1587 AND 1588.
Small political effect of the death of Mary.--Warlike preparations of
Spain destroyed by Drake.--Case of lord Beauchamp.--Death and character
of the duchess of Somerset.--Hatton appointed chancellor.--Leicester
returns to Holland--is again recalled.--Disgrace of lord
Buckhurst.--Rupture with Spain.--Preparations against the
Armada.--Notices of the earls of Cumberland and Northumberland--T. and
R. Cecil--earl of Oxford--sir C. Blount--W. Raleigh--lord Howard of
Effingham--Hawkins--Frobisher--Drake.--Leicester appointed
general.--Queen at Tilbury.--Defeat of the Armada.--Introduction of
newspapers.--Death of Leicester.
It is well deserving of remark, that the strongest and most
extraordinary act of the whole administration of Elizabeth,--that which
brought the blood of a sister-queen upon her head and indelible reproach
upon her memory,--appears to have been productive of scarcely any
assignable political effect. It changed her relations with no foreign
power, it altered very little the state of parties at home, it
recommended no new adviser to her favor, it occasioned the displacement
of Davison alone.
She may appear, it is true, to have obtained by this stroke an immunity
from that long series of dark conspiracies by which, during so many
years, she had been disquieted and endangered. To deliver the queen of
Scots was an object for which many men had been willing to risk their
lives; but none were found desperate or chivalrous enough to run the
same hazard in order to avenge her. But the recent detection of
Babington and his associates, and the rigorous justice executed upon
them, was likely, even without the death of Mary, to have deterred from
the speedy repetition of similar practices; and a crisis was now
approaching fitted to suspend the machinations of faction, to check the
operation even of religious bigotry, and to unite all hearts in the
love, all hands in the protection, of their native soil.
Philip of Spain, though he purposely avoided as yet a declaration of
war, was known to be intently occupied upon the means of taking signal
vengeance on the queen of England for all the acts of hostility on her
part of which he thought himself entitled to complain.
Already in the summer of 1587 the ports of Spain and Portugal had begun
to be thronged with vessels of various sorts and every size, destined to
compose that terrible armada from which nothing less than the complete
subjugation of England was anticipated;--already had the pope showered
down his benedictions on the holy enterprise; and, by a bull declaring
the throne of the schismatic princess forfeited to the first occupant,
made way for the pretensions of Philip, who claimed it as the true heir
of the house of Lancaster.
But Elizabeth was not of a temper so timid or so supine as to suffer
these preparations to advance without interruption. She ordered Drake
to sail immediately for the coast of Spain, and put in practice against
her enemy every possible mode of injury and annoyance. To the four great
ships which she allotted to him for this service, the English merchants,
instigated by the hopes of plunder, cheerfully added twenty-six more of
different sizes; and with this force the daring leader steered for the
port of Cadiz, where a richly-laden fleet lay ready to sail for Lisbon,
the final rendezvous for the whole armada. By the impetuosity of his
attack, he compelled six galleys which defended the mouth of the harbour
to seek shelter under its batteries; and having thus forced an entrance,
he took, burned and destroyed about a hundred store-ships and two
galleons of superior size. This done, he returned to Cape St. Vincent;
then took three castles; and destroying as he proceeded every thing that
came in his way, even to the fishing-boats and nets, he endeavoured to
provoke the Spanish admiral to come out and give him battle off the
mouth of the Tagus. But the marquis of Santa Croce deemed it prudent to
suffer him to pillage the coast without molestation. Having fully
effected this object, he made sail for the Azores, where the capture of
a bulky carrack returning from India amply indemnified the merchants for
all the expenses of the expedition, and enriched the admiral and his
crews. Drake returned to England in a kind of triumph, boasting that he
had "singed the whiskers" of the king of Spain: nor was his vaunt
unfounded; the destruction of the store-ships, and the havoc committed
by him on the magazines of every kind, was a mischief so great, and for
the present so irreparable, that it crippled the whole design, and
compelled Philip to defer, for no less than a year, the sailing of his
invincible armada.
The respite thus procured was diligently improved by Elizabeth for the
completion of her plans of defence against the hour of trial, which she
still anticipated.--The interval seems to afford a fit occasion for the
relation of some incidents of a more private nature, but interesting as
illustrative of the manners and practices of the age.
It has been already mentioned, that the secret marriage of the earl of
Hertford with lady Catherine Gray, notwithstanding the sentence of
nullity which the queen had caused to be so precipitately pronounced and
the punishment which she had tyrannically inflicted on the parties, had
at length been duly established by a legal decision in which her majesty
was compelled to acquiesce. The eldest son of the earl assumed in
consequence his father's second title of lord Beauchamp, and became
undoubted heir to all the claims of the Suffolk line. About the year
1585, this young nobleman married, unknown to his father, a daughter of
sir Richard Rogers, of Brianston, a gentleman of ancient family, whose
son had already been permitted to intermarry with a daughter of the
house of Seymour. It might have been hoped that the earl of Hertford,
from his own long and unmerited sufferings on a similar account, would
have learned such a lesson of indulgence towards the affections of his
children, that a match of greater disparity might have received from
him a ready forgiveness. But he inherited, it seems, too much of the
unfeeling haughtiness of his high-born mother; and in the fury of his
resentment on discovery of this connexion of his son's, he made no
scruple of separating by force the young couple, in direct defiance of
the sacred tie which bound them to each other. Lord Beauchamp bore in
the beginning this arbitrary treatment with a dutiful submission, by
which he flattered himself that the heart of his father must sooner or
later be touched; but at length, finding all entreaties vain, and seeing
reason to believe that a settled plan was entertained by the earl of
estranging him for ever from his wife, he broke on a sudden from the
solitary mansion which had been assigned him as his place of abode, or
of banishment, and was hastening to London to throw himself at the feet
of her majesty and beseech her interposition, when a servant of his
father's overtook and forcibly detained him.
