ENGLAND UNDER ELIZABETH
There was great rejoicing all over the land when the Lords of the
Council went down to Hatfield, to hail the Princess Elizabeth as the
new Queen of England. Weary of the barbarities of Mary’s reign, the
people looked with hope and gladness to the new Sovereign. The nation
seemed to wake from a horrible dream; and Heaven, so long hidden by the
smoke of the fires that roasted men and women to death, appeared to
brighten once more.
Queen Elizabeth was five-and-twenty years of age when she rode through
the streets of London, from the Tower to Westminster Abbey, to be
crowned. Her countenance was strongly marked, but on the whole,
commanding and dignified; her hair was red, and her nose something too
long and sharp for a woman’s. She was not the beautiful creature her
courtiers made out; but she was well enough, and no doubt looked all
the better for coming after the dark and gloomy Mary. She was well
educated, but a roundabout writer, and rather a hard swearer and coarse
talker. She was clever, but cunning and deceitful, and inherited much
of her father’s violent temper. I mention this now, because she has
been so over-praised by one party, and so over-abused by another, that
it is hardly possible to understand the greater part of her reign
without first understanding what kind of woman she really was.
She began her reign with the great advantage of having a very wise and
careful Minister, Sir William Cecil, whom she afterwards made Lord
Burleigh. Altogether, the people had greater reason for rejoicing than
they usually had, when there were processions in the streets; and they
were happy with some reason. All kinds of shows and images were set up;
Gog and Magog were hoisted to the top of Temple Bar, and (which was
more to the purpose) the Corporation dutifully presented the young
Queen with the sum of a thousand marks in gold—so heavy a present, that
she was obliged to take it into her carriage with both hands. The
coronation was a great success; and, on the next day, one of the
courtiers presented a petition to the new Queen, praying that as it was
the custom to release some prisoners on such occasions, she would have
the goodness to release the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John, and also the Apostle Saint Paul, who had been for some time shut
up in a strange language so that the people could not get at them.
To this, the Queen replied that it would be better first to inquire of
themselves whether they desired to be released or not; and, as a means
of finding out, a great public discussion—a sort of religious
tournament—was appointed to take place between certain champions of the
two religions, in Westminster Abbey. You may suppose that it was soon
made pretty clear to common sense, that for people to benefit by what
they repeat or read, it is rather necessary they should understand
something about it. Accordingly, a Church Service in plain English was
settled, and other laws and regulations were made, completely
establishing the great work of the Reformation. The Romish bishops and
champions were not harshly dealt with, all things considered; and the
Queen’s Ministers were both prudent and merciful.
The one great trouble of this reign, and the unfortunate cause of the
greater part of such turmoil and bloodshed as occurred in it, was Mary
Stuart, Queen of Scots. We will try to understand, in as few words as
possible, who Mary was, what she was, and how she came to be a thorn in
the royal pillow of Elizabeth.
She was the daughter of the Queen Regent of Scotland, Mary of Guise.
She had been married, when a mere child, to the Dauphin, the son and
heir of the King of France. The Pope, who pretended that no one could
rightfully wear the crown of England without his gracious permission,
was strongly opposed to Elizabeth, who had not asked for the said
gracious permission. And as Mary Queen of Scots would have inherited
the English crown in right of her birth, supposing the English
Parliament not to have altered the succession, the Pope himself, and
most of the discontented who were followers of his, maintained that
Mary was the rightful Queen of England, and Elizabeth the wrongful
Queen. Mary being so closely connected with France, and France being
jealous of England, there was far greater danger in this than there
would have been if she had had no alliance with that great power. And
when her young husband, on the death of his father, became Francis the
Second, King of France, the matter grew very serious. For, the young
couple styled themselves King and Queen of England, and the Pope was
disposed to help them by doing all the mischief he could.
Now, the reformed religion, under the guidance of a stern and powerful
preacher, named John Knox, and other such men, had been making fierce
progress in Scotland. It was still a half savage country, where there
was a great deal of murdering and rioting continually going on; and the
Reformers, instead of reforming those evils as they should have done,
went to work in the ferocious old Scottish spirit, laying churches and
chapels waste, pulling down pictures and altars, and knocking about the
Grey Friars, and the Black Friars, and the White Friars, and the friars
of all sorts of colours, in all directions. This obdurate and harsh
spirit of the Scottish Reformers (the Scotch have always been rather a
sullen and frowning people in religious matters) put up the blood of
the Romish French court, and caused France to send troops over to
Scotland, with the hope of setting the friars of all sorts of colours
on their legs again; of conquering that country first, and England
afterwards; and so crushing the Reformation all to pieces. The Scottish
Reformers, who had formed a great league which they called The
Congregation of the Lord, secretly represented to Elizabeth that, if
the reformed religion got the worst of it with them, it would be likely
to get the worst of it in England too; and thus, Elizabeth, though she
had a high notion of the rights of Kings and Queens to do anything they
liked, sent an army to Scotland to support the Reformers, who were in
arms against their sovereign. All these proceedings led to a treaty of
peace at Edinburgh, under which the French consented to depart from the
kingdom. By a separate treaty, Mary and her young husband engaged to
renounce their assumed title of King and Queen of England. But this
treaty they never fulfilled.
It happened, soon after matters had got to this state, that the young
French King died, leaving Mary a young widow. She was then invited by
her Scottish subjects to return home and reign over them; and as she
was not now happy where she was, she, after a little time, complied.
