1568 TO 1570.
Proceedings of the commissioners at York in the cause of
Mary.--Intrigues of the duke of Norfolk with the regent Murray.--The
conferences transferred to Westminster.--Mary's guilt disclosed.--Fresh
intrigues of Norfolk.--Conspiracy for procuring his marriage with
Mary.--Conduct of Throgmorton.--Attempt to ruin Cecil baffled by the
queen.--Endeavour of Sussex to reconcile Norfolk and Cecil.--Norfolk
betrayed by Leicester--his plot revealed--committed to the Tower.--Mary
given in charge to the earl of Huntingdon.--Remarks on this
subject.--Notice of Leonard Dacre--of the earls of Westmorland and
Northumberland.--Their rebellion.--Particulars of the Norton
family.--Severities exercised against the rebels.--Conduct of the earl
of Sussex.--Rising under Leonard Dacre.--His after-fortunes and those of
his family.--Expedition of the earl of Sussex into Scotland.--Murder of
regent Murray.--Influence of this event on the affairs of
Elizabeth.--Campaign in Scotland.--Papal bull against the
queen.--Trifling effect produced by it.--Attachment of the people to her
government.
The three commissioners named by Elizabeth to sit as judges in the great
cause between Mary and her subjects, of which she had been named the
umpire, were the duke of Norfolk, the earl of Sussex, and sir Ralph
Sadler, a very able negotiator and man of business. On the part of the
Scottish nation, the regent Murray, fearing to trust the cause in other
hands, appeared in person, attended by several men of talent and
consequence. The situation of Mary herself was not more critical or more
unprecedented, and scarcely more humiliating, than that in which Murray
was placed by her appeal to Elizabeth. Acting on behalf of the infant
king his nephew, he saw himself called upon to submit to the tribunal of
a foreign sovereign such proofs of the atrocious guilt of the queen his
sister; as should justify in the eyes of this sovereign, and in those of
Europe, the degradation of Mary from the exalted station which she was
born to fill, her imprisonment, her violent expulsion from the kingdom,
and her future banishment or captivity for life:--an attempt in which,
though successful, there was both disgrace to himself and detriment to
the honor and independence of his country; and from which, if
unsuccessful, he could contemplate nothing but certain ruin. Struck with
all the evils of this dilemma; with the danger of provoking beyond
forgiveness his own queen, whose restoration he still regarded as no
improbable event, and with the imprudence of relying implicitly on the
dubious protection of Elizabeth, Murray long hesitated to bring forward
the only charge dreaded by the illustrious prisoner,--that of having
conspired with Bothwell the murder of her husband.
In the mean time Maitland, a Scottish commissioner secretly attached to
Mary, found means to open a private communication with the duke of
Norfolk, and to suggest to this nobleman, now a widower for the third
time, the project of obtaining for himself the hand of Mary, and of
replacing her by force on the throne of her ancestors. The vanity of
Norfolk, artfully worked upon by the bishop of Ross, Mary's prime
agent, caused him to listen with complacency to this rash proposal; and
having once consented to entertain it, he naturally became earnest to
prevent Murray from preferring that heinous accusation which he had at
length apprized the English commissioners that he was provided with
ample means of substantiating. After some deliberation on the means of
effecting this object, he accordingly resolved upon the step of
discovering his views to the regent himself, and endeavouring to obtain
his concurrence. Murray, who seems to have felt little confidence in the
stability of the government of which he was the present head, and who
judged perhaps that the return of the queen as the wife of an English
protestant nobleman would afford the best prospect of safety to himself
and his party, readily acceded to the proposal, and consented still to
withhold the "damning proofs" of Mary's guilt which he held in his hand.
But neither the Scottish associates of Murray nor the English cabinet
were disposed to rest satisfied with this feeble and temporizing
conduct. Mary's commissioners too, emboldened by his apparent timidity,
of which the motives were probably not known to them all, began to push
their advantage in a manner which threatened final defeat to his party:
the queen of England artfuly incited him to proceed; and in spite of his
secret engagements with the duke and his own reluctance, he at length
saw himself compelled to let fall the long suspended stroke on the head
of Mary. He applied to the English court for encouragement and
protection in his perilous enterprise; and Elizabeth, being at length
suspicious of the intrigue which had hitherto baffled all her
expectations from the conferences at York, suddenly gave orders for the
removal of the queen of Scots from Bolton-castle and the superintendence
of lord Scrope, the duke's brother-in-law, to the more secure situation
of Tutbury-castle in Staffordshire and the vigilant custody of the earl
of Shrewsbury. At the same time she found pretexts for transferring the
conferences from York to Westminster, and added to the number of her
commissioners sir Nicholas Bacon, lord-keeper, the earls of Arundel and
Leicester, lord Clinton, and Cecil.
Anxious to preserve an air of impartiality, Elizabeth declined giving to
the regent all the assurances for his future security which he required;
but on his arrival in London she extended to him a reception equally
kind and respectful, and by alternate caresses and hints of intimidation
she gradually led him on to the production of the fatal casket
containing the letters of Mary to Bothwell, by which her participation
in the murder of her husband was clearly proved.
