History of the English People Volume Iv Part 6

She distrusted a plan in fact just in proportion to its speculative range or its outlook into the future. Her notion of statesmanship lay in watching how things turned out around her, and in seizing the moment for making the best of them.

Such a policy as this, limited, practical, tentative as it always was, had little of grandeur and originality about it; it was apt indeed to degenerate into mere trickery and finesse. But it was a policy suited to the England of her day, to its small resources and the transitional character of its religious and political belief, and it was eminently suited to Elizabeth's peculiar powers. It was a policy of detail, and in details her wonderful readiness and ingenuity found scope for their exercise. "No War, my Lords," the Queen used to cry imperiously at the council-board, "No War!" but her hatred of war sprang not so much from aversion to blood or to expense, real as was her aversion to both, as from the fact that peace left the field open to the diplomatic manoeuvres and intrigues in which she excelled. Her delight in the consciousness of her ingenuity broke out in a thousand puckish freaks, freaks in which one can hardly see any purpose beyond the purpose of sheer mystification. She revelled in "bye-ways" and "crooked ways." She played with grave cabinets as a cat plays with a mouse, and with much of the same feline delight in the mere embarra.s.sment of her victims. When she was weary of mystifying foreign statesmen she turned to find fresh sport in mystifying her own ministers. Had Elizabeth written the story of her reign she would have prided herself, not on the triumph of England or the ruin of Spain, but on the skill with which she had hoodwinked and outwitted every statesman in Europe during fifty years.

Nothing is more revolting, but nothing is more characteristic of the Queen, than her shameless mendacity. It was an age of political lying, but in the profusion and recklessness of her lies Elizabeth stood without a peer in Christendom. A falsehood was to her simply an intellectual means of meeting a difficulty; and the ease with which she a.s.serted or denied whatever suited her purpose was only equalled by the cynical indifference with which she met the exposure of her lies as soon as their purpose was answered. Her trickery in fact had its political value. Ign.o.ble and wearisome as the Queen's diplomacy seems to us now, tracking it as we do through a thousand despatches, it succeeded in its main end, for it gained time, and every year that was gained doubled Elizabeth's strength. She made as dexterous a use of the foibles of her temper. Her levity carried her gaily over moments of detection and embarra.s.sment where better women would have died of shame. She screened her tentative and hesitating statesmanship under the natural timidity and vacillation of her s.e.x. She turned her very luxury and sports to good account. There were moments of grave danger in her reign when the country remained indifferent to its perils, as it saw the Queen give her days to hawking and hunting, and her nights to dancing and plays. Her vanity and affectation, her womanly fickleness and caprice, all had their part in the diplomatic comedies she played with the successive candidates for her hand. If political necessities made her life a lonely one, she had at any rate the satisfaction of averting war and conspiracies by love sonnets and romantic interviews, or of gaining a year of tranquillity by the dexterous spinning out of a flirtation.

As we track Elizabeth through her tortuous mazes of lying and intrigue, the sense of her greatness is almost lost in a sense of contempt. But, wrapped as they were in a cloud of mystery, the aims of her policy were throughout temperate and simple, and they were pursued with a rare tenacity. The sudden acts of energy which from time to time broke her habitual hesitation proved that it was no hesitation of weakness.

Elizabeth could wait and finesse; but when the hour was come she could strike, and strike hard. Her natural temper indeed tended to a rash self-confidence rather than to self-distrust. "I have the heart of a King," she cried at a moment of utter peril, and it was with a kingly unconsciousness of the dangers about her that she fronted them for fifty years. She had, as strong natures always have, an unbounded confidence in her luck. "Her Majesty counts much on Fortune," Walsingham wrote bitterly; "I wish she would trust more in Almighty G.o.d." The diplomatists who censured at one moment her irresolution, her delay, her changes of front, censure at the next her "obstinacy," her iron will, her defiance of what seemed to them inevitable ruin. "This woman,"

Philip's envoy wrote after a wasted remonstrance, "this woman is possessed by a hundred thousand devils." To her own subjects, who knew nothing of her manoeuvres and flirtations, of her "bye-ways" and "crooked ways," she seemed the embodiment of dauntless resolution. Brave as they were, the men who swept the Spanish Main or glided between the icebergs of Baffin's Bay never doubted that the palm of bravery lay with their Queen.

[Sidenote: Catharine of Medicis.]