Elizabeth had been Queen three years, when Mary Queen of Scots embarked
at Calais for her own rough, quarrelling country. As she came out of
the harbour, a vessel was lost before her eyes, and she said, ‘O! good
God! what an omen this is for such a voyage!’ She was very fond of
France, and sat on the deck, looking back at it and weeping, until it
was quite dark. When she went to bed, she directed to be called at
daybreak, if the French coast were still visible, that she might behold
it for the last time. As it proved to be a clear morning, this was
done, and she again wept for the country she was leaving, and said many
times, ‘Farewell, France! Farewell, France! I shall never see thee
again!’ All this was long remembered afterwards, as sorrowful and
interesting in a fair young princess of nineteen. Indeed, I am afraid
it gradually came, together with her other distresses, to surround her
with greater sympathy than she deserved.
When she came to Scotland, and took up her abode at the palace of
Holyrood in Edinburgh, she found herself among uncouth strangers and
wild uncomfortable customs very different from her experiences in the
court of France. The very people who were disposed to love her, made
her head ache when she was tired out by her voyage, with a serenade of
discordant music—a fearful concert of bagpipes, I suppose—and brought
her and her train home to her palace on miserable little Scotch horses
that appeared to be half starved. Among the people who were not
disposed to love her, she found the powerful leaders of the Reformed
Church, who were bitter upon her amusements, however innocent, and
denounced music and dancing as works of the devil. John Knox himself
often lectured her, violently and angrily, and did much to make her
life unhappy. All these reasons confirmed her old attachment to the
Romish religion, and caused her, there is no doubt, most imprudently
and dangerously both for herself and for England too, to give a solemn
pledge to the heads of the Romish Church that if she ever succeeded to
the English crown, she would set up that religion again. In reading her
unhappy history, you must always remember this; and also that during
her whole life she was constantly put forward against the Queen, in
some form or other, by the Romish party.
That Elizabeth, on the other hand, was not inclined to like her, is
pretty certain. Elizabeth was very vain and jealous, and had an
extraordinary dislike to people being married. She treated Lady
Catherine Grey, sister of the beheaded Lady Jane, with such shameful
severity, for no other reason than her being secretly married, that she
died and her husband was ruined; so, when a second marriage for Mary
began to be talked about, probably Elizabeth disliked her more. Not
that Elizabeth wanted suitors of her own, for they started up from
Spain, Austria, Sweden, and England. Her English lover at this time,
and one whom she much favoured too, was Lord Robert Dudley, Earl of
Leicester—himself secretly married to Amy Robsart, the daughter of an
English gentleman, whom he was strongly suspected of causing to be
murdered, down at his country seat, Cumnor Hall in Berkshire, that he
might be free to marry the Queen. Upon this story, the great writer,
Sir Walter Scott, has founded one of his best romances. But if
Elizabeth knew how to lead her handsome favourite on, for her own
vanity and pleasure, she knew how to stop him for her own pride; and
his love, and all the other proposals, came to nothing. The Queen
always declared in good set speeches, that she would never be married
at all, but would live and die a Maiden Queen. It was a very pleasant
and meritorious declaration, I suppose; but it has been puffed and
trumpeted so much, that I am rather tired of it myself.
Divers princes proposed to marry Mary, but the English court had
reasons for being jealous of them all, and even proposed as a matter of
policy that she should marry that very Earl of Leicester who had
aspired to be the husband of Elizabeth. At last, Lord Darnley, son of
the Earl of Lennox, and himself descended from the Royal Family of
Scotland, went over with Elizabeth’s consent to try his fortune at
Holyrood. He was a tall simpleton; and could dance and play the guitar;
but I know of nothing else he could do, unless it were to get very
drunk, and eat gluttonously, and make a contemptible spectacle of
himself in many mean and vain ways. However, he gained Mary’s heart,
not disdaining in the pursuit of his object to ally himself with one of
her secretaries, David Rizzio, who had great influence with her. He
soon married the Queen. This marriage does not say much for her, but
what followed will presently say less.
Mary’s brother, the Earl of Murray, and head of the Protestant party in
Scotland, had opposed this marriage, partly on religious grounds, and
partly perhaps from personal dislike of the very contemptible
bridegroom. When it had taken place, through Mary’s gaining over to it
the more powerful of the lords about her, she banished Murray for his
pains; and, when he and some other nobles rose in arms to support the
reformed religion, she herself, within a month of her wedding day, rode
against them in armour with loaded pistols in her saddle. Driven out of
Scotland, they presented themselves before Elizabeth—who called them
traitors in public, and assisted them in private, according to her
crafty nature.
Mary had been married but a little while, when she began to hate her
husband, who, in his turn, began to hate that David Rizzio, with whom
he had leagued to gain her favour, and whom he now believed to be her
lover. He hated Rizzio to that extent, that he made a compact with Lord
Ruthven and three other lords to get rid of him by murder. This wicked
agreement they made in solemn secrecy upon the first of March, fifteen
hundred and sixty-six, and on the night of Saturday the ninth, the
conspirators were brought by Darnley up a private staircase, dark and
steep, into a range of rooms where they knew that Mary was sitting at
supper with her sister, Lady Argyle, and this doomed man. When they
went into the room, Darnley took the Queen round the waist, and Lord
Ruthven, who had risen from a bed of sickness to do this murder, came
in, gaunt and ghastly, leaning on two men. Rizzio ran behind the Queen
for shelter and protection. ‘Let him come out of the room,’ said
Ruthven. ‘He shall not leave the room,’ replied the Queen; ‘I read his
danger in your face, and it is my will that he remain here.’ They then
set upon him, struggled with him, overturned the table, dragged him
out, and killed him with fifty-six stabs. When the Queen heard that he
was dead, she said, ‘No more tears. I will think now of revenge!’
Within a day or two, she gained her husband over, and prevailed on the
tall idiot to abandon the conspirators and fly with her to Dunbar.
There, he issued a proclamation, audaciously and falsely denying that
he had any knowledge of the late bloody business; and there they were
joined by the Earl Bothwell and some other nobles. With their help,
they raised eight thousand men; returned to Edinburgh, and drove the
assassins into England. Mary soon afterwards gave birth to a son—still
thinking of revenge.