After steps on the part of his sovereign from which the duke might have
inferred her knowledge of his secret machinations; after discoveries
respecting the conduct of Mary which impeached her of guilt so heinous,
and covered her with infamy so indelible; prudence and honor alike
required that he should abandon for ever the thought of linking his
destiny with hers. But in the light and unbalanced mind of Norfolk, the
ambition of matching with royalty unfortunately preponderated over all
other considerations: he speedily began to weave anew the tissue of
intrigue which the removal of the conferences had broken off; and
turning once more with fond credulity to Murray, by whom his cause had
been before deserted, he again put confidence in his assurances that the
marriage-project had his hearty approbation, and should receive his
effectual support. Melvil informs us that this fresh compact was brought
about by sir Nicholas Throgmorton, "being a man of a deep reach and
great prudence and discretion, who had ever travelled for the union of
this isle." But notwithstanding his "deep reach," he was certainly
imposed upon in this affair; for the regent, insincere perhaps from the
beginning, had now no other object than to secure his present personal
safety by lavishing promises which he had no intention to fulfil.
Melvil, who attended him on his return to Scotland, thus explains the
secret of his conduct: "At that time the duke commanded over all the
north parts of England, where our mistress was kept, and so might have
taken her out when he pleased. And when he was angry at the regent, he
had appointed the earl of Westmorland to lie in his way, and cut off
himself and so many of his company as were most bent upon the queen's
accusation. But after the last agreement, the duke sent and discharged
the said earl from doing us any harm; yet upon our return the earl came
in our way with a great company of horse, to signify to us that we were
at his mercy."
It is difficult to believe, notwithstanding this positive testimony,
that the duke of Norfolk, a man of mild dispositions and guided in the
main by religion and conscience, would have hazarded, or would not have
scrupled, so atrocious, so inexpiable an act of violence, as that of
cutting off the regent of Scotland returning to his own country under
sanction of the public faith and the express protection of the queen:
but he may have indulged himself in vague menaces, which Westmorland, a
bigoted papist, ripe for rebellion against the government of Elizabeth,
would have felt little reluctance to carry into effect, and thus the
regent's duplicity might in fact be prompted and excused to himself by a
principle of self-defence.
Whatever degree of confidence Norfolk and his advisers might place in
Murray's sincerity, they were well aware that other steps must be taken,
and other confederates engaged, before the grand affair of the marriage
could be put in a train to ensure its final success. There was no
immediate prospect of Mary's regaining her liberty by means of the queen
of England, or with her concurrence; for since the production of the
great charge against her, to which she had instructed her commissioners
to decline making any answer, Elizabeth had regarded her as one who had
suffered judgement to go against her by default, and began to treat her
accordingly. Her confinement was rendered more rigorous, and henceforth
the still pending negotiations respecting her return to her own country
were carried on with a slackness which evidently proceeded from the
dread of Mary, and the reluctance of Elizabeth, to bring to a decided
determination a business which could not now be ended either with credit
or advantage to the deposed queen.
Elizabeth had dismissed the regent to his government without open
approbation of his conduct as without censure; but he had received from
her in private an important supply of money, and such other effectual
aids as not only served to establish the present preponderance of his
authority, but would enable him, it was thought, successfully to
withstand all future attempts for the restoration of Mary. Evidently
then it was only by the raising of a formidable party in the English
court that any thing could be effected in behalf of the royal captive;
but her agents and those of the duke assured themselves that ample means
were in their hands for setting this machine in action.
Elizabeth, it was now thought, would not marry: the queen of Scots was
generally admitted to be her legal heir; and it appeared highly
important to the welfare of England that she should not transfer her
claims, with her hand, to any of the more powerful princes of Europe;
consequently the duke entertained little doubt of uniting in favor of
his suit the suffrages of all those leading characters in the English
court who had formerly conveyed to Mary assurances of their attachment
to her title and interests. His own influence amongst the nobility was
very considerable, and he readily obtained the concurrence of the earl
of Pembroke, the earl of Arundel (his first wife's father), and lord
Lumley (a catholic peer closely connected with the house of Howard). The
design was now imparted to Leicester, who entered into it with an
ostentation of affectionate zeal which ought perhaps to have alarmed the
too credulous duke. As if impatient to give an undeniable pledge of his
sincerity, he undertook to draw up with his own hand a letter to the
queen of Scots, warmly recommending the duke to her matrimonial choice,
which immediately received the signatures of the three nobles above
mentioned and the rest of the confederates. By these subscribers it was
distinctly stipulated, that the union should not take place without the
knowledge and approbation of the queen of England, and that the reformed
religion should be maintained in both the British kingdoms;--conditions
by which they at first perhaps believed that they had provided
sufficiently for the interests of Elizabeth and of protestantism: it was
however immediately obvious that the duke and his agents had the design
of concealing carefully all their measures from their sovereign, till
the party should have gained such strength that it would no longer be
safe for her to refuse a consent which it was well known that she would
always be unwilling to grant.
But when, on encouragement being given by Mary to the hopes of her
suitor, the kings of France and Spain, and even the Pope himself, were
made privy to the scheme and pledged to give it their assistance, all
its English, and especially all its protestant supporters, ought to have
been aware that their undertaking was assuming the form of a conspiracy
with the enemies of their queen and country against her government and
personal safety; against the public peace, and the religion by law
established; and nothing can excuse the blindness, or palliate the
guilt, of their perseverance in a course so perilous and so crooked.
Private interests were doubtless at the bottom with most or all of the
participators in this affair who were not papists; and those,--they were
not a few,--who envied or who feared the influence and authority of
Cecil, eagerly seized the occasion to array against him a body of
hostility by which they trusted to work his final and irretrievable
ruin.
