1582 TO 1587.
Traits of the queen.--Brown and his sect.--Promotion of
Whitgift.--Severities exercised against the puritans.--Embassy of
Walsingham to Scotland.--Particulars of lord Willoughby.--Transactions
with the Czar.--Death of Sussex.--Adventures of Egremond Ratcliffe--of
the earl of Desmond.--Account of Raleigh--of Spenser.--Prosecutions of
catholics.--Burleigh's apology for the government.--Leicester's
Commonwealth.--Loyal association.--Transactions with the queen of
Scots.--Account of Parry.--Case of the earl of Arundel--of the
earl of Northumberland.--Transactions of Leicester in Holland.--Death
and character of P. Sidney--of sir H. Sidney.--Return of
Leicester.--Approaching war with Spain.--Babington's conspiracy.--Trial
and condemnation of the queen of Scots.--Rejoicings of the
people.--Artful conduct of the queen.--Reception of the Scotch
embassy.--Conduct of Davison.--Death of Mary.--Behaviour of
Elizabeth.--Davison's case.--Conduct of Leicester.--Reflections.
The disposition of Elizabeth was originally deficient in benevolence and
sympathy, and prone to suspicion, pride and anger; and we observe with
pain in the progress of her history, how much the influences to which
her high station and the peculiar circumstances of her reign inevitably
exposed her, tended in various modes to exasperate these radical evils
of her nature.
The extravagant flattery administered to her daily and hourly, was of
most pernicious effect; it not only fostered in her an absurd excess of
personal vanity, but, what was worse, by filling her with exaggerated
notions both of her own wisdom and of her sovereign power and
prerogative, it contributed to render her rule more stern and despotic,
and her mind on many points incapable of sober counsel. This effect was
remarked by one of her clergy, who, in a sermon preached in her
presence, had the boldness to tell her, that she who had been meek as
lamb was become an untameable heifer; for which reproof he was in his
turn reprehended by her majesty on his quitting the pulpit, as "an over
confident man who dishonored his sovereign."
The decay of her beauty was an unwelcome truth which all the artifices
of adulation were unable to hide from her secret consciousness; since
she could never behold her image in a mirror, during the latter years of
her life, without transports of impotent anger; and this circumstance
contributed not a little to sour her temper, while it rendered the young
and lovely the chosen objects of her malignity.
On this head the following striking anecdote is furnished by sir John
Harrington.... "She did oft ask the ladies around her chamber, if they
loved to think of marriage? And the wise ones did conceal well their
liking hereto, as knowing the queen's judgement in this matter. Sir
Matthew Arundel's fair cousin, not knowing so deeply as her fellows, was
asked one day hereof, and simply said, she had thought much about
marriage, if her father did consent to the man she loved. 'You seem
honest, i'faith,' said the queen; 'I will sue for you to your
father.'... The damsel was not displeased hereat; and when sir Robert
came to court, the queen asked him hereon, and pressed his consenting,
if the match was discreet. Sir Robert, much astonied at this news, said
he never heard his daughter had liking to any man, and wanted to gain
knowledge of her affection; but would give free consent to what was most
pleasing to her highness will and advice. 'Then I will do the rest,'
saith the queen. The lady was called in, and the queen told her that her
father had given his free consent. 'Then,' replied the lady, 'I shall be
happy, and please your grace'. 'So thou shalt, but not to be a fool and
marry; I have his consent given to me, and I vow thou shalt never get it
into thy possession. So go to thy business, I see thou art a bold one to
own thy foolishness so readily[93].'"
[Note 93: "Nugae."]
The perils of many kinds, from open and secret enemies, by which
Elizabeth had found herself environed since her unwise and unauthorized
detention of the queen of Scots, aggravated the mistrustfulness of her
nature; and the severities which fear and anger led her to exercise
against that portion of her subjects who still adhered to the ancient
faith, increased its harshness. It is true that, since the fulmination
of the papal anathema, the zealots of this church had kept no measures
with respect to her either in their words, their writings, or their
actions. Plans of insurrection and even of assassination were
frequently revolved in their councils, but as often disappointed by the
extraordinary vigilance and sagacity of her ministers; while the courage
evinced by herself under these circumstances of severe probation was
truly admirable. Bacon relates that "the council once represented to her
the danger in which she stood by the continual conspiracies against her
life, and acquainted her that a man was lately taken who stood ready in
a very dangerous and suspicious manner to do the deed; and they showed
her the weapon wherewith he thought to have acted it. And therefore they
advised her that she should go less abroad to take the air, weakly
attended, as she used. But the queen answered, 'that she had rather be
dead than put in custody.'"
"Ireland," says Naunton, "cost her more vexation than any thing else;
the expense of it pinched her, the ill success of her officers wearied
her, and in that service she grew hard to please." She also arrived at a
settled persuasion that the extreme of severity was safer than that of
indulgence; an opinion which, being communicated to her officers and
ministers, was the occasion, especially in Ireland, of many a cruel and
arbitrary act.
When angry, she observed little moderation in the expression of her
feelings. In the private letters even of Cecil, whom she treated on the
whole with more consideration than any other person, we find not
unfrequent mention of the harsh words which he had to endure from her,
sometimes, as he says, on occasions when he appeared to himself
deserving rather of thanks than of censure. The earl of Shrewsbury
often complains to his correspondents of her captious and irascible
temper; and we find Walsingham taking pains to console sir Henry Sidney
under some manifestations of her displeasure, by the assurance that they
had proceeded only from one of those transient gusts of passion for
which she was accustomed to make sudden amends to her faithful servants
by new and extraordinary tokens of her favor.
There was no branch of prerogative of which Elizabeth was more tenacious
than that which invested her with the sole and supreme direction of
ecclesiastical affairs. The persevering efforts therefore of the
puritans, to obtain various relaxations or alterations of the laws which
she in her wisdom had laid down for the government of the church,--on
failure of which they scrupled not to recall to her memory the strong
denunciations of the Jewish prophets against wicked and irreligious
princes,--at once exasperated and alarmed her, and led her to assume
continually more and more of the incongruous and odious character of a
protestant persecutor of protestants. But the puritans themselves must
have seemed guiltless in her eyes compared with a new sect, the
principles of which, tending directly to the abrogation of all authority
of the civil magistrate in spiritual concerns, called forth about this
time her indignation manifested by the utmost severity of penal
infliction.
It was in the year 1580 that Robert Brown, having completed his studies
in divinity at Cambridge, began to preach at Norwich against the
discipline and ceremonies of the church of England, and to promulgate a
scheme which he affirmed to be more conformable to the apostolical
model. According to his system, each congregation of believers was to be
regarded as a separate church, possessing in itself full jurisdiction
over its own concerns; the _liberty of prophesying_ was to be indulged
to all the brethren equally, and pastors were to be elected and
dismissed at the pleasure of the majority, in whom he held that all
power ought of right to reside. On account of these opinions Brown was
called before certain ecclesiastical commissioners, who imprisoned him
for contumacy; but the interference of his relation lord Burleigh
procured his release, after which he repaired to Holland, where he
founded several churches and published a book in defence of his system,
in which he strongly inculcated upon his disciples the duty of
separating themselves from what he stated antichristian churches. For
the sole offence of distributing this work, two men were hanged in
Suffolk in 1583; to which extremity of punishment they were subjected as
having impugned the queen's supremacy, which was declared felony by a
late statute now for the first time put in force against protestants.
