1571 TO 1573.
Notice of sir T. Gresham.--Building of his exchange.--The queen's visit
to it.--Cecil created lord Burleigh and lord-treasurer.--Justs at
Westminster.--Notices of the earl of Oxford, Charles Howard, sir H. Lee,
sir Chr. Hatton.--Fresh negotiations for the marriage of Elizabeth with
the duke of Anjou.--Renewal of the intrigues of Norfolk.--His
re-committal, trial, and conviction.--Death of Throgmorton.--Sonnet
by Elizabeth.--Norfolk beheaded.--His character and
descendants.--Hostility of Spain.--Wylson's translation of
Demosthenes.--Walsingham ambassador to France.--Treaty with
that country.--Massacre of Paris.--Temporizing conduct of
Elizabeth.--Burleigh's calculation of the queen's nativity.--Notice of
Philip Sidney.
From the intrigues and violences of crafty politicians and discontented
nobles, we shall now turn to trace the prosperous and honorable career
of a private English merchant, whose abilities and integrity introduced
him to the notice of his sovereign, and whose patriotic munificence
still preserves to him the respectful remembrance of posterity. This
merchant was Thomas Gresham. Born of a family at once enlightened,
wealthy and commercial, he had shared the advantage of an education at
the university of Cambridge previously to his entrance on the walk of
life to which he was destined, and which, fortunately for himself, his
superior acquirements did not tempt him to desert or to despise.
His father, sir Richard Gresham, had been agent to Henry VIII. for the
negotiation of loans with the merchants of Antwerp, and in 1552 he
himself was nominated to act in a similar capacity to Edward VI., when
he was eminently serviceable in redeeming the credit of the king, sunk
to the lowest ebb by the mismanagement of his father's immediate
successor in the agency. Under Elizabeth he enjoyed the same
appointment, to which was added that of queen's merchant; and it appears
by the official letters of the time, that political as well as pecuniary
affairs were often intrusted to his discreet and able management. He was
also a spirited promoter of the infant manufactures of his country,
several of which owed to him their first establishment. By his diligence
and commercial talents he at length rendered himself the most opulent
subject in the kingdom, and the queen showed her sense of his merit and
consequence by bestowing on him the honor of knighthood.
Gresham had always made a liberal and patriotic use of his wealth; but
after the death of his only son, in 1564, he formed the resolution of
making his country his principal heir. The merchants of London had
hitherto been unprovided with any building in the nature of a burse or
exchange, such as Gresham had seen in the great commercial cities of
Flanders; and he now munificently offered, if the city would give him a
piece of ground, to build them one at his own expense. The edifice was
begun accordingly in 1566, and finished within three years. It was a
quadrangle of brick, with walks on the ground floor for the merchants,
(who now ceased to transact their business in the middle aisle of St.
Paul's cathedral,) with vaults for warehouses beneath and a range of
shops above, from the rent of which the proprietor sought some
remuneration for his great charges. But the shops did not immediately
find occupants; and it seems to have been partly with the view of
bringing them into vogue that the queen promised her countenance to the
undertaking. In January 1571, attended by a splendid train, she entered
the city; and after dining with sir Thomas at his spacious mansion in
Bishopsgate-street (still remaining), she repaired to the burse, visited
every part of it, and caused proclamation to be made by sound of trumpet
that henceforth it should bear the name of the Royal Exchange. Gresham
offered the shops rent-free for a year to such as would furnish them
with wares and wax lights against the coming of the queen; and a most
sumptuous display was made of the richest commodities and manufactures
of every quarter of the globe.
Afterwards the shops of the exchange became the favorite resort of
fashionable customers of both sexes: much money was squandered here,
and, if we are to trust the representations of satirists and comic
writers, many reputations lost. The building was destroyed in the fire
of London; and the divines of that day, according to their custom,
pronounced this catastrophe a judgement on the avarice and unfair
dealing of the merchants and shopkeepers, and the pride, prodigality and
luxury of the purchasers and idlers by whom it was frequented and
maintained.
Elizabeth soon after paid homage to merit in another form, by conferring
on her invaluable servant Cecil,--whose wisdom, firmness and vigilance
had most contributed to preserve her unhurt amid the machinations of her
implacable enemies,--the dignity of baron of Burleigh; an elevation
which might provoke the envy or resentment of some of the courtiers his
opponents, but which was hailed by the applauses of the people.
Before the close of the year, the death, at a great but not venerable
age, of that corrupt and selfish statesman the marquis of Winchester,
afforded her an opportunity of apportioning to the new dignity of her
secretary a suitable advance in office and emolument, by conferring on
him the post of lord-high-treasurer, which he continued to enjoy to the
end of his life.