It seems to have been by an ambitious rivalry with the secretary, that
sir Nicholas Throgmorton, whose early life had exhibited so bold a
spirit of resistance to tyranny and popery when triumphant and
enthroned, had been carried into a faction which all his principles
ought to have rendered odious to him. In his intercourses with the queen
of Scots as ambassador from Elizabeth, he had already shown himself her
zealous partisan. In advising her to sign for her safety the deed of
abdication tendered to her at Loch-Leven, he had basely suggested that
the compulsion under which she acted would excuse her from regarding it
as binding: to the English crown he also regarded her future title as
incontrovertible. He now represented to his party, that Cecil was
secretly inclined to the house of Suffolk; and that no measure favorable
to the reputation or authority of the queen of Scots could be carried
whilst he enjoyed the confidence of his mistress. By these suggestions,
the duke, unfortunately for himself, was led to sanction an attempt
against the power and reputation of this great minister.
Leicester, who had long hated his virtues; the old corrupt statesmen
Winchester, Pembroke, and Arundel; and the discontented catholic peers
Northumberland and Westmorland, eagerly joined in the plot. It was
agreed to attack the secretary in the privy-council, on the ground of
his having advised the detention of the money going into the Low
Countries for the service of the king of Spain, and thus exposing the
nation to the danger of a war with this potentate; and Throgmorton is
said to have advised that, whatever he answered, they should find some
pretext for sending him to the Tower; after which, he said, it would be
easy to compass his overthrow.
But the penetration of Elizabeth enabled her to appretiate justly, with
a single exception, the principles, characters, and motives of all her
servants; and she knew that, while his enemies were exclusively attached
to their own interests, Cecil was attached also to the interests of his
prince, his country, and his religion; that while others,--with that
far-sighted selfishness which involves men in so many intrigues, usually
rendered fruitless or needless by the after-course of events,--were bent
on securing to themselves the good graces of her successor, he was
content to depend on her alone; that while others were the courtiers,
the flatterers, or the ministers, of the queen, he, and perhaps he only,
was the friend of Elizabeth. All the rest she knew that she could
replace at a moment;--him never. Secret information was carried to her
of all that her council were contriving, and had almost executed,
against the secretary: full of indignation she hurried to their meeting,
where she was not expected, and by her peremptory mandate put an instant
stop to their proceedings; making Leicester himself sensible, by a
warmth which did her honor, that the man who held the first place in her
esteem was by no one to be injured with impunity.
The earl of Sussex, the true friend of Norfolk, and never his abettor in
designs of which his sober judgement could discern all the criminality
and all the rashness, was grieved to the soul that the artifices of his
followers should have set him at variance with Cecil. He was doubtless
aware of the advantage which their disagreement would minister against
them both to the malignant Leicester, his and their common enemy; and
trembling for the safety of the duke and the welfare of both, he
addressed to the secretary, from the north, where he was then occupied
in the queen's service, a letter on the subject, eloquent by its
uncommon earnestness.
He tells him that he knows not the occasion of the coldness between him
and the duke, of which he had acknowledged the existence; but that he
cannot believe other, esteeming both parties as he does, than that it
must have had its origin in misrepresentation and the ill offices of
their enemies; and he implores him, as the general remedy of all such
differences, to resort to a full and fair explanation with the duke
himself, in whom he will find "honor, truth, wisdom and plainness."
These excellent exhortations were not without effect: it is probable
that the incautious duke had either been led inadvertently or dragged
unwillingly, by his faction, into the plot against the secretary, whose
ruin he was not likely to have sought from any personal motive of
enmity; and accordingly a few weeks after (June 1569) we find Sussex
congratulating Cecil, in a second letter, on a reconciliation between
them which he trusts will prove entire and permanent[68].
[Note 68: "Illustrations" &c. by Lodge, vol. ii.]
Hitherto the queen had preserved so profound a silence respecting the
intrigues of the duke, that he flattered himself she was without a
suspicion of their existence; but this illusion was soon to vanish. In
August 1569, the queen being at Farnham in her progress and the duke in
attendance on her, she took him to dine with her, and in the course of
conversation found occasion, "without any show of displeasure," but with
sufficient significance of manner, to give him the advice, "to be very
careful on what pillow he rested his head." Afterwards she cautioned him
in plain terms against entering into any marriage treaty with the queen
of Scots. The duke, in his first surprise, made no scruple to promise on
his allegiance that he would entertain no thoughts of her; he even
affected to speak of such a connexion with disdain, declaring that he
esteemed his lands in England worth nearly as much as the whole kingdom
of Scotland, wasted as it was by wars and tumults, and that in his
tennis-court at Norwich he reckoned himself equal to many a
prince.--These demonstrations were all insincere; the duke remained
steady to his purpose, and his correspondence with the queen of Scots
was not for a single day intermitted in submission to his Sovereign. But
he felt that it was now time to take off the mask; and fully confiding
in the strength of his party, he requested the earl of Leicester
immediately to open the marriage proposal to her majesty, and solicit
her consent. This the favorite promised, but for his own ends continued
to defer the business from day to day.
Cecil, who had recently been taken into the consultations of the duke,
urged upon him with great force the expediency of being himself the
first to name his wishes to the queen; but Norfolk, either from
timidity, or, more probably, from an ill-founded reliance on Leicester's
sincerity, and a distrust, equally misplaced, of that of Cecil, whom he
was conscious of having ill treated, neglected to avail himself of this
wise and friendly counsel, by which he might yet have been preserved.
Leicester, who watched all his motions, was at length satisfied that his
purpose was effected,--the victim was inveigled beyond the power of
retreat or escape, and it was time for the decoy-bird to slip out of the
snare.
