CHAPTER IX 1568-1569

Norris in France, and Cecil’s agents in Spain and Flanders, continued to send home alarming news of the intentions of Philip and the Guises against England. The stories were untrue, but coming from so many quarters at the same time, were evidently not invented by the senders. They were in fact set afloat by Philip, as a means of keeping England in a state of apprehension, and so preventing her from sending overt aid to the Protestants in Flanders and France. To some extent they were successful in frightening Elizabeth, evidently to Cecil’s annoyance, for the Secretary at least had taken Philip’s measure, and knew that his hands were full. In a letter to Lord Cobham, written in April 1568, Cecil gives expression to this feeling in the figurative language which he was in the habit of employing. Cobham, as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, had forwarded a secret proposal of some Frenchmen in Calais to seize that citadel and deliver it to the Huguenots to be held for Elizabeth. The Queen was alarmed at the boldness of the plan, but promised that she would consider it if the King of France refused her offered mediation between him and the Huguenots. Cecil writes thereupon: “It grieveth me to hold and follow the plough where the owner of the ground forbears to cast in the seed in seasonable time, and I am all the more grieved that your Lordship is in like manner discouraged. ‘Moremus sepe sed nihil promoremus.’ But[209] besides the plough your Lordship follows, we are occupied with another, meaning to join both together for surety, but still I despair of seed.”[264]

In the meanwhile, though Elizabeth herself was still overshadowed by the traditional might of Spain, the English Catholics were feeling, by the increased severity exercised towards them, the changed political situation. The English minister, and in her stronger moments the English Queen, were speaking more firmly now than ever they had dared to do since Elizabeth’s accession. For the first time the position was becoming defined. It was no longer France or Spain nationally that was the enemy of England: it was Catholic against Protestant the world over. Philip was as nervously anxious to avoid war as Elizabeth herself, and his need to do so much greater than hers; but if Protestantism was allowed to become strong, then his great empire must crumble, and the basis of his system disappear. His own slow stolidity had been in a great measure the cause of his finding himself in so unfavourable a tactical position, for he had allowed the champions of the autonomous rights of his Flemish dominions—rights which at first he might easily have conciliated with his own sovereignty—to obtain for their cause the immense added impetus of religious reform. It was this fact which had changed the situation; and it was accentuated in England by the activity of the Pope (Pius V.) in establishing English seminaries abroad, and by means of money and busy agents in England itself, raising the spirits of those who clung to the old faith.[265]

[210]

The answer to the effervescence thus caused amongst the Catholics was the renewed harshness against them by the English ministers and the rising aggressiveness of the Protestants. Late in February 1568, Cecil sent word to Guzman, with whom he was still ostensibly on friendly terms, to say that the Queen had learnt casually that the English Ambassador in Madrid (Dr. Man) was not allowed to hold Protestant service in the embassy. She was surprised at this, and had sent to the Ambassador orders to demand the same rights as were accorded to Guzman in England; if these were denied she would recall him. Cecil himself was more outspoken and indignant than usual, and much more so than the Queen. “They think, no doubt, that the present troubles in France and elsewhere,” writes Guzman, “give them a good opportunity of gaining ground, their own affairs being favourable; so they have begun to look out more keenly, and to trouble the Catholics, summoning some and arresting others, and warning them to obey the present laws … they (the Council) soon change her (the Queen), and all their efforts are directed at making her shy of me.”[266] Guzman’s messenger to Madrid travelled more quickly than Cecil’s, and before Dr. Man could demand his right to enjoy Protestant service, he was unceremoniously hustled out of Madrid, without obtaining audience of the King, the pretext being that he had in public conversation at his own table insulted the Catholic faith.[267] Though Philip took[211] this strong course, he was as anxious as ever to avoid an open quarrel with England about that or anything else, and sent all sorts of conciliatory messages to the Queen. Dr. Man, he said, had behaved himself so outrageously that his further stay in Spain was impossible; but if another Ambassador were sent who would act as English Ambassadors always had done, he should be received with open arms.

The news arrived in London at a bad time. A Portuguese Ambassador had just come (May 1568) to complain—“brawling,” as Cecil calls it—of the Hawkins expeditions to Guinea. He went to the audience with Guzman, and found the Queen in a towering rage about a scurrilous letter referring to her, written by the Cardinal Prince Dom Henrique. Cecil had obtained possession of the letter somehow, and produced it, saying that the presumption of the Portuguese was insufferable and made them hated by all nations. The matter of the letter quite overshadowed the grievance about trade, as it no doubt was intended to do, and the Portuguese got no redress. On the contrary, Cecil called to him some Spanish residents in London who accompanied the Ambassador to Whitehall, and warned them that they might not attend mass at the embassy. What! not foreigners? asked Antonio de Guaras. No, retorted Cecil, and turned his back upon them to rejoin the Queen. The next day when Cecil saw Guzman, he complained of Alba’s severity in Flanders, and of some insulting reference to Elizabeth in the “Pontifical History” of Dr. Illescas, so that when Dr. Man’s letter arrived immediately afterwards announcing his practical expulsion from Spain, everything was prepared for an explosion. The Queen received the news with some alarm as to what it might portend, and was at first inclined to be conciliatory; but when Guzman visited Cecil in the Strand two or three days afterwards,[212] he found the Secretary in a fit of anger unusual with him. Such treatment of an Ambassador, he said, was an unheard-of insult to his mistress, unless it was meant as a provocation to war. After storming for some time, he stopped for want of breath; and it needed all Guzman’s suavity to calm him. “I waited a little for him to recover from his rage, and then went up to him, laughing, and embraced him, saying that I was amused to see him fly into such a passion over what I had told him, because I knew that he understood differently. The affair, I said, might be made good or bad as the Queen liked to make it.”[268] But Cecil was not easily appeased. He told Guzman that the Council regarded him with suspicion, that Englishmen were treated harshly in Spain, and much more to the same effect, all of which was very surprising to the Spaniard, who was unused to such plain speaking from him. But in the ten years that Elizabeth had sat upon the throne, things had radically changed. Cecil could afford to speak boldly to Spain now; for whilst England had grown enormously in wealth, commerce, industry, and shipping, under a prudent, patriotic Government, both the great rivals she formerly feared were rent by the religious schism which the folly or ambition of their rulers had precipitated upon them, and England at any given moment could paralyse either of them for harm by smiling upon their Protestant subjects.

