England under the Tudors Part 28

At the same time, it was difficult to see how the members of the a.s.sociation could carry out their pledge without a breach of the law; stronger legal measures for the defence of the Queen and the frustration of a.s.sa.s.sination as a means to secure the inheritance in any particular quarter were required. Parliament was summoned at the end of November.

Ministers wished to have definite provision made for carrying on the Government in case of the Queen's murder; but she would go with them no further than to sanction the a.s.sociation, with the entirely laudable modification that the person for whose sake the deed was done should not be held _ipso facto_ guilty of complicity. The differences of opinion were so strong that the session closed without the pa.s.sing of any Act. In January however, an accomplice of that Parry already mentioned [Footnote: See p. 330] denounced him for intending to kill the Queen. Threatened with the rack, Parry made a full confession, and was hanged, drawn, and quartered. At the renewed Session in February, it was enacted that an invasion, rebellion, or attempt on the Queen's person, on behalf of any one with a claim to the succession, should disqualify such person from the succession absolutely, if complicity in the attempt should be proved after due enquiry. A commission was appointed to put the Act in execution in the event of a.s.sa.s.sination; and the a.s.sociation was sanctioned subject to these provisions. Subsidies were then voted, and parliament prorogued, after an unusually gracious speech from the throne.

[Sidenote: 1585: France: the Holy League]

Meantime the United Provinces, despairing of an English overlordship, were again making overtures to France for a Protectorate, or even annexation if France should insist on that alternative. Relations between the King and Mendoza, now Amba.s.sador at Paris, were so strained that war seemed all but inevitable; Henry seems to have been held back only by the well-founded fear that Elizabeth was intriguing to draw him into the war and frustrate him in carrying it on. But in that fear he declined the offer of the Provinces. In March the Guises produced a new development by the open announcement of the formation of the Holy League, for the exclusion of Navarre from the succession and the enforcement in France of the decrees of the Council of Trent.

But for the unconquerable mutual distrust of Henry and Elizabeth, Henry, relying on English support, would have bidden defiance to the League; but the memories of St. Bartholomew and Elizabeth's character as an intriguer made confidence on either side impossible. The great siege of Antwerp seemed to be on the verge of terminating in a catastrophe for the revolting States, which would enable Parma to co-operate actively with Guise; and Henry found himself threatened with excommunication. Before midsummer he capitulated, and declared for the League. On the other hand, Navarre was not the man to yield, and while Elizabeth again had the chance of playing a bold part and espousing his cause heartily, she judged rightly that he was strong enough unaided to keep the alliance of the League and the Court very thoroughly occupied for some time to come. As a factor in the Netherlands question. France was for the present at least a negligible quant.i.ty. So she left Navarre to fight his own battles in France, while she should dole out to the Netherlanders just so much or so little support as might suffice for her own ends.

While the French King was surrendering to the League, the Spanish King took a step which was intended to frighten England, and had as usual the precisely contrary result. He ordered the seizure of all English ships and crews on his coasts. The order was carried out; and England instead of being cowed was forthwith ablaze with defiance. The effect was promptly apparent.

[Sidenote: Agreement with the States]

The United Provinces were again offering themselves to England. In August an agreement was arrived at. The Queen was to hold Ostend and Sluys as well as Flushing and Brille, as security. She was to send over five thousand men with Leicester in command. Some Queen's troops and large numbers of volunteers were shipped off in a few days--too late however to save Antwerp. Still weeks and even months pa.s.sed before pay or commanders were allowed to follow. But before the year was out, Sidney, Leicester, and others had taken up their commands, the last named representing the Queen of England.

[Sidenote: Drake's raid]

Already, however, an enterprise still more ominous to Spain was in hand--unofficial, like most other great enterprises of the reign. Letters of reprisal for the seizure of the English ships had been promptly issued, and numbers of privateers were quickly in Spanish waters. Among others, Francis Drake fitted out a flotilla, the Queen being an interested shareholder in his venture--though even under those conditions he put to sea before time, lest counter-orders should arrive. The adventurers sailed into Vigo, demanded the release of all English prisoners in the province, which was promised, captured some prizes, and betook themselves to the ocean, with a view to seizing the Spanish Plate Fleet, which was on its way from America. They just missed the Fleet, but proceeded to San Domingo (Hayti) which they held to ransom, went on to treat Cartagena in like manner, and then being attacked by Yellow Fever, came home with the spoils.