It was this dauntless courage which backed Elizabeth's good luck in the Scottish war. The issue of the war wholly changed her position at home and abroad. Not only had she liberated herself from the control of Philip and successfully defied the threats of the Guises, but at a single blow she had freed England from what had been its sorest danger for two hundred years. She had broken the dependence of Scotland upon France. That perpetual peace between England and the Scots which the policy of the Tudors had steadily aimed at was at last sworn in the Treaty of Edinburgh. If the Queen had not bound to her all Scotland, she had bound to her the strongest and most vigorous party among the n.o.bles of the north. The Lords of the Congregation promised to be obedient to Elizabeth in all such matters as might not lead to the overthrow of their country's rights or of Scottish liberties. They were bound to her not only by the war but by the events that followed the war. A Parliament at Edinburgh accepted the Calvinistic confession of Geneva as the religion of Scotland, abolished the temporal jurisdiction of the bishops, and prohibited the celebration of the Ma.s.s. The Act and the Treaty were alike presented for confirmation to Francis and Mary. They were roughly put aside, for the French king would give no sanction to a successful revolt, and Mary had no mind to waive her claim to the English throne. But from action the two sovereigns were held back by the troubles in France. It was in vain that the Guises strove to restore political and religious unity by an a.s.sembly of the French notables: the notables met only to receive a demand for freedom of worship from the Huguenots of the west, and to force the Government to promise a national council for the settlement of the religious disputes as well as a gathering of the States-General. The counsellors of Francis resolved to antic.i.p.ate this meeting by a sudden stroke at the heretics; and as a preliminary step the chiefs of the House of Bourbon were seized at the court and the Prince of Conde threatened with death. The success of this measure roused anew the wrath of the young king at the demands of the Scots, and at the close of 1560 Francis was again nursing plans of vengeance on the Lords of the Congregation. But Elizabeth's good fortune still proved true to her. The projects of the Guises were suddenly foiled by the young king's death. The power of Mary Stuart and her kindred came to an end, for the childhood of Charles the Ninth gave the regency over France to the queen-mother, Catharine of Medicis, and the policy of Catharine secured England and Scotland alike from danger of attack. Her temper, like that of Elizabeth, was a purely political temper; her aim was to balance Catholics against Protestants to the profit of the throne. She needed peace abroad to preserve this political and religious balance at home, and though she made some fruitless efforts to renew the old friendship with Scotland, she had no mind to intrigue like the Guises with the English Catholics nor to back Mary Stuart's pretensions to the English throne.

[Sidenote: Philip's policy.]

With Scotland as an ally and with France at peace Elizabeth's throne at last seemed secure. The outbreak of the strife between the Old Faith and the New indeed, if it gave the Queen safety abroad, somewhat weakened her at home. The sense of a religious change which her caution had done so much to disguise broke slowly on England as it saw the Queen allying herself with Scotch Calvinists and French Huguenots; and the compromise she had hoped to establish in matters of worship became hourly less possible as the more earnest Catholics discerned the Protestant drift of Elizabeth's policy. But Philip still held them back from any open resistance. There was much indeed to move him from his old support of the Queen. The widowhood of Mary Stuart freed him from his dread of a permanent annexation of Scotland by France as well as of a French annexation of England, while the need of holding England as a check on French hostility to the House of Austria grew weaker as the outbreak of civil war between the Guises and their opponents rendered French hostility less possible. Elizabeth's support of the Huguenots drove the Spanish king to a burst of pa.s.sion. A Protestant France not only outraged his religious bigotry, but, as he justly feared, it would give an impulse to heresy throughout his possessions in the Netherlands which would make it hard to keep his hold upon them. Philip noted that the success of the Scotch Calvinists had been followed by the revolt of the Calvinists in France. He could hardly doubt that the success of the French Huguenots would be followed by a rising of the Calvinists in the Low Countries. "Religion" he told Elizabeth angrily "was being made a cloak for anarchy and revolution." But, vexed as Philip was with her course both abroad and at home, he was still far from withdrawing his support from Elizabeth. Even now he could not look upon the Queen as lost to Catholicism. He knew how her course both at home and abroad had been forced on her not by religious enthusiasm but by political necessity, and he still "trusted that ere long G.o.d would give us either a general council or a good Pope who would correct abuses and then all would go well. That G.o.d would allow so n.o.ble and Christian a realm as England to break away from Christendom and run the risk of perdition he could not believe."

[Sidenote: Pius the Fourth.]

What was needed, Philip thought, was a change of policy in the Papacy.