Brown himself, after his return from Holland, was repeatedly imprisoned,
and, but for the protection of his powerful kinsman might probably have
shared the fate of his two disciples. At length, the terror of a
sentence of excommunication drove him to recant, and joining the
established church he soon obtained preferment. But the Brownist sect
suffered little by the desertion of its founder, whose private
character was far from exemplary: in spite of penal laws, of
persecution, and even of ridicule and contempt, it survived, increased,
and eventually became the model on which the churches not only of the
sect of Independents but also of the two other denominations of English
protestant dissenters remain at the present day constituted.
The death of archbishop Grindal in 1583 afforded the queen the long
desired opportunity of elevating to the primacy a prelate not inclined
to offend her, like his predecessor, by any remissness in putting in
force the laws against puritans and other nonconformists. She nominated
to this high dignity Whitgift bishop of Worcester, known to polemics as
the zealous antagonist of Cartwright the puritan, and further
recommended to her majesty by his single life, his talents for business,
whether secular or ecclesiastical, his liberal and hospitable style of
living, and the numerous train of attendants which swelled the pomp of
his appearance on occasions of state and ceremony, when he even claimed
to be served on the knee.
This promotion forms an important aera in the ecclesiastical history of
the reign of Elizabeth: but only a few circumstances more peculiarly
illustrative of the sentiments and disposition of Whitgift, of the queen
herself, and of some of her principal counsellors, can with propriety
find a place in a work like the present.
To bring back the clergy to that exact uniformity with respect to
doctrines, rites, and ceremonies, from which the lenity of his
predecessor had suffered them in many instances to recede, appeared to
the new primate the first and most essential duty of his office; and
the better to enforce obedience, he eagerly demanded to be armed with
that plenitude of power which her majesty as head of the church was
authorized to delegate at her pleasure. His request was granted with
alacrity, and the work of intolerance began. Subscriptions were now
required of the whole clerical body to the supremacy; to the book of
Common-prayer; and to the articles of religion settled by the
convocation of 1560. In consequence of this first step alone, so large a
number of zealous preachers and able divines attached to the Calvinistic
model were suspended from their functions for non-compliance, that the
privy-council took alarm, and addressed a letter to the archbishop
requesting a conference; but he loftily reproved their interference in
matters of this nature, declaring himself amenable in the discharge of
his functions to his sovereign alone. In the following year he prevailed
upon her majesty to appoint a second high-commission court, the members
of which were authorized, _ex officio_, to administer interrogatories on
oath in matters of faith;--an assumption of power not merely cruel and
oppressive, but absolutely illegal, if we are to rely on Beal, clerk of
the council, an able and learned but somewhat intemperate partisan of
the puritans, who published on this occasion a work against the
archbishop. To enter into controversy was now no part of the plan of
Whitgift; he held it as a maxim, that it was safer and better for an
established church to silence than to confute; and a book of Calvinistic
discipline having issued from the Cambridge press, he procured a
Star-chamber decree for lessening and limiting the number of presses;
for restraining any man from exercising the trade of a printer without a
special license; and for subjecting all works to the censorship, of the
archbishop or the bishop of London. At the same time he vehemently
declared that he would rather lie in prison all his life, or die, than
grant any indulgence to puritans; and he expressed his wonder, as well
as indignation, that men high in place should countenance the factious
portion of the clergy, low and obscure individuals and not even
considerable by their numbers, against him the second person of the
state. The earl of Leicester was not however to be intimidated from
extending to these conscientious sufferers a protection which was in
many instances effectual: Walsingham occasionally interceded in behalf
of Calvinistic preachers of eminence; and sir Francis Knolles, whose
influence with the queen was considerable, never failed to encounter the
measures of the primate with warm, courageous, and persevering
opposition. Even Burleigh, whom Whitgift had regarded as a friend and
patron and hoped to number among his partisans, could not forbear
expressing to him on various occasions his serious disapprobation of the
rigors now resorted to; nor was he to be silenced by the plea of the
archbishop, that he acted entirely by the command of her majesty. On the
contrary, as instances multiplied daily before his eyes of the tyranny
and persecution exercised, through the extraordinary powers of the
ecclesiastical commission, on ministers of unblemished piety and often
of exemplary usefulness, his remonstrances assumed a bolder tone and
more indignant character: as in the following instance. "But when the
said lord treasurer understood, that two of these ministers, living in
Cambridgeshire, whom for the good report of their modesty and
peaceableness he had a little before recommended unto the archbishop's
favor, were by the archbishop in commission sent to a register in
London, to be strictly examined upon those four and twenty articles
before mentioned, he was displeased. And reading over the articles
himself, disliked them as running in a Romish style, and making no
distinction of persons. Which caused him to write in some earnestness to
the archbishop, and in his letter he told him, that he found these
articles so curiously penned, so full of branches and circumstances, as
he thought the inquisitors of Spain used not so many questions to
comprehend and to trap their preys. And that this juridical and
canonical sifting of poor ministers was not to edify and reform. And
that in charity he thought, they ought not to answer to all these nice
points, except they were very notorious offenders in papistry or heresy:
Begging his grace to bear with that one fault, if it were so, that he
had willed these ministers not to answer those articles, except their
consciences might suffer them[94]."
[Note 94: "Life of Whitgift" by Strype.]
The archbishop, in a long and labored answer, expressed his surprise at
his lordship's "vehement speeches" against the administering of
interrogatories, "seeing it was the ordinary course in other courts: as
in the star-chamber, in the courts of the marches, and in other places:"
and he advanced many arguments, or assertions, in defence of his
proceedings, none of which proved satisfactory to the lord treasurer, as
appeared by his reply. In the end, the archbishop found himself obliged
to compromise this dispute by engaging that in future the twenty-four
articles should only be administered to students in divinity previously
to their ordination; and not to ministers already settled in cures,
unless they should have openly declared themselves against the
church-government by law established. But this instance of concession
extorted by the urgency of Walsingham appears to have been a solitary
one; the high commission, with the archbishop at its head, proceeded
unrelentingly in the work of establishing conformity, and crushing with
a strong hand all appeals to the sense of the public on controverted
points of discipline or doctrine. The queen, vehemently prepossessed
with the idea that the opposers of episcopacy must ever be ill affected
also to monarchy, made no scruple of declaring, after some years
experience of the untameable spirit of the sect, that the puritans were
greater enemies of hers than the papists; and in the midst of her
greatest perils from the machinations of the latter sect, she seldom
judged it necessary to conciliate by indulgence the attachment of the
former. Several Calvinistic ministers, during the course of the reign,
were subjected even to capital punishment on account of the scruples
which they entertained respecting the lawfulness of acknowledging the
queen's supremacy: on the other hand, the attempts of sir Francis
Knowles to inspire her majesty with jealousy of the designs of the
archbishop, by whom some advances were made towards claiming for the
episcopal order an authority by divine right, independently of the
appointment of the head of the church, failed entirely of success. No
ecclesiastic had ever been able to acquire so great an ascendency over
the mind of Elizabeth as Whitgift; there was a conformity in their
views, and in some points a sympathy in their characters; which seem to
have secured to the primate in all his undertakings the sanction and
approval of his sovereign: his favor continued unimpaired to the latest
hour of her life: it was from his lips that she desired to receive the
final consolations of religion; and regret for her loss, from the
apprehension of unwelcome changes in the ecclesiastical establishment
under the auspices of her successor, is believed to have contributed to
the attack which carried off the archbishop within a year after the
decease of his gracious and lamented mistress.