Whatever fears of a Spanish war might be entertained by Elizabeth herself, the English seamen had no qualms as to their own immeasurable superiority, and desired nothing better than opportunities for demonstrating it.

[Sidenote 1: Elizabeth's intrigues]

[Sidenote 2: 1586 Leicester in the Netherlands]

While Drake was thus congenially employed, Elizabeth was carrying on her system of inaction and double-dealing. She intrigued--behind the backs of her ministers--with Parma, for the surrender to him of the towns she held, on terms which from her point of view were quite good enough for the Provinces, namely the rest.i.tution of their old Const.i.tutional Government without religious liberty; although in their own view, religious liberty was primarily essential. Leicester complicated matters for her by accepting, in flat contradiction to her orders, the formal Governorship of the United Provinces: finding in fact that if he was to stay in the Netherlands nothing short of that would prevail against the suspicions of the Queen's treachery. At home, Burghley himself threatened to resign if she would not take a straightforward course. Walsingham wrote to Leicester, with his usual bitterness, of the "peril to safety and honour" from her behaviour. If she had indeed contemplated the surrender of the cities to Parma, that plan was frustrated. Still she stormed at Burghley and Walsingham, flatly and with contumely refused to ratify Leicester's arrangement, and continued to keep back the pay of the troops. Parma, though he too was starved in men and money by Philip, continued inch by inch to absorb the revolted territory. All that Leicester succeeded in accomplishing by the month of September was the brilliant and entirely futile action of Zutphen where in one great hour Philip Sidney won death and immortality (September 22nd). Thereafter, inaction and short supplies continued to be the rule, on both sides. In November, Leicester was back in England, where a fresh situation was developing.

[Sidenote:1585-86 The trapping of Mary]

While the arrangements for armed intervention in the Netherlands were in progress, Walsingham had been busy preparing for the last act in the Tragedy of Mary Stewart. The Secretary was foremost among those who held not only that the captive Queen deserved death, but that her death was more necessary to the welfare of England than any other event. Yet it was quite certain that Elizabeth would not a.s.sent to her death, unless she thought she could convince herself and the world that Mary had been actively engaged in treasonous plots. Recently however at Tutbury under the charge of Sir Amyas Paulet, she had been guarded so strictly that no surrept.i.tious correspondence had a chance of pa.s.sing. Walsingham was confident that if the opportunity were given, a treasonous correspondence would be opened. It became his object therefore to give her the opportunity in appearance, while securing that the channel through which communications pa.s.sed should be a treacherous one, and the whole of what was supposed to be secret should be betrayed to him. To this end, the Queen was removed in December 1585 to Chartley Manor, avowedly in response to her own demands for a less rigorously unpleasant residence than Tutbury. The instrument of the plot was a young man named Giffard, supposed to be in the inner counsels of the Jesuits, actually in Walsingham's service. Through Giffard, communications were opened between Mary and a devoted adherent of hers in France named Morgan: but every letter pa.s.sing was deciphered and copied, and the copies placed in the Secretary's hands.

[Sidenote: 1586 Babington's plot]

In the late spring, the great Babington conspiracy was set on foot; whereof the main features were, that Elizabeth was to be a.s.sa.s.sinated by a group of half a dozen young men who had places at court and occasional access to her person. The two leading spirits were Anthony Babington and a Jesuit named Ballard. Of course a Catholic rising and a foreign invasion were part of the plan, and Mendoza at Paris was playing his own part. Much of the plot was confided to Giffard, who reported to Walsingham. The Secretary and his Queen were satisfied to let the plot develop while they gathered all the threads in their own hands before striking. The correspondence, as copied for Walsingham at Chartley, conveyed not details but general intelligence of what was on foot to Mary, and approval from Mary to the conspirators. In August, Walsingham's moment came: the conspirators were seized; under torture or threat of torture they made complete confession. The Scottish Queen's rooms at Chartley were ransacked, and all her papers impounded.