The bigotry of Paul the Fourth had driven England from the obedience of the Roman See. The gentler policy of Pius the Fourth might yet restore her to it. Pius was as averse from any break with Elizabeth as Philip was. He censured bitterly the harshness of his predecessor. The loss of Scotland and the threatened loss of France he laid to the charge of the wars which Paul had stirred up against Philip and which had opened a way for the spread of Calvinism in both kingdoms. England, he held, could have been easily preserved for Catholicism but for Paul's rejection of the conciliatory efforts of Pole. When he ascended the Papal throne at the end of 1559 indeed the accession of England to the Reformation seemed complete. The royal supremacy was re-established: the Ma.s.s abolished: the English Liturgy restored. A new episcopate, drawn from the Calvinistic refugees, was being gathered round Matthew Parker. But Pius would not despair. He saw no reason why England should not again be Catholic. He knew that the bulk of its people clung to the older religion, if they clung also to independence of the Papal jurisdiction and to the secularization of the Abbey-lands. The Queen, as he believed, had been ready for a compromise at her accession, and he was ready to make terms with her now. In the spring of 1560 therefore he despatched Parpaglia, a follower of Pole, to open negotiations with Elizabeth. The moment which the Pope had chosen was a critical one for the Queen. She was in the midst of the Scotch war, and her forces had just been repulsed in an attempt to storm the walls of Leith. Such a repulse woke fears of conspiracy among the Catholic n.o.bles of the northern border, and a refusal to receive the legate would have driven them to an open rising. On the other hand the reception of Parpaglia would have alienated the Protestants, shaken the trust of the Lords of the Congregation in the Queen's support, and driven them to make terms with Francis and Mary. In either case Scotland fell again under the rule of France, and the throne of Elizabeth was placed in greater peril than ever. So great was the Queen's embarra.s.sment that she availed herself of Cecil's absence in the north to hold out hopes of the legate's admission to the realm and her own reconciliation with the Papacy. But she was freed from these difficulties by the resolute intervention of Philip. If he disapproved of her policy in Scotland he had no mind that Scotland should become wholly French or Elizabeth be really shaken on her throne.

He ordered the legate therefore to be detained in Flanders till his threats had obtained from the Pope an order for his recall.

[Sidenote: The Council of Trent.]

But Pius was far from abandoning his hopes. After ten years suspension he had again summoned the Council of Trent. The cry for Church reform, the threat of national synods in Spain and in France, forced this measure on the Pope; and Pius availed himself of the a.s.sembly of the Council to make a fresh attempt to turn the tide of the Reformation and to win back the Protestant Churches to Catholicism. He called therefore on the Lutheran princes of Germany to send doctors to the Council, and in May 1561, eight months after Parpaglia's failure, despatched a fresh nuncio, Martinengo, to invite Elizabeth to send amba.s.sadors to Trent.

Philip pressed for the nuncio's admission to the realm. His hopes of the Queen's return to the faith were now being fed by a new marriage-negotiation; for on the withdrawal of the Archduke of Austria in sheer weariness of Elizabeth's treachery, she had encouraged her old playfellow, Lord Robert Dudley, to hope for her hand and to amuse Philip by pledges of bringing back "the religion," should the help of the Spanish king enable him to win it. Philip gave his help, but Dudley remained a suitor, and the hopes of a Catholic revolution became fainter than ever. The Queen would suffer no landing of a legate in her realm.

The invitation to the Council fared no better. The Lutheran states of North Germany had already refused to attend. The Council, they held, was no longer a council of reunion. In its earlier session it had formally condemned the very doctrine on which Protestantism was based; and to join it now would simply be to undo all that Luther had done. Elizabeth showed as little hesitation. The hour of her triumph, when a Calvinistic Scotland and a Calvinistic France proved the mainstays of her policy, was no hour of submission to the Papacy. In spite of Philip's entreaties she refused to send envoys to what was not "a free Christian Council."

The refusal was decisive in marking Elizabeth's position. The long period of hesitation, of drift, was over. All chance of submission to the Papacy was at an end. In joining the Lutheran states in their rejection of this Council, England had definitely ranged itself on the side of the Reformation.

CHAPTER IV

ENGLAND AND MARY STUART

1561-1567

[Sidenote: The English Catholics.]

What had hitherto kept the bulk of Elizabeth's subjects from opposition to her religious system was a disbelief in its permanence. Englishmen had seen English religion changed too often to believe that it would change no more. When the Commissioners forced a Protestant ritual on St.

John's College at Oxford, its founder, Sir Thomas White, simply took away its vestments and crucifixes, and hid them in his house for the better times that every zealous Catholic trusted would have their turn.

They believed that a Catholic marriage would at once bring such a turn about; and if Elizabeth dismissed the offer of Philip's hand she played long and a.s.siduously with that of a son of the Emperor, an archduke of the same Austrian house. But the alliance with the Scotch heretics proved a rough blow to this trust: and after the repulse at Leith there were whispers that the two great Catholic n.o.bles of the border, the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, were only waiting for the failure of the Scotch enterprise to rise on behalf of the older faith.

Whatever their projects were, they were crushed by the Queen's success.