That she should have had a greater scorn for her husband after his late
cowardice and treachery than she had had before, was natural enough.
There is little doubt that she now began to love Bothwell instead, and
to plan with him means of getting rid of Darnley. Bothwell had such
power over her that he induced her even to pardon the assassins of
Rizzio. The arrangements for the Christening of the young Prince were
entrusted to him, and he was one of the most important people at the
ceremony, where the child was named James: Elizabeth being his
godmother, though not present on the occasion. A week afterwards,
Darnley, who had left Mary and gone to his father’s house at Glasgow,
being taken ill with the small-pox, she sent her own physician to
attend him. But there is reason to apprehend that this was merely a
show and a pretence, and that she knew what was doing, when Bothwell
within another month proposed to one of the late conspirators against
Rizzio, to murder Darnley, ‘for that it was the Queen’s mind that he
should be taken away.’ It is certain that on that very day she wrote to
her ambassador in France, complaining of him, and yet went immediately
to Glasgow, feigning to be very anxious about him, and to love him very
much. If she wanted to get him in her power, she succeeded to her
heart’s content; for she induced him to go back with her to Edinburgh,
and to occupy, instead of the palace, a lone house outside the city
called the Kirk of Field. Here, he lived for about a week. One Sunday
night, she remained with him until ten o’clock, and then left him, to
go to Holyrood to be present at an entertainment given in celebration
of the marriage of one of her favourite servants. At two o’clock in the
morning the city was shaken by a great explosion, and the Kirk of Field
was blown to atoms.
Darnley’s body was found next day lying under a tree at some distance.
How it came there, undisfigured and unscorched by gunpowder, and how
this crime came to be so clumsily and strangely committed, it is
impossible to discover. The deceitful character of Mary, and the
deceitful character of Elizabeth, have rendered almost every part of
their joint history uncertain and obscure. But, I fear that Mary was
unquestionably a party to her husband’s murder, and that this was the
revenge she had threatened. The Scotch people universally believed it.
Voices cried out in the streets of Edinburgh in the dead of the night,
for justice on the murderess. Placards were posted by unknown hands in
the public places denouncing Bothwell as the murderer, and the Queen as
his accomplice; and, when he afterwards married her (though himself
already married), previously making a show of taking her prisoner by
force, the indignation of the people knew no bounds. The women
particularly are described as having been quite frantic against the
Queen, and to have hooted and cried after her in the streets with
terrific vehemence.
Such guilty unions seldom prosper. This husband and wife had lived
together but a month, when they were separated for ever by the
successes of a band of Scotch nobles who associated against them for
the protection of the young Prince: whom Bothwell had vainly
endeavoured to lay hold of, and whom he would certainly have murdered,
if the Earl of Mar, in whose hands the boy was, had not been firmly and
honourably faithful to his trust. Before this angry power, Bothwell
fled abroad, where he died, a prisoner and mad, nine miserable years
afterwards. Mary being found by the associated lords to deceive them at
every turn, was sent a prisoner to Lochleven Castle; which, as it stood
in the midst of a lake, could only be approached by boat. Here, one
Lord Lindsay, who was so much of a brute that the nobles would have
done better if they had chosen a mere gentleman for their messenger,
made her sign her abdication, and appoint Murray, Regent of Scotland.
Here, too, Murray saw her in a sorrowing and humbled state.
She had better have remained in the castle of Lochleven, dull prison as
it was, with the rippling of the lake against it, and the moving
shadows of the water on the room walls; but she could not rest there,
and more than once tried to escape. The first time she had nearly
succeeded, dressed in the clothes of her own washer-woman, but, putting
up her hand to prevent one of the boatmen from lifting her veil, the
men suspected her, seeing how white it was, and rowed her back again. A
short time afterwards, her fascinating manners enlisted in her cause a
boy in the Castle, called the little Douglas, who, while the family
were at supper, stole the keys of the great gate, went softly out with
the Queen, locked the gate on the outside, and rowed her away across
the lake, sinking the keys as they went along. On the opposite shore
she was met by another Douglas, and some few lords; and, so
accompanied, rode away on horseback to Hamilton, where they raised
three thousand men. Here, she issued a proclamation declaring that the
abdication she had signed in her prison was illegal, and requiring the
Regent to yield to his lawful Queen. Being a steady soldier, and in no
way discomposed although he was without an army, Murray pretended to
treat with her, until he had collected a force about half equal to her
own, and then he gave her battle. In one quarter of an hour he cut down
all her hopes. She had another weary ride on horse-back of sixty long
Scotch miles, and took shelter at Dundrennan Abbey, whence she fled for
safety to Elizabeth’s dominions.
Mary Queen of Scots came to England—to her own ruin, the trouble of the
kingdom, and the misery and death of many—in the year one thousand five
hundred and sixty-eight. How she left it and the world, nineteen years
afterwards, we have now to see.
SECOND PART
When Mary Queen of Scots arrived in England, without money and even
without any other clothes than those she wore, she wrote to Elizabeth,
representing herself as an innocent and injured piece of Royalty, and
entreating her assistance to oblige her Scottish subjects to take her
back again and obey her. But, as her character was already known in
England to be a very different one from what she made it out to be, she
was told in answer that she must first clear herself. Made uneasy by
this condition, Mary, rather than stay in England, would have gone to
Spain, or to France, or would even have gone back to Scotland. But, as
her doing either would have been likely to trouble England afresh, it
was decided that she should be detained here. She first came to
Carlisle, and, after that, was moved about from castle to castle, as
was considered necessary; but England she never left again.