On the first of May and the two following days solemn justs were held
before the queen at Westminster; in which the challengers were the earl
of Oxford, Charles Howard, sir Henry Lee and sir Christopher
Hatton,--all four deserving of biographical commemoration.
Edward earl of Oxford was the seventeenth of the illustrious family of
Vere who had borne that title, and his character presented an
extraordinary union of the haughtiness, violence and impetuosity of the
feudal baron, with many of the elegant propensities and mental
accomplishments which adorn the nobleman of a happier age. It was
probably to his travels in Italy that he owed his more refined tastes
both in literature and in luxury, and it was thence that he brought
those perfumed and embroidered gloves which he was the first to
introduce into England. A superb pair which he presented to her majesty
were so much approved by her, that she sat for her portrait with them on
her hands. These gloves became of course highly fashionable, but those
prepared in Spain were soon found to excel in scent all others; and the
importance attached to this discovery may be estimated by the following
commission given by sir Nicholas Throgmorton, then in France, to sir
Thomas Chaloner ambassador in Spain:--"I pray you, good my lord
ambassador, send me two pair of perfumed gloves, perfumed with
orange-flowers and jasmin, the one for my wife's hand, the other for
mine own; and wherein soever I can pleasure you with any thing in this
country, you shall have it in recompense thereof, or else so much money
as they shall cost you; provided always that they be of the best choice,
wherein your judgement is inferior to none[72]."
[Note 72: "Burleigh Papers" by Haynes.]
The earl of Oxford enjoyed in his own times a high poetical reputation;
but his once celebrated comedies have perished, and two or three
fugitive pieces inserted in collections are the only legacy bequeathed
to posterity by his muse. Of these, "The complaint of a lover wearing
black and tawny" has ceased, in the change of manners and fashions, to
interest or affect the reader. "Fancy and Desire" may still lay claim to
the praise of ingenuity, though the idea is perhaps not original even
here, and has since been exhibited with very considerable improvements
both in French and English, especially in Ben Jonson's celebrated song,
"Tell me where was Fancy bred?" Two or three stanzas may bear quotation.
"Where wert thou born Desire?"
"In pomp and pride of May."
"By whom sweet boy wert thou begot?"
"By Fond Conceit men say."
"Tell me who was thy nurse?"
"Fresh Youth in sugred joy."
"What was thy meat and daily food?"
"Sad sighs with great annoy."
"What had'st thou then to drink?"
"Unsavoury lovers' tears."
"What cradle wert thou rocked in?"
"In hope devoid of fears." &c.
In the chivalrous exercises of the tilt and tournament the earl of
Oxford had few superiors: he was victor in the justs both of this year
and of the year 1580, and on the latter occasion he was led by two
ladies into the presence-chamber, all armed as he was, to receive a
prize from her majesty's own hand. Afterwards, by gross misconduct, he
incurred from his sovereign a disgrace equally marked and public, being
committed to the Tower for an attempt on one of her maids of honor. On
other occasions his lawless propensities broke out with a violence which
Elizabeth herself was scarcely able to restrain.
He had openly begun to muster his friends, retainers and servants, to
take vengeance on sir Thomas Knevet, by whom he had been wounded in a
duel; and the queen, who interfered to prevent the execution of this
savage design, was obliged for some time to appoint Knevet a guard in
order to secure his life. He also publicly insulted sir Philip Sidney in
the tennis-court of the palace; and her majesty could discover no other
means of preventing fatal consequences than compelling sir Philip
Sidney, as the inferior in rank, to compromise the quarrel on terms
which he regarded as so inequitable and degrading, that after
transmitting to her majesty a spirited remonstrance against encouraging
the insolence of the great nobles, he retired to Penshurst in disgust.
The duke of Norfolk was the nephew of this earl of Oxford, who was very
strongly attached to him, and used the utmost urgency of entreaty with
Burleigh, whose daughter he had married, to prevail on him to procure
his pardon: "but not succeeding," says lord Orford, "he was so incensed
against that minister, that in most absurd and unjust revenge (though
the cause was amiable) he swore he would do all he could to ruin his
daughter; and accordingly not only forsook her bed, but sold and
consumed great part of the vast inheritance descended to him from his
ancestors[73]."
[Note 73: "Royal and Noble Authors."]
This remarkable person died very aged early in the reign of James I.