With the Lords of the Congregation masters across the border the northern Earls lay helpless between the two Protestant realms. In the ma.s.s of men loyalty was still too strong for any dream of revolt; but there was a growing uneasiness lest they should find themselves heretics after all, which the failure of the Austrian match and the help given to the Huguenots was fanning into active discontent. It was this which gave such weight to the Queen's rejection of the summons to Trent. Whatever colour she might strive to put upon it, the bulk of her subjects accepted the refusal as a final break with Catholicism, as a final close to all hope of their reunion with the Catholic Church.

[Sidenote: Mary Stuart.]

The Catholic disaffection which the Queen was henceforth to regard as her greatest danger was thus growing into life when in August 1561, but a few months after the Queen's refusal to acknowledge the Council, Mary Stuart landed at Leith. Girl as she was, and she was only nineteen, Mary was hardly inferior in intellectual power to Elizabeth herself, while in fire and grace and brilliancy of temper she stood high above her. She brought with her the voluptuous refinement of the French Renascence; she would lounge for days in bed, and rise only at night for dances and music. But her frame was of iron, and incapable of fatigue; she galloped ninety miles after her last defeat without a pause save to change horses. She loved risk and adventure and the ring of arms; as she rode in a foray to the north the swordsmen beside her heard her wish she was a man "to know what life it was to lie all night in the fields, or to walk on the cawsey with a jack and knapschalle, a Glasgow buckler and a broadsword." But in the closet she was as cool and astute a politician as Elizabeth herself; with plans as subtle, and of a far wider and bolder range than the Queen's. "Whatever policy is in all the chief and best practised heads of France," wrote an English envoy, "whatever craft, falsehood, and deceit is in all the subtle brains of Scotland, is either fresh in this woman's memory, or she can fetch it out with a wet finger." Her beauty, her exquisite grace of manner, her generosity of temper and warmth of affection, her frankness of speech, her sensibility, her gaiety, her womanly tears, her manlike courage, the play and freedom of her nature, the flashes of poetry that broke from her at every intense moment of her life, flung a spell over friend or foe which has only deepened with the lapse of years. Even to Knollys, the sternest Puritan of his day, she seemed in her later captivity to be "a notable woman." "She seemeth to regard no ceremonious honour besides the acknowledgement of her estate royal. She showeth a disposition to speak much, to be bold, to be pleasant, to be very familiar. She showeth a great desire to be avenged on her enemies. She showeth a readiness to expose herself to all perils in hope of victory. She desireth much to hear of hardiness and valiancy, commending by name all approved hardy men of her country though they be her enemies, and she concealeth no cowardice even in her friends."

[Sidenote: Mary's plans.]

Of the stern bigotry, the intensity of pa.s.sion, which lay beneath the winning surface of Mary's womanhood, men as yet knew nothing. But they at once recognized her political ability. Till now she had proved in her own despite a powerful friend to the Reformation. It was her claim of the English crown which had seated Elizabeth on the throne, had thrown her on the support of the Protestants, and had secured to the Queen in the midst of her religious changes the protection of Philip of Spain. It was the dread of Mary's ambition which had forced Elizabeth to back the Lords of the Congregation, and the dread of her husband's ambition which had driven Scotland to throw aside its jealousy of England and ally itself with the Queen. But with the death of Francis Mary's position had wholly changed. She had no longer the means of carrying out her husband's threats of crushing the Lords of the Congregation by force of arms. The forces of France were in the hands of Catharine of Medicis; and Catharine was parted from her both by her dread of the Guises and by a personal hate. Yet the att.i.tude of the Lords became every day more threatening. They were pressing Elizabeth to marry the Earl of Arran, a chief of the house of Hamilton and near heir to the throne, a marriage which pointed to the complete exclusion of Mary from her realm. Even when this project failed, they rejected with stern defiance the young Queen's proposal of restoring the old religion as a condition of her return. If they invited her to Scotland, it was in the name of the Parliament which had set up Calvinism as the law of the land. Bitter as such terms must have been Mary had no choice but to submit to them. To accept the offer of the Catholic Lords of Northern Scotland with the Earl of Huntly at their head, who proposed to welcome her in arms as a champion of Catholicism, was to risk a desperate civil war, a war which would in any case defeat a project far dearer to her than her plans for winning Scotland, the project she was nursing of winning the English realm. In the first months of her widowhood therefore her whole att.i.tude was reversed. She received the leader of the Protestant Lords, her half-brother, Lord James Stuart, at her court. She showed her favour to him by creating him Earl of Murray. She adopted his policy of accepting the religious changes in Scotland and of bringing Elizabeth by friendly pressure to acknowledge her right, not of reigning in her stead, but of following her on the throne. But while thus in form adopting Murray's policy, Mary at heart was resolute to carry out her own policy too. If she must win the Scots by submitting to a Protestant system in Scotland, she would rally round her the English Catholics by remaining a Catholic herself. If she ceased to call herself Queen of England and only pressed for her acknowledgement as rightful successor to Elizabeth, she would not formally abandon her claim to reign as rightful Queen in Elizabeth's stead. Above all she would give her compliance with Murray's counsels no legal air. No pressure either from her brother or from Elizabeth could bring the young Queen to give her royal confirmation to the Parliamentary Acts which established the new religion in Scotland, or her signature to the Treaty of Edinburgh. In spite of her habitual caution the bold words which broke from Mary Stuart on Elizabeth's refusal of a safe conduct betrayed her hopes. "I came to France in spite of her brother's opposition," she said, "and I will return in spite of her own. She has combined with rebel subjects of mine: but there are rebel subjects in England too who would gladly listen to a call from me.