After trying very hard to get rid of the necessity of clearing herself,
Mary, advised by Lord Herries, her best friend in England, agreed to
answer the charges against her, if the Scottish noblemen who made them
would attend to maintain them before such English noblemen as Elizabeth
might appoint for that purpose. Accordingly, such an assembly, under
the name of a conference, met, first at York, and afterwards at Hampton
Court. In its presence Lord Lennox, Darnley’s father, openly charged
Mary with the murder of his son; and whatever Mary’s friends may now
say or write in her behalf, there is no doubt that, when her brother
Murray produced against her a casket containing certain guilty letters
and verses which he stated to have passed between her and Bothwell, she
withdrew from the inquiry. Consequently, it is to be supposed that she
was then considered guilty by those who had the best opportunities of
judging of the truth, and that the feeling which afterwards arose in
her behalf was a very generous but not a very reasonable one.
However, the Duke of Norfolk, an honourable but rather weak nobleman,
partly because Mary was captivating, partly because he was ambitious,
partly because he was over-persuaded by artful plotters against
Elizabeth, conceived a strong idea that he would like to marry the
Queen of Scots—though he was a little frightened, too, by the letters
in the casket. This idea being secretly encouraged by some of the
noblemen of Elizabeth’s court, and even by the favourite Earl of
Leicester (because it was objected to by other favourites who were his
rivals), Mary expressed her approval of it, and the King of France and
the King of Spain are supposed to have done the same. It was not so
quietly planned, though, but that it came to Elizabeth’s ears, who
warned the Duke ‘to be careful what sort of pillow he was going to lay
his head upon.’ He made a humble reply at the time; but turned sulky
soon afterwards, and, being considered dangerous, was sent to the
Tower.
Thus, from the moment of Mary’s coming to England she began to be the
centre of plots and miseries.
A rise of the Catholics in the north was the next of these, and it was
only checked by many executions and much bloodshed. It was followed by
a great conspiracy of the Pope and some of the Catholic sovereigns of
Europe to depose Elizabeth, place Mary on the throne, and restore the
unreformed religion. It is almost impossible to doubt that Mary knew
and approved of this; and the Pope himself was so hot in the matter
that he issued a bull, in which he openly called Elizabeth the
‘pretended Queen’ of England, excommunicated her, and excommunicated
all her subjects who should continue to obey her. A copy of this
miserable paper got into London, and was found one morning publicly
posted on the Bishop of London’s gate. A great hue and cry being
raised, another copy was found in the chamber of a student of Lincoln’s
Inn, who confessed, being put upon the rack, that he had received it
from one John Felton, a rich gentleman who lived across the Thames,
near Southwark. This John Felton, being put upon the rack too,
confessed that he had posted the placard on the Bishop’s gate. For this
offence he was, within four days, taken to St. Paul’s Churchyard, and
there hanged and quartered. As to the Pope’s bull, the people by the
reformation having thrown off the Pope, did not care much, you may
suppose, for the Pope’s throwing off them. It was a mere dirty piece of
paper, and not half so powerful as a street ballad.
On the very day when Felton was brought to his trial, the poor Duke of
Norfolk was released. It would have been well for him if he had kept
away from the Tower evermore, and from the snares that had taken him
there. But, even while he was in that dismal place he corresponded with
Mary, and as soon as he was out of it, he began to plot again. Being
discovered in correspondence with the Pope, with a view to a rising in
England which should force Elizabeth to consent to his marriage with
Mary and to repeal the laws against the Catholics, he was re-committed
to the Tower and brought to trial. He was found guilty by the unanimous
verdict of the Lords who tried him, and was sentenced to the block.
It is very difficult to make out, at this distance of time, and between
opposite accounts, whether Elizabeth really was a humane woman, or
desired to appear so, or was fearful of shedding the blood of people of
great name who were popular in the country. Twice she commanded and
countermanded the execution of this Duke, and it did not take place
until five months after his trial. The scaffold was erected on Tower
Hill, and there he died like a brave man. He refused to have his eyes
bandaged, saying that he was not at all afraid of death; and he
admitted the justice of his sentence, and was much regretted by the
people.
Although Mary had shrunk at the most important time from disproving her
guilt, she was very careful never to do anything that would admit it.
All such proposals as were made to her by Elizabeth for her release,
required that admission in some form or other, and therefore came to
nothing. Moreover, both women being artful and treacherous, and neither
ever trusting the other, it was not likely that they could ever make an
agreement. So, the Parliament, aggravated by what the Pope had done,
made new and strong laws against the spreading of the Catholic religion
in England, and declared it treason in any one to say that the Queen
and her successors were not the lawful sovereigns of England. It would
have done more than this, but for Elizabeth’s moderation.
Since the Reformation, there had come to be three great sects of
religious people—or people who called themselves so—in England; that is
to say, those who belonged to the Reformed Church, those who belonged
to the Unreformed Church, and those who were called the Puritans,
because they said that they wanted to have everything very pure and
plain in all the Church service. These last were for the most part an
uncomfortable people, who thought it highly meritorious to dress in a
hideous manner, talk through their noses, and oppose all harmless
enjoyments. But they were powerful too, and very much in earnest, and
they were one and all the determined enemies of the Queen of Scots. The
Protestant feeling in England was further strengthened by the
tremendous cruelties to which Protestants were exposed in France and in
the Netherlands. Scores of thousands of them were put to death in those
countries with every cruelty that can be imagined, and at last, in the
autumn of the year one thousand five hundred and seventy-two, one of
the greatest barbarities ever committed in the world took place at
Paris.