He summoned to his aid a fit of sickness, the never-failing resource of
the courtiers of Elizabeth in case of need. His pitying mistress, as he
had doubtless anticipated, hastened to pay him a charitable visit at his
own house, and he then suffered her to discover that his malady was
occasioned by some momentous secret which weighed upon his spirits; and
after due ostentation of penitence and concern, at length revealed to
her the whole of the negotiations for the marriage of the duke with the
queen of Scots, including the part which he had himself taken in that
business.
Elizabeth, who seems by no means to have suspected that matters had gone
so far, or that so many of her nobles were implicated in this
transaction, was moved with indignation, and commanded the immediate
attendance of the duke, who, conscious of his delinquency, and
disquieted by the change which he thought he had observed in the
countenance of her majesty and the carriage towards him of his brother
peers, had sometime before quitted the court, and retired first to his
house in London, and afterwards to his seat of Kenninghall in Norfolk.
The duke delayed to appear, not daring to trust himself in the hands of
his offended sovereign; and after a short delay, procured for him by the
compassion of Cecil, who persisted in assuring the queen that he would
doubtless come shortly of his own accord, a messenger was sent to bring
him up to London. This messenger, on his arrival, found the duke
apparently, and perhaps really, laboring under a violent ague; and he
suffered himself to be prevailed upon to accept his solemn promise of
appearing at court as soon as he should be able to travel, and to return
without him.
Meanwhile the queen, now bent upon sifting this matter to the bottom,
had written to require the Scottish regent to inform her of the share
which he had taken in the intrigue, and whatever else he knew respecting
it. Murray had become fully aware how much more important it was to his
interests to preserve the favor and friendship of Elizabeth than to aim
at keeping any measures with Mary, by whom he was now hated with extreme
bitterness; and learning that the confidence of the duke had already
been betrayed by the earl of Leicester, he made no scruple of
acquainting her with all the particulars in which he was immediately
concerned.
It thus became known to Elizabeth, that as early as the conferences at
York, the regent had been compelled, by threats of personal violence on
his return to Scotland, to close with the proposals of the duke relative
to his marriage;--that it was with a view to this union that Mary had
solicited from the states of Scotland a sentence of divorce from
Bothwell, which Murray by the exertion of his influence had induced them
to refuse, and thus delayed the completion of the contract: but it
appeared from other evidence, that written promises of marriage had
actually been exchanged between the duke and Mary, and committed to the
safe keeping of the French ambassador. It was also found to be a part of
the scheme to betroth the infant king of Scots to a daughter of the duke
of Norfolk.
The anger of Elizabeth disdained to be longer trifled with; and she
dispatched a messenger with peremptory orders to bring up the duke, "his
ague notwithstanding," who found him already preparing to set out on his
journey. Cecil in one of his letters to sir Henry Norris, dated October
1569, relates these circumstances at length, and expresses his
satisfaction in the last, both for the sake of the state and of the
duke himself, whom, of all subjects, he declares he most loved and
honored. He then proceeds thus: "The queen's majesty hath willed the
earl of Arundel and my lord of Pembroke to keep their lodgings here, for
that they were privy of this marriage intended, and did not reveal it to
her majesty; but I think none of them did so with any evil meaning, and
of my lord of Pembroke's intent herein I can witness, that he meant
nothing but well to the queen's majesty; my lord Lumley is also
restrained: the queen's majesty hath also been grievously offended with
my lord of Leicester; but considering that he hath revealed all that he
saith he knoweth of himself, her majesty spareth her displeasure the
more towards him. Some disquiets must arise, but I trust not hurtful;
for her majesty saith she will know the truth, so as every one shall see
his own fault, and so stay.... My lord of Huntingdon is joined with the
earl of Shrewsbury for the Scots queen's safety. Whilst this matter was
in passing, you must not think but the queen of Scots was nearer looked
to than before."
The duke on his arrival was committed to the Tower; but neither against
him nor any of his adherents did the queen think proper to proceed by
course of law, and they were all liberated after a restraint of longer
or shorter duration.
It is proper to mention, that the adherents of Mary in her own time, and
various writers since, have conspired to cast severe reflections upon
Elizabeth for committing her to the joint custody of the earl of
Huntingdon, because this nobleman, being descended by his mother, a
daughter of Henry Pole lord Montacute, from the house of Clarence, was
supposed to put his right of succession to the crown in competition with
hers, and therefore to entertain against her peculiar animosity. But on
the part of Elizabeth it may be observed, First, that there is not the
slightest ground to suspect that this nobleman, who was childless,
entertained the most distant idea of reviving the obsolete claims of his
family; and certainly if Elizabeth had suspected him of it, he would
never have held so high a place in her confidence. Secondly, nothing
less than the death of Mary would have served any designs that he might
have formed; and by joining him in commission with others for her safe
keeping, Elizabeth will scarcely be said to have put it in his power to
make away with her. Thirdly, the very writers who complain of the
vigilance and strictness with which the queen of Scots was now guarded,
all acknowledge that nothing less could have baffled the plans of escape
which the zeal of her partisans was continually setting on foot. Amongst
the warmest of these partisans was Leonard Dacre, a gentleman whose
personal qualities, whose errors, injuries and misfortunes, all conspire
to render him an object of attention, illustrative as they also are of
the practices and sentiments of his age.
Leonard was the second son of William lord Dacre of Gilsland, descended
from the ancient barons Vaux who had held lordships in Cumberland from
the days of the Conqueror.