Whilst Mary was in Lochleven Castle, Murray’s enemies, the Hamiltons and the Catholics, were busy. Murray had tried his best by severity to reduce the country to something approaching order, and the turbulent chiefs who profited by anarchy resented it. The compromising papers which implicated the ruling powers in the late deeds of murder and violence were burnt,[213] though not those that implicated the Queen,[269] and the whole of the responsibility was cast upon the Queen and Bothwell. Religious uniformity was passed by Parliament, and the exercise of Catholic worship abolished. All this violent action, too rapid and too partial to be readily assimilated by a country so profoundly divided as Scotland was, naturally caused reaction in favour of Mary, and when after one unsuccessful attempt she escaped from prison (2nd May), there were friends in plenty to flock to her banner. The day before her flight she had written the fervent prayer to Elizabeth, swearing unchanging fidelity to her if she would send her help[270]—help for which she had besought Catharine de Medici in vain; for France wanted the alliance of Scotland, not that of Mary Stuart personally. The day after, when Mary, surrounded by Hamiltons, was free again, the possibilities were all changed. Mary Stuart turned in a few hours from the humble suppliant to the haughty sovereign. Her abdication was revoked, Murray’s regency declared illegal, and all his acts annulled. Beton was sent off post-haste to London and Paris to demand for his mistress a thousand harquebussiers and a sum of money. Beton’s instructions were to tell the English Government that if they would not send the help, he was to demand it from the French. Cecil writes to Norris,[271] 16th May, that under these circumstances the Queen had promised all that Mary demanded; but he was to keep his eye on Beton, and if he asked for French aid, Catharine was to be told the message he brought from Mary to London. Before Beton left London he went to see Guzman with a verbal message from Mary. Now that she was free, she said, she would show the world how[214] innocent she was, and begged for the advice and help of Guzman and his master. She was a firmer Catholic than ever, she averred; nearly all the people and nobles of Scotland were on her side; but she complained that she was in the field without proper garb or adornments, and begged Guzman to send a request to the Duke of Alba to seize her jewels and restore them to her, if Murray sent them to Flanders for sale.[272]

This was on the 11th May. Two days afterwards the result of the battle of Langside once more cast the unhappy Mary Stuart into the chasm of irredeemable misfortune, and on the 16th she fled across the Solway a fugitive to England, to see her country no more in life. Such a step as this was tempting fate. It is true that Elizabeth had constantly professed sympathy for her in her captivity; but whilst the English Queen’s words were fair, the acts of her Government, dictated not by personal motives, such as the friends of Mary have absurdly tried to fix upon Cecil, but by high national policy, had been uniformly in favour of Murray and the Protestants. Mary’s attitude, moreover, had from the first, and not unnaturally, been favourable to the French alliance, upon which for centuries Scotland had depended for the preservation of its independence; and to place herself thus unconditionally at the mercy of the English, whose policy she had opposed and whose interests she sought to subvert, was little short of an act of madness. Mary had no excuse for trusting to a Quixotic generosity, of which Elizabeth had never given her the slightest indication beyond conventional fine words, such as would hardly deceive Mary. It was not so much that she overrated her generosity as she underrated her boldness.

[215]

Drury in Berwick had kept Cecil informed almost from hour to hour of the course of events in Scotland;[273] and a few hours only after Mary landed at Workington she wrote her famous and oft-quoted letter to the English Queen. In it she recites her sorrows, and begs Elizabeth to aid her in her just quarrel; but, above all, to send for her as soon as possible, “for I am in a pitiable condition, not only for a Queen but a gentlewoman.”[274] The position was a difficult one for the English Queen and Council. Guzman says they were much perplexed, “as the Queen has always shown good-will to the Queen of Scots, and the majority of the Council has been opposed to her, and favourable to the Regent and his government. If this Queen has her way, they will have to treat Mary as a sovereign, which will offend those who forced her to abdicate; so that although these folks are glad enough to have her in their hands, they have many things to consider … if she remain free, and able to communicate with her friends, great suspicions will arise. In any case it is certain that the two women will not agree very long together.”[275]

When Mary had arrived at Carlisle a few days afterwards, she sent Lord Herries to London with a letter for Cecil, which may be given in full. Mary’s letters were always clever, unless she lost her temper, as she did sometimes, and here it will be seen that she appeals to positively the only feeling which it was probable would move Cecil to favour her, namely, her kinship to his mistress and her regal status. “Mester Ceciles,” runs the letter, “L’équité, dont vous avvez le nom d’estre amateur, et la fidelle et sincère servitude que portez a[216] la Royne, Madame ma bonne s?ur, et par consequent a toutes celles qui sont de son sang, et en pareille dignité, me fayt en ma juste querele, par sur tous autres m’adresser a vous en ce temps de mon trouble pour etre avancée par votre bon conseille, que j’ai commandé Lord Heris, presant porteur vous fayre entandre au long.… De Karlile ce xxviii Mey. Votre bien bonne amye Marie R.”[276] With this letter Herries brought others for the Pope and Guzman. He demanded aid for his mistress on a pledge sent to her by Elizabeth through Throgmorton in the form of a ring, and when some hesitation was shown, he imprudently blurted out that if Elizabeth did not keep her word his mistress would appeal to France, Spain, the Emperor, and the Pope. “The Pope!” exclaimed puritan Bedford, shocked at the idea. “Yes, the Pope,” replied Herries, “or the Grand Turk, or the Sophi, or any one else who will help her.” This sort of talk was sufficient to decide Mary’s removal to Bolton as a measure of precaution.