Sir Charles Howard, eldest son of lord Howard of Effingham, was at this
period of his life chiefly remarkable for the uncommon beauty of his
person,--a species of merit never overlooked by her majesty,--for grace
and agility in his exercises, and for the manners of an accomplished
courtier. At no time was he regarded as a person of profound judgement,
and of vanity and self-consequence he is said to have possessed an
abundant share. He was however brave, courteous, liberal, and diligent
in affairs; and the favor of the queen admitted him in 1585 to succeed
his father in the office of lord-high-admiral. His intrepid bearing, in
the year 1588, encouraged his sailors to meet the terrible Armada with
stout hearts and cheerful countenances, and the glory of its defeat was
as much his own as the participation of winds and waves would allow. In
consideration of this distinguished piece of service he was created earl
of Nottingham; and the queen's partiality towards her relations
increasing with her years, he became towards the end of the reign one of
the most considerable persons at her court, where his hostility to Essex
grew equally notorious with the better grounded antipathy entertained by
Sussex, also a royal kinsman, against Leicester, the earlier favorite of
her majesty.
The earl of Nottingham survived to the year 1624, the 88th of his age.
Sir Henry Lee was one of the finest courtiers and certainly the most
complete knight-errant of his time. He was now in the fortieth year of
his age, had travelled, and had seen some military service; but the
tilt-yard was ever the scene of his most conspicuous exploits and those
in which he placed his highest glory. He had declared himself the
queen's own knight and champion, and having inscribed upon his shield
the constellation of Ariadne's Crown, culminant in her majesty's
nativity, bound himself by a solemn vow to appear armed in the tilt-yard
on every anniversary of her happy accession till disabled by age. This
vow gave origin to the annual exercises of the Knights-Tilters, a
society consisting of twenty-five of the most gallant and favored of the
courtiers of Elizabeth. The modern reader may wonder to find included in
this number so grave an officer as Bromley lord chancellor; but under
the maiden reign neither the deepest statesman, the most studious
lawyer, nor the rudest soldier was exempted from the humiliating
obligation of accepting, and even soliciting, those household and menial
offices usually discharged by mere courtiers, nor from the irksome one
of assuming, for the sake of their sovereign lady, the romantic disguise
of armed champions and enamoured knights. Sir Henry Lee, however,
appears to have devoted his life to these chivalrous pageantries rather
from a quixotical imagination than with any serious views of ambition or
interest. He was a gentleman of ancient family and plentiful fortune,
little connected, as far as appears, with any court faction or
political, party, and neither capable nor ambitious of any public
station of importance. It is an amiable and generous trait of his
character, that he attended the unfortunate duke of Norfolk even to the
scaffold, received his last embrace, and repeated to the assembled
multitude his request that they would assist him with their prayers in
his final agony. His royal Dulcinea rewarded his fatigues and his
adoration by the lieutenancy of Woodstock manor, the office of keeper of
the armoury, and especially by the appropriate meed of admission into
the most noble order of the Garter. He resigned the championship at the
approach of old age with a solemn ceremony hereafter to be described,
died at his mansion of Quarendon in Bucks, in 1611, in his 81st year,
and was interred in the parish church under a splendid tomb hung round
with military trophies, and inscribed with a very long, very quaint and
very tumid epitaph.
Christopher Hatton, the last of this undaunted band of challengers, was
a new competitor for the smiles of royalty, and bright was the dawn of
fortune and of favor which already broke upon him. He was of a decayed
family of Northamptonshire gentry, and had just commenced the study of
the law at one of the inns of court, when hope or curiosity stimulated
him to gain admittance at some court-festival, where he had an
opportunity of dancing before the queen in a mask. His figure and his
performance so captivated her fancy, that she immediately bestowed upon
him some flattering marks of attention, which encouraged him to quit his
profession and turn courtier.
This showy outside and these gay accomplishments were unexpectedly found
in union with a moderate and cautious temper, enlightened views, and a
solid understanding; and after due deliberation, Elizabeth, that
penetrating judge of men, decided, in spite of ridicule, that she could
not do better than make this superlatively-excellent dancer of galliards
her lord-chancellor.
The enemies of Hatton are said to have promoted this appointment in
expectation of his disgracing himself by ignorance and incapacity; but
their malice was disappointed; whatever he did not know, he was able to
learn and willing to be taught; he discharged the duties of his high
office with prudence first and afterwards with ability, and died in 1591
in possession of it and of the public esteem. It is remarkable,
considering the general predilection of the queen in favor of celibacy,
that Hatton was the only one of her ministers who lived and died a
bachelor.
Early in this year the king of France married a daughter of the emperor
Maximilian; and Elizabeth, desirous at this time of being on the best
terms both with the French and Imperial courts, sent lord Buckhurst to
Paris on a splendid embassy of congratulation.