Elizabeth took an important though secret part in the struggles for
power among the Scottish nobles of opposite factions by which that
kingdom was now agitated during several years. It has been suspected,
but seems scarcely probable, that she was concerned in the conspiracy of
the earl of Gowry for seizing the person of the young king; she
certainly however interposed afterwards to mitigate his just anger
against the participators in that dark design. On the whole, she was
generally enabled to gain all the influence in the court of Scotland
which she found necessary to her ends; for James could always be
intimidated, and his minions most frequently bribed or cajoled. She
regarded it however as an object of some consequence to gain an accurate
knowledge of the character and capacity of her young kinsman, from one
on whom she could rely; and for this purpose she prevailed on
Walsingham, notwithstanding his age and infirmities, to undertake an
embassy into Scotland, of which the ostensible objects were so trifling
that its real purpose became perfectly evident to the more sagacious of
James's counsellors. Melvil confesses, that it cost him prodigious pains
to equip the king, at short notice, with so much of artificial dignity
and borrowed wisdom as might enable him to pass successfully through the
ordeal of Walsingham's examination. But his labor was not thrown away;
for James, who really possessed considerable quickness of parts and a
competent share of book learning, played with such plausibility the part
assigned him, that even this sagacious statesman is believed to have
returned impressed with a higher opinion of his abilities than any part
of his after conduct was found to warrant.
Her increasing apprehensions from the hostility of the king of Spain,
caused Elizabeth to cultivate with added zeal the friendship of the
northern powers of Europe, and in 1582 she sent the garter to the king
of Denmark as a pledge of amity; making at the same time a fruitless
endeavour to obtain for English merchant ships some remission of the
duties newly levied by the Danish sovereign on the passage of the Sound.
It was the prudent practice of her majesty to intrust these embassies of
compliment to young noblemen lately come into possession of their
estates, who, for her favor and their own honor, were willing to
discharge them in a splendid manner at their private expense. The Danish
mission was the price which she exacted from Peregrine Bertie, lately
called up to the house of peers as lord Willoughby of Eresby in right of
his mother, for her reluctant and ungracious recognition of his
undeniable title to this dignity. On the occurrence of this first
mention of a high-spirited nobleman, afterwards celebrated for a
brilliant valor which rendered him the idol of popular fame, the
remarkable circumstances of his birth and parentage must not be omitted.
His mother, only daughter and heir of the ninth lord Willoughby by a
Spanish lady of high birth who had been maid of honor to queen Catherine
of Arragon, was first the ward and afterwards the third wife of Charles
Brandon duke of Suffolk, by whom she had two sons, formerly mentioned as
victims to the sweating-sickness.
Few ladies of that age chose long to continue in the unprotected state
of widowhood; and the duchess had already re-entered the matrimonial
state with Richard Bertie, a person of obscure birth but liberal
education, when the accession of Mary exposed her to all the cruelties
and oppressions exercised without remorse by the popish persecutors of
that reign upon such of their private enemies as they could accuse of
being also the enemies of the catholic church. The duchess, during the
former reign, had drawn upon herself the bitter enmity of Gardiner by
some imprudent and insulting manifestations of her abhorrence of his
character and contempt for his religion; and she now learned with dismay
that it was his intention to subject her to a strict interrogatory on
the subject of her faith.
Except apostasy, there was no other resource than the hazardous and
painful one of voluntary banishment, and this she without hesitation
adopted. Bertie first obtained license for quitting the country on some
pretended business; and soon after, the duchess, attended only by two or
three domestics, escaped by night with her infant daughter from her
house in Barbican, and taking boat on the Thames arrived at a port in
Kent. Here she embarked; and through many perils,--for stress of weather
compelled her to put back into an English port, and the search was every
where very strict,--she reached at length a more hospitable shore, and
rejoined her husband at Santon in the duchy of Cleves. From this town,
however, they were soon chased by the imminent apprehension of
molestation from the bishop of Arras. It was on an October evening that,
followed only by two maid-servants, on foot, through rain and mire and
darkness, Bertie carrying a bundle and the duchess her child, the
forlorn wanderers began their march for Wesel one of the Hanse-towns,
about four miles distant. On their arrival, their wild and wretched
appearance, with the sword which Bertie carried, gave them in the eyes
of the inhabitants so suspicious an appearance, that no one would
harbour them; and while her husband ran from inn to inn vainly imploring
admittance, the afflicted duchess was compelled to betake herself to the
shelter of a church porch; and there, in that misery and desolation and
want of every thing, was delivered of a child, to whom, in memory of the
circumstance, she gave the name of Peregrine. Bertie meantime,
addressing himself in Latin to two young scholars whom he overheard
speaking together in that language, obtained a direction to a Walloon
minister, to whom the duchess had formerly shown kindness in England. By
his means such prompt and affectionate succour was administered as
served to restore her to health; and here for some time they found rest
for the sole of their foot. A fresh alarm then obliged them to remove
into the dominions of the Palsgrave, where they had remained till the
supplies which they had brought with them in money and jewels were
nearly exhausted; when a friend of the duchess's having interested the
king of Poland in their behalf, they fortunately received an invitation
from this sovereign. Arriving in his country, after great hardships and
imminent danger of their lives from the brutality of some soldiers on
their way, a large demesne was assigned them by their princely
protector, on which they lived in great honor and tranquillity till the
happy accession of Elizabeth recalled them to their native land.
Peregrine lord Willoughby found many occasions of distinguishing
himself in the wars of Flanders, where he rose to the rank of
lieutenant-general. He was not less magnanimous than brave; and
disdaining the servility of a court life, is thought to have enjoyed on
this account less of the queen's favor than her admiration of military
merit would otherwise have prompted her to bestow upon him. He died
governor of Berwick in 1601; his son was afterwards created earl of
Lindsey, and the title of duke of Ancaster is now borne by his
descendants.
The king of Sweden, conducted to the brink of ruin by an unequal contest
with the arms of Russia, sent in 1583 a solemn embassy to the queen of
England to entreat her to mediate a peace for him. This good work, in
which she cheerfully engaged, was speedily brought to a happy issue; and
the Czar seized the opportunity of the negotiations to press for the
conclusion of that league offensive and defensive with England, which he
had formerly proposed in vain. The objection that such an alliance was
inconsistent with the laws of nations, since it might engage the queen
to commit hostilities on princes against whom she had never declared
war, made, as might be expected, little impression on this barbarian;
and Elizabeth had considerable difficulty in escaping from the intimate
embrace of his proffered friendship, to the cool civilities of a
commercial treaty. Another perplexing circumstance occurred. The Czar
had set his heart upon an English wife; some say he ventured to address
the queen herself; but however this might be, she was about to gratify
his wish by sending him for a bride a lady of royal blood, sister of the
earl of Huntingdon, when the information which she received of the
unlimited privilege of divorce exercised by his Muscovite majesty,
deterred her from completing her project. She was in consequence obliged
to excuse the failure on the ground of the delicate health of the young
lady, the reluctance of her brother to part with her, and, what must
have filled the despot with astonishment, her own inability to dispose
of her female subjects in marriage against the consent of their own
relations.