Before this took place, however, Lord Scrope and Sir Francis Knollys had been deputed by Elizabeth to visit and confer with Mary at Carlisle. Herries on that occasion had said that if the English would not help his Queen, she wished to go to France; “whereupon,” writes Knollys, we “answered that your Highness could in no wise lyke hyr sekyng aide in France, therbie to bring Frenchmen into Skotland;” and, continued the envoys, the Queen of England could not receive her personally until she was satisfied of her innocence in the murder of her husband. Mary was just as imprudent as Herries in her interview with the English envoys; but what frightened Knollys most was the large number of her English sympathisers in the north of England. In his letter to Elizabeth he points out the danger of[217] the situation, and suggests that Mary should have the choice of freely returning to Scotland, if she chose, or of remaining in England; but not of going to France, as she evidently wished to do. “She was so agile and spirited,” says Knollys, that she could only be kept a prisoner so near the Border by very rigorous means, such as “devices of towels and toyes at her chamber window”; whereas to carry her farther inland might cause “serious sedition.”

Elizabeth and her Council decided to run the latter risk rather than that Mary should go to France to be a permanent thorn in the flesh of England, and the Queen of Scots’ long imprisonment commenced.[277] Even in the first few weeks of her stay she was busy endeavouring to subvert English ends; appointing Chatelherault, Argyll, and Huntly to the supreme government of the kingdom against Murray; Chatelherault being strongly in the French interest, and daily clamouring through his brother in Paris for French armed support. All this was known to the Queen and Cecil; and Mary’s intemperate letters of protest against her removal from Carlisle, and her constant threats to appeal to France and Spain if Elizabeth would not help her,[278] made it[218] altogether inconsistent with prudence to allow the misguided woman her liberty. The investigation into Mary’s guilt or innocence seems to have originated with Cecil.[279] Left to herself, Elizabeth, as we have seen, was mainly influenced by the personal feeling of reverence for a sovereign: Cecil could not oppose this, and as usual took an indirect means of reaching his end. When Mary complained to Knollys at Carlisle of the subjects who had dethroned her, he had told her that as it was lawful for subjects to depose mad sovereigns, it was also lawful for them to depose those who had lost their wits to the extent of conniving at murder. Mary wept at this, and Knollys softened the blow; but Knollys had certainly seen Cecil’s report, and took the line suggested by it. If Mary could be shown to have connived at Darnley’s death—and Cecil must have known of the damning proofs against her when he proposed the negotiation—the regal immunity fell from her like a loosened garment, and Elizabeth’s personal desire to consider the sacredness of the monarch before the interests of the country lost its principal resting point.

In the meanwhile the state of civil war in Scotland continued, and news came daily of French armaments preparing to aid Mary’s party. Cecil ceaselessly urged an armistice, and at last (1st September) was successful, though imprudent Herries continued to threaten that if Elizabeth did not restore the Queen of Scots to the throne in two months, she and her friends would appeal only to France for armed aid. Elizabeth clearly could not force Mary upon the Scottish people, and for her interference to be effective she must be recognised as a mediator, not by Mary alone, but also by Murray and his party. This was difficult; for Murray knew that[219] if the final result was to restore Mary with any power at all, he and his party sooner or later were doomed. Thanks mainly to the efforts of Cecil, Murray at last gave way, and the commissions of Scotch and English Councillors were sent to York, ostensibly to mediate between the Queen of Scots and her subjects. But Mary found herself no longer, as she had hoped to be, the accuser of Murray, but practically on her own trial for murder. By a remark in a letter from Cecil to Norris at the time, he seems again with some difficulty to have avoided being appointed a commissioner himself.

Whilst the intricate and obscure proceedings in York[280] were progressing, Cecil’s hands were full in London. Protestant zeal was fairly aflame now at Alba’s proceedings in the Netherlands. All eastern England swarmed with Flemish fugitives, many of whom found their way back home again well armed with weapons bought in England, and even more with messages of indignant sympathy from English Protestants. Guzman protested to Cecil again and again, but could get no more than vague half promises, and once a proclamation, which the Spaniards described as a “compliment rather than a remedy.”

In September the mild and diplomatic Guzman[220] was withdrawn, much to Elizabeth’s apprehension, and Cecil’s regret, and an Ambassador of very different calibre was sent. For many years the warlike party in Philip’s councils, led by Alba, had been urging him to active hostility towards England, but the peace party of Ruy Gomez had prevented the advice from being adopted. Now that Alba was supreme in the Netherlands, and reported that the Protestant revolt was mainly fed from England, Philip seems to have decided to alarm Elizabeth into neutrality by sending a rough-tongued representative. He had felt his ground first by his contemptuous treatment of Dr. Man, and seeing that Elizabeth had taken it quietly, he sent as his new Ambassador a turbulent bigoted Catalan, named Gerau de Spes, to endeavour by truculence to do what the suavity of Guzman had failed to effect. Dutch, Huguenot, and English privateers were preying upon Spanish shipping, to an extent which well-nigh cut off communication by sea between Spain and northern Europe. Money and arms, unchecked, found their way from England to the brave “beggars” in Holland; and though Philip did not wish to fight England, it was vital for him to paralyse her for harm. Mary Stuart had written to Philip from Carlisle, begging him for help against Elizabeth, and the chance seemed to Philip a good one to disturb England for his own ends, without war. He accordingly wrote cautiously to Alba (15th September), saying that he was willing to help Mary, but desired Alba to report upon what might be done to that end, whilst sending reassuring promises to the Queen of Scots.[281] From the first hour that De Spes set foot in England, he went beyond his instructions and conspired actively against the Government to which he was accredited.