I am a queen as well as she, and not altogether friendless. And perhaps I have as great a soul too!"

[Sidenote: Her toleration.]

She saw indeed the new strength which was given her by her husband's death. Her cause was no longer hampered, either in Scotland or in England, by a national jealousy of French interference. It was with a resolve to break the league between Elizabeth and the Scotch Protestants, to unite her own realm around her, and thus to give a firm base for her intrigues among the English Catholics, that Mary Stuart landed at Leith. The effect of her presence was marvellous. Her personal fascination revived the national loyalty, and swept all Scotland to her feet. Knox, the greatest and sternest of the Calvinistic preachers, alone withstood her spell. The rough Scotch n.o.bles owned that there was in Mary "some enchantment whereby men are bewitched." It was clear indeed from the first that, loyal as Scotland might be, its loyalty would be of little service to the Queen if she attacked the new religion. At her entry into Edinburgh the children of the pageant presented her with a Bible and "made some speech concerning the putting away of the Ma.s.s, and thereafter sang a psalm." It was only with difficulty that Murray won for her the right of celebrating Ma.s.s at her court. But for the religious difficulty Mary was prepared. While steadily abstaining from any legal confirmation of the new faith, and claiming for her French followers freedom of Catholic worship, she denounced any attempt to meddle with the form of religion she found existing in the realm. Such a toleration was little likely to satisfy the more fanatical among the ministers; but even Knox was content with her promise "to hear the preaching," and brought his brethren to a conclusion, as "she might be won," "to suffer her for a time." If the preachers indeed maintained that the Queen's liberty of worship "should be their thraldom," the bulk of the nation was content with Mary's acceptance of the religious state of the realm. Nor was it distasteful to the secular leaders of the reforming party. The Protestant Lords preferred their imperfect work to the more complete reformation which Knox and his fellows called for. They had no mind to adopt the whole Calvinistic system. They had adopted the Genevan Confession of Faith; but they rejected a book of discipline which would have organized the Church on the Huguenot model. All demands for rest.i.tution of the church property which they were pillaging they set aside as a "fond imagination." The new ministers remained poor and dependent, while n.o.ble after n.o.ble was hanging an abbot to seize his estates in forfeiture, or roasting a commendator to wring from him a grant of abbey-lands in fee.

[Sidenote: Mary and Elizabeth.]

The att.i.tude of the Lords favoured the Queen's designs. She was in effect bartering her toleration of their religion in exchange for her reception in Scotland and for their support of her claim to be named Elizabeth's successor. With Mary's landing at Leith the position of the English Queen had suddenly changed. Her work seemed utterly undone. The national unity for which she was struggling was broken. The presence of Mary woke the party of the old faith to fresh hopes and a fresh activity, while it roused a fresh fear and fanaticism in the party of the new. Scotland, where Elizabeth's influence had seemed supreme, was struck from her hands. Not only was it no longer a support; it was again a danger; for loyalty, national pride, a just and statesmanlike longing for union with England, united her northern subjects round the Scottish Queen in her claim to be recognized as Elizabeth's successor, and even Murray counted on Elizabeth's consent to this claim to bring Mary into full harmony with his policy, and to preserve the alliance between England and Scotland. But the question of the succession, like the question of her marriage, was with Elizabeth a question of life and death. Her wedding with a Catholic or a Protestant suitor would have been equally the end of her system of balance and national union, a signal for the revolt of the party which she disappointed and for the triumphant dictation of the party which she satisfied. "If a Catholic prince come here," wrote a Spanish amba.s.sador while pressing her marriage with an Austrian archduke, "the first Ma.s.s he attends will be the signal for a revolt." It was so with the question of the succession.

To name a Protestant successor from the House of Suffolk would have driven every Catholic to insurrection. To name Mary was to stir Protestantism to a rising of despair, and to leave Elizabeth at the mercy of every fanatical a.s.sa.s.sin who wished to clear the way for a Catholic ruler. Yet to leave both unrecognized was to secure the hostility of both, as well as the discontent of the people at large, who looked on the settlement of the succession as the primary need of their national life. From the moment of Mary's landing therefore Elizabeth found herself thrown again on an att.i.tude of self-defence. Every course of direct action was closed to her. She could satisfy neither Protestant nor Catholic, neither Scotland nor England. Her work could only be a work of patience; the one possible policy was to wait, to meet dangers as they rose, to watch for possible errors in her rival's course, above all by diplomacy, by finesse, by equivocation, by delay, to gain time till the dark sky cleared.