Well aware that his nearness to the crown must have rendered peculiarly
offensive to the queen what she would regard as his presumption in
marrying without her knowledge and consent, he at first suspected her
majesty as the author of this attack on his liberty; but being soon
informed of her declaration, "that he was no prisoner of hers, and the
man had acted without warrant," he addressed to lord Burleigh an earnest
petition for redress. In this remarkable piece, after a statement of his
case, he begs to submit himself by the lord-treasurer's means to the
queen and council, hoping _that they will grant him the benefit of the
laws of the realm_; that it would please his lordship to send for him by
his warrant; and that he might not be injured by his father's men,
though hardly dealt with by himself. Such were the lengths to which, in
this age, a parent could venture to proceed against his child, and such
the measures which it was then necessary to take in order to obtain the
protection of the laws. It is not stated whether lord Beauchamp was at
this time a minor; but if so, he probably made application to Burleigh
as master of the wards. Apparently his representations were not without
effect; for he procured in the end both a re-union with his wife and a
reconciliation with his father.
The grandmother of this young nobleman, Anne duchess-dowager of
Somerset, died at a great age in 1587. Maternally descended from the
Plantagenets, and elevated by marriage to the highest rank of English
nobility, she perhaps gloried in the character of being the proudest
woman of her day. It has often been repeated, that her repugnance to
yield precedence to queen Catherine Parr, when remarried to the younger
brother of her husband, was the first occasion of that division in the
house of Seymour by which Northumberland succeeded in working its
overthrow. In the misfortune to which she had thus contributed, the
duchess largely shared. When the Protector was committed to the Tower,
she also was carried thither amid the insults of the people, to whom her
arrogance had rendered her odious; and rigorous examinations and an
imprisonment of considerable duration here awaited her. She saw her
husband stripped of power and reputation, convicted of felony, and led
by his enemies to an ignominious death; and what to a woman of her
temper was perhaps a still severer trial, she beheld her son,--that son
for whose aggrandizement she had without remorse urged her weak husband
to strip of his birthright his own eldest born,--dispossessed in his
turn of title and estates, and reduced by an act of forfeiture to the
humble level of a private gentleman.
Her remarriage to an obscure person of the name of Newdigate, may prove,
either that ambition was not the only inordinate affection to which the
disposition of the duchess was subject, or that she was now reduced to
seek safety in insignificance.
During the reign of Mary, no favor beyond an unmolested obscurity was to
be expected by the protestant house of Seymour; but it was one of the
earliest acts of Elizabeth generously to restore to Edward Seymour the
whole of the Protector's confiscated estates not previously granted to
his elder half-brother, and with them the title of earl of Hertford, the
highest which his father had received from Henry VIII., and that with
which he ought to have rested content. Still no door was opened for the
return of the duchess of Somerset to power or favor; Elizabeth never
ceasing to behold in this haughty woman both the deadly enemy of admiral
Seymour,--that Seymour who was the first to touch her youthful heart,
and whose pretensions to her hand had precipitated his ruin,--and that
rigid censor of her early levities, who, dressed in a "brief authority,"
had once dared to assume over her a kind of superiority, which she had
treated at the time with disdain, and apparently continued to recollect
with bitterness.
It appears from a letter in which the duchess earnestly implores the
intercession of Cecil in behalf of her son, when under confinement on
account of his marriage, that she was at the time of writing it excluded
from the royal presence; and it was nine whole years before all the
interest she could make, all the solicitations which she compelled
herself to use towards persons whom she could once have commanded at her
pleasure, proved effectual in procuring his release. The vast wealth
which she had amassed must still, however, have maintained her
ascendency over her own family and numerous dependents, though with its
final disposal her majesty evinced a strong disposition to intermeddle.
Learning that she had appointed her eldest son sole executor, to the
prejudice of his brother sir Henry Seymour, whom she did not love, the
queen sent a gentleman to expostulate with her, and urge her strongly to
change this disposition. The aged duchess, after long refusal, agreed at
length to comply with the royal wish: but this promise she omitted to
fulfil, and some obstruction was in consequence given to the execution
of her last will. We possess a large inventory of her jewels and
valuables, among which are enumerated "two pieces of unicorn's horn," an
article highly valued in that day, from its supposed efficacy as an
antidote, or a test, for poisons. The extreme smallness of her bequests
for charitable purposes was justly remarked as a strong indication of a
harsh and unfeeling disposition, in an age when similar benefactions
formed almost the sole resource of the sick and needy.
In this year lord-chancellor Bromley died: and it should appear that
there was at the time no other lawyer of eminence who had the good
fortune to stand high in the favor of the queen and her counsellors, for
we are told that she had it in contemplation to appoint as his successor
the earl of Rutland; a nobleman in the thirtieth year of his age,
distinguished indeed among the courtiers for his proficiency in elegant
literature and his knowledge of the laws of his country, but known to
the public only in the capacity of a colonel of foot in the bloodless
campaign of the earl of Sussex against the Northern rebels.
How far this young man might have been qualified to do honor to so
extraordinary a choice, remains matter of conjecture; his lordship being
carried off by a sudden illness within a week of Bromley himself, after
which her majesty thought proper to invest with this high office sir
Christopher Hatton her vice-chamberlain.
This was a nomination scarcely less mortifying to lawyers than that of
the earl of Rutland. Hatton's abode at one of the inns of court had been
so short as scarcely to entitle him to a professional character; and
since his fine dancing had recommended him to the favor of her majesty,
he had entirely abandoned his legal pursuits for the life and the hopes
of a courtier. It is asserted that his enemies promoted his appointment
with more zeal than his friends, in the confident expectation of seeing
him disgrace himself: what may be regarded as more certain is, that he
was so disquieted by intimations of the queen's repenting of her choice,
that he tendered to her his resignation before he entered on the duties
of his office; and that in the beginning of his career the serjeants
refused to plead before him. But he soon found means both to vanquish
their repugnance and to establish in the public mind an opinion of his
integrity and sufficiency, which served to redeem his sovereign from the
censure or ridicule to which this extraordinary choice seemed likely to
expose her. He had the wisdom to avail himself, in all cases of peculiar
difficulty, of the advice of two learned serjeants;--in other matters he
might reasonably regard his own prudence and good sense as competent
guides. In fact, it was only since the reformation that this great
office had begun to be filled by common-law lawyers: before this period
it was usally exercised by some ecclesiastic who was also a civilian,
and instances were not rare of the seals having been held in commission
by noblemen during considerable intervals;--facts which, in justice to
Hatton and to Elizabeth, ought on this occasion to be kept in mind.
The pride of Leicester had been deeply wounded by the circumstances of
that forced return from Holland which, notwithstanding all his artful
endeavours to color it to the world, was perfectly understood at court
as a disgraceful recall.