About this time died the earl of Sussex. In him the queen was deprived
of a faithful and honorable counsellor and an affectionate kinsman;
Leicester lost the antagonist whom he most dreaded, and the nobility one
of its principal ornaments. Dying childless, his next brother succeeded
him, in whom the race ended; for Egremond Ratcliffe, his youngest
brother, had already completed his disastrous destiny. This unfortunate
gentleman, it will be remembered, was rendered a fugitive and an outlaw
by the part which he had taken, at a very early age, in the Northern
rebellion. For several years he led a forlorn and rambling life,
sometimes in Flanders, sometimes in Spain, deriving his sole support
from an ill paid pension and occasional donations of Philip II., and
often enduring extremities of poverty and hardship.
Wearied with so many sufferings in a desperate cause, he then employed
all his endeavours to make his peace at home; and impatient at length of
the suspense which he endured, he took the step of returning to England
at all hazards and throwing himself on the compassion of lord Burleigh.
The treasurer, touched with his misery and his expressions of
penitence, interceded with the queen for his pardon; but she, on some
fresh occasion of suspicion, caused him to be advised to steal out of
the kingdom again; and neglecting this intimation, he was committed to
the Tower. After some months he was released, possibly under a promise
of attempting some extraordinary piece of service to his country, and
was sent back to Flanders, where he was soon after apprehended on a
charge of conspiring against the life of don John of Austria: some say,
and some deny, that he confessed his guilt, and accused the English
ministry of a participation in the design: however this might be, he
perished by the hand of public justice, a lamentable victim to the
guilty violence of the popish faction which first beguiled his
inexperience; to the relentless policy of Elizabeth, which forbade the
return of offenders perhaps not incorrigible; and to the desperation
which gaining dominion over his mind had subverted all its moral
principles.
Ireland had been as usual the scene of much danger and disturbance. In
1582 an attempt was made by the king of Spain to incite the catholic
inhabitants to a general rebellion, by throwing on the coast a small
body of troops seconded by a very considerable sum of money, and
attended by a number of priests prepared to preach up his title to the
sovereignty of the island in virtue of the papal donation. But the
vigorous measures of Arthur lord Grey the deputy, by holding the Irish
in check, rendered this effort abortive. The Spaniards, unable to
penetrate into the country, raised a fort near the place of their
landing, which they hoped to be able to hold out till the arrival of
reinforcements. They obstinately refused the terms of surrender first
offered them by the deputy; and the fort being afterwards taken by
assault, the whole garrison, with the exception of the officers, was put
to the sword: an act of cruelty which the deputy is said to have
commanded with tears, in obedience to the decision of a court-martial
from which he could not venture to depart; and which Elizabeth publicly
reprobated, perhaps without internally condemning.
The earl of Desmond, who on the arrival of the Spanish troops had risen
in arms against the government with all the power he could muster, was
excepted from the general pardon granted to other Irish insurgents, and
thus remaining by necessity in a state of rebellion, gave for some time
considerable disquiet, if not alarm, to the English government. But his
resources of every kind gradually falling off, he was hunted about
through bogs and forests, from one fastness or lurking-place to another,
enduring every kind of privation and hardship, and often foiling his
pursuers by hair-breadth scapes. It is even related that he and his
countess on one occasion being roused from their bed in the middle of
the night, found no other mode of concealment than that of wading up to
their necks in the river which bathed the walls of their retreat. At
length, a small party of soldiers having entered by surprise a solitary
cabin, they there found one old man sitting alone, to whom their brutal
leader gave a blow with his sword, which nearly cut off his arm, and
another on the side of his head; on which he cried out, "I am the earl
of Desmond." The name was no protection; for perceiving that he bled
fast and was unable to march, the ruthless soldier, bidding him prepare
for instant death, struck off his head and brought it away as a trophy;
leaving the mangled trunk to the chance of interment by any faithful
follower of the house of Fitzgerald who might venture from his
hiding-place to explore the fate of his chief. The head was sent to
England as a present to the queen, and placed by her command on London
Bridge.
From this time, the beginning of 1583, Ireland enjoyed a short respite
from scenes of violence and blood under the vigorous yet humane
administration of sir John Perrot, the new deputy.
The petty warfare of this turbulent province, amid the many and great
evils of various kinds which it brought forth, was productive however of
some contingent advantage to the queen's affairs, by serving as a school
of military discipline to many an officer of merit whose abilities she
afterwards found occasion to employ in more important enterprises to
check the power of Spain. Ireland was, in particular, the scene of
several of the early exploits of that brilliant and extraordinary genius
Walter Raleigh; and it was out of his service in this country that an
occasion arose for his appearing before her majesty, which he had the
talent and dexterity so to improve as to make it the origin of all his
favor and advancement. Raleigh was the poor younger brother of a
decayed but ancient family in Devonshire. His education at Oxford was
yet incomplete, when the ardor of his disposition impelled him to join a
gallant band of one hundred volunteers led by his relation Henry
Champernon, in 1569, to the aid of the French protestants. Here he
served a six-years apprenticeship to the art of war, after which,
returning to his own country, he gave himself for a while to the more
tranquil pursuits of literature; for "both Minervas" claimed him as
their own. In 1578 he resumed his arms under general Norris, commander
of the English forces in the Netherlands; the next year, ambitious of a
new kind of glory, he accompanied that gallant navigator sir Humphrey
Gilbert, his half brother, in a voyage to Newfoundland. This expedition
proving unfortunate, he obtained in 1580 a captain's commission in the
Irish service; and recommended by his vigor and capacity, rose to be
governor of Cork. He was the officer appointed to carry into effect the
bloody sentence passed upon the Spanish garrison; a cruel service, but
one which the military duty of obedience rendered matter of
indispensable obligation. A quarrel with lord Grey put a stop to his
promotion in Ireland; and on his following this nobleman to England,
their difference was brought to a hearing before the privy-council, when
the great talents and uncommon flow of eloquence exhibited by Raleigh in
pleading his own cause, by raising the admiration of all present, proved
the means of introducing him to the presence of the queen. His comely
person, fine address, and prompt proficiency in the arts of a courtier,
did all the rest; and he rapidly rose to such a height of royal favor as
to inspire with jealousy even him who had long stood foremost in the
good graces of his sovereign.
It is recorded of Raleigh during the early days of his court attendance,
when a few handsome suits of clothes formed almost the sum total of his
worldly wealth, that as he was accompanying the queen in one of her
daily walks,--during which she was fond of giving audience, because she
imagined that the open air produced a favorable effect on her
complexion,--she arrived at a miry spot, and stood in perplexity how to
pass. With an adroit presence of mind, the courtier pulled off his rich
plush cloak and threw it on the ground to serve her for a footcloth. She
accepted with pleasure an attention which flattered her, and it was
afterwards quaintly said that the spoiling of a cloak had gained him
many _good suits_.