Catherine de' Medici took this opportunity of renewing proposals of
marriage to the queen of England on the part of her son the duke of
Anjou, and they were listened to with an apparent complacency which
perplexed the politicians. It is certainly to this negotiation, and to
the intrigues of the duke of Norfolk and other nobles with the queen of
Scots, that Shakespear alludes in the following ingenious and exquisite
passage.
..."Once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a _Mermaid_ on a _Dolphin_'s back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
And _certain stars shot madly from their spheres_,
To hear the sea-maid's music.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
That very time I saw, but thou could'st not,
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all-arm'd: a certain aim he took
At _a fair Vestal throned by the West_,
And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watry moon,
And the Imperial Votress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy-free."
_Midsummer Night's Dream._
Unfortunately for himself, the duke of Norfolk had not acquired, even
from the severe admonition of a long imprisonment, resolution sufficient
to turn a deaf ear to the enchantments of this syren. His situation was
indeed perplexing: He had entered into the most serious engagements with
his sovereign to abstain from all further intercourse with the queen of
Scots: at the same time the right of Elizabeth to interdict him an
alliance so flattering to his vanity might plausibly be questioned, and
the previous interchange between himself and Mary of solemn promises of
marriage, seemed to have brought him under obligations to her too
sacred to be dissolved by any subsequent stipulation of his, though one
to which Mary herself had been compelled to become a party. Neither had
chivalrous ideas by any means lost their force in this age; and as a
knight and a gentleman the duke must have esteemed himself bound in
honor to procure the release of the captive princess, and to claim
through all perils the fair hand which had been plighted to him.
Impressed by such sentiments, he returned to a letter of eloquent
complaint which she found means to convey to him, an answer filled with
assurances of his inviolable constancy; and the intrigues of the party
were soon renewed with as much activity as ever.
But the vigilance of the ministry of Elizabeth could not long be eluded.
An important packet of letters written by Ridolfi, a Florentine who had
been sent abroad by the party to confer with the pope and with the duke
of Alva, was intercepted; and in consequence of the plots thus unfolded,
the bishop of Ross, who bore the character of Mary's ambassador in
England, was given into private custody. Soon after, a servant of the
duke's, intrusted by him with the conveyance of a sum of money from the
French ambassador to Mary's adherents in Scotland, carried the parcel
containing it to the secretary of state. The duke's secretary was then
sent for and examined. This man, who was probably in the pay of
government, not only confessed with readiness all that he knew, but
produced some letters from the queen of Scots which his lord had
commanded him to burn after decyphering them. Other concurring
indications of the duke's guilt appearing, he was recommitted to the
Tower in September 1571.
After various consultations of civilians on the extent of an
ambassador's privilege, and the title which the agent of a deposed
sovereign might have to avail himself of that sacred character, it was
determined that the laws of nations did not protect the bishop of Ross,
and he was carried to the Tower, where, in fear of death, he made full
confession of all his machinations against the person and state of
Elizabeth. In the most guilty parts of these designs he affirmed that
the duke had constantly refused his concurrence;--and in fact, weak and
infatuated as he was, the agents of Mary seem to have found it
impracticable, by all their artifices, to bring this unfortunate
nobleman entirely to forget that he was a protestant and an Englishman.
He would never consent directly to procure the death or dethronement of
Elizabeth; though it must have been perfectly evident to any man of
clear and unbiassed judgement, that, under all the circumstances, the
accomplishment of his wishes could by no other means be attained.
This affair was regarded in so very serious a light, that the queen
thought it necessary, before the duke was put on his trial, to lay all
the circumstances of his case before the court of France; and the
parliament, which was again assembled after an interval of five years,
passed some new laws for the protection of the queen's person from the
imminent perils by which they saw her environed.
The illustrious prisoner was now brought before the tribunal of his
brother-peers; and a perfectly fair and regular trial, according to the
practices of that age, was accorded him. Whatever his intentions might
have been, his actions appear to have come clearly within the limits of
treason; and the earl of Shrewsbury, as lord-high-steward for the day,
pronounced upon him, with tears, a verdict of Guilty. But the queen
hesitated or deferred, from clemency or caution, to sign his death
warrant, and he was remanded to the Tower under some uncertainty whether
or not the last rigor of the offended laws awaited him.