It is called in history, The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, because it
took place on Saint Bartholomew’s Eve. The day fell on Saturday the
twenty-third of August. On that day all the great leaders of the
Protestants (who were there called Huguenots) were assembled together,
for the purpose, as was represented to them, of doing honour to the
marriage of their chief, the young King of Navarre, with the sister of
Charles the Ninth: a miserable young King who then occupied the French
throne. This dull creature was made to believe by his mother and other
fierce Catholics about him that the Huguenots meant to take his life;
and he was persuaded to give secret orders that, on the tolling of a
great bell, they should be fallen upon by an overpowering force of
armed men, and slaughtered wherever they could be found. When the
appointed hour was close at hand, the stupid wretch, trembling from
head to foot, was taken into a balcony by his mother to see the
atrocious work begun. The moment the bell tolled, the murderers broke
forth. During all that night and the two next days, they broke into the
houses, fired the houses, shot and stabbed the Protestants, men, women,
and children, and flung their bodies into the streets. They were shot
at in the streets as they passed along, and their blood ran down the
gutters. Upwards of ten thousand Protestants were killed in Paris
alone; in all France four or five times that number. To return thanks
to Heaven for these diabolical murders, the Pope and his train actually
went in public procession at Rome, and as if this were not shame enough
for them, they had a medal struck to commemorate the event. But,
however comfortable the wholesale murders were to these high
authorities, they had not that soothing effect upon the doll-King. I am
happy to state that he never knew a moment’s peace afterwards; that he
was continually crying out that he saw the Huguenots covered with blood
and wounds falling dead before him; and that he died within a year,
shrieking and yelling and raving to that degree, that if all the Popes
who had ever lived had been rolled into one, they would not have
afforded His guilty Majesty the slightest consolation.
When the terrible news of the massacre arrived in England, it made a
powerful impression indeed upon the people. If they began to run a
little wild against the Catholics at about this time, this fearful
reason for it, coming so soon after the days of bloody Queen Mary, must
be remembered in their excuse. The Court was not quite so honest as the
people—but perhaps it sometimes is not. It received the French
ambassador, with all the lords and ladies dressed in deep mourning, and
keeping a profound silence. Nevertheless, a proposal of marriage which
he had made to Elizabeth only two days before the eve of Saint
Bartholomew, on behalf of the Duke of Alençon, the French King’s
brother, a boy of seventeen, still went on; while on the other hand, in
her usual crafty way, the Queen secretly supplied the Huguenots with
money and weapons.
I must say that for a Queen who made all those fine speeches, of which
I have confessed myself to be rather tired, about living and dying a
Maiden Queen, Elizabeth was ‘going’ to be married pretty often. Besides
always having some English favourite or other whom she by turns
encouraged and swore at and knocked about—for the maiden Queen was very
free with her fists—she held this French Duke off and on through
several years. When he at last came over to England, the marriage
articles were actually drawn up, and it was settled that the wedding
should take place in six weeks. The Queen was then so bent upon it,
that she prosecuted a poor Puritan named Stubbs, and a poor bookseller
named Page, for writing and publishing a pamphlet against it. Their
right hands were chopped off for this crime; and poor Stubbs—more loyal
than I should have been myself under the circumstances—immediately
pulled off his hat with his left hand, and cried, ‘God save the Queen!’
Stubbs was cruelly treated; for the marriage never took place after
all, though the Queen pledged herself to the Duke with a ring from her
own finger. He went away, no better than he came, when the courtship
had lasted some ten years altogether; and he died a couple of years
afterwards, mourned by Elizabeth, who appears to have been really fond
of him. It is not much to her credit, for he was a bad enough member of
a bad family.
To return to the Catholics. There arose two orders of priests, who were
very busy in England, and who were much dreaded. These were the Jesuits
(who were everywhere in all sorts of disguises), and the Seminary
Priests. The people had a great horror of the first, because they were
known to have taught that murder was lawful if it were done with an
object of which they approved; and they had a great horror of the
second, because they came to teach the old religion, and to be the
successors of ‘Queen Mary’s priests,’ as those yet lingering in England
were called, when they should die out. The severest laws were made
against them, and were most unmercifully executed. Those who sheltered
them in their houses often suffered heavily for what was an act of
humanity; and the rack, that cruel torture which tore men’s limbs
asunder, was constantly kept going. What these unhappy men confessed,
or what was ever confessed by any one under that agony, must always be
received with great doubt, as it is certain that people have frequently
owned to the most absurd and impossible crimes to escape such dreadful
suffering. But I cannot doubt it to have been proved by papers, that
there were many plots, both among the Jesuits, and with France, and
with Scotland, and with Spain, for the destruction of Queen Elizabeth,
for the placing of Mary on the throne, and for the revival of the old
religion.
If the English people were too ready to believe in plots, there were,
as I have said, good reasons for it. When the massacre of Saint
Bartholomew was yet fresh in their recollection, a great Protestant
Dutch hero, the Prince of Orange, was shot by an assassin, who
confessed that he had been kept and trained for the purpose in a
college of Jesuits. The Dutch, in this surprise and distress, offered
to make Elizabeth their sovereign, but she declined the honour, and
sent them a small army instead, under the command of the Earl of
Leicester, who, although a capital Court favourite, was not much of a
general. He did so little in Holland, that his campaign there would
probably have been forgotten, but for its occasioning the death of one
of the best writers, the best knights, and the best gentlemen, of that
or any age. This was Sir Philip Sidney, who was wounded by a musket
ball in the thigh as he mounted a fresh horse, after having had his own
killed under him. He had to ride back wounded, a long distance, and was
very faint with fatigue and loss of blood, when some water, for which
he had eagerly asked, was handed to him. But he was so good and gentle
even then, that seeing a poor badly wounded common soldier lying on the
ground, looking at the water with longing eyes, he said, ‘Thy necessity
is greater than mine,’ and gave it up to him. This touching action of a
noble heart is perhaps as well known as any incident in history—is as
famous far and wide as the blood-stained Tower of London, with its axe,
and block, and murders out of number. So delightful is an act of true
humanity, and so glad are mankind to remember it.
At home, intelligence of plots began to thicken every day. I suppose
the people never did live under such continual terrors as those by
which they were possessed now, of Catholic risings, and burnings, and
poisonings, and I don’t know what. Still, we must always remember that
they lived near and close to awful realities of that kind, and that
with their experience it was not difficult to believe in any enormity.