[Sidenote: Mary's succession.]

Nothing better proves Elizabeth's political ability than the patience, the tenacity, with which for the six years that followed she played this waiting game. She played it utterly alone. Even Cecil at moments of peril called for a policy of action. But his counsels never moved the Queen. Her restless ingenuity vibrated ceaselessly, like the needle of a compa.s.s, from one point to another, now stirring hopes in Catholic, now in Protestant, now quivering towards Mary's friendship, then as suddenly trembling off to incur her hate. But tremble and vibrate as it might, Elizabeth's purpose returned ever to the same unchanging point. It was in vain that Mary made a show of friendship, and negotiated for a meeting at York, where the question of the succession might be settled.

It was in vain that to prove her lack of Catholic fanaticism she even backed Murray in crushing the Earl of Huntly, the foremost of her Catholic n.o.bles, or that she held out hopes to the English envoy of her conformity to the faith of the Church of England. It was to no purpose that, to meet the Queen's dread of her marriage with a Catholic prince when her succession was once acknowledged, a marriage which would in such a case have shaken Elizabeth on her throne, Mary listened even to a proposal for a match with Lord Leicester, and that Murray supported such a step, if Elizabeth would recognize Mary as her heir. Elizabeth promised that she would do nothing to impair Mary's rights; but she would do nothing to own them. "I am not so foolish," she replied with bitter irony to Mary's entreaties, "I am not so foolish as to hang a winding-sheet before my eyes." That such a refusal was wise time was to show. But even then it is probable that Mary's intrigues were not wholly hidden from the English Queen. Elizabeth's lying paled indeed before the cool duplicity of this girl of nineteen. While she was befriending Protestantism in her realm, and holding out hopes of her mounting the English throne as a Protestant queen, Mary Stuart was pledging herself to the Pope to restore Catholicism on either side the border, and pressing Philip to aid her in this holy work by giving her the hand of his son Don Carlos. It was with this design that she was fooling the Scotch Lords and deceiving Murray: it was with this end that she strove in vain to fool Elizabeth and Knox.

[Sidenote: France and the Reformation.]

But pierce through the web of lying as she might, the pressure on the English Queen became greater every day. What had given Elizabeth security was the adhesion of the Scotch Protestants and the growing strength of the Huguenots in France. But the firm government of Murray and her own steady abstinence from any meddling with the national religion was giving Mary a hold upon Scotland which drew Protestant after Protestant to her side; while the tide of French Calvinism was suddenly rolled back by the rise of a Catholic party under the leadership of the Guises. Under Catharine of Medicis France had seemed to be slowly drifting to the side of Protestantism. While the queen-mother strove to preserve a religious truce the att.i.tude of the Huguenots was that of men sure of success. Their head, the king of Navarre, boasted that before the year was out he would have the Gospel preached throughout the realm, and his confidence seemed justified by the rapid advance of the new opinions. They were popular among the merchant cla.s.s. The _n.o.blesse_ was fast becoming Huguenot. At the court itself the n.o.bles feasted ostentatiously on the fast days of the Church and flocked to the Protestant preachings. The clergy themselves seemed shaken. Bishops openly abjured the older faith. Coligni's brother, the Cardinal of Chatillon, celebrated the communion instead of ma.s.s in his own episcopal church at Beauvais, and married a wife. So irresistible was the movement that Catharine saw no way of preserving France to Catholicism but by the largest concessions; and in the summer of 1561 she called on the Pope to allow the removal of images, the administration of the sacrament in both kinds, and the abolition of private ma.s.ses. Her demands were outstripped by those of an a.s.sembly of deputies from the states which met at Pontoise. These called for the confiscation of Church property, for freedom of conscience and of worship, and above all for a national Council in which every question should be decided by "the Word of G.o.d." France seemed on the verge of becoming Protestant; and at a moment when Protestantism had won England and Scotland, and appeared to be fast winning southern as well as northern Germany, the accession of France would have determined the triumph of the Reformation. The importance of its att.i.tude was seen in its effect on the Papacy. It was the call of France for a national Council that drove Rome once more to summon the Council of Trent. It was seen too in the policy of Mary Stuart. With France tending to Calvinism it was no time for meddling with the Calvinism of Scotland; and Mary rivalled Catharine herself in her pledges of toleration. It was seen above all in the anxiety of Philip of Spain. To preserve the Netherlands was still the main aim of Philip's policy, and with France as well as England Protestant, a revolt of the Netherlands against the cruelties of the Inquisition became inevitable. By appeals therefore to religious pa.s.sion, by direct pledges of aid, the Spanish king strove to rally the party of the Guises against the system of Catharine.