The name of sir Nicholas Throgmorton was so mixed up in the confessions
of the bishop of Ross, that it was perhaps an indulgent fate which had
removed him some months previously from the sphere of human action. He
died at the house of the earl of Leicester, and certainly of a pleurisy;
but the malevolent credulity of that age seldom allowed a person of any
eminence to quit the world without imputing the occurrence in some
manner, direct or indirect, to the malice of his enemies. It was rumored
that Throgmorton had fallen a victim to the hostility of Leicester,
which he was thought to have provoked by quitting the party of the earl
to reconcile himself with Burleigh, his secret enemy; and the suspicion
of proficiency in the art of poisoning, which had so long rested upon
the favorite, obtained credit to this absurd report. Possibly there
might be more truth in the general opinion, that it was in some measure
owing to the enmity of Burleigh that a person of such acknowledged
abilities in public affairs, and one who had conducted himself so
skilfully in various important negotiations, should never have been
advanced to any considerable office of trust or profit. But the lofty
and somewhat turbulent spirit of Throgmorton himself, ought probably to
bear the chief blame both of this enmity, and of his want of success at
the court of a princess who exacted from her servants the exercise of
the most refined and cautious policy, as well as an entire and implicit
submission to all her views and wishes. It is highly probable that she
never entirely pardoned Throgmorton for giving the lie to her
declarations respecting the promises made to the earl of Murray and his
party, by the open production of his own diplomatic instructions.
The hostility of Leicester extended, as we shall see hereafter, to other
branches of the unfortunate family of Throgmorton, whom an imprudent or
criminal zeal in the cause of popery exposed without defence to the
whole weight of his vengeance. On some slight pretext he procured the
dismissal of sir John Throgmorton, the brother of sir Nicholas; from his
office of chief justice of Chester, who did not long survive the
disgrace though apparently unmerited. Puttenham, author of the "Art of
English Poesie," ventured, though a professed courtier, to compose an
epitaph on this victim of oppression, of which he has preserved to us
the following lines in the work above mentioned:
"Whom Virtue reared Envy hath overthrown,
And lodged full low under this marble stone:
Ne never were his values so well known
Whilst he lived here, as now that he is gone.
No sun by day that ever saw him rest
Free from the toils of his so busy charge,
No night that harboured rancour in his breast,
Nor merry mood made Reason run at large.
His head a source of gravity and sense,
His memory a shop of civil art:
His tongue a stream of sugred eloquence,
Wisdom and meekness lay mingled in his heart." &c.
The literary propensities of Elizabeth have already come under our
notice: they had frequently served to divert her mind from the cares of
government; but in the state of unremitted anxiety occasioned by her
dread of the machinations relative to the queen of Scots, in which she
had found the first peer of her realm a principal actor, her thoughts,
even in the few leisure hours which she found means to bestow on these
soothing recreations, still hovered about the objects from which she
most sought to withdraw them.
The following sonnet of her composition will illustrate this remark: it
was published during her lifetime in Puttenham's "Arte of English
Poesie," and its authenticity, its principal merit, has never been
called in question.
SONNET _by Queen Elizabeth_.
The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy,
And wit me warns to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy.
For falsehood now doth flow, and subjects' faith doth ebb;
Which would not be if Reason ruled, or Wisdom weaved the web.
But clouds of toys untried do cloak aspiring minds,
Which turn to rain of late repent by course of changed winds.
The top of hope supposed the root of ruth will be;
And fruitless all their graffed guiles, as shortly ye shall see.
Those dazzled eves with pride, which great ambition blinds,
Shall be unseal'd by worthy wights whose foresight falsehood finds.
The Daughter of Debate that eke discord doth sow,
Shall reap no gain where former rule hath taught still peace to grow.
No foreign banish'd wight shall anchor in this port;
Our realm it brooks no strangers' force, let them elsewhere resort.
Our rusty sword with rest shall first his edge employ,
To poll their tops that seek such change, and gape for joy.
The house of commons, in which great dread and hatred of the queen of
Scots and her adherents now prevailed, showed itself strongly disposed
to pass an act by which Mary should be declared for ever unworthy and
incapable of the English succession: but Elizabeth, with her usual
averseness to all unqualified declarations and irrevocable decisions,
interfered to prevent the completion of a measure which most sovereigns,
under all the circumstances, would have been eager to embrace. To the
unanimous expression of the opinion of the house, that the execution of
the sentence against the duke of Norfolk ought not to be longer delayed,
she was however prevailed upon to lend a more favorable ear; and on June
2d, 1572, this nobleman received his death on Tower-hill.