The government had the same fear, and did not take the best means of
discovering the truth—for, besides torturing the suspected, it employed
paid spies, who will always lie for their own profit. It even made some
of the conspiracies it brought to light, by sending false letters to
disaffected people, inviting them to join in pretended plots, which
they too readily did.
But, one great real plot was at length discovered, and it ended the
career of Mary, Queen of Scots. A seminary priest named Ballard, and a
Spanish soldier named Savage, set on and encouraged by certain French
priests, imparted a design to one Antony Babington—a gentleman of
fortune in Derbyshire, who had been for some time a secret agent of
Mary’s—for murdering the Queen. Babington then confided the scheme to
some other Catholic gentlemen who were his friends, and they joined in
it heartily. They were vain, weak-headed young men, ridiculously
confident, and preposterously proud of their plan; for they got a
gimcrack painting made, of the six choice spirits who were to murder
Elizabeth, with Babington in an attitude for the centre figure. Two of
their number, however, one of whom was a priest, kept Elizabeth’s
wisest minister, Sir Francis Walsingham, acquainted with the whole
project from the first. The conspirators were completely deceived to
the final point, when Babington gave Savage, because he was shabby, a
ring from his finger, and some money from his purse, wherewith to buy
himself new clothes in which to kill the Queen. Walsingham, having then
full evidence against the whole band, and two letters of Mary’s
besides, resolved to seize them. Suspecting something wrong, they stole
out of the city, one by one, and hid themselves in St. John’s Wood, and
other places which really were hiding places then; but they were all
taken, and all executed. When they were seized, a gentleman was sent
from Court to inform Mary of the fact, and of her being involved in the
discovery. Her friends have complained that she was kept in very hard
and severe custody. It does not appear very likely, for she was going
out a hunting that very morning.
Queen Elizabeth had been warned long ago, by one in France who had good
information of what was secretly doing, that in holding Mary alive, she
held ‘the wolf who would devour her.’ The Bishop of London had, more
lately, given the Queen’s favourite minister the advice in writing,
‘forthwith to cut off the Scottish Queen’s head.’ The question now was,
what to do with her? The Earl of Leicester wrote a little note home
from Holland, recommending that she should be quietly poisoned; that
noble favourite having accustomed his mind, it is possible, to remedies
of that nature. His black advice, however, was disregarded, and she was
brought to trial at Fotheringay Castle in Northamptonshire, before a
tribunal of forty, composed of both religions. There, and in the Star
Chamber at Westminster, the trial lasted a fortnight. She defended
herself with great ability, but could only deny the confessions that
had been made by Babington and others; could only call her own letters,
produced against her by her own secretaries, forgeries; and, in short,
could only deny everything. She was found guilty, and declared to have
incurred the penalty of death. The Parliament met, approved the
sentence, and prayed the Queen to have it executed. The Queen replied
that she requested them to consider whether no means could be found of
saving Mary’s life without endangering her own. The Parliament
rejoined, No; and the citizens illuminated their houses and lighted
bonfires, in token of their joy that all these plots and troubles were
to be ended by the death of the Queen of Scots.
[Illustration: Mary Queen of Scots Reading the death warrant]
She, feeling sure that her time was now come, wrote a letter to the
Queen of England, making three entreaties; first, that she might be
buried in France; secondly, that she might not be executed in secret,
but before her servants and some others; thirdly, that after her death,
her servants should not be molested, but should be suffered to go home
with the legacies she left them. It was an affecting letter, and
Elizabeth shed tears over it, but sent no answer. Then came a special
ambassador from France, and another from Scotland, to intercede for
Mary’s life; and then the nation began to clamour, more and more, for
her death.
What the real feelings or intentions of Elizabeth were, can never be
known now; but I strongly suspect her of only wishing one thing more
than Mary’s death, and that was to keep free of the blame of it. On the
first of February, one thousand five hundred and eighty-seven, Lord
Burleigh having drawn out the warrant for the execution, the Queen sent
to the secretary Davison to bring it to her, that she might sign it:
which she did. Next day, when Davison told her it was sealed, she
angrily asked him why such haste was necessary? Next day but one, she
joked about it, and swore a little. Again, next day but one, she seemed
to complain that it was not yet done, but still she would not be plain
with those about her. So, on the seventh, the Earls of Kent and
Shrewsbury, with the Sheriff of Northamptonshire, came with the warrant
to Fotheringay, to tell the Queen of Scots to prepare for death.
When those messengers of ill omen were gone, Mary made a frugal supper,
drank to her servants, read over her will, went to bed, slept for some
hours, and then arose and passed the remainder of the night saying
prayers. In the morning she dressed herself in her best clothes; and,
at eight o’clock when the sheriff came for her to her chapel, took
leave of her servants who were there assembled praying with her, and
went down-stairs, carrying a Bible in one hand and a crucifix in the
other. Two of her women and four of her men were allowed to be present
in the hall; where a low scaffold, only two feet from the ground, was
erected and covered with black; and where the executioner from the
Tower, and his assistant, stood, dressed in black velvet. The hall was
full of people. While the sentence was being read she sat upon a stool;
and, when it was finished, she again denied her guilt, as she had done
before. The Earl of Kent and the Dean of Peterborough, in their
Protestant zeal, made some very unnecessary speeches to her; to which
she replied that she died in the Catholic religion, and they need not
trouble themselves about that matter. When her head and neck were
uncovered by the executioners, she said that she had not been used to
be undressed by such hands, or before so much company. Finally, one of
her women fastened a cloth over her face, and she laid her neck upon
the block, and repeated more than once in Latin, ‘Into thy hands, O
Lord, I commend my spirit!’ Some say her head was struck off in two
blows, some say in three. However that be, when it was held up,
streaming with blood, the real hair beneath the false hair she had long
worn was seen to be as grey as that of a woman of seventy, though she
was at that time only in her forty-sixth year. All her beauty was gone.
