennet, a priest, to Lord Arundel, lamenting the false accusations he had given against him, and craving pardon. It is always possible, as I have just hinted, that these retractations may be more false than the charges. But ministers who employ spies, without the utmost distrust of their information, are sure to become their dupes, and end by the most violent injustice and tyranny.

[245] The rich catholics compounded for their recusancy by annual payments, which were of some consideration in the queen's rather scanty revenue. A list of such recusants, and of the annual fines paid by them in 1594, is published in Strype, iv. 197, but is plainly very imperfect.

The total was 3323 1_s_. 10_d_. A few paid as much as 140 per annum.

The average seems, however, to have been about 20. Vol. iii. Append.

153; see also p. 258. Probably these compositions, though oppressive, were not quite so serious as the catholics pretended.

[246] Parry seems to have been privately reconciled to the church of Rome about 1580; after which he continued to correspond with Cecil, but generally recommending some catholics to mercy. He says, in one letter, that a book printed at Rome, _De Persecutione Anglicana_, had raised a barbarous opinion of our cruelty; and that he could wish that in those cases it might please her majesty to pardon the dismembering and drawing. Strype, iii. 260. He sat afterwards in the parliament of 1584, taking, of course, the oath of supremacy, where he alone opposed the act against catholic priests. _Parl. Hist._ 822. Whether he were actually guilty of plotting against the queen's life (for this part of his treason he denied at the scaffold) I cannot say; but his speech there made contained some very good advice to her. The ministry garbled this before its publication in Holingshed and other books; but Strype has preserved a genuine copy. Vol. iii. Append. 102. It is plain that Parry died a catholic; though some late writers of that communion have tried to disclaim him. Dr. Lingard, it may be added, admits that there were many schemes to a.s.sa.s.sinate Elizabeth, though he will not confess any particular instance. "There exist," he says, "in the archives at Simancas several notices of such offers."--P. 384.

[247] It might be inferred from some authorities that the catholics had become in a great degree disaffected to the queen about 1584, in consequence of the extreme rigour practised against them. In a memoir of one Crichton, a Scots jesuit, intended to show the easiness of invading England, he says, that "all the catholics without exception favour the enterprise, first, for the sake of the rest.i.tution of the catholic faith; secondly, for the right and interest which the Queen of Scots has to the kingdom, and to deliver her out of prison; thirdly, for the great trouble and misery they endure more and more, being kept out of all employments, and dishonoured in their own countries, and treated with great injustice and partiality when they have need to recur to law; and also for the execution of the laws touching the confiscation of their goods in such sort as in so short time would reduce the catholics to extreme poverty." Strype, iii. 415. And in the report of the Earl of Northumberland's treasons, laid before the star-chamber, we read that "Throckmorton said, that the bottom of this enterprise, which was not to be known to many, was, that if a toleration of religion might not be obtained without alteration of the government, that then the government should be altered, and the queen removed." _Somers Tracts_, vol. i. p.

206. Further proofs that the rigour used towards the catholics was the great means of promoting Philip's designs occur in Birch's _Memoirs of Elizabeth_, i. 82 _et alibi_.

We have also a letter from Persons in England to Allen in 1586, giving a good account of the zeal of the catholics, though a very bad one of their condition through severe imprisonment and other ill-treatment.

Strype, iii. 412, and Append. 151. Rishton and Ribadeneira bear testimony that the persecution had rendered the laity more zealous and sincere. De Schismate, l. iii. 320, and l. iv. 53.

Yet to all this we may oppose their good conduct in the year of the Spanish Armada, and in general during the queen's reign; which proves that the loyalty of the main body was more firm than their leaders wished, or their enemies believed. However, if any of my readers should incline to suspect that there was more disposition among this part of the community to throw off their allegiance to the queen altogether than I have admitted, he may possibly be in the right; and I shall not impugn his opinion, provided he concurs in attributing the whole, or nearly the whole, of this disaffection to her unjust aggressions on the liberty of conscience.

[248] _State Trials_, i. 1162.

[249] 27 Eliz. c. i.