[Sidenote: The Civil War.]

But Philip's intrigues were hardly needed to rouse the French Catholics to arms. If the Guises had withdrawn from court it was only to organize resistance to the Huguenots. They were aided by the violence of their opponents. The Huguenot lords believed themselves irresistible; they boasted that the churches numbered more than three hundred thousand men fit to bear arms. But the ma.s.s of the nation was hardly touched by the new Gospel; and the Guises stirred busily the fanaticism of the poor.

The failure of a conference between the advocates of either faith was the signal for a civil war in the south. Catharine strove in vain to allay the strife at the opening of 1562 by an edict of pacification; Guise struck his counter-blow by ma.s.sacring a Protestant congregation at Va.s.sy, by entering Paris with two thousand men, and by seizing the Regent and the King. Conde and Coligni at once took up arms; and the fanaticism of the Huguenots broke out in a terrible work of destruction which rivalled that of the Scots. All Western France, half Southern France, the provinces along the Loire and the Rhone, rose for the Gospel. Only Paris and the north of France held firmly to Catholicism.

But the plans of the Guises had been ably laid. The Huguenots found themselves girt in by a ring of foes. Philip sent a body of Spaniards into Gascony, Italians and Piedmontese in the pay of the Pope and the Duke of Savoy marched upon the Rhone. Seven thousand German mercenaries appeared in the camp of the Guises. Panic ran through the Huguenot forces; they broke up as rapidly as they had gathered; and resistance was soon only to be found in Normandy and in the mountains of the Cevennes.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth and the Huguenots.]

Conde appealed for aid to the German princes and to England: and grudge as she might the danger and cost of such a struggle, Elizabeth saw that her aid must be given. She knew that the battle with her opponent had to be fought abroad rather than at home. The Guises were Mary's uncles; and their triumph meant trouble in Scotland and worse trouble in England. In September therefore she concluded a treaty with the Huguenots at Hampton Court, and promised to supply them with six thousand men and a hundred thousand crowns. The bargain she drove was a hard one. She knew that the French had no purpose of fulfilling their pledge to restore Calais, and she exacted the surrender of Havre into her hands as a security for its restoration. Her aid came almost too late. The Guises saw the need of securing Normandy if English intervention was to be hindered, and a vigorous attack brought about the submission of the province. But the Huguenots were now reinforced by troops from the German princes; and at the close of 1562 the two armies met on the field of Dreux. The strife had already widened into a general war of religion. It was the fight, not of French factions, but of Protestantism and Catholicism, that was to be fought out on the fields of France. The two warring elements of Protestantism were represented in the Huguenot camp where German Lutherans stood side by side with the French Calvinists. On the other hand the French Catholics were backed by soldiers from the Catholic cantons of Switzerland, from the Catholic states of Germany, from Catholic Italy, and from Catholic Spain. The encounter was a desperate one, but it ended in a virtual triumph for the Guises. While the German troops of Coligni clung to the Norman coast in the hope of subsidies from Elizabeth, the Duke of Guise was able to march at the opening of 1563 on the Loire, and form the siege of Orleans.

[Sidenote: Mary and Protestantism.]

In Scotland Mary Stuart was watching her uncle's progress with ever-growing hope. The policy of Murray had failed in the end to which she mainly looked. Her acceptance of the new religion, her submission to the Lords of the Congregation, had secured her a welcome in Scotland and gathered the Scotch people round her standard. But it had done nothing for her on the other side of the border. Two years had gone by, and any recognition of her right of succession to the English crown seemed as far off as ever. But Murray's policy was far from being Mary's only resource. She had never surrendered herself in more than outer show to her brother's schemes. In heart she had never ceased to be a bigoted Catholic, resolute for the suppression of Protestantism as soon as her toleration of it had given her strength enough for the work. It was this that made the strife between the two Queens of such terrible moment for English freedom. Elizabeth was fighting for more than personal ends. She was fighting for more than her own occupation of the English throne.

Consciously or unconsciously she was struggling to avert from England the rule of a Queen who would have undone the whole religious work of the past half-century, who would have swept England back into the tide of Catholicism, and who in doing this would have blighted and crippled its national energies at the very moment of their mightiest developement. It was the presence of such a danger that sharpened the eyes of Protestants on both sides the border. However she might tolerate the reformed religion or hold out hopes of her compliance with a reformed worship, no earnest Protestant either in England or in Scotland could bring himself to see other than an enemy in the Scottish Queen.