Again, as after the Throgmorton conspiracy, fleets were manned and musters called out. In September, the conspirators were tried and executed, and a Commission was appointed to try Mary herself in October.

[Sidenote: Trial of Mary]

Mary, as before, denied the jurisdiction, professing readiness to answer only before Parliament. She ignored an invitation from the Queen to obtain pardon by a confession of guilt. She a.s.sented under protest to appear before the Court, and there avowed that she had consistently appealed to the Powers of Europe to aid her, as she was ent.i.tled to do, but flatly denied complicity in the Babington plot. The evidence against her was entirely that of letters--said to be copied from her correspondence, but quite possibly invented in whole or in part--and the confessions of the conspirators or of her secretaries, extorted under torture or the fear of it. Those letters might even have been concocted to suit Walsingham without his actual privity, by the man who had the task of deciphering and copying them. Having heard her denial, the Court was transferred from Fotheringay, where it first sat, to Westminster: and at Westminster, after further examination of the doc.u.ments and of Mary's secretaries, it unanimously p.r.o.nounced her guilty. The sentence was left for Parliament and the Queen to settle. The Parliament which had pa.s.sed the recent Act for the Defence of the Queen was dissolved, and a new one was summoned. On its meeting in November, it pet.i.tioned for Mary's execution, in accordance with the terms of the "a.s.sociation" which Mary herself had offered to join. The publication of the sentence was received with public acclamation: but whether the Queen would a.s.sent to it remained to be seen.

What then were the guiding considerations, whether of Ethics or of Expediency?

[Sidenote: The situation reviewed;]

For eighteen years, Mary had been in Elizabeth's power. Elizabeth had held her captive for the sufficient reason--amongst others--that were she outside of England and free from restraint, there was nothing to prevent her from actively agitating the Catholics of Europe to a.s.sert her claim to the English throne. No monarch having in his grip a claimant with an undeniably strong t.i.tle to his throne would have allowed that claimant to escape from his clutches. Few would have hesitated to concoct some more or less plausible pretext for the claimant's death. Half England considered that a sufficient pretext was provided by Kirk o' Field; but even a.s.suming that Mary's guilt in that matter was legally proved, which it a.s.suredly was not, it is sufficiently obvious that the sovereign of England had no jurisdiction. Still any monarch situated like Elizabeth would have maintained, and probably have acted upon, the right to put the captive to death, if proved to be guilty of complicity in treason or subornation thereof. Throughout the eighteen years, Elizabeth had deliberately abstained from seeking to prove definitely that Mary was an accomplice in the various plots on her behalf, while she was no less careful to leave the imputation of complicity clinging to her. But now, if the Chartley correspondence were genuine, the case was decided. The Court, which cannot be said to have been packed, was satisfied. Again it does not appear that any monarch, regarding the captive's death as _per se_ desirable, would have doubted the sufficiency of the ground for her execution.

But hitherto the English Queen had not regarded her rival's death as _per se_ desirable. Conceivably there was an element of generosity in that view. Certainly there was the fact that Mary was an anointed Queen, and Elizabeth had a most profound respect for the sanct.i.ty of crowned heads. But apart from this, there was the purely political argument. Mary living, and in her power, was an a.s.set. She might always be set at liberty on terms. Elizabeth hated parting with a political a.s.set even at a high price, for good value. Hitherto she had reckoned the living Mary as worth more than Mary's death would be: for Mary might simply be replaced as a claimant by James, who was not, like his mother, in her power, and might very well think the crown of England worth a Ma.s.s.