There was more even than this untoward change[221] to occupy the thoughts and hands of Elizabeth’s first minister. The war had raged in France between the Huguenots and the Catholics from September 1567 till the clever management of Catharine had beguiled the Protestants to accept the hollow peace of Longjumeau (March 1568). Hans Casimir and his mercenary Germans went home; the Huguenots laid down their arms; and then again the Catholic pulpits thundered forth that it was godly to break faith with heretics, and that the blood shed of unbelievers sent up sweet incense to heaven. Nearly 10,000 Huguenots were treacherously slain in three months, and no punishment could be obtained against the murderers. Condé and Coligny fled to the stronghold of La Rochelle, there to be joined by the Queen of Navarre with 4000 men-at-arms, and all that was strong and warlike on the side of the Huguenots. Elizabeth in the autumn was making a progress through the valley of the Thames when she heard that Cardinal Chatillon[282] had escaped from Tréport, and had arrived in England and desired an audience. Lord Cobham, Warden of the Cinque Ports, made much of him when he landed; Gresham entertained him; the French Ambassador, himself inclined to be a Huguenot, honoured him as if he were a prince; and as soon as the Queen’s answer was received, Chatillon hurried down to Newbury to prefer his request to the Queen. He looked little of a cardinal or a churchman, for he dressed in cape, hat, and sword, and his wife joined him, but that perhaps made him all the more welcome. Throgmorton voices the general idea in a letter to Cecil. “I think,” he says, “with you, that it is a special favour of God to preserve this realm from calamities by their neighbours’ troubles.… If her Majesty suffer the Low Countries and France to be[222] weeded of the members of the Church whereof England is also a portion, I see no other thing can happen but a more grievous accident to us than to those whom we have suffered to be destroyed.”[283]

But it is quite clear that neither the Queen nor Cecil intended to allow the Huguenots to be destroyed. The Cardinal was received with open arms, munitions were brought from the Tower in hot haste, and a strong fleet was fitted out to carry aid to Huguenots in Rochelle. The French Ambassador might be half a Huguenot, but his brother the Bishop of Rennes was not, and he came and protested strongly in the name of Catharine against Chatillon’s reception in England. Cecil tells Norris in Paris that he got a very short answer. “I told him,” says Cecil, “we had more cause to favour him (Chatillon) and all such, because the said Cardinal Lorraine was known to be an open enemy of our sovereign. So he departed with no small misliking, and I well contented to utter some round speeches.”[284] But, prudent as usual, Cecil was a stickler for legality, and took care that appearances were kept up. The Cardinal, he insisted, was a faithful subject of his King; it was the Guises who were the enemies. Norris is directed to tell Catharine that the fleet is “to protect our Burdeaux fleet from pyrats”; and if any complaint is made about money and munitions of war being provided for Chatillon, he is to say that the Queen would never do anything against the French King, but if English merchants made bargains with the Huguenots, he (Cecil) knew of no way to stop it. He certainly made no attempt to do so; for with a great civil war on hand it was clear that France could not resort to arms for the cause of Mary Stuart; and whilst mediatory proceedings were dragging on in[223] England, the Protestant cause in Scotland was being consolidated.

The unhappy Queen of Scots herself, persuaded that no help could just now reach her from her French kinsmen, seems to have depended almost entirely upon the aid to be given by the King of Spain and Alba to the Scottish Catholics. No messenger came from her to London without beseeching secret letters in cipher to the Spanish Ambassador; and whilst the trial dragged on, she left no stone unturned to arouse indignation against Murray and the English. They wished to kill her child, she said, and force the reformed faith upon her and Scotland. In an intercepted letter to one of the Hamiltons, which fell into Cecil’s hands,[285] she says that Dumbarton, with Murray’s consent, was to be seized by the English. Elizabeth had, she averred, promised to sustain Murray, to recognise his legitimacy, and raise him to the throne as her vassal; both of these being accusations which were likely to move the Hamiltons to fury. But, above all, she accused Cecil of a deeper plot still. He had arranged, she said, to marry one of his daughters to the Earl of Hertford, father of Catharine Grey’s young heir, and thus, by mutual support, Hertford’s son and Murray might occupy respectively the English and Scottish thrones under Cecil’s tutelage. “So they will both be bent on my son’s death.” There was no truth in it; but it was an excellent invention to arouse the ire of the Scottish Catholics. Before even this was written (December), Cecil knew how bitter was Mary’s feeling against him. When Beton came to London from Mary in October, with secret messages for De Spes, suggesting her escape, “which will not be difficult, or even to raise a revolt against this Queen,” Cecil guessed his real errand, and, says De Spes, “Cecil[224] is so much against the Queen of Scotland, and so jealous in the matter, that as soon as he saw Beton he asked him whether he had been with his complaints to the Spanish Ambassador, and whether he came to see me often; to which Beton replied that he had no dealings whatever with me.”[286]