But she was beautiful enough to her little dog, who cowered under her
dress, frightened, when she went upon the scaffold, and who lay down
beside her headless body when all her earthly sorrows were over.
THIRD PART
On its being formally made known to Elizabeth that the sentence had
been executed on the Queen of Scots, she showed the utmost grief and
rage, drove her favourites from her with violent indignation, and sent
Davison to the Tower; from which place he was only released in the end
by paying an immense fine which completely ruined him. Elizabeth not
only over-acted her part in making these pretences, but most basely
reduced to poverty one of her faithful servants for no other fault than
obeying her commands.
James, King of Scotland, Mary’s son, made a show likewise of being very
angry on the occasion; but he was a pensioner of England to the amount
of five thousand pounds a year, and he had known very little of his
mother, and he possibly regarded her as the murderer of his father, and
he soon took it quietly.
Philip, King of Spain, however, threatened to do greater things than
ever had been done yet, to set up the Catholic religion and punish
Protestant England. Elizabeth, hearing that he and the Prince of Parma
were making great preparations for this purpose, in order to be
beforehand with them sent out Admiral Drake (a famous navigator, who
had sailed about the world, and had already brought great plunder from
Spain) to the port of Cadiz, where he burnt a hundred vessels full of
stores. This great loss obliged the Spaniards to put off the invasion
for a year; but it was none the less formidable for that, amounting to
one hundred and thirty ships, nineteen thousand soldiers, eight
thousand sailors, two thousand slaves, and between two and three
thousand great guns. England was not idle in making ready to resist
this great force. All the men between sixteen years old and sixty, were
trained and drilled; the national fleet of ships (in number only
thirty-four at first) was enlarged by public contributions and by
private ships, fitted out by noblemen; the city of London, of its own
accord, furnished double the number of ships and men that it was
required to provide; and, if ever the national spirit was up in
England, it was up all through the country to resist the Spaniards.
Some of the Queen’s advisers were for seizing the principal English
Catholics, and putting them to death; but the Queen—who, to her honour,
used to say, that she would never believe any ill of her subjects,
which a parent would not believe of her own children—rejected the
advice, and only confined a few of those who were the most suspected,
in the fens in Lincolnshire. The great body of Catholics deserved this
confidence; for they behaved most loyally, nobly, and bravely.
So, with all England firing up like one strong, angry man, and with
both sides of the Thames fortified, and with the soldiers under arms,
and with the sailors in their ships, the country waited for the coming
of the proud Spanish fleet, which was called The Invincible Armada. The
Queen herself, riding in armour on a white horse, and the Earl of Essex
and the Earl of Leicester holding her bridal rein, made a brave speech
to the troops at Tilbury Fort opposite Gravesend, which was received
with such enthusiasm as is seldom known. Then came the Spanish Armada
into the English Channel, sailing along in the form of a half moon, of
such great size that it was seven miles broad. But the English were
quickly upon it, and woe then to all the Spanish ships that dropped a
little out of the half moon, for the English took them instantly! And
it soon appeared that the great Armada was anything but invincible, for
on a summer night, bold Drake sent eight blazing fire-ships right into
the midst of it. In terrible consternation the Spaniards tried to get
out to sea, and so became dispersed; the English pursued them at a
great advantage; a storm came on, and drove the Spaniards among rocks
and shoals; and the swift end of the Invincible fleet was, that it lost
thirty great ships and ten thousand men, and, defeated and disgraced,
sailed home again. Being afraid to go by the English Channel, it sailed
all round Scotland and Ireland; some of the ships getting cast away on
the latter coast in bad weather, the Irish, who were a kind of savages,
plundered those vessels and killed their crews. So ended this great
attempt to invade and conquer England. And I think it will be a long
time before any other invincible fleet coming to England with the same
object, will fare much better than the Spanish Armada.
Though the Spanish king had had this bitter taste of English bravery,
he was so little the wiser for it, as still to entertain his old
designs, and even to conceive the absurd idea of placing his daughter
on the English throne. But the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir
Thomas Howard, and some other distinguished leaders, put to sea from
Plymouth, entered the port of Cadiz once more, obtained a complete
victory over the shipping assembled there, and got possession of the
town. In obedience to the Queen’s express instructions, they behaved
with great humanity; and the principal loss of the Spaniards was a vast
sum of money which they had to pay for ransom. This was one of many
gallant achievements on the sea, effected in this reign. Sir Walter
Raleigh himself, after marrying a maid of honour and giving offence to
the Maiden Queen thereby, had already sailed to South America in search
of gold.
The Earl of Leicester was now dead, and so was Sir Thomas Walsingham,
whom Lord Burleigh was soon to follow. The principal favourite was the
Earl of Essex, a spirited and handsome man, a favourite with the people
too as well as with the Queen, and possessed of many admirable
qualities. It was much debated at Court whether there should be peace
with Spain or no, and he was very urgent for war. He also tried hard to
have his own way in the appointment of a deputy to govern in Ireland.
One day, while this question was in dispute, he hastily took offence,
and turned his back upon the Queen; as a gentle reminder of which
impropriety, the Queen gave him a tremendous box on the ear, and told
him to go to the devil. He went home instead, and did not reappear at
Court for half a year or so, when he and the Queen were reconciled,
though never (as some suppose) thoroughly.
From this time the fate of the Earl of Essex and that of the Queen
seemed to be blended together. The Irish were still perpetually
quarrelling and fighting among themselves, and he went over to Ireland
as Lord Lieutenant, to the great joy of his enemies (Sir Walter Raleigh
among the rest), who were glad to have so dangerous a rival far off.