[Sidenote: its recent developments]

Now however, a considerable change had come over the situation. Failing Mary the English Catholics were divided as to the succession. James could profess filial affection when it suited him; but for some time past he had dropped that att.i.tude; he had just made a convenient compact with England; and his mother, making up her mind to his antagonism, had by will disinherited him and bequeathed her rights to Philip of Spain, who had a clear claim to the blood Royal of England as descending through his mother Isabella of Portugal from John of Gaunt. [Footnote: See _Front._ Philip's cousins, however, the d.u.c.h.esses of Braganza and Parma, daughters of Isabella's brother, had a better t.i.tle--as they also had to the crown of Portugal. See p. 303. The exiled Westmorland had a better t.i.tle still.] The accession of Philip would suit neither France, nor the Pope; the accession of James would be at best an uncertain gain to the Catholics; and so Mary's execution would leave no one claimant for the discontented to rally to. On the other hand, if Mary were allowed to live, her restoration by Elizabeth would be almost incredible. Her value as an a.s.set had fallen, the security given by her death would be much more a.s.sured. Political expediency, therefore, entirely favoured her death, unless the execution would bring France or Scotland against Elizabeth in arms. France protested earnestly, but clearly intended nothing stronger than protests, and it very soon became equally clear that no serious trouble need be feared from James.

[Sidenote: 1587 The sentences carried out]

Still through December and January Elizabeth continued to vacillate. The sentiment as to the sanct.i.ty of an anointed Queen still influenced her; yet it is sufficiently clear that her real motive for hesitation was the desire, not to spare Mary, but herself to escape the odium of sanctioning the execution. At last however the warrant was signed, and received the Chancellor's seal. Yet she made the Secretary Davison write to Paulet and urge him to put Mary to death without waiting for the warrant. Paulet flatly refused. She used such terms to Davison that he feared on his own responsibility to forward the warrant to the appointed authorities Shrewsbury and Kent. He went to Burghley: Burghley summoned privately all members of the Council then in London. They agreed to share the responsibility for acting without further reference to the Queen. On February 4th, the letters were issued. On the 7th, in the afternoon, Kent and Shrewsbury presented themselves at Fotheringay and told Mary that on the following morning she must die.

[Sidenote: Death of Mary]

It was characteristic of her that during the few hours of life left to her, she forgot neither loyal servant nor victorious foe. Her last written words were to bid her friends remember both. When the morrow came, she mounted the low scaffold in the great hall with unfaltering step, far less moved outwardly than the six attendants whom she had chosen for her last moments, a splendid tragic figure; every word, every gesture those of a woman falsely charged and deeply wronged, majestic in her proud self-control. Was it merely a superb, an unparalleled piece of acting? [Footnote: See Appendix C. Mr. Froude is dramatically at his best in telling the story; but his partisan bias is correspondingly emphasized.] Was it the heroism of a martyr? The voice of England had doomed her; she appealed to a higher Tribunal than England. King or Queen never faced their end more triumphantly. Mary Stewart, royal in the fleeting moments of her prosperity, royal throughout the long years of her adversity, was never so supremely royal as in her last hour on earth.

CHAPTER XXIII

ELIZABETH (viii), 1558-87--THE SEAMEN

As before we postponed the story of Ireland, in order to give a consecutive narrative down to the point at which the interaction of Irish and English affairs became marked and definite, so we have hitherto deferred consideration of the most tremendous factor in the Elizabethan evolution, the development of the Island nation into the greatest Ocean Power in the world. The charter of the Queen of the Seas was drawn by the Tudor seamen, and received its seal when the great Armada perished. It is time therefore to see how it came about that England was able to challenge and to shatter the Power which threatened to dominate the world.

[Sidenote: The New World]

Throughout the Middle Ages, until what we conveniently term, from the English point of view, the Tudor Period, the European peoples were confined to the European Continent and the adjacent islands. In Asia and in Mediterranean Africa the Mohammedan races were a militant barrier to expansion. The discoveries of Columbus and Vasco da Gama opened new fields, whereof the inheritance was destined to the nations who should achieve the dominion of the Ocean. Always important, the capacity for maritime development now became the primary condition of ultimate greatness. The fact was at the first recognised by Spain and Portugal; and an immediate incentive was given to those two Powers, and something of a check to the rest, when Pope Alexander VI., with an authority as yet unchallenged, divided between them the newly found countries and the lands still to be discovered. Acquiescence in the award was limited; with the ecclesiastical revolt from Rome it vanished; but Spaniards and Portuguese were already in full possession of vast territories before their exclusive t.i.tle to the whole was called in question.