But Cecil’s spies were everywhere, and he knew that De Spes was working ceaselessly in Mary’s interests to bring disaster upon England, in union with his chief, the Duke of Alba, in Flanders. The great difficulty in the way of the Spaniards was the extreme penury of the treasury. Spain was in the very depths of poverty, its commerce well-nigh killed by unwise fiscal arrangements and the depredations of the privateers, against whom De Spes inveighed to Cecil constantly, but in vain, though the Secretary was strongly against piracy on principle. Flanders desolated with war, Holland and Zeeland in revolt, were no longer the milch-cows for the Spaniards that they had been, and Alba, with an unpaid and rebellious soldiery, was in despair of subduing Orange, much less of crushing England, unless large sums of money were forthcoming. Philip made a great effort in the autumn of 1568, and borrowed a large sum of money from the Genoese bankers to supply Alba with the sinews of war. The money was to be conveyed by sea to Flanders at the risk of the bankers. Three of the vessels duly arrived in Antwerp, after having been chased by Huguenot privateers; but several others put into Southampton, Plymouth, and Falmouth, to escape from their pursuers. The representative in England of the bankers was the Genoese Benedict Spinola, who requested De Spes to ask the Queen to allow the money to be discharged and brought overland to Dover, where it could be transhipped under convoy for the Duke of Alba. De Spes[225] saw the Queen on the 29th November, and she consented to this course being adopted.

In the meanwhile the privateers, in crowds, were clustered outside the harbours where the rich treasure lay, and nearly every Spanish ship that entered the Channel fell into their hands. De Spes had not been sent by Philip to provoke war, but in the few months that he had been in England his violence, insolence, and bigotry had brought war nearer than ever it had been before. Norris in Paris had just been warned, and had sent the warning to Cecil, that a plot was formed to kill the Queen, and that the papal banker Ridolfi, De Spes, and the English Catholic nobility, headed by the Earl of Arundel, had agreed to place Mary Stuart on the English throne. De Spes was closeted day and night with Mary’s agents. “The Bishop of Ross came at midnight to offer me the good-will of his mistress and many gentlemen of this country.… The Queen of Scotland told my servant to convey to me the following words: ‘Tell the Ambassador that if his master will help me I shall be Queen of England in three months, and mass shall be said all over the country.’”[287]

Condé’s agents, too, were for ever telling the Queen and Cecil of the plans against England of the Guises and Alba, as soon as the Protestants in France and Flanders had been subjugated; and Knollys wrote almost despairingly from Bolton of Mary’s haughty disbelief in Elizabeth’s power to harm her.[288] There need, therefore, be no surprise that the English Council began to question the wisdom of allowing the treasure that had fallen into their power to be used against the tranquillity and independence of their own country. When De Spes asked Cecil for the safe conducts for the money, he was put off[226] with vague evasions, whilst the main question was being discussed. After much pressing, Cecil gave the safe conducts, and sent orders to Plymouth and Falmouth (13th December, N.S.) that the shore authorities were to defend the treasure-ships, which were being threatened by pirates, even in port. “These orders are now being sent off,” writes De Spes, “but in all things Cecil showed himself an enemy to the Catholic cause, and desirous on every opportunity of opposing the interests of your Majesty.… He has to be dealt with by prayers and gentle threats.” “The Council is sitting night and day about the Queen of Scotland’s affairs. Cecil and the Chancellor (Bacon) would like to see her dead, as they have a King of their own choosing, one of Hertford’s children.”[289]

After deliberation, Cecil had sent for Bernard Spinola, and ascertained from him that the money was being conveyed at the bankers’ risk, and could not legally be called King Philip’s property.[290] This seems to have decided the question. The money on the cutter in Southampton harbour was discharged, on the pretext of protecting it from pirates;[291] and as soon as De Spes got the news, on the 20th December, he went to[227] the Queen in a violent rage to demand its return. He only saw Cecil, who said the money was safe, but hinted that it did not belong to the King. De Spes then gave the bad advice to Alba to retaliate by seizing all English property in the Netherlands, which was done, and Cecil was provided with a pretext which gave him what he always needed, a good legal position to justify his acts. The Queen had not hitherto plainly said that she would keep the money; but as soon as she heard that Alba had seized English property, it gave her the required excuse for doing so. Her credit was as good as Philip’s, she said, and she would borrow it herself. Not only 400,000 crowns in gold, but every scrap of Spanish property in England was seized, enormously in excess of all English property in Flanders. In vain De Spes hectored and stormed, in vain Alba alternately threatened and implored, in vain Philip made seizures of Englishmen and goods in Spain; the Queen was in an unassailable position. Alba had openly declared the seizures of English property first, and all Elizabeth had done was to adopt reprisals afterwards. But it crippled Alba and Philip almost to exhaustion, and well-nigh ruined Spanish commerce and killed Spanish credit.

For years open and secret negotiations went on to obtain some restoration of the enormous amount of Spanish property seized. Cajolery, bribery, and appeals to English honour were resorted to without effect; private negotiations were opened by the owners of the property to get partial restitution on any terms; envoy after envoy was sent, and returned home empty-handed. The Queen refused to acknowledge Alba or his agents in any form, and Cecil was immovable in his determination that no arrangement should be made that did not bring into account all the confiscations and persecutions that had ever been suffered by English in Spain at the hands of the Inquisition, which he knew was impossible. In the[228] meanwhile the property dwindled and was jobbed away, and little, if any, ever eventually reached its proper owners.