The queen, in the first emotions of indignation and disappointment
called forth by his ill-success, had in public made use of expressions
respecting his conduct, of which he well knew that the effect could
only be obviated by some mark of favor equally public; and he spared no
labor for the accomplishment of this object. By an extraordinary
exertion of that influence over her majesty's affections which enabled
him to hold her judgement in lasting captivity, he was at length
successful, and the honorable and lucrative place of chief justice in
Eyre of all the forests south of Trent was bestowed upon him early in
1587. So far was well; but he disdained to rest satisfied with less than
the restitution of that supreme command over the Dutch provinces which
had flattered his vanity with a title never borne by Englishman before;
that of _Excellence_. His usual arts prevailed in this instance
likewise. By means of the authority which he had surreptitiously
reserved to himself, he held the governors of towns and forts in Holland
in complete dependence, whilst his solemn ostentation of religion had
secured the zealous attachment of the protestant clergy; an order which
then exerted an important influence over public opinion. It had thus
been in his power to raise a strong faction in the country, through the
instrumentality of which he raised such impediments to the measures of
administration, that the States-general saw themselves at length
compelled, as the smaller of two evils, to solicit the queen for his
return. It was a considerable time before she could be brought to
sanction a step of which her sagest counsellors, secretly hostile to
Leicester, labored to demonstrate the entire inexpediency. The affairs
of Holland suffered at once by the dissensions which the malice of
Leicester had sown, and by the long irresolution of Elizabeth; and she
at length sent over lord Buckhurst to make inquiry into some measures of
the States which had given her umbrage, and to report upon the whole
matter.
The sagacious and upright statesman was soon satisfied where the blame
ought to rest, and he suggested a plan for the government of the country
which excluded the idea of Leicester's return. But the intrigues of the
favorite finally prevailed, and he was authorized in June 1587 to resume
a station of which he had proved himself equally incapable and unworthy,
having previously been further gratified by her majesty with the office
of lord high-steward, and with permission to resign that of master of
the horse to his stepson the earl of Essex. But fortune disdained to
smile upon his arms; and his failure in an attempt to raise the siege of
Sluys produced such an exasperation of his former quarrel with the
States, that in the month of November the queen found herself compelled
to supersede him, appointing the brave lord Willoughby captain-general
in his place.
On his return to England, Leicester found lord Buckhurst preparing
against him a charge of malversation in Holland, and he received a
summons to justify himself before the privy-council; but he better
consulted his safety by flying for protection to the footstool of the
throne. The queen, touched by his expressions of humility and sorrow,
and his earnest entreaties "that she would not receive with disgrace on
his return, him whom she had sent forth with honor, nor bring down
alive to the grave one whom her former goodness had raised from the
dust," consented once again to receive him into wonted favor. Nor was
this all; for on the day when he was expected to give in his answer
before the council, he appeared in his place, and by a triumphant appeal
to her majesty, whose secret orders limited, as he asserted, his public
commission, baffled at once the hopes of his enemies and the claims of
public justice. What was still more gross, he was suffered to succeed in
procuring a censure to be passed upon lord Buckhurst, who continued in
disgrace for the nine remaining months of Leicester's life, during which
a royal command restrained him within his house. Elizabeth must in this
instance have known her own injustice even while she was committing it;
but by the loyal and chivalrous nobility, who knelt before the footstool
of the maiden-queen, "her buffets and rewards were ta'en with equal
thanks;" and Abbot, the chaplain of lord Buckhurst, has recorded of his
patron, that "so obsequious was he to this command, that in all the time
he never would endure, openly or secretly, by day or night, to see
either wife or child." He had his reward; for no sooner was the queen
restored to liberty by the death of her imperious favorite, than she
released her kinsman, honored him with the garter, procured, two years
after, his election to the chancellorship of the university of Oxford,
and finally appointed him Burleigh's successor in the honorable and
lucrative post of lord treasurer.
During the unavoidable delay which the expedition of Drake had brought
to the designs of Philip II., the prince of Parma had by his master's
directions been endeavouring to amuse the vigilance of Elizabeth with
overtures of negotiation. The queen, at the request of the prince, sent
plenipotentiaries to treat with him in Flanders; and though the
Hollanders absolutely refused to enter into the treaty, they proceeded
with apparent earnestness in the task of settling preliminaries. Some
writers maintain, that there was, from the beginning, as little
sincerity on one side as on the other; to gain time for the preparations
of attack or defence, being the sole object of both parties in these
manoeuvres. Yet the cautious and pacific character of the policy of
Elizabeth, and the secret dread which she ever entertained of a serious
contest with the power of Spain, seem to render it more probable that
the wish and hope of an accommodation was at first on her side real; and
that the fears of the States that their interests might become the
sacrifice, must have been by no means destitute of foundation. Leicester
is said to have had the merit of first opening the eyes of his sovereign
to the fraudulent conduct of the prince of Parma,--who in fact was
furnished with no powers to treat,--and to have earned for himself by
this discovery the restoration of her favor.
In March 1588 these conferences broke off abruptly. It was impossible
for either party longer to deceive or to act the being deceived; for all
Europe now rang with the mighty preparations of king Philip for the
conquest of England;--preparations which occupied the whole of his vast
though disjointed empire, from the Flemish provinces which still owned
his yoke, to the distant ports of Sicily and Naples.
The spirit of the English people rose with the emergency. All ranks and
orders vied with each other in an eager devotedness to the sacred cause
of national independence; the rich poured forth their treasures with
unsparing hand; the chivalrous and young rushed on-board ships of their
own equipment, a band of generous volunteers; the poor demanded arms to
exterminate every invader who should set foot on English ground; while
the clergy animated their audience against the Pope and the Spaniard,
and invoked a blessing on the holy warfare of their fellow-citizens.
Elizabeth, casting aside all her weaknesses, showed herself worthy to be
the queen and heroine of such a people. Her prudence, her vigilance, her
presence of mind, which failed not for a moment, inspired unbounded
confidence, while her cheerful countenance and spirited demeanour
breathed hope and courage and alacrity into the coldest bosoms. Never
did a sovereign enter upon a great and awful contest with a more
strenuous resolution to fulfil all duties, to confront all perils; never
did a people repay with such ardor of gratitude, such enthusiasm of
attachment, the noblest virtues of a prince.