In 1568, on the death without issue of his nephew, a minor in wardship
to the duke of Norfolk, Leonard as heir male laid claim to the title and
family estates, but the three sisters of the last lord disputed with him
this valuable succession; and being supported by the interest of the
duke of Norfolk their step-father, to whose three sons they were
married, they found means to defeat the claims of their uncle, though
indisputably good in law;--one instance in a thousand of the scandalous
partiality towards the rich and powerful exhibited in the legal
decisions of that age.
Stung with resentment against the government and the queen herself, by
whom justice had been denied him, Leonard Dacre threw himself, with all
the impetuosity of his character, into the measures of the malcontents
and the interests of the queen of Scots, and he laid a daring plan for
her deliverance from Tutbury-castle. This plan the duke on its being
communicated to him had vehemently opposed, partly from his repugnance
to measures of violence, partly from the apprehension that Mary, when at
liberty, might fall into the hands of a foreign and catholic party, and
desert her engagements with him for a marriage with the king of Spain.
Dacre, however, was not to be diverted from his design, especially by
the man with whom he was at open enmity, and he assembled a troop of
horse for its execution; but suspicions had probably been excited, and
the sudden removal of the prisoner to Wingfield frustrated all his
measures.
This was not the only attempt of that turbulent and dangerous faction of
which the inconsiderate ambition of the duke had rendered him nominally
the head but really the tool and victim, which he had now the grief to
find himself utterly unable to guide or restrain.
The earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, heads of the ancient and
warlike families of Percy and Nevil, were the first to break that
internal tranquillity which the kingdom had hitherto enjoyed, without
the slightest interruption, under the wise and vigorous rule of
Elizabeth. The remoteness of these noblemen from the court and capital,
with the poverty and consequent simplicity, almost barbarism, of the
vassals over whom they bore sway, and whose homage they received like
native and independent princes, appears to have nourished in their minds
ideas of their own importance better suited to the period of the wars of
the Roses than to the happier age of peace and order which had
succeeded.
The offended pride of the earl of Westmorland, a man destitute in fact
of every kind of talent, seems on some occasion to have conducted him to
the discovery that at the court of Elizabeth the representative of the
king-making Warwick was a person of very slender consideration. The
failure of the grand attack upon the secretary, in which he had taken
part, confirmed this mortifying impression; and the committal of his
brother-in-law, the great and powerful duke of Norfolk himself, must
subsequently have carried home to the bottom of his heart unwilling
conviction that the preponderance of the ancient aristocracy of the
country was subverted, and its proudest chieftains fast sinking to the
common level of subjects. His attachment to the religion, with the
other practices and prejudices of former ages, gave additional
exasperation to his discontent against the established order of things:
the incessant invectives of Romish priests against a princess whom the
pope was on the point of anathematizing, represented the cause of her
enemies as that of Heaven itself; and the spirit of the earl was roused
at length to seek full vengeance for all the injuries sustained by his
pride, his interests, or his principles.
Every motive of disaffection which wrought upon the mind of Westmorland,
affected equally the earl of Northumberland; and to the cause of popery
the latter was still further pledged by the example and fate of his
father, that sir Thomas Percy who had perished on the scaffold for his
share in Aske's rebellion. The attainder of sir Thomas had debarred his
son from succeeding to the titles and estates of the last unhappy earl
his uncle, and he had suffered the mortification of seeing them go to
raise the fortunes of the house of Dudley; but on the accession of Mary,
by whom his father was regarded as a martyr, he had been restored to all
the honors of his birth, and treated with a degree of favor which could
not but strengthen his predilection for the faith of which she was the
patroness. It appears, however, that the attachment of the earl to the
cause of popery had not on all occasions been proof against immediate
personal interest. Soon after the marriage of the queen of Scots with
Darnley, that rash and ill-judging pair esteeming their authority in the
country sufficiently established to enable them to venture on an
attempt for the restoration of the old religion, the pope, in
furtherance of their pious designs, had remitted the sum of eight
thousand crowns. "But the ship wherein the said gold was," says James
Melvil in his memoirs, "did shipwrack upon the coast of England, within
the earl of Northumberland's bounds, who alleged the whole to appertain
to him by just law, which he caused his advocate to read unto me, when I
was directed to him for the demanding restitution of the said sum, in
the old Norman language, which neither he nor I understood well, it was
so corrupt. But all my entreaties were ineffectual, he altogether
refusing to give any part thereof to the queen, albeit he was himself a
catholic, and professed secretly to be her friend." And through this
disappointment Mary was compelled to give up her design.
An additional trait of the earl's character is furnished by the same
author, in transcribing the instructions which he carried home from his
brother sir Robert Melvil, then ambassador to England, on his return
from that country, after announcing the birth of the prince of Scotland.
"_Item_, that her majesty cast not off the earl of Northumberland,
albeit as a fearful and facile man he delivered her letter to the queen
of England; neither appear to find fault with sir Henry Percy as yet for
his dealing with Mr. Ruxbie," (an English spy in Scotland) "which he
doth to gain favor at court, being upon a contrary faction to his
brother the earl."
The machinations of the two earls, however cautiously carried on, did
not entirely escape the penetration of the earl of Sussex, lord
president of the north, who sent for them both and subjected them to
some kind of examination; but no sufficient cause for their detention
then appearing, he dismissed them, hoping probably that the warning
would prove efficacious in securing their peaceable behaviour. In this
idea, however, he was deceived: on their return they instantly resumed
their mischievous designs; and they were actually preparing for an
insurrection, which was to be supported by troops from Flanders promised
by the duke of Alva, when a summons from the queen for their immediate
attendance at court disconcerted all their measures.