[250] In Murden's _State Papers_ we have abundant evidence of Mary's acquaintance with the plots going forward in 1585 and 1586 against Elizabeth's government, if not with those for her a.s.sa.s.sination. But Thomas Morgan, one of the most active conspirators, writes to her, 9th July, 1586: "There be some good members that attend opportunity to do the Queen of England a piece of service, which I trust will quiet many things, if it shall please G.o.d to lay his a.s.sistance to the cause, for the which I pray daily."--P. 530. In her answer to this letter, she does not advert to this hint, but mentions Babington as in correspondence with her. At her trial she denied all communication with him.

[251] It may probably be answered to this, that if the letter signed by Walsingham as well as Davison to Sir Amias Paulet, urging him "to find out some way to shorten the life of the Scots queen," be genuine, which cannot perhaps be justly questioned (though it is so in the _Biog.

Brit._ art. WALSINGHAM, note O), it will be difficult to give him credit for any scrupulousness with respect to Mary. But, without entirely justifying this letter, it is proper to remark, what the Marian party choose to overlook, that it was written after the sentence, during the queen's odious scenes of grimace, when some might argue, though erroneously, that, a legal trial having pa.s.sed, the formal method of putting the prisoner to death might in so peculiar a case, be dispensed with. This was Elizabeth's own wish, in order to save her reputation, and enable her to throw the obloquy on her servants; which by Paulet's prudence and honour in refusing to obey her by privately murdering his prisoner, she was reduced to do in a very bungling and scandalous manner.

[252] Questions were put to civilians by the queen's order in 1570, concerning the extent of Lesley, Bishop of Ross's privilege, as Mary's amba.s.sador. _Murden Papers_, p. 18; _Somers Tracts_, i. 186. They answered, first, that an amba.s.sador that raises rebellion against the prince to whom he is sent, by the law of nations, and the civil law of the Romans, has forfeited the privileges of an amba.s.sador, and is liable to punishment: secondly, that if a prince be lawfully deposed from his public authority, and another subst.i.tuted in his stead, the agent of such a prince cannot challenge the privileges of an amba.s.sador; since none but absolute princes, and such as enjoy a royal prerogative, can const.i.tute amba.s.sadors. These questions are so far curious, that they show the _jus gentium_ to have been already reckoned in matter of science, in which a particular cla.s.s of lawyers was conversant.

[253] Strype, 360, 362. Civilians were consulted about the legality of trying Mary. _Idem_, Append. 138.

[254] Butler's _English Catholics_, i. 259; Hume. This is strongly confirmed by a letter printed not long after, and republished in the Harleian _Miscellany_, vol. i. p. 142, with the name of one Leigh, a seminary priest, but probably the work of some protestant. He says, "for contributions of money, and for all other warlike actions, there was no difference between the catholic and the heretic. But in this case [of the Armada] to withstand the threatened conquest, yea, to defend the person of the queen, there appeared such a sympathy, concourse, and consent of all sorts of persons, without respect of religion, as they all appeared to be ready to fight against all strangers as it were with one heart and one body." Notwithstanding this, I am far from thinking that it would have been safe to place the catholics, generally speaking, in command. Sir William Stanley's recent treachery in giving up Deventer to the Spaniards made it unreasonable for them to complain of exclusion from trust. Nor do I know that they did so. But trust and toleration are two different things. And even with respect to the former, I believe it far better to leave the matter in the hands of the executive government, which will not readily suffer itself to be betrayed, than to proscribe, as we have done, whole bodies by a legislative exclusion. Whenever, indeed, the government itself is not to be trusted, there arises a new condition of the problem.

[255] Strype, vols. iii. and iv. _pa.s.sim_; _Life of Whitgift_, 401, 505; Murden, 667; Birch's _Memoirs of Elizabeth_, Lingard, etc. One hundred and ten catholics suffered death between 1588 and 1603. Lingard, 513.

[256] 33 Eliz. c. 2.

[257] Camden, 566; Strype, iv. 56. This was the declaration of October 1591, which Andreas Philopater answered. Ribadeneira also inveighs against it. According to them, its publication was delayed till after the death of Hatton, when the persecuting part of the queen's council gained the ascendency.