Within a few months of her arrival the cool eye of Knox had pierced through the veil of Mary's dissimulation. "The Queen," he wrote to Cecil, "neither is nor shall be of our opinion." Her steady refusal to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh or to confirm the statutes on which the Protestantism of Scotland rested was of far greater significance than her support of Murray or her honeyed messages to Elizabeth. While the young Queen looked coolly on at the ruin of the Catholic house of Huntly, at the persecution of Catholic recusants, at so strict an enforcement of the new worship that "none within the realm durst more avow the hearing or saying of Ma.s.s than the thieves of Liddesdale durst avow their stealth in presence of an upright judge," she was in secret correspondence with the Guises and the Pope. Her eye was fixed upon France. While Catharine of Medicis was all-powerful, while her edict secured toleration for the Huguenots on one side of the sea, Mary knew that it was impossible to refuse toleration on the other. But with the first movement of the Duke of Guise fiercer hopes revived. Knox was "a.s.sured that the Queen danced till after midnight because that she had received letters that persecution was begun in France, and that her uncles were beginning to stir their tail, and to trouble the whole realm of France." Whether she gave such open proof of her joy or no, Mary woke to a new energy at the news of Guise's success. She wrote to Pope Pius to express her regret that the heresy of her realm prevented her sending envoys to the Council of Trent. She a.s.sured the Cardinal of Lorraine that she would restore Catholicism in her dominions, even at the peril of her life. She pressed on Philip of Spain a proposal for her marriage with his son, Don Carlos, as a match which would make her strong enough to restore Scotland to the Church.

[Sidenote: The Papal Brief.]

The echo of the French conflict was felt in England as in the north. The English Protestants saw in it the approach of a struggle for life and death at home. The English Queen saw in it a danger to her throne. So great was Elizabeth's terror at the victory of Dreux that she resolved to open her purse-strings and to hire fresh troops for the Huguenots in Germany. But her dangers grew at home as abroad. The victory of Guise dealt the first heavy blow at her system of religious conformity. Rome had abandoned its dreams of conciliation on her refusal to own the Council of Trent, and though Philip's entreaties brought Pius to suspend the issue of a Bull of Deposition, the Papacy opened the struggle by issuing in August 1562 a brief which p.r.o.nounced joining in the Common Prayer schismatic and forbade the attendance of Catholics at church. On no point was Elizabeth so sensitive, for on no point had her policy seemed so successful. Till now, whatever might be their fidelity to the older faith, few Englishmen had carried their opposition to the Queen's changes so far as to withdraw from religious communion with those who submitted to them. But with the issue of the brief this unbroken conformity came to an end. A few of the hotter Catholics withdrew from church. Heavy fines were laid on them as recusants; fines which, as their numbers increased, became a valuable source of supply for the royal exchequer. But no fines could compensate for the moral blow which their withdrawal dealt. It was the beginning of a struggle which Elizabeth had averted through three memorable years. Protestant fanaticism met Catholic fanaticism, and as news of the ma.s.sacre at Va.s.sy spread through England the Protestant preachers called for the death of "Papists." The tidings of Dreux spread panic through the realm. The Parliament which met again in January 1563 showed its terror by measures of a new severity. There had been enough of words, cried one of the Queen's ministers, Sir Francis Knollys, "it was time to draw the sword."

[Sidenote: The Test Act.]

The sword was drawn in the first of a series of penal statutes which weighed upon English Catholics for two hundred years. By this statute an oath of allegiance to the Queen and of abjuration of the temporal authority of the Pope was exacted from all holders of office, lay or spiritual, within the realm, with the exception of peers. Its effect was to place the whole power of the realm in the hands either of Protestants or of Catholics who accepted Elizabeth's legitimacy and her ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the teeth of the Papacy. The oath of supremacy was already exacted from every clergyman and every member of the universities. But the obligation of taking it was now widely extended. Every member of the House of Commons, every officer in the army or the fleet, every schoolmaster and private tutor, every justice of the peace, every munic.i.p.al magistrate, to whom the oath was tendered, was pledged from this moment to resist the blows which Rome was threatening to deal. Extreme caution indeed was used in applying this test to the laity, but pressure was more roughly put on the clergy. A great part of the parish priests, though they had submitted to the use of the Prayer-Book, had absented themselves when called on to take the oath prescribed by the Act of Uniformity, and were known to be Catholics in heart. As yet Elizabeth had cautiously refused to allow any strict enquiry into their opinions. But a commission was now opened by her order at Lambeth, to enforce the Act of Uniformity in public worship; while thirty-nine of the Articles of Faith drawn up under Edward the Sixth, which had till now been left in suspense by her Government, were adopted in Convocation as a standard of faith, and acceptance of them demanded from all the clergy.

[Sidenote: Mary and Knox.]