Norfolk was a man of many amiable and several estimable qualities, and
much too good for the faction with which he had been enticed to act and
the cause in which he suffered. On the scaffold he acknowledged, with
great apparent sincerity, the justice of his sentence, and his peculiar
guiltiness in breaking the solemn promise which he had pledged to his
sovereign. He declared himself to have been an earnest protestant ever
since he had had any taste for religion, and in this faith he died very
devoutly. He bequeathed by his will his best George to his kinsman and
true friend the earl of Sussex, whose faithful counsels he too late
reproached himself with neglecting. By his attainder the dukedom was
lost to the family of Howard; but Philip, his eldest son, succeeded his
maternal grandfather in the earldom of Arundel; lord Thomas, his second
son, (whose mother was the daughter and heiress of lord Audley,) was
created lord Howard of Walden by Elizabeth and earl of Suffolk by James;
and lord William, the youngest, who possessed Naworth-castle in right of
Elizabeth Dacre his wife, and was known upon the West Border (of which
he was warden) by the appellation of "Belted Will," was ancestor to the
earls of Carlisle[74].
[Note 74:
"His Bilboa blade, by marchmen felt,
Hung in a broad and studded belt;
Hence in rude phrase the Borderers still
Call noble Howard Belted Will."
Lay of the Last Minstrel.]
The king of Spain had long been regarded in England as the most
implacable and formidable of the enemies of Elizabeth; and on good
grounds. It was believed to be through his procurement that Sixtus V.
had been led to fulminate his anathema against her;--it was well known
that the pope had made a donation to him of the kingdom of Ireland, of
which he was anxious to avail himself;--there was strong ground to
suspect that he had sent one of his ablest generals in embassy to
England with no other view than to have taken the command of the
northern rebels, had their enterprise prospered;--and the intimate
participation of his agents in all the intrigues of the queen of Scots
was notorious. Dr. Wylson, a learned civilian, an accomplished scholar,
and one of the first refiners of English prose, had published in 1571,
with the express view of rousing the spirit of his readers against this
formidable tyrant, a version of the Orations of Demosthenes against the
king Philip of his day, and had been at the pains of pointing out in the
notes coincidences in the situation of Athens and of England. The
author, who was an earnest protestant, had the further motive in this
work of paying a tribute to the memory of the learned and unfortunate
Cheke, who during his voluntary exile had read gratuitous lectures to
his countrymen at Padua on the works of the great Grecian orator, of
which Wylson had been an auditor, and who had also made a Latin version
of them, of which the English translator freely availed himself.
It was principally her dread of the Spaniards which led Elizabeth into
those perpetual reciprocations of deceitful professions and empty
negotiations with the profligate and perfidious court of France, which
in the judgement of posterity have redounded so little to her honor, but
which appeared to her of so much importance that she now thought herself
peculiarly fortunate in having discovered an agent capable of conducting
with all the wariness, penetration and profound address so peculiarly
requisite where sincerity and good faith are wanting. This agent was sir
Francis Walsingham, whose rare acquisitions of political knowledge, made
principally during the period of his voluntary exile for religion, and
still rarer talents for public business, had induced lord Burleigh to
recommend him to the service and confidence of his mistress. For several
years from this time he resided as the queen's ambassador at the court
of France, at first as coadjutor to sir Thomas Smith,--a learned and
able man, who afterwards became a principal secretary of state,--the
rest of the time alone. There was not in England a man who was regarded
as a more sincere and earnest protestant than Walsingham; yet such was
at this time his sense of the importance to the country of the French
alliance, that he expressed himself strongly in favor of the match
between Elizabeth and the duke of Anjou, and, as a minister, spared no
pains to promote it.
Similar language was held on this subject both by Leicester and
Burleigh; but the former was perhaps no more in earnest on the subject
than his mistress; and finally all parties, except the French
protestants, who looked to the conclusion of these nuptials as their
best security, seem to have been not ill pleased when, the marriage
treaty being at length laid aside, a strict league of amity between the
two countries was agreed upon in its stead.
Splendid embassies were reciprocally sent to receive the ratifications
of this treaty; and Burleigh writes to a friend, between jest and
earnest, that an unexpected delay of the French ambassador was cursed by
all the husbands whose ladies had been detained at great expense and
inconvenience in London, to contribute to the splendor of the court on
his reception. On the 9th of June 1572 the duke de Montmorenci and his
suite at length arrived. His entertainment was magnificent; all seemed
peace and harmony between the rival nations; and Elizabeth even
instructed her ambassadors to give favorable ear to a hint which the
queen-mother had dropped of a matrimonial treaty between the queen of
England and her youngest son, the duke d'Alencon, who had then scarcely
attained the age of seventeen.