To comply with the command seemed madness in men who were conscious that
their proceedings had already amounted to high treason;--but to refuse
obedience, and thus set at defiance a power to which they were as yet
unprepared to oppose any effectual resistance, seemed equally desperate.
They hesitated; and it is said that the irresolution of Northumberland
was only ended by the stratagem of some of his dependents, who waked him
one night with a false alarm that his enemies were upon him, and thus
hurried him into the irretrievable step of quitting his home and joining
Westmorland, on which the country flocked in for their defence, and they
found themselves compelled to raise their standard.
The enterprise immediately assumed the aspect of a Holy War, or crusade
against heresy: on the banners of the insurgents were displayed the
cross, the five wounds of Christ, and the cup of the eucharist: mass
was regularly performed in their camp; and on reaching Durham, they
carried off from the cathedral and committed to the flames the bible and
the English service books.
The want of money to purchase provisions compelled the earls to
relinquish their first idea of marching to London; they took however a
neighbouring castle, and remained masters of the country as long as no
army appeared to oppose them; but on the approach of the earl of Sussex
and lord Hunsdon from York, with a large body of troops, they gradually
retreated to the Scotch borders; and there disbanded their men without a
blow. The earl of Westmorland finally made his escape to Flanders, where
he dragged out a tedious existence in poverty and obscurity, barely
supplied with the necessaries of life by a slender pension from the king
of Spain. Northumberland, being betrayed for a reward by a Scottish
borderer to whom, as to a friend, he had fled for refuge, was at length
delivered up by the regent Morton to the English government, and was
beheaded at York.
Posterity is not called upon to respect the memory of these rebellious
earls as martyrs even to a mistaken zeal for the good of their country,
or to any other generous principle of action. The objects of their
enterprise, as assigned by themselves, were the restoration of the old
religion, the removal of evil counsellors, and the liberation of the
duke of Norfolk and other imprisoned nobles. But even their attachment
to popery appears to have been entirely subservient to their views of
personal interest; and so little was the duke inclined to blend his
cause with theirs, that he exerted himself in every mode that his
situation would permit to strengthen the hands of government for their
overthrow; and it was in consideration of the loyal spirit manifested by
him on occasion of this rebellion, and of a subsequent rising in
Norfolk, that he soon after obtained his liberty on a solemn promise to
renounce all connexion with the queen of Scots.
In the northern counties, however, the cause and the persons of the two
earls, who had well maintained the hospitable fame of their great
ancestors, were alike the objects of popular attachment: the miserable
destiny of the outlawed and ruined Westmorland, and the untimely end of
Northumberland through the perfidy of the false friend in whom he had
put his trust, were long remembered with pity and indignation, and many
a minstrel "tuned his rude harp of border frame" to the fall of the
Percy or the wanderings of the Nevil. There was also an ancient
gentleman named Norton, of Norton in Yorkshire, who bore the banner of
the cross and the five wounds before the rebel army, whose tragic fall,
with that of his eight sons, has received such commemoration and
embellishment as the pathetic strains of a nameless but probably
contemporary bard could bestow. The excellent ballad entitled "The
Rising in the North[69]" impressively describes the mission of Percy's
"little foot page" to Norton, to pray that he will "ride in his
company;" the council held by Richard Norton with his nine sons, when
"Eight of them did answer make,
Eight of them spake hastily,
O father! till the day we die
We'll stand by that good earl and thee;"
while Francis, the eldest, seeks to dissuade his father from rebellion,
but finding him resolved, offers to accompany him "unarmed and naked."
Their standard is then mentioned: and after recording the flight of the
two earls, the minstrel adds,
"Thee Norton with thine eight good sons
They doomed to die, alas for ruth!
Thy reverend locks thee could not save,
Nor them their fair and blooming youth!"
[Note 69: See Percy's "Reliques," vol. ii.]
But how slender is the authority of a poet in matters of history! It is
quite certain that Richard Norton did not perish by the hands of the
executioner, and it is uncertain whether any one of his sons did. It is
true that the old man with three more of the family was attainted, that
his great estates were confiscated, and that he ended his days a
miserable exile in Flanders. We also know that two gentlemen of the name
of Norton were hanged at London: but some authorities make them brothers
of the head of the family; and two of the sons of Richard Norton,
Francis, and Edmund ancestor of the present lord Grantley, certainly
lived and died in peace on their estates in Yorkshire.
It is little to the honor of Elizabeth's clemency, that a rebellion
suppressed almost without bloodshed should have been judged by her to
justify and require the unmitigated exercise of martial law over the
whole of the disaffected country. Sir John Bowes, marshal of the army,
made it his boast, that in a tract sixty miles in length and forty in
breadth, there was scarcely a town or village where he had not put some
to death; and at Durham the earl of Sussex caused sixty-three constables
to be hanged at once;--a severity of which it should appear that he was
the unwilling instrument; for in a letter written soon after to Cecil he
complains, that during part of the time of his command in the north he
had nothing left to him "but to direct hanging matters." But the
situation of this nobleman at the time was such as would by no means
permit him at his own peril to suspend or evade the execution of such
orders as he received from court. Egremond Ratcliffe his half-brother
was one of about forty noblemen and gentlemen attainted for their
concern in this rebellion; he had in the earl of Leicester an enemy
equally vindictive and powerful; and some secret informations had
infused into the mind of the queen a suspicion that there had been some
wilful slackness in his proceedings against the insurgents. There was
however at the bottom of Elizabeth's heart a conviction of the truth and
loyalty of her kinsman which could not be eradicated, and he soon after
took a spirited step which disconcerted entirely the measures of his
enemies, and placed him higher than ever in her confidence and esteem.