It was in Ireland too that Edmund Spenser, one of our first genuine
poets, whose rich and melodious strains will find delighted audience as
long as inexhaustible fertility of invention, truth, fluency and
vivacity of description, copious learning, and a pure, amiable and
heart-ennobling morality shall be prized among the students of English
verse, was now tuning his enchanting lyre; and the ear of Raleigh was
the first to catch its strains. This eminent person was probably of
obscure parentage and slender means, for it was as a sizer, the lowest
order of students, that he was entered at Cambridge; but that his humble
merit early attracted the notice of men of learning and virtue is
apparent from his intimacy with Stubbs, already commemorated, and from
his friendship with that noted literary character Gabriel Hervey, by
whom he was introduced to the acquaintance of Philip Sidney. His leaning
towards puritanical principles, clearly manifested by various passages
in the Shepherd's Calendar, had probably betrayed itself to his
superiors at the university, by his choice of associates, or other
circumstances, previously to the publication of that piece; and possibly
might have some share in the disappointment of his hopes of a fellowship
which occurred in 1576. Quitting college on this occurrence, he retired
for some time into the north of England; but the friendship of Sidney
drew him again from his solitude, and it was at Penshurst that he
composed much of his Shepherd's Calendar, published in 1579 under the
signature of Immerito, and dedicated to this generous patron of his
muse. The earl of Leicester, probably at his nephew's request, sent
Spenser the same year on some commission to France; and in the next he
obtained the post of secretary to lord Grey, and attended him to
Ireland.
Though the child of fancy and the muse, Spenser now showed that business
was not "the contradiction of his fate;" he drew up an excellent
discourse on the state of Ireland, still read and valued, and received
as his reward the Grant of a considerable tract of land out of the
forfeited Desmond estates, and of the castle of Kilcolman, which
henceforth became his residence, and where he had soon the satisfaction
of receiving a first visit from Raleigh. Both pupils of classical
antiquity, both poets and aspirants after immortal fame, they met in
this land of ignorance and barbarity as brothers; and so strong was the
impression made on the mind of Raleigh, that even on becoming a
successful courtier he dismissed not from his memory or his affection
the tuneful shepherd whom he had left behind tending his flocks "under
the foot of Mole, that mountain hoar." He spoke of him to the queen with
all the enthusiasm of kindred genius; obtained for him some favors, or
promises of favors; and on a second visit which he made to Ireland,
probably for the purpose of inspecting the large grants which he had
himself obtained, he dragged his friend from his obscure retreat,
carried him over with him to England, and hastened to initiate him in
those arts of pushing a fortune at court which with himself had
succeeded so prosperously. But bitterly did the disappointed poet learn
to deprecate the mistaken kindness which had taught him to exchange
leisure and independence, though in a solitude so barbarous and remote,
for the servility, the intrigues and the treacheries of this
heart-sickening scene. He put upon lasting record his grief and his
repentance, in a few lines of energetic warning to the inexperienced in
the ways of courts, and hastened back to earn in obscurity his title to
immortal fame by the composition of the Faery Queen. This great work
appeared in 1589, with a preface addressed to Raleigh and a considerable
apparatus of recommendatory poems; one of which, a sonnet of great
elegance, is marked with initials which assign it to the same
patronizing friend.
The proceedings of the administration against papists accused of
treasonable designs or practices, began about this time to excite
considerable perturbation in the public mind; for though circumstances
were brought to light which seemed to justify in some degree the worst
suspicions entertained of this faction, a system of conduct on the part
of the government also became apparent which no true Englishman could
without indignation and horror contemplate. The earl of Leicester,
besides partaking with the other confidential advisers of her majesty in
the blame attached to the general character of the measures now pursued,
lay under the popular imputation of making these acts of power
subservient, in many atrocious instances, to his private purposes of
rapacity or vengeance, and a cloud of odium was raised against him which
the breath of his indulgent sovereign was in vain exerted to disperse.
There was in Warwickshire a catholic gentleman named Somerville, a
person of violent temper and somewhat disordered in mind, who had been
worked up, by the instigations of one Hall his confessor, to such a
pitch of fanatical phrensy, that he set out for London with the fixed
purpose of killing the queen; but falling furiously upon some of her
protestant subjects by the way, he was apprehended, and readily
confessed the object of his journey. Being closely questioned, perhaps
with torture, he is said to have dropped something which touched Mr.
Arden his father-in-law; and Hall on examination positively declared
that this gentleman had been made privy to the bloody purpose of
Somerville. On this bare assertion of the priest, unconfirmed, as
appears, by any collateral evidence, Arden was indicted, found guilty,
and underwent the whole sentence of the law. It happened to be publicly
known that Arden was the personal enemy of Leicester, for he had refused
to wear his livery;--a base kind of homage which was paid him without
scruple, as it seems, by other neighbouring gentlemen;--and he was also
in the habit of reproaching him with the murder of his first wife. The
wife also of Arden was the sister of sir Nicholas Throgmorton, whom
Leicester was vulgarly supposed to have poisoned, and of the chief
justice of Chester lately displaced. When therefore, in addition to
these circumstances of suspicion, it was further observed that
Somerville, instead of being produced to deny or confirm on the scaffold
the evidence which he was said to have given against Arden, died
strangled in prison, by his own hand as was affirmed;--when it was seen
that Hall, who was confessedly the instigator of the whole, and further
obnoxious to the laws as a catholic priest, was quietly sent out of the
kingdom by Leicester's means, in spite of the opposition of sir
Christopher Hatton;--and finally, when it appeared that the forfeited
lands of Arden went to enrich a creature of the same great man,--this
victim of law was regarded as a martyr, and it was found impossible to
tie up the tongues of men from crying shame and vengeance on his cruel
and insidious destroyer.
The plot thickened when Francis Throgmorton, son of the degraded judge
of Chester, was next singled out. Some intercepted letters to the queen
of Scots formed the first ground of this gentleman's arrest; but being
carried to the Tower, he was there racked to extort further discoveries,
and lord Paget and Charles Arundel, a courtier, quitted the kingdom in
haste as soon as they knew him to be in custody. After this many of the
leading catholics fell into suspicion, particularly the earls of
Northumberland and Arundel, who were ordered to confine themselves to
their houses; lord William Howard, brother to the latter nobleman, and
his uncle lord Henry Howard, were likewise subjected to several long and
rigorous examinations, but were dismissed at length on full proof of
their perfect innocence. The confessions of Throgmorton further
implicated the Spanish ambassador; who replied in so high a tone to the
representations made him on the subject, that her majesty commanded him
to quit the kingdom.
Francis Throgmorton was condemned, and suffered as a traitor, and, it is
probable, not undeservedly: there was reason also to believe that a
dangerous activity was exercised by the queen of Scots and her agents,
and that the letters which she was continually finding means of
conveying not only to the heads of the popish party, but to all whose
connexions led her to imagine them in any degree favorable to the cause,
had shaken the allegiance of numbers. On the other hand, the catholics
complained, and certainly not without reason, of dark and detestable
means employed by the ministry to betray and ensnare them.
Counterfeited letters, it seems, were often addressed to gentlemen of
this persuasion, purporting to come either from the queen of Scots or
from certain English exiles, and soliciting concurrence in some scheme
for her deliverance, or some design against the government. If the
unwary receivers either answered the letters, or simply forbore to
deliver them up to the secretary of state, their houses were entered;
search was made for these papers by the emissaries of government, who
were themselves the fabricators of them; the unfortunate owners were
dragged to prison as suspected persons; and interrogated, and perhaps
tortured, till they discovered all that they knew of the secrets of the
party. Spies were planted upon them, every unguarded word was caught up
and interpreted in the worst sense, and false or frivolous accusations
were greedily entertained.
Walsingham, next to Leicester, bore the chief odium of these
proceedings; but to him no corrupt motives or private ends ever appear
to have been imputed in particular cases, though an anxiety to preserve
his place, and to recommend himself to the queen his mistress by an
extraordinary manifestation of care for her safety and zeal in her
service, may not unfairly be supposed to have influenced the general
character of his policy.