Lulled by these flattering appearances of tranquillity, her majesty set
out on her summer progress, and she was enjoying the festivities
prepared by Leicester for her reception at his splendid castle of
Kennelworth, when news arrived of the execrable massacre of Paris;--an
atrocity not to be paralleled in history! Troops of affrighted Hugonots,
who had escaped through a thousand perils with life, and life alone,
from the hands of their pitiless assassins, arrived on the English
coast, imploring the commiseration of their brother protestants, and
relating in accents of despair their tale of horrors. After such a
stroke, no one knew what to expect; the German protestants flew to
arms; even the subjects of Elizabeth trembled for their countrymen
travelling on the continent and for themselves in their island-home. The
pope applauded openly the savage deed; the court of Spain showed itself
united hand and heart with that of France,--to the astonishment of
Elizabeth, who had been taught to believe them at enmity;--and it seemed
as if the signal had been given of a general crusade against the
reformed churches of Europe.
For several days fears were entertained for the safety of Walsingham
himself, who had not dared to transmit any account of the event except
one by a servant of his own, whose passage had been by some accident
delayed. Even this minister, cautious and crafty and sagacious as he
was, assisted by all the spies whom he constantly kept in pay, had been
unable to penetrate any part of the bloody secret;--he was completely
taken by surprise. But of his personal safety the perfidious young king
and his detestable mother were, for their own sakes, careful; and not
only were himself and his servants protected from injury, but every
Englishman who had the presence of mind to take shelter in his house
found it an inviolable sanctuary. Two persons only of this nation fell
victims to the fury of that direful night, but the property of many was
plundered. The afflicted remnant of the French protestants prepared to
stand upon their defence with all the intrepidity of despair. They
closed the gates of Rochelle, their strong hold, against the king's
troops, casting at the same time an imploring eye towards England,
where thousands of brave and generous spirits were burning with
impatience to hasten to their succour.
No act would have been hailed with such loud and general applause of her
people as an instant renunciation by Elizabeth of all friendship and
intercourse with the perjured and blood-stained Charles, the midnight
assassin of his own subjects; and it is impossible to contemplate
without disdain the coldness and littleness of that character which, in
such a case, could consent to measure its demonstrations of indignation
and abhorrence by the narrow rules of a self-interested caution. But
that early experience of peril and adversity which had formed the mind
of this princess to penetration, wariness, and passive courage, and
given her a perfect command of the whole art of simulation and
dissimulation, had at the same time robbed her of some of the noblest
impulses of our nature; of generosity, of ardor, of enterprise, of
magnanimity. Where more exalted spirits would only have felt, she
calculated; where bolder ones would have flown to action, she contented
herself with words.
Charles and his mother, while still in uncertainty how far their
master-stroke of policy,--so they regarded it,--would be successful in
crushing entirely the Hugonots, prudently resolved to spare no efforts
to preserve Elizabeth their friend, or to prevent her at least from
becoming an open enemy. Instructions had therefore been in the first
instance dispatched to La Mothe Fenelon, the French ambassador in
England, to communicate such an account of the massacre and its motives
as suited these views, and to solicit a confirmation of the late treaty
of amity. His reception at court on this occasion was extremely solemn:
the courtiers and ladies who lined the rooms leading to the
presence-chamber were all habited in deep mourning, and not one of them
would vouchsafe a word or a smile to the ambassador, though himself a
man of honor, and one whom they had formerly received on the footing of
cordial intimacy. The queen herself, in listening to his message,
assumed an aspect more composed, but extremely cold and serious. She
expressed her horror at the idea that a sovereign could imagine himself
under a necessity of taking such vengeance on his own subjects;
represented the practicability of proceeding with them according to law,
and desired to be better informed of the reality of the treasonable
designs imputed to the Hugonots. She also declared that it would be
difficult for her to place reliance hereafter on the friendship of a
prince who had shown himself so deadly a foe to those who professed her
religion; but, at the suit of the ambassador, she consented to suspend
in some degree her judgement of the deed till further information.
Even these feeble demonstrations of sensibility to crime so enormous
were speedily laid aside. In spite of Walsingham's declared opinion,
that the demonstrations of the French court towards her were so
evidently treacherous that its open enmity was less to be dreaded than
its feigned friendship, Elizabeth suffered her indignation to evaporate
in a few severe speeches, restrained her subjects from carrying such aid
to the defenders of Rochelle as could be made a ground of serious
quarrel, and even permitted a renewal of the shocking and monstrous
overtures for her marriage with the youngest son of Catherine de' Medici
herself. By this shameless woman various proposals were now made for
bringing about a personal interview between herself and Elizabeth. She
first named England as the place of meeting, then the sea between Dover
and Calais, and afterwards the isle of Jersey; but from the first plan
she herself departed, and the others were rejected in anger by the
English council, who remarked, with a proper and laudable spirit, that
they who had ventured upon such propositions must imagine them strangely
careless of the personal safety of their sovereign.