Cecil thus relates the circumstance in one of his letters to Norris,
dated February 1570.
"The earl of Sussex... upon desire to see her majesty, came hither
unlooked for; and although, in the beginning of this northern rebellion,
her majesty sometimes uttered some misliking of the earl, yet this day
she, meaning to deal very princely with him, in presence of her council,
charged him with such things as she had heard to cause her misliking,
without any note of mistrust towards him for his fidelity; whereupon he
did with such humbleness, wisdom, plainness and dexterity, answer her
majesty, as both she and all the rest were fully satisfied, and he
adjudged by good proofs to have served in all this time faithfully, and
so circumspectly, as it manifestly appeareth that if he had not so used
himself in the beginning, the whole north part had entered into the
rebellion."
A formidable mass of discontent did in fact subsist among the catholics
of the north, and it was not long before a new and more daring leader
found means to set it again in fierce and violent action.
Leonard Dacre had found no opportunity to take part in the enterprise of
the two earls, though a deep participator in their counsels; for knowing
that their design could not yet be ripe for execution, and foreseeing as
little as the rest of the faction those measures of the queen by which
their affairs were prematurely brought to a crisis, he had proceeded to
court on his private concerns, and was there amusing her majesty with
protestations of his unalterable fidelity and attachment, while his
associates in the north were placing their lands and lives on the hazard
of rebellion. Learning on his journey homewards the total discomfiture
of the earls, he carefully preserved the semblance of a zealous
loyalty, till, having armed the retainers of his family on pretence of
preserving the country in the queen's obedience, and having strongly
garrisoned its hereditary castles of Naworth and Greystock, which he
wrested from the custody of the Howards, he declared himself, and broke
out into violent rebellion.
The late severities had rather exasperated than subdued the spirit of
disaffection in this neighbourhood, and three thousand men ranged
themselves under the scallop-shells of Dacre;--a well known ensign which
from age to age had marshalled the hardy borderers to deeds of warlike
prowess. Lord Hunsdon, the governor of Berwick, marched promptly forth
with all the force he could muster to disperse the rebels; but this time
they stood firmly on the banks of the little river Gelt, to give him
battle. Such indeed was the height of fanaticism or despair to which
these unhappy people were wrought up, that the phrensy gained the softer
sex; and there were seen in their ranks, says the chronicler, "many
desperate women that gave the adventure of their lives, and fought right
stoutly." After a sharp action in which about three hundred were left
dead on the field, victory at length declared for the queen's troops;
and Leonard Dacre, who had bravely sustained, notwithstanding the
deformity of his person, the part of soldier as well as general, seeing
that all was lost, turned his horse's head and rode off full speed for
Scotland, whence he passed into Flanders and took up at Lovain his
melancholy abode.
The treason of this unfortunate gentleman was, it must be confessed,
both notorious and heinous; and had he been intercepted in making his
escape, no blame could have attached to Elizabeth in exacting the full
penalty of his offence. But when, five-and-twenty years after this time,
we find his aged mother at court "an earnest suitor" for the pardon of
her two sons[70]; obtaining, probably by costly bribes, a promise of
admission to the queen's presence, and at length gaining nothing
more,--it is impossible not to blame or lament that relentless severity
of temper which rendered Elizabeth so much a stranger to the fairest
attribute of sovereign power. The case of Francis Dacre indeed was one
which ought to have appealed to her sense of justice rather than to her
feelings of mercy. This gentleman, after the expatriation and attainder
of his elder brother, had prosecuted at law the claims to the honors and
lands of the barony of Gilsland which had thus devolved upon him; but
being baffled in all his appeals to the equity of the courts, he had
withdrawn in disgust to Flanders, and on this account suffered a
sentence of outlawry. He lived and died in exile, leaving a son, named
Ranulph, heir only to poverty and misfortunes, to noble blood, and to
rights which he was destitute of the power of rendering available. Lord
Dacre of the south, as he was usually called, settled on this poor man,
his very distant relation, a small annuity; and on his death the
following lord Dacre, becoming the heir male of the family, received by
way of compromise from the Howards no less than thirteen manors which
they had enjoyed to the prejudice of Leonard Dacre, of his brother and
of his nephew.
[Note 70: Letter of R. Whyte in "Sidney Papers."]
On the suppression of this second rising in the north, the queen, better
advised or instructed by experience, granted a general pardon to all but
its leader; and such was the effect of this lenity, or of the example of
repeated failure on the part of the insurgents, that the internal
tranquillity of her kingdom was never more disturbed from this quarter,
the most dangerous of all from the vicinity of Scotland.
The earl of Sussex had been kept for some time in a state of
dissatisfaction, as appears from one of his letters to Cecil, by her
majesty's dilatoriness in conferring upon him such a mark of her special
favor as she had graciously promised at the conclusion of his
satisfactory defence of himself before the council; but she appeased at
length his wounded feelings, by admitting him to the council-board and
giving him the command of a strong force appointed to act on the
Scottish border.