Not being by any means successful there, and knowing that his enemies
would take advantage of that circumstance to injure him with the Queen,
he came home again, though against her orders. The Queen being taken by
surprise when he appeared before her, gave him her hand to kiss, and he
was overjoyed—though it was not a very lovely hand by this time—but in
the course of the same day she ordered him to confine himself to his
room, and two or three days afterwards had him taken into custody. With
the same sort of caprice—and as capricious an old woman she now was, as
ever wore a crown or a head either—she sent him broth from her own
table on his falling ill from anxiety, and cried about him.
He was a man who could find comfort and occupation in his books, and he
did so for a time; not the least happy time, I dare say, of his life.
But it happened unfortunately for him, that he held a monopoly in sweet
wines: which means that nobody could sell them without purchasing his
permission. This right, which was only for a term, expiring, he applied
to have it renewed. The Queen refused, with the rather strong
observation—but she _did_ make strong observations—that an unruly beast
must be stinted in his food. Upon this, the angry Earl, who had been
already deprived of many offices, thought himself in danger of complete
ruin, and turned against the Queen, whom he called a vain old woman who
had grown as crooked in her mind as she had in her figure. These
uncomplimentary expressions the ladies of the Court immediately snapped
up and carried to the Queen, whom they did not put in a better tempter,
you may believe. The same Court ladies, when they had beautiful dark
hair of their own, used to wear false red hair, to be like the Queen.
So they were not very high-spirited ladies, however high in rank.
The worst object of the Earl of Essex, and some friends of his who used
to meet at Lord Southampton’s house, was to obtain possession of the
Queen, and oblige her by force to dismiss her ministers and change her
favourites. On Saturday the seventh of February, one thousand six
hundred and one, the council suspecting this, summoned the Earl to come
before them. He, pretending to be ill, declined; it was then settled
among his friends, that as the next day would be Sunday, when many of
the citizens usually assembled at the Cross by St. Paul’s Cathedral, he
should make one bold effort to induce them to rise and follow him to
the Palace.
So, on the Sunday morning, he and a small body of adherents started out
of his house—Essex House by the Strand, with steps to the river—having
first shut up in it, as prisoners, some members of the council who came
to examine him—and hurried into the City with the Earl at their head
crying out ‘For the Queen! For the Queen! A plot is laid for my life!’
No one heeded them, however, and when they came to St. Paul’s there
were no citizens there. In the meantime the prisoners at Essex House
had been released by one of the Earl’s own friends; he had been
promptly proclaimed a traitor in the City itself; and the streets were
barricaded with carts and guarded by soldiers. The Earl got back to his
house by water, with difficulty, and after an attempt to defend his
house against the troops and cannon by which it was soon surrounded,
gave himself up that night. He was brought to trial on the nineteenth,
and found guilty; on the twenty-fifth, he was executed on Tower Hill,
where he died, at thirty-four years old, both courageously and
penitently. His step-father suffered with him. His enemy, Sir Walter
Raleigh, stood near the scaffold all the time—but not so near it as we
shall see him stand, before we finish his history.
In this case, as in the cases of the Duke of Norfolk and Mary Queen of
Scots, the Queen had commanded, and countermanded, and again commanded,
the execution. It is probable that the death of her young and gallant
favourite in the prime of his good qualities, was never off her mind
afterwards, but she held out, the same vain, obstinate and capricious
woman, for another year. Then she danced before her Court on a state
occasion—and cut, I should think, a mighty ridiculous figure, doing so
in an immense ruff, stomacher and wig, at seventy years old. For
another year still, she held out, but, without any more dancing, and as
a moody, sorrowful, broken creature. At last, on the tenth of March,
one thousand six hundred and three, having been ill of a very bad cold,
and made worse by the death of the Countess of Nottingham who was her
intimate friend, she fell into a stupor and was supposed to be dead.
She recovered her consciousness, however, and then nothing would induce
her to go to bed; for she said that she knew that if she did, she
should never get up again. There she lay for ten days, on cushions on
the floor, without any food, until the Lord Admiral got her into bed at
last, partly by persuasions and partly by main force. When they asked
her who should succeed her, she replied that her seat had been the seat
of Kings, and that she would have for her successor, ‘No rascal’s son,
but a King’s.’ Upon this, the lords present stared at one another, and
took the liberty of asking whom she meant; to which she replied, ‘Whom
should I mean, but our cousin of Scotland!’ This was on the
twenty-third of March. They asked her once again that day, after she
was speechless, whether she was still in the same mind? She struggled
up in bed, and joined her hands over her head in the form of a crown,
as the only reply she could make. At three o’clock next morning, she
very quietly died, in the forty-fifth year of her reign.
That reign had been a glorious one, and is made for ever memorable by
the distinguished men who flourished in it. Apart from the great
voyagers, statesmen, and scholars, whom it produced, the names of
Bacon, Spenser, and Shakespeare, will always be remembered with pride
and veneration by the civilised world, and will always impart (though
with no great reason, perhaps) some portion of their lustre to the name
of Elizabeth herself. It was a great reign for discovery, for commerce,
and for English enterprise and spirit in general. It was a great reign
for the Protestant religion and for the Reformation which made England
free. The Queen was very popular, and in her progresses, or journeys
about her dominions, was everywhere received with the liveliest joy. I
think the truth is, that she was not half so good as she has been made
out, and not half so bad as she has been made out. She had her fine
qualities, but she was coarse, capricious, and treacherous, and had all
the faults of an excessively vain young woman long after she was an old
one. On the whole, she had a great deal too much of her father in her,
to please me.
Many improvements and luxuries were introduced in the course of these
five-and-forty years in the general manner of living; but
cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and bear-baiting, were still the national
amusements; and a coach was so rarely seen, and was such an ugly and
cumbersome affair when it was seen, that even the Queen herself, on
many high occasions, rode on horseback on a pillion behind the Lord
Chancellor.