QUEEN'S FAVOURITE
Court life--The Queen's position--Her character--She takes
notice of Ralegh--Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester--Sir Philip
Sidney--Burghley, the Lord High Treasurer, and Walsingham--
Robert Cecil--The dress of the courtier--The language of the
courtier--The other side, and the other Queen--Mary, Queen of
Scots--The great intrigue--Its discovery--Death of Queen Mary.
The Court was the brilliant feature of the time. The Court was not
confined to ceremonial functions and presentations--it was not a bath in
which a man or a woman must be dipped before he or she could lay any
real claim to distinguished respectability. The Court had a vivid
existence of its own. "It was the centre, not of government alone, but
of the fine arts: the exemplar of culture and civilization." The Court
held a lien on the gaiety and life of the time. Courtiers and merchants
(the two chief classes) were as distinct as a little later were town and
gown at the Universities. To be a proper courtier became a cult.
Three great books, extraordinarily typical of the Renaissance, were
written in almost identical years, books which pointed to new scope for
the State, for the Prince, and for the private man. In 1513 Machiavel
completed _The Prince_, in 1516 Sir Thomas More's _Utopia_ was
published, and in the same year Count Baldassare Castiglione finished
his _Book of the Courtier_.
The dream of the Utopia may never be realized; but in some seventy-five
years a close example of the Prince and of the Courtier were found in
Queen Elizabeth, and in many of the men who surrounded her. _The Book of
the Courtier_ was translated into all the languages of Europe, and
became the text-book of the cult. Its English translator was Thomas
Hoby, and his work, as has been seen, was commended by the judicious
Ascham. Castiglione was chaffed for moulding his own conduct precisely
on the model of the perfect courtier he portrays in his book; and he
could not but confess that the man of his imagination was the man he
would choose to be. And, indeed, it would be what every courtier would
aspire to be, as Wordsworth's Happy Warrior,
"This is the happy Warrior, this is he
That every man in arms should wish to be."
The Courtier must be gallant in the use of arms, proficient in all
exercises of the body, skilled in all exercises of the mind; he must be
ready and witty of tongue; he must be well-born and distinguished. But
his realm is beyond the mere enterprise of accomplishments and birth.
For the book ends with Bembo's great praise of Beauty--that Beauty
"which is the origin of all other beawtye, whiche never encreaseth nor
diminisheth always bewtifull and of itself ... most simple. This is the
beawtye unseperable from the high bountye, whiche with her voyce calleth
and draweth to her all thynges...," and an understanding of this
Heavenly Beauty must be the final trait of the Perfect Courtier.
And it is well to bear this in mind. For this feeling for beauty existed
in the Elizabethan courtier, just as it gave the finishing touch to
Castiglione's hero; and existed as really as the more conspicuous
qualities of gallantry and strength and intellect. Vitality, as has
been said again and again, was the keynote of the age; and it is
apparent in this aspiration towards beauty, just as it is apparent in
reckless cruelty. The compass of the age was immense. And every
instinct, every tendency of brute or god, raged with intense life, and
was expressed Nothing lay dormant. The centre of all this life, of all
this genius for living was the Court; and the illustrious head of the
Court was Queen Elizabeth.
Guy de Maupassant has written a story of a small band of French soldiers
who are at the last gasp with hunger and weariness and cold. They cannot
march any further. They are content to lie down in the snow and die. But
two fugitives come running to them, an old man and his grand-daughter, a
young girl. "Allons les camarades," cries the Sergeant Pratique, "faut
porter cette demoiselle-la ou bien nous n' sommes pu Francais, nom d'un
chien." So the worn-out men forget their weariness and carry her; they
dare the cold and strip off their overcoats to keep her warm; they find
new courage and drive back a party of the enemy, and they reach the
French lines in safety. "What's that you're carrying?" asks a soldier.
"Aussitot une petite figure blonde apparut, depeignee et souriante qui
repondit, 'C'est moi, monsieur.' Un rire s'eleva parmi les hommes et une
joie courut dans leurs coeurs. Alors Pratique agita son kepi en
vociferant, 'Vive la France.'"