Early in January the Queen refused to receive De Spes, and sent Cecil and the Lord Admiral, attended by a large train, and the aldermen of the city, to see him at his house. Cecil, as usual, was the spokesman. He was angry and severe: upbraided the Ambassador for his bad offices; condemned the cruelty of the Duke of Alba, and his insolence in seizing English property; and ended by placing De Spes and all his household under arrest, in the custody of Henry Knollys, Arthur Carew, and Sir Henry Knyvett. The reason of this was that a violent letter from De Spes to Alba had been intercepted by Cecil’s orders. To make matters worse, the foolish Ambassador, whilst under arrest, wrote an insolent letter to Alba complaining of his treatment, and sent it open to the Council. In it he says that “Cecil is harsh and arrogant; that he vapoured about religion, dragged up the matter of John Man and about Bishop Quadra’s affairs, and, in short, did and said a thousand impertinent things. He thinks he is dealing with Englishmen, who all tremble before him.… The question of the money does not suit him. I beg your Excellency not to refrain on my account from doing everything that the interests and dignity of the King demand; for whilst Cecil rules, I do not believe there will ever be lasting peace. It is a pity so excellent a Queen should give credit to so scandalous a person as this. God send a remedy; for in this country, people great and small are discontented with the Government.… Cecil is having a proclamation drawn up, from which he leaves out what is most important, and misstates the case. He refused to return my packet, and is getting one Somers to decipher my letters. If he succeeds I will pardon him.”[292] The transmission of this insolent letter, open to the Council, to be sent to Alba,[229] produced the effect that might have been expected. De Spes was asked to explain what he meant by such offensive expressions against the Government, and by some scurrilous references employed in another intercepted letter towards the Queen. He tried to attenuate his insolence towards the Queen, and the Council as a whole, but not that towards Cecil personally.

And so affairs drifted from bad to worse. Every letter from De Spes to Alba and the King was full of abuse of Cecil, and statements of the determination of the English Catholics to shake off his tyranny and raise Mary Stuart to the throne. The people are all discontented, he says, and the slightest show of countenance from Philip will enable Elizabeth and the detested Cecil to be overthrown. Philip did not know what to think of it, and sent to Alba orders to inquire independently whether De Spes’ representations were true. If it is so easy, he says, he is willing to give the aid required, as after his duty to maintain the holy faith in his own dominions, it is incumbent upon him to re-establish it in England. “If you think the chance will be lost by again waiting to consult me, you may at once take the steps you consider advisable.”[293] Alba soon undeceived the King. He had his hands full in the Netherlands; he was almost without money; rash and foolish De Spes, he knew, was not to be depended upon, and he told Philip plainly that he must temporise and make friends with Elizabeth, leaving vengeance until later. De Spes, he thought, was being deceived, perhaps betrayed, by Ridolfi and the Catholics, and open war with England must be avoided at any cost. Cecil, indeed, had accurately gauged the situation, and knew far better than De Spes that Philip dared not fight, now that the Prince of Orange was holding Holland and Zeeland[230] against him. England’s traditional alliance was not with the House of Spain, but with the possessor of the Netherlands, and in the same proportion as Spain lost control over the Low Countries, the need for a close union with her shifted.

Late in February the Duke of Norfolk, and his father-in-law, the Earl of Arundel, to whom the changed situation was not so clear as to Cecil, sent Ridolfi to De Spes with a cipher communication to tell him that the money and Spanish property should be returned.[294] “They had only consented to my detention and Cecil’s other impertinences, because they were not yet strong enough to resist him. But they were gathering friends, and were letting the public know what was going on, in the hope and belief that they will be able to turn out the present accursed Government and raise up another Catholic one, bringing the Queen to consent thereto. They think your Excellency (Alba) will support them in this, and that the country will not lose the friendship of our King. They say they will return to the Catholic religion, and they think a better opportunity never existed than now. Although Cecil thinks he has them all under his heel, he will find few or none of them stand by him. I have encouraged them.… In the meanwhile Cecil is bravely harrying the Catholics, imprisoning many, for nearly all the prisons are full. The Spaniards (i.e. from the arrested ships) are in Bridewell to the number of over 150, and a minister is sent to preach to them.” This gives us a clue to the real origin of the plot against Cecil, which his domestic biographer absurdly ascribes to a noble member of the Council having seen upon his table a book attacking aristocracy.[295][231] Rapin is nearer in guessing the cause of the conspiracy in ascribing it to Norfolk, Winchester, Pembroke, Leicester, Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Arundel, in favour of Mary Stuart’s claim, at least to the succession, in opposition to Cecil’s candidate, Catharine Grey’s son, Lord Beauchamp. Camden records that Throgmorton, Leicester’s henchman, advocated the lodging of Cecil in the Tower first. “If he were once shut up, men would open their mouths to speak freely against him.”[296] As will be seen, however, Cecil was more than a match for his jealous enemies, who were also the enemies of England; and the Queen, to her honour, stood bravely up for her great minister.[297] The plan agreed upon was for Norfolk, a cat’s-paw of Leicester, to denounce Cecil for his supposed intention of forcing the succession of Beauchamp, and provoking war with Spain by advocating the seizure of Philip’s treasure; but Leicester, too unstable, even, to keep the counsel[232] of his own plot, dropped a hint to the Queen, who warned Cecil, and the whole nefarious conspiracy was unveiled. The excuse given by Norfolk and Arundel to De Spes for their failure was that so many Councillors were interested in the plunder that they could not get them to move against Cecil. “For my part,” says De Spes, “I believe that they have very little courage, and in the usual English way wish things to be so far advanced that they can with but little trouble win your Majesty’s rewards and favours.”