The loud complaints of the catholics had excited so strong and so widely
diffused a sentiment of compassion for them and indignation against
their oppressors, that it was judged expedient to publish an apology for
the measures of government, written either by lord Burleigh himself or
under his direction, which bore the title of "A declaration of the
favorable dealing of her majesty's commissioners appointed for the
examination of certain traitors, and of tortures unjustly reported to be
done upon them for matters of religion."
It thus begins: "Good reader, although her majesty's most mild and
gracious government be sufficient to defend itself against those most
slanderous reports of heathenish and unnatural tyranny and cruel
tortures pretended to have been exercised upon certain traitors who
lately suffered for their treason, and others; as well as spread abroad
by rungates, Jesuits, and seminary men in their seditious books, letters
and libels, in foreign countries and princes courts, as also intimated
into the hearts of some of our own countrymen and her majesty's
subjects.... I have conferred with a very honest gentleman whom I knew
to have good and sufficient means to deliver the truth." &c. And the
following are the heads of this "honest gentleman's" testimony. "It is
affirmed for truth, and is offered upon due examination to be proved,"
"that the forms of torture in their severity or rigor of execution have
not been such as is slanderously represented"... "that even the
principal offender Campion himself"... "before the conference had with
him by learned men in the Tower, wherein he was charitably used, was
never so racked but that he was presently able to walk and to write, and
did presently write and subscribe all his confessions." That Briant, a
man said to, have been reduced to such extremities of hunger and thirst
in prison, that he ate the clay out of the walls and drank the droppings
of the roof, was kept in that state by his own fault; for certain
treasonable writings being found upon him, he was required to give a
specimen of his handwriting; which refusing, he was told he should have
no food till he wrote for what he wanted, and after fasting nearly two
days and nights he complied. Also, that both with respect to these two
and others, it might be affirmed, that the warders, whose office it is
to use the rack, "were ever by those that attended the examinations
specially charged to use it in as charitable a manner as such a thing
might be."
Secondly, that none of those catholics who have been racked during her
majesty's reign were, "upon the rack or in any other torture," demanded
of any points of faith and doctrine merely, "but only with what persons,
at home or abroad, and touching what plots and practises they had
dealt... about attempts against her majesty's estate or person, or to
alter the laws of the realm for matters of religion, by treason or by
force; and how they were persuaded themselves and did persuade others,
touching the pope's pretence of authority to depose kings and princes;
and namely for deprivation of her majesty, and to discharge subjects
from their allegiance." &c.
"Thirdly, that none of them have been put to the rack or torture, no not
for the matters of treason, or partnership of treason, or such like, but
where it was first known and evidently probable, by former detections,
confessions, and otherwise, that the party was guilty, and could
deliver truth of the things wherewith he was charged; so as it was first
assured that no innocent was at any time tormented, and the rack was
never used to wring out confessions at adventure upon uncertainties."
&c.
"Fourthly, that none of them hath been racked or tortured unless he had
first said expressly, or amounting to as much, that he will not tell the
truth though the queen did command him." &c.
"Fifthly, that the proceeding to torture was always so slowly, so
unwillingly, and with so many preparations of persuasions to spare
themselves, and so many means to let them know that the truth was by
them to be uttered, both in duty to her majesty, and in wisdom for
themselves, as whosoever was present at those actions must needs
acknowledge in her majesty's ministers a full purpose to follow the
example of her own gracious disposition."... "Thus it appeareth, that
albeit, by the more general laws of nations, torture hath been and is
lawfully judged to be used in lesser cases, and in sharper manner, for
inquisition of truth in crimes not so near extending to public danger as
these ungracious persons have committed, whose conspiracies, and the
particularities thereof, it did so much import and behove to have
disclosed; yet even in that necessary use of such proceeding, enforced
by the offenders notorious obstinacy, is nevertheless to be acknowledged
the sweet temperature of her majesty's mild and gracious clemency, and
their slanderous lewdness to be the more condemned, that have in favor
of heinous malefactors and stubborn traitors spread untrue rumours and
slanders, to make her merciful government disliked, under false pretence
and rumors of sharpness and cruelty to those against whom nothing can be
cruel, and yet upon whom nothing hath been done but gentle and
merciful."
This is a document which speaks sufficiently for itself. Torture, in any
shape, was even at this time absolutely contrary to the law of the land;
and happily, there was enough of true English feeling in the country,
even under the rule of a Tudor, to render it expedient for Elizabeth,
soon after the exposition of these "favorable dealings" of her
commissioners, to issue an order that no species of it should in future
be applied to state-prisoners on any pretext whatsoever.
Parsons the Jesuit, who had been fortunate enough to make his escape
when his associate Campion was apprehended, is believed to have been the
papist who sought to avenge his party on its capital enemy by the
composition of that virulent invective called "Leicester's
Commonwealth:" a pamphlet which was printed in Flanders in 1584, and of
which a vast number of copies were imported into England, where it
obtained, from the color of the leaves and the supposed author, the
familiar title of "Father Parsons' Green-coat." In this work all the
current stories against the unpopular favorite were collected and set
forth as well attested facts; and they were related with that
circumstantiality and minuteness of detail which are too apt to pass
upon the common reader as the certain and authentic characters of truth.
The success of this book was prodigious; it was read universally and
with the utmost avidity. All who envied Leicester's power and grandeur;
all who had smarted under his insolence, or felt the gripe of his
rapacity; all who had been scandalized, or wounded in family honor, by
his unbridled licentiousness; all who still cherished in their hearts
the image of the unfortunate duke of Norfolk, whom he was believed to
have entangled in a deadly snare; all who knew him for the foe and
suspected him for the murderer of the gallant and lamented earl of
Essex;--finally, all, and they were nearly the whole of the nation, who
looked upon him as a base and treacherous miscreant, shielded by the
affection of his sovereign and wrapped in an impenetrable cloud of
hypocrisy and artifice, who aimed in the dark his envenomed weapons
against the bosom of innocence;--exulted in this exposure of his secret
crimes, and eagerly received and propagated for truth even the grossest
of the exaggerations and falsehoods with which the narrative was
intermixed.
Elizabeth, incensed to the last degree at so furious an attack upon the
man in whom her confidence was irremoveably fixed, caused her council to
write letters to all persons in authority for the suppression of these
books, and punishment of such as were concerned in their dispersion;
adding at the same time the declaration, that her majesty "testified in
her conscience before God, that she knew in assured certainty the books
and libels against the earl to be most malicious, false and scandalous,
and such as none but an incarnate devil himself could dream to be true."
The letters further stated, that her majesty regarded this publication
as an attempt to discredit her own government, "as though she should
have failed in good judgement and discretion in the choice of so
principal a councillor about her, or to be without taste or care of all
justice or conscience, in suffering such heinous and monstrous crimes,
as by the said books and libels be infamously imputed, to pass
unpunished; or finally, at the least, to want either good will, ability
or courage, if she knew these enormities were true, to call any subject
of hers whatsoever to render sharp account of them, according to the
force of her laws." The councillors in their own persons afterwards went
on to declare, that they, "to do his lordship but right, of their
sincere consciences must needs affirm these strange and abominable
crimes to be raised of a wicked and venomous malice against the said
earl, of whose good service, sincerity of religion, and all other
faithful dealings towards her majesty and the realm, they had had long
and true experience."