The best troops of the country were at this time absent in Flanders; and
there was no standing army except the queen's guard and the garrisons
kept in a few forts on the coast or the Scottish border. The royal navy
was extremely small, and the revenues of the crown totally inadequate
to the effort of raising it to any thing approaching a parity with the
fleets of Spain. The queen possessed not a single ally on the continent
capable of affording her aid; she doubted the fidelity of the king of
Scots to her interests, and a formidable mass of disaffection was
believed to subsist among her own subjects of the catholic communion. It
was on the spontaneous efforts of individuals that the whole safety of
the country at this momentous crisis was left dependent: if these
failed, England was lost;--but in such a cause, at such a juncture, they
could not fail; and the first appeal made by government to the
patriotism of the people was answered with that spirit in which a nation
is invincible. A message was sent by the privy-council to inquire of the
corporation of London what the city would be willing to undertake for
the public service? The corporation requested to be informed what the
council might judge requisite in such a case. Fifteen ships and five
thousand men, was the answer. Two days after, the city "humbly intreated
the council, in sign of their perfect love and loyalty, to prince and
country, to accept ten thousand men and thirty ships amply furnished."
"And," adds the chronicler, "even as London, London like, gave
precedent, the whole kingdom kept true rank and equipage." At this time,
the able-bodied men in the capital between the ages of eighteen and
sixty amounted to no more than 17,083.
Without entering into further detail respecting the particular
contributions of different towns or districts to the common defence, it
is sufficient to remark, that every sinew was strained, and that little
was left to the charge of government but the task of arranging and
applying the abundant succours furnished by the zeal of the country. One
trait of the times, however, it is essential to commemorate. Terror is
perhaps the most merciless of all sentiments, and that which is least
restrained either by shame or a sense of justice; and under this
debasing influence some of the queen's advisers did not hesitate to
suggest, that in a crisis so desperate, she ought to consult her own
safety and that of the country, by seeking pretexts to take away the
lives of some of the leading catholics. They cited in support of this
atrocious proposal the example of Henry VIII. her father, who, before
his departure for the French wars, had without scruple brought to the
block his own cousin the marquis of Exeter and several others, whose
chief crime was their attachment to the ancient faith and their enjoying
a degree of popularity which might enable them to raise commotions in
his absence.
Elizabeth rejected with horror these suggestions of cowardice and
cruelty, at the same time that she omitted no measures of precaution
which she regarded as justifiable. The existing laws against priests and
seminary-men were enforced with vigilance and severity, all popish
recusants were placed under close inspection, and a considerable number
of those accounted most formidable were placed under safe custody in
Wisbeach-castle.
To these gentlemen, however, the queen caused it to be intimated, that
the step which she had taken was principally designed for their
protection, since it was greatly to be apprehended that, in the event of
landing of the Spaniards, the Roman catholics might become the victims
of some ebullition of popular fury which it would not then be in the
power of government to repress.
This lenient proceeding on the part of her majesty was productive of the
best effects; the catholics who remained at liberty became earnest to
prove themselves possessed of that spirit of patriotism and loyalty for
which she had given them credit. Some entered the ranks as volunteers;
others armed and encouraged their tenantry and dependants for the
defence of their country; several even fitted out vessels at their own
expense, and intrusted the command of them to protestant officers on
whom the government could entirely rely.
After the defeat of the Armada, the prisoners at Wisbeach-castle, having
signed the submission required by law of such as had offended in hearing
mass and absenting themselves from church, petitioned the privy-council
for their liberty; but a bond for good behaviour being further demanded
of them, with the condition of being obedient to such orders as six
members of the privy-council should write down respecting them, they
refused to comply with such terms of enlargement, and remained in
custody. As the submission which they had tendered voluntarily was in
terms apparently no less strong than the bond which they refused, it was
conjectured that the former piece had been drawn up by their ghostly
fathers with some private equivocation or mental reservation; a
suspicion which receives strong confirmation from the characters and
subsequent conduct of some of these persons,--the most noted fanatics
certainly of their party,--and amongst whom we read the names of Talbot,
Catesby, and Tresham, afterwards principal conspirators in the
detestable gunpowder plot[98].
[Note 98: Life of Whitgift, by Strype.]
The ships equipped by the nobility and gentry to combat the armada
amounted in the whole to forty-three, and it was on-board these vessels
that young men of the noblest blood and highest hopes now made their
first essay in arms. In this number may be distinguished George Clifford
third earl of Cumberland, one of the most remarkable, if not the
greatest, characters of the reign of Elizabeth.
The illustrious race of Clifford takes origin from William duke of
Normandy; in a later age its blood was mingled with that of the
Plantagenets by the intermarriage of the seventh lord de Clifford and a
daughter of the celebrated Hotspur by Elizabeth his wife, whose father
was Edward Mortimer earl of March. Notwithstanding this alliance with
the house of York, two successive lords de Clifford were slain in the
civil wars fighting strenuously on the Lancastrian side. It was to the
younger of these, whose sanguinary spirit gained him the surname of the
Butcher, that the barbarous murder of the young earl of Rutland was
popularly imputed; and a well-founded dread of the vengeance of the
Yorkists caused his widow to conceal his son and heir under the lowly
disguise of a shepherd-boy, in which condition he grew up among the
fells of Westmorland totally illiterate, and probably unsuspicious of
his origin.
At the end of five-and-twenty years, the restoration of the line of
Lancaster in the person of Henry VII. restored to lord de Clifford the
name, rank, and large possessions of his ancestors; but the
peasant-noble preferred through life that rustic obscurity in which his
character had been formed and his habits fixed, to the splendors of a
court or the turmoils of ambition. He kept aloof from the capital; and
it was only on the field of Flodden, to which he led in person his hardy
tenantry, that this de Clifford exhibited some sparks of the warlike
fire inherent in his race.
His successor, by qualities very different from the homely virtues which
had obtained for his father among his tenantry and neighbours the
surname of the Good, recommended himself to the special favor of Henry
VIII., who created him earl of Cumberland, and matched his heir to his
own niece lady Eleanor Brandon. The sole fruit of this illustrious
alliance, which involved the earl in an almost ruinous course of
expense, was a daughter, who afterwards became the mother of Ferdinando
earl of Derby, a nobleman whose mysterious and untimely fate remains to
be hereafter related. By a second and better-assorted marriage, the earl
of Cumberland became the father of George, his successor, our present
subject, who proved the most remarkable of this distinguished family.