On the strength of their intentions against Cecil, Arundel, with his sons-in-law, Norfolk and Lumley, tried their hardest to get some money from De Spes, but without effect until the northern rebellion was in preparation. Their intermediary was a Florentine banker, whose brother-in-law, Cavalcanti, was one of Cecil’s agents, and through him every step was known to the Secretary. Spies were everywhere. Whilst Cecil’s most confidential private secretary, Allington, carried all his secrets to De Spes for a consideration,[298] no visitor went to the Spanish Embassy whose name and business was not at once reported to Cecil, who, says De Spes, was suspicious even of the birds of the air. Though Mary was in captivity, she contrived to write constant cipher letters through De Spes to the Pope, to Alba, and to Philip. The Bishop of Ross, her indefatigable but imprudent agent, took no step in Mary’s cause without consultation with the Spaniard. She would, he said, have been released already but for Cecil, her great enemy in the Council.[299] If he could be got rid of, all would be well.[233] The Bishop of Ross went so far as to solicit another husband for Mary to be chosen by Philip, and offered her abject submission both for England and Scotland, in return for aid to the coming rising in her favour. It will be seen by this that a more dangerous and widespread plot even than that against Cecil was being planned by the Catholic nobility.

At what period the first suggestion was made for a marriage between the Duke of Norfolk and Mary Stuart is not certain, but the Bishop of Ross afterwards deposed[300] that the Duke had sent his offer to the Queen before the meeting of the Commission of York (October 1568), of which he was president; and as Lady Scrope, in whose husband’s house, Bolton Castle, Mary was kept, was Norfolk’s sister, it is probable that the plan was hatched during her stay at Bolton. From Murray’s statement[301] it appears that Norfolk had a private conference with him during the sitting of the Commission at York, when the Duke proposed to suppress the papers which incriminated Mary, in order to save the scandal of a conviction. Murray placed the evidence before the English Commissioners, and agreed to abide by Elizabeth’s decision, and Norfolk at once wrote a private letter to Cecil conveying his strong impression of the Queen’s guilt, but advocating the suppression of the evidence. Norfolk’s conference with Murray, and probably Cecil’s knowledge of the marriage plan, appears to have been the reason for the removal of the Commission[234] to London, and the employment of Norfolk elsewhere, as well as of the removal of Mary to Tutbury. When Norfolk returned to court, Elizabeth received him coldly, for the talk about his marriage with Mary was now public, and the Duke assured the Queen of the untruth of the rumours. After Murray, with real or pretended reluctance, had laid the whole of his evidence against Mary before the Commission, and the sittings had come to an end with the sole result of leaving the cloud over her head, Norfolk’s plan for a time was shelved;[302] but the conspiracy of the nobles against Cecil in favour of Mary again revived the idea of the marriage; and Guzman in June 1569 says that the new Lord Dacre had mentioned the matter to him, and professed his willingness to hold in readiness 15,000 men in the north, to rise in favour of Mary if he were assured of Philip’s support. De Spes asserts that Cecil had proposed to marry his widowed sister-in-law, Lady Hoby, to the Duke, a proposal which the Duke had rejected with scorn, “as his eyes were fixed upon the Queen of Scots.”

By this time matters had so far advanced that a large sum of money (6000 crowns) was sent by Alba to the Catholic nobles, through Lumley and Arundel, as well as 10,000 to Mary, and the rising in the north was in principle decided upon; but Alba, whilst ready to supply money secretly, strictly enjoined De Spes to turn a deaf ear to any suggestions for overt aid against the Queen’s Government.[303] His great care for the moment was to[235] repair the effects of his mistake, and obtain some sort of restitution of the Spanish property seized in England. Agents were sent backwards and forwards, supple cosmopolitan Florentines mostly. Ridolfi, Fiesco, the Cavalcantis, and several others tried by bribery and other means to induce Cecil to consent to an arrangement. It suited him to pretend a willingness to do so. Ridolfi dined and conferred with him more than once on the subject at Cecil House. De Spes was released from his captivity in Paget House (on the site of the present Essex Street, Strand), and allowed to take the Bishop of Winchester’s house instead; but on various pretexts, invented, as he says, by Cecil, the interminable negotiations about the restitution dragged on without much result, as Cecil evidently intended them to do. “We must have patience,” De Spes writes to Alba, “but the affair is greatly injured by Cecil’s having again got the upper hand in the government, without fear now that the other members may overthrow him, for he knows that they could not agree together for the purpose.”[304]

Whilst Cecil was temporising about the restitution, and dallying with the Spanish agents, he kept his hand on the pulse of the Catholic Lords. Arundel and his party had arranged that De Spes should once more be admitted to the Queen’s presence at Guildford, and then[236] go to a meeting of the conspirators at Nonsuch; but Cecil raised difficulties, and himself came to town specially to tell De Spes that the Queen could not receive him until he obtained fresh credentials direct from Spain. Cecil had apparently by this time (August 1569) won over the Earl of Pembroke; and Leicester himself had taken fright at the probable result of his plotting. His accomplices had gone beyond him. The rise of Norfolk and Mary under a Catholic regime would of course have meant extinction for Leicester, and though he was ready enough to ruin Cecil, he had no wish to be dragged down in his fall. “The Duke’s party,” writes De Spes, “and those who favour the Queen of Scotland, are incomparably the greater number.… I believe there will be some great event soon, as the people are much dissatisfied and distressed by want of trade, and these gentlemen of Nonsuch have some new imaginations in their heads.”

A few days after this was written, Norfolk received the ominous warning from the Queen at Titchfield, to “beware on what pillow he rested his head.” The Duke was a poor, weak creature, and instead of accompanying the Queen to Windsor, he fled into Norfolk, and from there wrote an apology to the Queen. Elizabeth’s answer was a peremptory summons for him to come to court, ill or well. He delayed, and the Queen, in a rage, sent and arrested him, confining him first at Burnham, near Windsor, and shortly afterwards in the Tower. How wise and moderate Cecil was under the circumstances, may be seen in his own letters. He knew better than any one that the conspiracy was primarily directed against him, as one of the conditions imposed upon Mary was stated to be that nothing should be done against Elizabeth;[305] yet this is how he[237] wrote to the Queen just before Norfolk was sent to the Tower[306] (9th October): “If the Duke shall be charged with the crime of treason, and shall not thereof be convicted, he shall not only save his credit, but increase it. And surely, without the facts may appear manifest within the compass of treason (which I cannot see how they can), he shall be acquitted of that charge; and better it were in the beginning to foresee the matter, than attempt it with discredit, and not without suspicion of evil will and malice. Wherefore I am bold to wish that your Majesty would show your intention only to inquire of the facts and circumstances, and not by any speech to note the same as treason. And if your Majesty would yourself consider the words of the statute evidencing treasons, I think you would so consider it.”