The occasion for this military movement arose out of the tragical
incident of the assassination of the regent Murray, which had proved the
signal for a furious inroad upon the English limits by some of the
southern clans, who found themselves immediately released from the
restraints of an administration vigorous enough to make the lawless
tremble. Sussex was ordered to chastize their insolence; and he
performed the task thoroughly and pitilessly, laying waste with fire and
sword the whole obnoxious district.
Besides recognising in Murray a valuable coadjutor, neighbour and ally,
Elizabeth appears to have loved and esteemed him as a man and a friend,
and she bewailed his death with an excess of dejection honorable surely
to her feelings, though regarded by some as derogatory from the dignity
of her station. It was indeed an event which broke all her measures, and
which, at a period when difficulties and dangers were besetting her on
all hands, added fresh embarrassment to her perplexity and presented new
chances of evil to her fears. What degree of compunction she felt for
her unjustifiable detention of Mary may be doubtful; but it is certain
that her mind was now shaken with perpetual terrors and anxieties for
the consequences of that irrevocable step, and that there was nothing
which she more earnestly desired than to transfer to other hands the
custody of so dangerous a prisoner.
She had nearly concluded an agreement for this purpose with Murray, to
whom she was to have surrendered the person of the captive queen,
receiving six Scottish noblemen as hostages for her safe keeping; and
though the interference of the French and Spanish ambassadors had
obliged her to suspend its execution, there is no reason to suppose that
the design was relinquished, when this unexpected stroke rendered it for
ever impracticable. The regency of Scotland, too, was now to be
contested by the enraged factions of that distracted country, and it was
of great importance to Elizabeth that the victory should fall to the
party of the young king; yet such were the perplexities of her political
situation, that it was some time before she could satisfy herself that
there would not be too great a hazard in supporting by arms the
election of the earl of Lenox, to whom she gave her interest.
Her first recourse was to her favorite arts of intrigue; and she sent
Randolph, her chosen instrument for these occasions, to tamper with
various party-leaders, while Sussex, whose character inclined him more
to measures of coercion, exhorted her to put an end to her irresolution
and throw the sword into the scale of Lenox. She at length found reason
to adopt this counsel; and the earl, re-entering Scotland with his army,
laid waste the lands and took or destroyed the castles of Mary's
adherents.
Sir William Drury, marshal of the army, was afterwards sent further into
the country to chastize the Hamiltons, of which clan was the assassin of
Murray.
The contemporary accounts of this expedition, amid many lamentable
particulars of ravages committed, afford one amusing trait of manners.
Lord Fleming, who held out Dumbarton castle for the queen of Scots, had
demanded a parley with sir William Drury, during which he treacherously
caused him to be fired upon; happily without effect. Sir George Cary,
burning to avenge the injury offered to his commander, sent immediately
a letter of defiance to lord Fleming, challenging him to meet him in
single combat on this quarrel, when, where and how he dares; concluding
thus: "Otherwise I will baffle your good name, sound with the trumpet
your dishonor, and paint your picture with the heels upward and bear it
in despite of yourself." That this was not the only species of affront
to which portraits were in these days exposed, we learn from an
expression of Ben Jonson's:--"Take as unpardonable offence as if he had
torn your mistress's colors, or _breathed on her picture_[71]."
[Note 71: See "Every Man out of his Humour."]
The Scotch war was terminated a few months after, by an agreement
between Elizabeth and Mary, by virtue of which the former consented to
withdraw her troops from the country on the engagement of the latter
that no French forces should enter it in support of her title. After
this settlement, Elizabeth returned to her usual ambiguous dealing in
the affairs of Scotland; and so far from insisting that Lenox should be
named regent, she sent a request to the heads of the king's party that
they would refrain for a time from the nomination of any person to that
office. In consequence of this mandate, which they dared not disobey,
Lenox was only chosen lieutenant for a time; an appointment which served
equally well the purposes of the English queen.
Connected with all the other measures adopted by the zeal of the great
catholic combination for the destruction of Elizabeth and the ruin of
the protestant cause, was one from which their own narrow prejudices or
sanguine wishes, rather than any just views of the state of public
opinion in England, led them to anticipate important results. This was
the publication of a papal bull solemnly anathematizing the queen, and
dispensing her subjects from their oath of allegiance. A fanatic named
Fulton was found willing to earn the crown of martyrdom by affixing this
instrument to the gate of the bishop of London's palace. He was taken
in the fact, and suffered the penalty of treason without exciting a
murmur among the people. A trifling insurrection in Norfolk ensued, of
which however the papal bull was not openly assigned as the motive, and
which was speedily suppressed with the punishment of a few of the
offenders according to law. Even the catholic subjects of Elizabeth for
the most part abhorred the idea of lifting their hands against her
government and the peace of their native land; and several of them were
now found among the foremost and most sincere in their offers of service
against the disaffected.
On the whole, the result of the great trial of the hearts of her people
afforded to the queen by the alarms of this anxious period, was
satisfactory beyond all example. Henceforth she knew, and the world
knew, the firmness of that rock on which her throne was planted;--based
on religion, supported by wisdom and fortitude and adorned by every
attractive art, it stood dear and venerable to her people, defying the
assaults of her baffled and malignant enemies. The anniversary of her
accession began this year to be celebrated by popular festivals all over
the country;--a practice which was retained not only to the end of the
reign, but for many years afterwards, during which the 17th of November
continued to be solemnly observed under designation of the Birthday of
the Gospel.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
_Printed by R. and A. Taylor, Shoe-Lane._
* * * * *
MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.
VOL. II.