The death of his father during his childhood had brought him under
wardship to the queen; and by her command he was sent to pursue his
studies at Peterhouse, Cambridge, under Whitgift, afterwards primate.
Here he applied himself with ardor to the mathematics, and it was
apparently the bent of his genius towards these studies which first
caused him to turn his attention to nautical matters. An enterprising
spirit and a turn for all the fashionable profusions of the day, which
speedily plunged him in pecuniary embarrassments, added incitements to
his activity in these pursuits; and in 1586 he fitted out three ships
and a pinnace to cruise against the Spaniards and plunder their
settlements. It appears extraordinary that he did not assume in person
the command of his little squadron; but combats and triumphs perhaps
still more glorious in his estimation awaited him on the smoother
element of the court.
In the games of chivalry he bore off the prize of courage and dexterity
from all his peers; the romantic band of knights-tilters boasted of him
as one of its brightest ornaments, and her majesty deigned to encourage
his devotedness to her glory by an envied pledge of favor.
As he stood or kneeled before her, she dropped her glove, perhaps not
undesignedly, and on his picking it up, graciously desired him to keep
it. He caused the trophy to be encircled with diamonds, and ever after
at all tilts and tourneys bore it conspicuously placed in front of his
high-crowned hat.
But the emergencies of the year 1588 summoned him to resign the
fopperies of an antiquated knight-errantry for serious warfare and the
exercise of genuine valor. Taking upon him the command of a ship, he
joined the fleet appointed to hang upon the motions of the Spanish
armada and harass it in its progress up the British Channel; and on
several occasions, especially in the last action, off Calais, he
signalized himself by uncommon exertions.
In reward of his services, her majesty granted him her royal commission
to pursue a voyage to the South Sea, which he had already projected; she
even lent him for the occasion one of her own ships; and thus
encouraged, he commenced that long series of naval enterprises which has
given him an enduring name. After two or three voyages he constantly
declined her majesty's gracious offers of the loan of her ships, because
they were accompanied with the express condition that he should never
lay any vessel of hers on-board a Spanish one, lest both should be
destroyed by fire. Such was the character of mingled penuriousness and
timidity which pervaded the maritime policy of this great princess, even
after the defeat of the armada had demonstrated that, ship for ship, her
navy might defy the world!
At this period, all attempts against the power and prosperity of Spain
were naturally regarded with high favor and admiration; and it cannot be
denied that in his long and hazardous expeditions the earl of Cumberland
evinced high courage, undaunted enterprise, and an extraordinary share
of perseverance under repeated failures, disappointments, and hardships
of every kind. It is also true that his vigorous attacks embarrassed
extremely the intercourse of Spain with her colonies; and, besides the
direct injury which they inflicted, compelled this power to incur an
immense additional expense for the protection of her treasure-ships and
settlements. But the benefit to England was comparatively trifling; and
to the earl himself, notwithstanding occasional captures of great value,
his voyages were far from producing any lasting advantage; they scarcely
repaid on the whole the cost of equipment; while the influx of sudden
wealth with which they sometimes gratified him, only ministered food to
that magnificent profusion in which he finally squandered both his
acquisitions and his patrimony. None of the liberal and enlightened
views which had prompted the efforts of the great navigators of this and
a preceding age appear to have had any share in the enterprises of the
earl of Cumberland. Even the thirst of martial glory seems in him to
have been subordinate to the love of gain, and that appetite for rapine
to which his loose and extravagant habits had given the force of a
passion.
He had formed, early in life, an attachment to the beautiful daughter of
that worthy character and rare exemplar of old English hospitality, sir
William Holles, ancestor to the earls of Clare of that surname; but her
father, from a singular pride of independence, refused to listen to his
proposals, saying "that he would not have to stand cap in hand to his
son-in-law; his daughter should marry a good gentleman with whom he
might have society and friendship." Disappointed thus of the object of
his affections, he matched himself with a daughter of the earl of
Bedford; a woman of merit, as it appears, but whom their mutual
indifference precluded from exerting over him any salutary influence. As
a husband, he proved both unfaithful and cruel; and separating himself
after a few years from his countess, on pretence of incompatibility of
tempers, he suffered her to pine not only in desertion, but in poverty.
We shall hereafter have occasion to view this celebrated earl in the
idly-solemn personage of queen's champion; meantime, he must be
dismissed with no more of applause than may be challenged by a character
signally deficient in the guiding and restraining virtues, and endowed
with such a share only of the more active ones as served to render it
conspicuous and glittering rather than truly and permanently
illustrious.
Henry earl of Northumberland likewise joined the fleet, on-board a
vessel hired by himself. Immediately after the fatal catastrophe of his
father in 1585, this young nobleman, anxious apparently to efface the
stigma of popery and disaffection stamped by the rash attempts of his
uncle and father on the gallant name of Percy, had seized the
opportunity of embarking with Leicester for the wars of the Low
Countries. He now sought distinction on another element, and in a cause
still nearer to the hearts of Englishmen. The conversion to
protestantism and loyalty of the head of such a house could not but be
regarded by Elizabeth with feelings of peculiar complacency, and in
1593 she was pleased to confer upon the earl the insignia of the garter.
He was present in 1601 at the siege of Ostend, where he considered
himself as so much aggrieved by the conduct of sir Francis Vere, that on
the return of this officer to England he sent him a challenge. During
the decline of the queen's health, Northumberland was distinguished by
the warmth with which he embraced the interests of the king of Scots,
and he was the first privy-councillor named by James on his accession to
the English throne. But the fate of his family seemed still to pursue
him: on some unsupported charges connected with the gunpowder plot, he
was stripped of all his offices, heavily fined, and sentenced to
perpetual imprisonment: the tardy mercy of the king procured however his
release at the end of fifteen years, and he spent the remnant of his
life in tranquil and honorable retirement. This unfortunate nobleman was
a man of parts: the abundant leisure for intellectual pursuits afforded
by his long captivity was chiefly employed by him in the study of the
mathematics, including perhaps the occult sciences; and as he was
permitted to enjoy freely the conversation of such men of learning as he
wished to assemble around him, he became one of their most bountiful
patrons.