In a letter written by Cecil to Norris a few days before this,[307] he says that he had answered to the Queen, who was very angry with Norfolk, for the latter’s return; and he gives an account of the Duke’s plight and reported willingness to obey the Queen’s summons:[238] “whereof I am glad; first, for the respect of the State, and next for the Duke himself, whom of all subjects I honoured and loved above the rest, and surely found in him always matter so deserving. Whilst this matter hath been passing, you must not think but that the Queen of Scots was nearer looked to than before; and though evil willers of our State would gladly have seen some troublesome issue of this matter, yet, God be thanked, I trust they shall be deceived. The Queen hath willed Lord Arundel and Lord Pembroke to keep their lodgings here, for that they were privy to this marriage intended, and did not reveal it to her Majesty; but I think none of them did so with any evil meaning.[308] Of Lord Pembroke’s intent herein, I can witness that he meant nothing but well to the Queen’s Majesty. Lord Lumley is also restrained, and the Queen hath also been grievously offended with Lord Leicester, but considering that he hath revealed all that he sayeth he knoweth of himself, her Majesty spareth her displeasure more towards him. Some disquiets must arise, but I trust not hurtful, for that her Majesty sayeth she will know the truth, so as every one shall see his own fault, and so stay.” But for all Cecil’s diplomatic pleading, Norfolk went to the Tower, where, with feigned submission and lying protestations, he continued to plot with Mary Stuart and the enemies of England. The Catholics and Norfolk’s[239] friends, of course, threw the whole blame upon Cecil.[309]

Shortly before Norfolk’s arrest, De Spes, who was still in close communication with the northern Lords and the Duke’s friends, wrote to the King, anticipating a favourable result of the movement; “although, on the other hand, I observe that Cecil and his fellow-Protestants on the Council are still very much deluding themselves. Even now, with the peril before them, they will not come to reason, so firmly persuaded are they that their religion will prevail.” As soon as Arundel and his friends were placed under arrest, De Spes says that “every one cast the blame on Secretary Cecil, who conducts these affairs with great astuteness.” All would be lost, he said, by the Duke’s cowardice, and the Queen of Scots had sent to urge him to behave valiantly. But valour was no part of wretched Norfolk’s nature. A few days before the Duke was lodged in the Tower, an envoy of the northern Earls, headed by Northumberland, came to De Spes, promising to raise and capture the north country, release Mary, restore the Catholic religion, and return unconditionally all the Spanish property seized. They only asked in return that a few Spanish harquebussiers should be sent; and they dropped Norfolk out of their programme, looking to the Spaniards to provide a fit husband for Mary. “Whilst Cecil governs here, no good course can be expected, and the Duke of Norfolk[240] says that he wished to get him out of the government and change the guard of the Queen of Scotland before taking up arms. It is thought they will not dare to take the Duke to the Tower, though in this they may be deceived, because they who now rule are Protestants, and most of them creatures of Cecil.” The Secretary’s attitude in this matter has been treated somewhat at length, because it happens that material exists which shows conclusively how bitter and unjust were his enemies towards him, and how impossible it is to accept, without full examination, statements to his detriment, made even by men who were in daily communication with him.

In the middle of October the Catholic ferment in the north reached its height. The Queen had summoned Northumberland and Westmoreland, and they refused to obey. Without waiting for the Spanish aid for which they had stipulated, they entered Durham with 5000 foot and 1000 horse, and proclaimed the restoration of the Catholic faith. Cecil himself, giving an account of the rising to Norris,[310] says, “They have in their company priests of their faction, who, to please the people thereabouts, give them masses, and some such trash as the spoils and wastes where they have been.” Smashing communion-tables and devastating Protestant houses as they went, they advanced to Doncaster; but the Government had long foreseen the affair, and were ready to cope with it. Mary was hurried off, strongly guarded, to Coventry, out of the reach of the rebels. Lord Darcy repulsed one band; the Earl of Sussex, president of the north, held York against the main body; the wardens of the marches were well prepared and provided by Cecil’s foresight, and the country people in the great towns of the north were intimidated into quietude. On the[241] 24th December, Cecil could write: “Thank God, our northern rebellion is fallen flat to the ground and scattered away.[311] The Earls are fled into Northumberland, seeking all ways to escape, but they are roundly pursued, by Sir John Forster and Sir Henry Percy in one company, and Lord Sussex in another. The 16th December they broke up their sorry army, the 18th entered Northumberland, the 19th into the mountains; they scattered all their footmen, willing them to shift for themselves; and of a thousand horsemen there are left but five hundred. By this time they must be fewer, and, I trust, either taken or fled into Scotland, where the Earl of Murray is in good readiness to chase them to their ruin.”[312]

So ended, ignominiously, the only important armed revolt against Elizabeth in England, but the first of a long series of plots against the peace and independence of the nation, by which Mary Stuart from her captivity, English Catholics who prized their faith more than their country, and Spain and the Guises, for their own national or dynastic ends, sought to bend the neck of England once again to the yoke which the statecraft of Elizabeth and her great minister had enabled her to shake off.