[Sidenote: The English Marine before Elizabeth]

Nevertheless, more than before, the eyes of statesmen were turned to the sea and the eyes of merchants to the ocean. The nucleus of a Royal Navy was formed by Henry VII., and his son very greatly increased the number of the King's ships and built many tall vessels. The merchants of Bristol and the western ports made daring voyages in hitherto unexplored and half-explored waters, as we have seen; while the general activity of the mercantile marine was greatly increased.

Prosperity, and as a necessary result, enterprise, suffered a check under the disastrous financial conditions prevalent in the reigns of Edward and Mary; yet the closing months of Edward's reign had been marked by the departure of the expedition of Willoughby and Chancellor in search of a North-East Pa.s.sage; while several voyages to the Guinea Coast--whither William Hawkins had sailed in Henry's day--were undertaken by John Lock and Towerson, during the reign of Mary. We have seen also how the young hot-heads of Protestantism had taken to privateering in the Channel, in the name of Patriotism and true Religion. That course was reprehensible enough; but it led at least to the cultivation of the art of seamanship. On the other hand, that art suffered from a curious draw-back. The partial cessation of the practice of fasting which accompanied the development of Protestantism reacted on the fishing trade, which was the regular school of sailors; insomuch that not only Somerset but Cecil in Elizabeth's time, proposed ordinances in favour of fasting, simply and solely to check the collapse of that industry.

[Sidenote: The Royal Navy]

The Royal Navy developed by Henry VIII. was allowed perforce to decay under his two immediate successors. According to the most authentic lists, [Footnote: Sir W. Laird Clowes, _The Royal Navy_, vol. i., pp. 419 ff. Throughout this chapter, the figures for tonnage are adopted from this work.] in 1548 there were 53 ships in the Fleet, with a total tonnage of about 11,000. In 1558 there were but 26, with a tonnage of little more than 7,000. During the first half of Elizabeth's reign, the numbers were not increased; in 1575 there were but 24 vessels; but the tonnage had risen 50 per cent., and was within 10 per cent, of what Henry had bequeathed to Edward. When the Armada came, in the twenty-ninth year of Elizabeth's reign, 34 ships of the Royal Navy were engaged, which had a slight superiority [Footnote: Clowes, _Royal Navy_, i., p. 561.] of armament over any equal number of the enemy's fleet. The aggregate tonnage is given [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 588.] as 15 per cent. more than that of Henry's 53--an average per ship of very nearly double. It is clear therefore that the policy of strengthening the navy was not neglected; but it took the form of acquiring not more ships, but larger and better fighting craft. [Footnote: Corbett, _Drake and the Tudor Navy_, i., pp. 370 ff. It is pointed out (p. 372) that medium sized ships were regarded as better weapons in general than those of the largest size.] The multiplication of smaller craft would have been a far less effective means for achieving the desired end. The Royal Navy, a creation of the century, was not supposed to const.i.tute the naval defences of the country. It occupied a position among the marine fighting force a.n.a.logous to that of our white troops in India to-day; who form only one-third of the army there while reckoned and intended to be its mainstay.

[Sidenote: Privateering]

It is possible that in the simple legitimate processes of trade, the merchant captains would never have learnt the art of extracting every ounce of value out of their ships as fighting machines; certainly they would not have developed the very marked supremacy in gunnery which was so decisive a feature in the contest with Spain. The mere temptations of successful barter would not have sufficed to attract the fiery and alert young gentlemen of Devon or elsewhere, and the daring mariners who revelled in meeting and overcoming any apparent odds. But the circ.u.mstances of the time presented to the men, who in other days would have found no outlet for their energies but in land-service abroad, the opportunity of giving those energies a wider scope in the more exacting but also more inspiring service by sea: where richer prizes were to be won, with greater risk no doubt, but risk which called every faculty of manhood into vigorous play.