These letters said too much; it was not credible that either her majesty
or her privy-councillors should each individually know to be false all
the imputations thrown upon Leicester in the libels written against him;
there was even good reason to believe that many of them were firmly
believed to be well founded by several, and perhaps most, of the
privy-councillors; at all events nothing like exculpatory evidence was
brought, or attempted to be brought, on the subject, consequently no
effect was produced on public opinion; the whole was regarded as an
_ex-parte_ proceeding. Philip Sidney, who probably set out with a
sincere disbelief of these shocking accusations brought against any
uncle who had shown for him an affection next to parental, eagerly took
up the pen in his defence. But the only point on which his refutation
appears to have been triumphant, was unfortunately one of no moral
moment,--the antiquity and nobility of the Dudley family, falsely, as it
seems, impugned by the libeller. Some inconsistencies and contradictions
he indeed pointed out in other matters; but, on the whole, the answer
was miserably deficient in every thing but invective, of which there was
far too much; and either from a gradual perception of the badness of his
cause or the weakness of his performance, or perhaps for other reasons
with which we are unacquainted, he abandoned his design; and the
fragment never saw the light till the publication of the Sidney Papers
about sixty years ago. But whatever might be the private judgements of
men concerning the character and conduct of the earl of Leicester; the
support of the queen, and the strength of the party which the long
possession of power, and a remarkable fidelity in the observance of his
engagements towards his own adherents, had enabled him to form,
effectually protected him from experiencing any decline of his political
influence. Of this a proof appeared soon after, when in consequence of
further disclosures of the dangerous designs of the catholics, a form of
association, by which the subscribers bound themselves to pursue, to the
utmost of their power, even to the death, all who should attempt any
thing against the queen in favor of any pretender to the crown, was
drawn up by this nobleman and obtained the signatures of all orders of
men.
This was a measure which the queen of Scots perceived to be aimed
expressly against herself, and of which she sought to divert the ill
effects by all the means still within her power. She desired to be one
of the first to whom the association should be offered for subscription;
and she begged that this act might form the basis of a treaty by which
all differences between herself and Elizabeth might be finally composed,
and her long captivity exchanged at length, if not for absolute freedom,
at least for a state of comparative independence under articles
guarantied by the principal powers of Europe. These articles, far
different from the former claims of Mary, appeared to Walsingham so
advantageous to his mistress, by the exemption which they seemed to
promise her from future machinations on the part of the queen of Scots,
that he strenuously urged their acceptance; but it was in vain. Mutual
injuries, dissimulation on both sides, and causes of jealousy on the
part of Elizabeth from which all her advantages over her captive enemy
had not served to set her free, now, as ever, opposed the conclusion of
any terms of agreement; and the imprudent and violent conduct of Mary
served to confirm Elizabeth in her unrelentingness. Even while the terms
were under discussion, a letter was intercepted addressed by the queen
of Scots to sir Francis Englefield, an English exile and pensioner in
Spain, in which she thus wrote: "Of the treaty between the queen of
England and me, I may neither hope nor look for good issue. Whatsoever
shall become of me, by whatsoever change of my state and condition, let
the execution of the _Great Plot_ go forward, without any respect of
peril or danger to me. For I will account my life very happily bestowed,
if I may with the same help and relieve so great a number of the
oppressed children of the Church.... And further, I pray you, use all
possible diligence and endeavour to pursue and promote, at the pope's
and other kings' hand, such a speedy execution of their former
designments, that the same may be effectuated sometime this next
spring." &c. It must be confessed, that after such a letter Mary had
little right to complain of the failure of these negotiations. The
countess of Shrewsbury, now at open variance with her husband, had
employed every art to infuse into the queen suspicions of a too great
intimacy subsisting between the earl and his prisoner; and Elizabeth,
either from a jealousy which the long fidelity of Shrewsbury to his
arduous trust was unable to counteract, or, as was believed, at the
instigation of some who meant further mischief to Mary, ordered about
this time her removal to the custody of sir Amias Paulet and sir Drugo
Drury.
This change filled the mind of the captive queen with terror, which
prepared her to listen with avidity to any schemes, however desperate,
for her own deliverance and the destruction of her enemy; and proved the
prelude to that tragical castastrophe which was now advancing fast upon
her.
A violent quarrel between Mary and the countess of Shrewsbury had
naturally resulted from the conduct of this furious woman; and Mary,
whose passions, whether fierce or tender, easily hurried her beyond the
bounds of decency and of prudence, gratified her resentment at once
against the countess and the queen by addressing to Elizabeth a letter
which could never be forgiven or forgotten. In this piece, much too
gross for insertion in the present work, she professes to comply with
the request of her royal sister, by acquainting her very exactly with
all the evil of every kind that the countess of Shrewsbury had ever
spoken of her majesty in her hearing. She then proceeds to repeat or
invent all that the most venomous malice could devise against the
character of Elizabeth: as, that she had conferred her favors on a
nameless person (probably Leicester) to whom she had promised marriage;
on the duke of Anjou, on Simier, on Hatton and others; that the latter
was quite disgusted with her fondness; that she was generous to none but
these favorites, &c. That her conceit of her beauty was such, that no
flattery could be too gross for her to swallow; and that this folly was
the theme of ridicule to all her courtiers, who would often pretend that
their eyes were unable to sustain the radiance of her countenance,--a
trait, by the way, which stands on other and better authority than this
infamous letter. That her temper was so furious that it was dreadful to
attend upon her;--that she had broken the finger of one lady, and
afterwards pretended to the courtiers that it was done by the fall of a
chandelier, and that she had cut another across the hand with a
knife;--stories very probably not entirely unfounded in fact, since we
find the earl of Huntingdon complaining, in a letter still preserved in
the British Museum, that the queen, on some quarrel, had pinched his
wife "very sorely." That she interfered in an arbitrary manner with the
marriage of one of the countess of Shrewsbury's daughters, and wanted to
engross the disposal of all the heiresses in the kingdom;--in which
charge there was also some truth. This insulting epistle concluded with
assurances of the extreme anxiety of the writer to see a good
understanding restored between herself and Elizabeth.
Meantime, the most alarming manifestations of the inveterate hostility
of the persecuted papists against the queen, continued to agitate the
minds of a people who loved and honored her; and who anticipated with
well founded horror the succession of another Mary, which seemed
inevitable in the event of her death. A book was written by a Romish
priest, exhorting the female attendants of her majesty to emulate the
merit and glory of Judith by inflicting on her the fate of Holophernes.
Dr. Allen, afterwards cardinal, published a work to justify and
recommend the murder of a heretic prince; and by this piece a gentleman
of the name of Parry was confirmed, it is said, in the black design
which he had several times revolved in his mind, but relinquished as
often from misgivings of conscience.
In the history of this person there are some circumstances very
remarkable. He was a man of considerable learning, but, being vicious
and needy, had some years before this time committed a robbery, for
which he had received the royal pardon. Afterwards he went abroad, and
was reconciled to the Romish church, though employed at the same time by
the ministers of Elizabeth to give intelligence respecting the English
exiles, whom he often recommended to pardon or favor, and sometimes
apparently with success. Returning home, he gained access to the queen,
who admitted him to several private interviews; and he afterwards
declared, that fearing he might be tempted to put in act the bloody
purpose which perpetually haunted his mind, he always left his dagger at
home when he went to wait upon her. On these occasions he apprized her
majesty of the existence of many designs against her life, and
endeavoured, with great earnestness and plainness of speech, to convince
her of the cruelty and impolicy of those laws against the papists which
had rendered them her deadly foes: but finding his arguments thrown away
upon the queen, he afterwards procured a seat in parliament, where he
was the sole opponent of a severe act passed against the Jesuits. On
account of the freedom with which he expressed himself on this occasion,
he was for a few days imprisoned.