There in little is the exact nature of Elizabeth's influence, and her
influence was conscious and acted, not upon the immediate Court alone,
but upon England. De Maupassant does not give any details of the girl,
nothing of her character, not even her name. They are not relevant to
his purpose. She may have as many faults in her small way as Elizabeth
had in her great way. He does not mention them.
[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH]
Such a mass of detail, however, is known about Elizabeth, and her
faults have been so relentlessly exposed in the interest of Truth--her
meanness, her avarice, her treachery, her wantonness, and what not--that
the whole picture of the woman who was learned enough to speak in public
impromptu in Latin and could converse in many languages, of the woman
who was great enough to cause her own worship to be the fashion, and the
sincere fashion, of the woman who was sufficiently beautiful and
sufficiently distinguished to shine like a diamond on the forehead of
that resplendent age,--is almost lost to view, so clouded with the dust
of detraction has that picture become.
She was the very epitome of the time. All the brutality and energy and
brilliance of that brutal, vital age found their counterpart in her. And
she was a woman, a fitting contemporary of Catherine de Medicis. But she
was too much a politician to be a good woman; and too much a woman to be
a good politician.
To all the power which a beautiful woman, and a woman strong in body and
intellect and passion, always has possessed and always will possess, she
added the prestige of being Queen of England. Whereas the passions of
her father threw Europe into confusion, the love affairs of Elizabeth,
less impetuously managed, often held the balance between nations and
brought every royal prince to England as suitor for her hand, and the
great English courtiers scowled or laughed at them, but were kept in
allegiance by their sovereign.
Wit, birth, and bearing found favour in her sight. There was no room at
her Court for a fool. She loved wit as she loved splendour.
The Queen had heard of Humfrey Gilbert's nephew from Humfrey Gilbert's
aunt, one of her intimate attendant women; and when Ralegh first came
into notice by his exploits in Ireland, she was inclined to favour him.
She was interested in his career, as a letter bears witness in which she
writes, "... for that our pleasure is to have our Servaunt Walter Rawley
treyned some longer tyme in that our realme for his better experience in
Martiall affaires, and for the special care we have to doe him good in
respect of his kyndred that have served us some of them (as you knowe)
neer aboute our Parson: theise are to require youe that the leading of
the said bande may be committed to the said Rawley."
Many stories are extant about his first meeting with Elizabeth. Truth
hides in all of them. Some say that the Queen was present when Lord Grey
de Wilton and young Ralegh were put face to face in a council chamber
before Lord Burghley, and that she was struck by the power and skill
with which he made good his case, proving the lack of judgment Lord Grey
had shown in conducting the affairs of the war. Old Thomas Fuller, that
worthiest of his own worthies (he had an eye for romantic effect,
steadfast as he was for truth in matters of importance), relates that
"Her Majesty, meeting with a plashy place, made some scruple to go on;
when Ralegh (dressed in the gay and genteel habit of those times)
presently cast off and spread his new plush cloak on the ground, whereon
the Queen trod gently over, rewarding him afterwards with many suits for
his so free and seasonable tender of so fair a footcloth. Thus an
advantageous admission into the notice of a prince is more than half a
degree to preferment." Industrious Fuller does not leave it at that; he
proceeds to tell how Ralegh wrote on a window in the Queen's presence,
"Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall,"
and how the Queen added with more grace than rhythm,
"If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all."
Ralegh's heart did not fail him. He became the Queen's lover; and his
influence over the Queen was so recognized that Tarleton, the famous
comedian, dared, during a performance, to add point to the words, "See,
the knave commands the queen," by stretching out his hand towards
Ralegh, who stood by the Queen. And Elizabeth, it is recorded, frowned.
Swift was his ascent to fortune, came the first step how it may.
Elizabeth was too clever to try to lay aside her sex, though she was a
skilful markswoman, an able horse-woman. Even her staid Archbishop
Whitgift she used to tease, saying (as Isaac Walton gravely records as a
fair testimony of her piety) that "she would never eat flesh in Lent
without obtaining a License from her little black husband: and that she
pitied him because she trusted him."