Charles IX. was particularly anxious that Elizabeth, as a pledge of
friendship, should consent to stand sponsor to his new-born daughter;
and with this request, after some difficulties and a few declarations of
horror at his conduct, she had the baseness to comply. She refused
however to indulge that king in his further desire, that she would
appoint either the earl of Leicester or lord Burleigh as her proxy;--not
choosing apparently to trust these pillars of state and of the
protestant cause within his reach; and she sent instead her cousin the
earl of Worcester, "a good simple gentleman," as Leicester called him,
and a catholic.
All this time Elizabeth was in her heart as hostile to the court of
France as the most zealous of her protestant subjects; for she well knew
that it was and ever must be essentially hostile to her and her
government; and in the midst of her civilities she took care to supply
to the Hugonots such secret aids as should enable them still to
persevere in a formidable resistance.
It is worth recording, on the subject of these negotiations between
Elizabeth and the royal family of France, that Burleigh seems to have
been encouraged to expect a successful issue by a calculation of the
queen's nativity, seen by Strype in his own handwriting, from which it
was foretold that she should marry, in middle life, a foreign prince
younger than herself; and probably be the mother of a son, who should be
prosperous in his middle age. Catherine de' Medici also, to whom some
female fortune-teller had predicted that all her sons should be kings,
hoped, after the election of her second son to the throne of Poland, to
find the full accomplishment of the prophecy in the advancement of the
youngest to the matrimonial crown of England. So serious was the belief
of that age in the lying oracles of judicial astrology!
Among the English travellers doomed to be eye-witnesses of the horrors
of the massacre of St. Bartholomew was the celebrated Philip Sidney,
then a youth of eighteen. He was the eldest son of sir Henry Sidney,
lord-deputy of Ireland, and from this excellent man and parent he had
received, amongst his earliest and strongest impressions, those elevated
principles of honor, veracity and moral purity which regulated and
adorned the whole tenor of his after-life. An extraordinary solidity of
character with great vivacity of parts had distinguished him from a
child, and fortune conspired with genius to bring him early before the
public eye.
He was nephew and presumptive heir to the earl of Leicester, by whom he
was in a manner adopted; and thus patronized, his rapid advancement was
anticipated as a matter of course.
It was the practice of that day for parents in higher life to dispose of
their children in marriage at an age now justly accounted immature[75];
and no sooner had young Sidney completed his fourteenth year than
arrangements were made for his union with Anne Cecil, daughter of the
secretary. Why the connexion never took place we do not learn: sir Henry
Sidney in a letter to Cecil says, with reference to this affair; "I am
sorry that you find coldness any where in proceeding, where such good
liking appeared in the beginning; but, for my part, I was never more
ready to perfect that affair than presently I am." &c. Shortly after,
the lady, unfortunately for herself, became the wife of the earl of
Oxford; and Sidney, still unfettered by matrimonial engagements,
obtained license to travel, and reached Paris in May 1572. Charles IX.,
in consideration no doubt of the influence of his uncle at the English
court, gave him the appointment of a gentleman of his bed-chamber, a
fortnight only before the massacre. On that night of horrors Sidney
took shelter in the house of Walsingham, and thus escaped all personal
danger; but his after-conduct fully proved how indelible was the
impression left upon his mind of the monstrous wickedness of the French
royal family, and the disgrace and misery which an alliance with it must
entail on his queen and country.
[Note 75: Thus we find sir George Manners, ancestor of the dukes of
Rutland, who died in 1513, bequeathing to each of his unmarried
daughters a portion of three hundred marks to be paid at the time of
their marriage, or within _four_ years after if the husband be not
twenty-one years of age; or at such time as the husband came of age.
Collins's "Peerage," by sir E. Brydges.]
He readily obeyed his uncle's directions to quit France without delay;
and, proceeding to Frankfort, there formed a highly honorable and
beneficial friendship with the virtuous Hubert Languet, who opened to
him at once his heart and his purse. The remonstrances of this patron,
who dreaded to excess for his youthful friend the artifices of the papal
court, deterred him from extending his travels to Rome, an omission
which he afterwards deeply regretted; but a leisurely survey of the
northern cities of Italy, during which he became advantageously known to
many eminent characters, occupied him profitably and delightfully till
his return to his native country in 1575, after which he will again
occur to our notice as the pride and wonder of the English court.