Soon after a gentleman of the family of Nevil, induced it is said by the
hope of obtaining as his reward the honors and lands of the rebel earl
of Westmorland lately dead, disclosed to the government a plot for
assassinating the queen, in which he affirmed that Parry had engaged his
concurrence. Parry confessed in prison that he had long deliberated on
the means of effectually serving his church, and it appeared that he
had come to the decision that the assassination of the queen's greatest
subject might be lawful: a letter was also found upon him from cardinal
Como, expressing approbation of some design which he had communicated to
him. On this evidence he was capitally condemned; but to the last he
strongly denied that the cardinal's letter, couched in general terms,
referred to any attempt on the queen's person, or that he had ever
entertained the design charged upon him. Unlike all the other martyrs of
popery at this time, he died,--not avowing and glorying in the crime
charged upon him,--but earnestly protesting his innocence, his loyalty,
his warm attachment to her majesty. An account of his life was published
immediately afterwards by the queen's printer, written in a style of the
utmost virulence, and filled with tales of his monstrous wickedness
which have much the air of violent calumnies.
Parry was well known to lord Burleigh, with whom he had corresponded for
several years; and the circumstance of his being brought by him to the
presence of the queen, proves that this minister was far from regarding
him either as the low, the infamous, or the desperate wretch that he is
here represented. That he had sometimes _imagined_ the death of the
queen, he seems to have acknowledged; but most probably he had never so
far conquered the dictates of loyalty and conscience as to have laid any
plan for her destruction, or even to have resolved upon hazarding the
attempt. The case therefore was one in which mercy and even justice seem
to have required the remission of a harsh and hasty sentence; but the
panic terror which had now seized the queen, the ministry, the
parliament, and the nation, would have sufficed to overpower the
pleadings of the generous virtues in hearts of nobler mould than those
of Elizabeth, of Leicester, or of Walsingham.
Nevil, the accuser of Parry, far from gaining any reward, was detained
prisoner in the Tower certainly till the year 1588, and whether he even
then obtained his liberation does not appear.
The severe enactments of the new parliament against papists, which
included a total prohibition of every exercise of the rites of their
religion, so affected the mind of Philip Howard earl of Arundel, already
exasperated by the personal hardships to which the suspicions of her
majesty and the hostility of her ministers had exposed him, that he
formed the resolution of banishing himself for ever from his native
land. Having secretly prepared every thing for his departure, he put his
whole case upon record in a letter addressed to her majesty, and left
behind at his house in London. This piece ought, as it appears, to have
excited in the breast of his sovereign sentiments of regret and
compunction rather than of indignation. The writer complains, that
without any offence given on his part, or even objected against him by
her majesty, he had long since fallen into her disfavor, as by her
"bitter speeches" had become publicly known; so that he was generally
accounted, "nay in a manner pointed at," as one whom her majesty least
favored, and in most disgrace as a person whom she did deeply suspect
and especially mislike." That after he had continued for some months
under this cloud, he had been called sundry times by her command before
the council, where charges had been brought against him, some of them
ridiculously trifling, others incredible, all so untrue, that even his
greatest enemies could not, after his answers were made, reproach him
with any disloyal thought;--yet was he in the end ordered to keep his
house. That his enemies still continued to pursue him with
interrogatories, and continued his restraint; and that even after the
last examination had failed to produce any thing against him, he was
still kept fifteen weeks longer in the same state, though accused of
nothing. That when, either his enemies being ashamed to pursue these
proceedings further, or her majesty being prevailed upon by his friends
to put an end to them, he had at length recovered his liberty, he had
been led to meditate on the fates of his three unfortunate ancestors,
all circumvented by their enemies, and two of them (the earl of Surry
his grandfather and the duke of Norfolk his father) brought for slight
causes to an untimely end. And having weighed their cases with what had
just befallen himself, he concluded that it might well be his lot to
succeed them in fortune as in place. His foes were strong to overthrow,
he weak to defend himself, since innocence, he had found, was no
protection; her majesty being "easily drawn to an ill opinion of" his
"ancestry;" and moreover, he had been "charged by the council to be of
the religion which was accounted odious and dangerous to her estate."
"Lastly," he adds, "but principally, I weighed in what miserable
doubtful case my soul had remained if my life had been taken, as it was
not unlikely, in my former troubles. For I protest, the greatest burden
that rested on my conscience at that time was, because I had not lived
according to the prescript rule of that which I undoubtedly believed."
&c.
The earl had actually embarked at a small port in Sussex, when, his
project having been betrayed to the government by the mercenary villany
of the master of the vessel and of one of his own servants, orders were
issued for his detention, and he was brought back in custody and
committed to the Tower. The letter just quoted was then produced against
him; it was declared to reflect on the justice of the country; and for
the double offence of having written it and of attempting to quit the
kingdom without license, he underwent a long imprisonment, and was
arbitrarily sentenced to a fine of one thousand pounds, which he proved
his inability to pay. The barbarous tyranny which held his body in
thraldom, served at the same time to rivet more strongly upon his mind
the fetters of that stern superstition which had gained dominion over
him. The more he endured for his religion, the more awful and important
did it appear in his eyes; while in proportion to the severity and
tediousness of his sufferings from without, the scenery within became
continually more cheerless and terrific; and learning to dread in a
future world the prolonged operation of that principle of cruelty under
which he groaned in this, he sought to avert its everlasting action by
practising upon himself the expiatory rigors of asceticism. The sequel
of his melancholy history we shall have occasion to contemplate
hereafter.
Thomas Percy earl of Northumberland, brother to that earl who had
suffered death on account of the Northern rebellion,--by his
participation in which he had himself also incurred a fine, though
afterwards remitted,--was naturally exposed at this juncture to vehement
suspicions. After some examinations before the council, cause was found
for his committal to the Tower; and here, according to the iniquitous
practice of the age, he remained for a considerable time without being
brought to trial. At length the public was informed that another
prisoner on a like account having been put to the torture to force
disclosures, had revealed matters against the earl of Northumberland
amounting to treason, on which account he had thought fit to anticipate
the sentence of the law by shooting himself through the heart. That the
earl was really the author of his own death was indeed proved before a
coroner's jury by abundant and unexceptionable testimony, as well as by
his deliberate precautions for making his lands descend to his son, and
his indignant declaration that the queen, on whom he bestowed a most
opprobrious epithet, should never have his estate; though it may still
bear a doubt whether a consciousness of guilt, despair of obtaining
justice, or merely the misery of an indefinite captivity, were the
motive of the rash act: but the catholics, actuated by the true spirit
of party, added without scruple the death of this nobleman to the "foul
and midnight murders" perpetrated within these gloomy walls.
Meantime the opposition to popery, which had now become the reigning
principle of English policy, was to be maintained on other ground, and
with other weapons than those with which an inquisitorial
high-commission, or a fierce system of penal enactments, had armed the
hands of religious intolerance, political jealousy, or private
animosity; and all the more generous and adventurous spirits prepared
with alacrity to draw the sword in the noble cause of Belgian
independence, against the united tyranny and bigotry of the detestable
Philip II.