Thomas Cecil, eldest son of the lord-treasurer, formerly a volunteer in
the expedition to Scotland undertaken in favor of the regent Murray, and
more recently appointed governor of the Brill in consideration of his
services in the war in Flanders, also embarked to repel the invaders;
as did Robert his half-brother, the afterwards celebrated secretary of
state created earl of Salisbury by James I.
Robert Cecil was deformed in his person, of a feeble and sickly
constitution, and entirely devoted to the study of politics; and
nothing, it is to be presumed, but his steady determination of omitting
no means of attracting to himself that royal favor which he contemplated
as the instrument by which to work out his future fortunes, could have
engaged him in a service so repugnant to his habits and pursuits, and
for which the hand of nature herself had so evidently disabled him.
The earl of Oxford, in expiation perhaps of some of those violences of
temper and irregularities of conduct by which he was perpetually
offending the queen and obstructing his own advancement in the state,
equipped on this occasion a vessel which he commanded.
Sir Charles Blount, notwithstanding the narrowness of his present
fortunes, judged it incumbent on him to give a similar proof of
attachment to his queen and country; and the circumstance affords an
occasion of introducing to the notice of the reader one of the brightest
ornaments of the court of Elizabeth.
This distinguished gentleman, now in the twenty-fifth year of his age,
was the second son of James sixth lord Montjoy of the ancient Norman
name of Le Blonde, corruptly written Blount. The family history might
serve as a commentary on the reigning follies of the English court
during two or three generations. His grandfather, a splendid courtier,
consumed his resources on the ostentatious equipage with which he
attended to the French wars his master Henry VIII. with whom he had the
misfortune to be a favorite. His father squandered a diminished
patrimony still more absurdly in his search after the philosopher's
stone; and the ruin of the family was so consummated by the ill-timed
prodigalities of his elder brother, that when his death without children
in 1594 transmitted the title of lord Montjoy to sir Charles, a thousand
marks was the whole amount of the inheritance by which this honor was to
be maintained. It is needless to add that the younger brother's portion
with which he set out in life was next to nothing. Having thus his own
way to make, he immediately after completing his education at Oxford
entered himself of the Inner Temple, as meaning to pursue the profession
of the law: but fortune had ordained his destiny otherwise; and being
led by his curiosity to visit the court, he there found "a pretty
strange kind of admission," which cannot be related with more vivacity
than in the original words of Naunton. "He was then much about twenty
years of age, of a brown hair, a sweet face, a most neat composure, and
tall in his person. The queen was then at Whitehall, and at dinner,
whither he came to see the fashion of the court. The queen had soon
found him out, and with a kind of an affected frown asked the lady
carver who he was? She answered, she knew him not; insomuch that enquiry
was made from one to another who he might be, till at length it was told
the queen that he was brother to the lord William Mountjoy. This
inquisition, with the eye of majesty fixed upon him, (as she was wont
to do to daunt men she knew not,) stirred the blood of this young
gentleman, insomuch as his colour went and came; which the queen
observing called him unto her, and gave him her hand to kiss,
encouraging him with gracious words and new looks; and so diverting her
speech to the lords and ladies, she said, that she no sooner observed
him but that she knew there was in him some noble blood, with some other
expressions of pity towards his house. And then again, demanding his
name, she said, 'Fail you not to come to the court, and I will bethink
myself how to do you good.' And this was his inlet, and the beginning of
his grace." It does not appear what boon the queen immediately bestowed
upon her new courtier; but he deserted the profession of the law, sat in
the parliaments of 1585 and 1586 as the representative of two different
Cornish boroughs, received in the latter year the honor of knighthood,
and soon after his present expedition appeared considerable enough at
court to provoke the hostility of the earl of Essex himself. Raleigh,
now high in favor, and invested with the offices of captain of the
queen's guard and her lieutenant for Cornwall, had been actively engaged
since the last year in training to arms the militia of that county. He
had also been employed, as a member of the council of war, in concerting
the general plan of national defence: but his ardent and adventurous
valor prompted him to aid his country in her hour of trial on both
elements, and with hand as well as head: throwing himself therefore into
a vessel of his own which waited his orders, he hastened to share in
the discomfiture of her insulting foe.
But it would be endless to enumerate all who spontaneously came forward
to partake the perils and the glory of this ever-memorable contest; and
the naval commanders of principal eminence have higher claims to our
notice.
The dignity of lord-high-admiral,--customarily conferred on mere men of
rank, in whom not the slightest tincture of professional knowledge was
required or expected,--at this critical juncture belonged to Charles
second lord Howard of Effingham, of whom we have formerly spoken, and
who appears never in the whole course of his life to have been at sea
but once before, and that only on an occasion of ceremony. He was every
way an untried man, and as yet distinguished for nothing except the
accomplishments of a courtier: but he exhibited on trial courage,
resolution, and conduct; an affability of manner which endeared him to
the sailors; and a prudent sense of his own inexperience, which rendered
him perfectly docile to the counsels of those excellent sea-officers by
whom he had the good fortune to find himself surrounded. He encouraged
his crew, and manifested his alacrity in the service, by putting his own
hand to the rope which was to tow his ship out of harbour; and he
afterwards gave proof of his good sense and his patriotism, by his
opposition to the orders which her majesty's excess of oeconomy led
her to issue on the first dispersion of the armada by a storm, for
laying up four of her largest ships; earnestly requesting that he might
be permitted to retain them at his own expense rather than the safety of
the country should be risked by their dismissal. John Hawkins, one of
the ablest and most experienced seamen of the age, was chiefly relied
upon for the conduct of the main fleet, in which he acted as
vice-admiral. For his good service he was knighted by the lord-admiral
on board his own ship immediately after the action, when the like honor
was bestowed on that eminent navigator Frobisher, who led into action
the Triumph, one of the three first-rates which were then all that the
English navy could boast.
To the hero Drake, as rear-admiral, a separate squadron was intrusted;
and it was by this division that the principal execution was done upon
the discomfited armada as it fled in confusion before the valor of the
English and the fury of their tempestuous seas. An enormous galleon
surrendered without firing a shot to the much smaller vessel of Drake,
purely from the terror of his name.