[Sidenote: Piracy?]

It has become the common practice to apply the term "piracy" at large to the doings of the Elizabethan seamen; but a single category which embraces Captain Kidd and Francis Drake ceases to imply any very specific condemnation. The suggestion that their acts were on the same moral plane is absurd. The "piracy" of the great Elizabethans was compatible with a clean conscience. At the present day we rightly account a man a murderer who slays another in his own private quarrel; but we do not give that name to one who two centuries ago killed his man in a duel. We decline to recognise the validity of the reasoning by which men justified such acts to themselves; but before the fallacy in that reasoning was understood, the degree of guilt involved in acting upon it was something very different from what it would be to-day. In the same way, a century ago honourable and honest men countenanced smuggling; but we do not cla.s.sify them with footpads. Yet a similar confusion of thought is involved in this indiscriminate application of the term piracy, unless we emphasize the fact that in this connexion it must be divested of its ordinary moral connotation.

Plain sea-robbers there were, not a few, who had no compunction about seizing and looting any vessel of any nationality except--for politic reasons--their own. The records show clearly enough that there were plenty of these, who found harbourage in the Scillies or on the Irish Coast, or even on the English Channel, or would lie in wait to cut out peaceable traders of any nation almost at the mouth of the Thames. The Government took little enough pains to repress them. They did not attack their own countrymen, and were a useful source for recruiting: but they were indisputably Pirates.

[Sidenote: Volunteers]

Then there were the privateers who had a colour for their depredations; professedly volunteers on the side of recognised belligerents. As it was considered legitimate for troops of English volunteers to fight for the revolted Netherland States, while the Government refused to acknowledge that their doing so const.i.tuted an act of war against Spain; so Englishmen were allowed to man ships and sail under the flag of the Huguenots of Roch.e.l.le, carrying a commission to wage war on "Papist" ships, French, or others regarded as in alliance with them.

This was not piracy in the accepted sense, though it was not perhaps very far removed from it in the majority of cases. The kind of fanaticism which, two hundred years after Elizabeth's accession, elevated Frederick the Great into "the Protestant Hero" could easily, without conscious insincerity, make Religion an excuse for spoiling the Papists in Elizabeth's day; and the privateers who looted a Spanish vessel or one carrying Spanish treasure or merchandise believed as a rule that they were thereby laying up treasure in Heaven as well as on Earth, Their Ethics were derived from the Old Testament; and they looked upon the "Idolaters" very much as the Israelites were told by the prophets to look upon the Philistines, or Amalek, or Ammon.

[Sidenote: Reprisal]

Moreover it must be borne in mind that as concerned the raiding of Spanish ships, the Government balanced the injury done against the grievances of the British sailors and ships seized in Spanish ports by the Inquisition. So long as the Spanish King refused to interfere with the jurisdiction of the Holy Office, the English Queen in effect refused to interfere with acts of reprisal. If these rovers could have been caught and hanged at the yard-arm, she could hardly have protested; but as breaches of international amity the practices were very much on a par. In the technical sense, that they made war on their own account on the ships of a theoretically friendly Power, the rovers of this cla.s.s were no doubt pirates; what we have to recognise is that the normal condition of affairs was one unknown to the law-books, a state of quasi-war; having no little resemblance to that prevalent for centuries on the Anglo-Scottish border, where it was not to be expected that the Wardens of the Marches on the one side would carry out their duties while the Wardens on the other side were neglecting theirs with the connivance of the Government. And in this case, Philip's connivance at the proceedings of the Inquisition was open and avowed; by consequence, the English Government refused to treat the proceedings of the privateers as piracy; and again by consequence the privateers considered themselves to be acting in a perfectly legitimate, not to say laudable, manner, in treating the enemy's commerce precisely as they would have done under a state of declared war.