Whilst the lord-admiral, with the principal fleet stationed off
Plymouth, prepared to engage the armada in its passage up the Channel,
sir Henry Seymour, youngest son of the protector, was stationed with a
smaller force, partly English partly Flemish, off Dunkirk, for the
purpose of intercepting the duke of Parma, who was lying with his
veteran forces on the coast, ready to embark and co-operate in the
conquest of England.
In the midst of these naval preparations, which happily sufficed in the
event to frustrate entirely the designs of the enemy, equal activity
was exerted to place the land-forces in a condition to dispute the soil
against the finest troops and most consummate general of Europe.
An army of reserve consisting of about thirty-six thousand men was drawn
together for the defence of the queen's person, and appointed to march
towards any quarter in which the most pressing danger should manifest
itself. A smaller, but probably better appointed, force of twenty-three
thousand was stationed in a camp near Tilbury to protect the capital,
against which it was not doubted that the most formidable efforts of the
enemy on making good his landing would be immediately directed.
Owing to the long peace which the country had enjoyed, England possessed
at this juncture no general of reputation, though, doubtless, a
sufficiency of men of resolution and capacity whom a short experience of
actual service would have matured into able officers. Under
circumstances which afforded to the government so small a choice of men,
the respective appointments of Arthur lord Grey,--distinguished by the
vigor which he had exerted in suppressing the last Irish rebellion,--to
the post of president of the council of war; of lord Hunsdon,--a brave
soldier long practised in the desultory warfare of the northern border,
as well as in several regular campaigns against Scotland,--to the
command of the army of reserve; and of the earl of Essex,--a gallant
youth who had fleshed his maiden sword and gained his spurs in the
affair of Zutphen,--to the post of general of the horse in the main
army;--seem to have merited the sanction of public approbation. But the
most strenuous defender of the measures of her majesty must have been
staggered by her nomination of Leicester,--the hated, the disgraced, the
incapable Leicester,--to the station of highest honor, danger, and
importance;--that of commander in chief of the army at Tilbury. Military
experience, indeed, the favorite possessed in a higher degree than most
of those to whom the defence of the country was now of necessity
intrusted, but of skill and conduct he had proved himself destitute;
even his personal courage was doubtful; and his recent failures in
Holland must have inspired distrust in the bosom of every individual,
whether officer or private, appointed to serve under him. Something must
be allowed for the embarrassments of the time; the deficiency of
military talent; the high rank of Leicester in the service, which
forbade his employment in any inferior capacity: but, with all these
palliations, the nomination of such an antagonist to confront the duke
of Parma must eternally be regarded as the weakest act into which the
prudence of Elizabeth was ever betrayed by a blind and unaccountable
partiality.
All these preparations for defence being finally arranged, her majesty
resolved to visit in person the camp at Tilbury, for the purpose of
encouraging her troops.
It had been a part of the commendation of Elizabeth, that in her public
appearances, of whatsoever nature, no sovereign on record had _acted_
the part so well, or with such universal applause. But on this
memorable and momentous occasion, when,--like a second Boadicea, armed
for defence against the invader of her country,--she appeared at once
the warrior and the queen, the sacred feelings of the moment, superior
to all the artifices of regal dignity and the tricks of regal
condescension, inspired her with that impressive earnestness of look, of
words, of gesture, which alone is truly dignified and truly eloquent.
Mounted on a noble charger, with a general's truncheon in her hand, a
corselet of polished steel laced on over her magnificent apparel, and a
page in attendance bearing her white-plumed helmet, she rode bare-headed
from rank to rank with a courageous deportment and smiling countenance;
and amid the affectionate plaudits and shouts of military ardor which
burst from the animated and admiring soldiery, she addressed them in the
following short and spirited harangue.
"My loving people; we have been persuaded by some that are careful of
our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes,
for fear of treachery; but, assure you, I do not desire to live to
distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear: I have always
so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength
and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects. And
therefore I am come amongst you at this time, not as for my recreation
or sport, but being resolved in the midst and heat of the battle, to
live or die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom,
and for my people, my honor and my blood, even in the dust. I know I
have but the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart of a
king, and of a king of England too; and think foul scorn that Parma or
Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my
realms: To which, rather than any dishonor should grow by me, I myself
will take up arms; I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of
every one of your virtues in the field.
"I know already by your forwardness, that you have deserved rewards and
crowns; and we do assure you, on the word of a prince, they shall be
duly paid you. In the meantime, my lieutenant-general shall be in my
stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble and worthy subject;
not doubting by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the
camp, and your valor in the field, we shall shortly have a famous
victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people."
The extraordinary reliance placed by the queen in this emergency upon
the counsels of Leicester encouraged the insatiable favorite to grasp at
honor and authority still more exorbitant; and he ventured to urge her
majesty to invest him with the office of her lieutenant in England and
Ireland; a dignity paramount to all other commands. She had the weakness
to comply; and it is said that the patent was actually drawn out, when
the defeat of the armada, by taking away all pretext for the creation of
such an officer, gave her leisure to attend to the earnest
representations of Hatton and Burleigh on the imprudence of conferring
on any subject powers so excessive, and capable even in some instances
of controlling her own prerogative. On better consideration the project
therefore was dropped.
It is foreign from the business of this work to detail the particulars
of that signal victory obtained by English seamanship and English valor
against the boasted armament of Spain, prodigiously superior as it was
in every circumstance of force excepting the moral energies employed to
wield it. While the history of the year 1588 in all its details must
ever form a favorite chapter in the splendid tale of England's naval
glory, it will here suffice to mark the general results.
Not a single Spaniard set foot on English ground but as a prisoner; one
English vessel only, and that of smaller size, became the prize of the
invaders. The duke of Parma did not venture to embark a man. The king of
Scots, standing firm to his alliance with his illustrious kinswoman,
afforded not the slightest succour to the Spanish ships which the storms
and the English drove in shattered plight upon his rugged coasts; while
the lord-deputy of Ireland caused to be butchered without remorse the
crews of all the vessels wrecked upon that island in their disastrous
circumnavigation of Great Britain: so that not more than half of this
vaunted _invincible armada_ returned in safety to the ports of Spain.
Never in the records of history was the event of war on one side more
entirely satisfactory, and glorious, on the other more deeply
humiliating and utterly disgraceful. Philip did indeed support the
credit of his personal character by the dignified composure with which
he heard the tidings of this great disaster; but it was out of his power
to throw the slightest veil over the dishonor of the Spanish arms, or
repair the total and final failure of the great popish cause.
By the English nation, this signal discomfiture of its most dreaded and
detested foe was hailed as the victory of protestant principles no less
than of national independence; and the tidings of the national
deliverance were welcomed, by all the reformed churches of Europe, with
an ardor of joy and thankfulness proportioned to the intenseness of
anxiety with which they had watched the event of a conflict where their
own dearest interests were staked along with the existence of their best
ally and firmest protector.
Repeated thanksgivings were observed in London in commemoration of this
great event: on the anniversary of the queen's birth a general festival
was proclaimed and celebrated with "sermons, singing of psalms,
bonfires, &c." and on the following Sunday her majesty went in state to
St. Paul's, magnificently attended by her nobles and great officers, and
borne along on a sumptuous chariot formed like a throne, with four
pillars supporting a canopy, and drawn by a pair of white horses. The
streets through which she passed were hung with blue cloth, in honor
doubtless of the navy, and the colors taken from the enemy were borne in
triumph.
Her majesty rewarded the lord-admiral with a considerable pension, and
settled annuities on the wounded seamen and on some of the more
necessitous among the officers; the rest she honored with much personal
notice and many gracious terms of commendation, which they were expected
to receive in lieu of more substantial remuneration;--for parsimony, the
darling virtue of Elizabeth, was not forgotten even in her gratitude to
the brave defenders of her country.
Two medals were struck on this great occasion; one, representing a fleet
retiring under full sail, with the motto, "_Venit, vidit, fugit_;" the
other, fire-ships scattering a fleet; the motto, "_Dux faemina facti_;" a
compliment to the queen, who is said to have herself suggested the
employment of these engines of destruction, by which the armada suffered
severely.
The intense interest in public events excited in every class by the
threatened invasion of Spain, gave rise to the introduction in this
country of one of the most important inventions of social life,--that of
newspapers. Previously to this period all articles of intelligence had
been circulated in manuscript; and all political remarks which the
government had found itself interested in addressing to the people, had
issued from the press in the shape of pamphlets, of which many had been
composed during the administration of Burleigh, either by himself or
immediately under his direction. But the peculiar convenience at such a
juncture of uniting these two objects in a periodical publication
becoming obvious to the ministry, there appeared, some time in the month
of April 1588, the first number of _The English Mercury_; a paper
resembling the present London Gazette, which must have come out almost
daily; since No. 50, the earliest specimen of the work now extant, is
dated July 23d of the same year. This interesting relic is preserved in
the British Museum.
In the midst of the public rejoicings an event occurred, which, in
whatever manner it might be felt by Elizabeth herself, certainly cast no
damp on the spirits of the nation at large; the death of Leicester.
After the frequent notices of this celebrated favorite contained in the
foregoing pages, a formal delineation of his character is
unnecessary;--a few traits may however be added.
Speaking of his letters and public papers, Naunton says, "I never yet
saw a style or phrase more seeming religious and fuller of the streams
of devotion;" and notwithstanding the charge of hypocrisy on this head
usually brought against Leicester in the most unqualified terms, many
reasons might induce us to believe his religious faith sincere, and his
attachment for certain schemes of doctrine, zealous. On no other
supposition does it appear possible to account for that steady patronage
of the puritanical party,--so odious to his mistress,--which gave on
some occasions such important advantages over him to his adversary
Hatton,--the only minister of Elizabeth who appears to have aimed at the
character of a high church-of-England man. The circumstance also of his
devoting during his lifetime a considerable sum of ready money, which
he could ill spare, to the endowment of a hospital, has much the air of
an act of expiation prompted by religious fears. As a statesman
Leicester appears to have displayed on some occasions considerable
acuteness and penetration, but in the higher kind of wisdom he was
utterly deficient. His moral insensibility sometimes caused him to offer
to his sovereign the most pernicious counsels; and had not the superior
rectitude of Burleigh's judgement interposed, his influence might have
inflicted still deeper wounds on the honor of the queen and the
prosperity of the nation.
Towards his own friends and adherents he is said to have been a
religious observer of his promises; a virtue very remarkable in such a
man. In the midst of that profusion which rendered him rapacious, he was
capable of acts of real generosity, and both soldiers and scholars
tasted largely of his bounty. That he was guilty of many detestable acts
of oppression, and pursued with secret and unrelenting vengeance such as
offended his arrogance by any failure in the servile homage which he
made it his glory to exact, are charges proved by undeniable facts; but
it has already been observed that the more atrocious of the crimes
popularly imputed to him, remain, and must ever remain, matters of
suspicion rather than proof.
His conduct during the younger part of life was scandalously licentious:
latterly he became, says Camden, uxorious to excess. In the early days
of his favor with the queen, her profuse donations had gratified his
cupidity and displayed the fondness of her attachment; but at a later
period the stream of her bounty ran low; and following the natural bent
of her disposition, or complying with the necessity of her affairs, she
compelled him to mortgage to her his barony of Denbigh for the expenses
of his last expedition to Holland. Immediately after his death she also
caused his effects to be sold by auction, for the satisfaction of
certain demands of her treasury. From these circumstances it may
probably be inferred, that the influence which Leicester still retained
over her was secured rather by the chain of habit than the tie of
affection; and after the first shock of final separation from him whom
she had so long loved and trusted, it is not improbable that she might
contemplate the event with a feeling somewhat akin to that of
deliverance from a yoke under which her haughty spirit had repined
without the courage to resist.
Leicester died, beyond all doubt, of a fever; but so reluctant were the
prejudices of that age to dismiss any eminent person by the ordinary
roads of mortality, that it was judged necessary to take examinations
before the privy-council respecting certain magical practices said to
have been employed against his life. The son of sir James Croft
comptroller of the household, made no scruple to confess that he had
consulted an adept of the name of Smith, to learn who were his father's
enemies in the council; that Smith mentioned the earl of Leicester; and
that a little while after, flirting with his thumbs, he exclaimed,
alluding to this nobleman's cognisance, "The bear is bound to the
stake;" and again, that nothing could now save him. But as it might
after all have been difficult to show in what manner the flirting of a
thumb in London could have exerted a fatal power over the life of the
earl at Kennelworth, the adept seems to have escaped unpunished,
notwithstanding the accidental fulfilment of his denunciations.