She was so born a Queen that she was able to do and say the most
dangerous things without losing her distinction, or lessening her
dignity.
And it is small wonder in those days when in England the whole force of
the Renaissance turned as it were to a rapture of patriotism that such a
Queen should be the visible emblem of the country, and be herself
worshipped. Men might rave at her whims, they were driven frantic by
them, but in their hearts they cherished her as Queen of themselves and
Queen of their country. Fortunately for herself, and fortunately for
England, her intellect mastered her passions, though that does not
prove that she was passionless: far from it. There is nothing to justify
that last scandal of a moral age which would damn her as a feelingless
flirt. Lord Bacon, the wise Baron of Verulam, summed the matter up
pithily, attaching its right value to the question, which, after all, is
a paltry one, when, in writing on the Fortunate Memory, he says: "She
suffered herself to be honoured and carressed and celebrated and
extolled with the name of Love; and wished it, and continued it beyond
the suitability of her age. If you take these things more softly, they
may not even be without some admiration, because such things are
commonly found in our fabulous narratives of a Queen in the Islands of
Bliss, with her hall and her institutes, who receives the
administrations of Love, but prohibits its licentiousness. If you judge
them more severely, still they have this admirable circumstance, that
gratifications of this sort did not much hurt her reputation, and not at
all her majesty; nor ever relaxed her government, nor were any notable
impediment to her State affairs." And it must be remembered that the
times were neither fastidious nor gentle, and that when Bacon says
licentiousness (_lasciviam_ is the Latin word he uses) he meant
licentiousness. Elizabeth was too sane, and too clever, and too busy to
have time to be licentious: just as she could not have retained her
control over men and control over herself, seen in the adroit way in
which she managed the foreign princes, if she had remained what is
called pure.
Masterly was her knowledge and treatment of men. Roughly speaking, they
were divided into two classes; those whom she liked, and those whom she
valued: but she kept them all imperiously to her will. The great
Burghley was her man of business; he and his son Robert Cecil were her
chief statesmen, and well she knew their value: capricious and exacting
as she might be, she respected their advice and gave way to it.
"Burghley," wrote Leicester, at the height of his arrogant power, "could
do more with her in an hour than others in seven years." And he wrote
concerning some political business. Never, when Leicester had most
influence with the Queen, did she ever allow him to control her
political actions, or in any way to supplant Cecil.
Robert Dudley, born about the year 1532, made Earl of Leicester in 1564,
enjoyed the Queen's good-will more continuously and more to his
advantage than any other of her lovers. He was regarded as the chief man
in England by the ambassadors of foreign princes: he was for a long time
the most magnificent. But Elizabeth kept always to her maxim, that
England should be a country with one mistress and no master; much to
Leicester's displeasure. His desire was to be master. He suggests a
comparison with Milton's Satan, "better to reign in Hell than to serve
in Heav'n," when he tried, and tried with conspicuous ill-success, to
become King of the Netherlands. By the old nobility, staunch Sussex and
proud Norfolk, he was hated. With the Duke of Norfolk, he on one
occasion came to blows, when, during a game of tennis, of which the
Queen was a spectator, he snatched her pocket-hand-kerchief to wipe the
sweat from his forehead. They thought him saucy and overweening. To the
Queen his insolence was not unpleasant. Cecil disliked him (he does not
appear a man to hate any one) and judiciously draws up papers
contrasting Leicester and other suitors, especially the Archduke
Charles, much to Leicester's disadvantage. But for all his glitter and
influence, he was hated by the English people. His name had an ill sound
ever since the untoward death of his wife, Amy Robsart. Though the
pamphlet _Leicester's Commonwealth_ is wholly unreliable, which among
other slanders, states that the Lady Amy was actually murdered at his
command, it is most probable that she committed suicide through misery
at her neglect. Well enough men knew what was meant when the husband in
the _Yorkshire Tragedy_ says, after he has thrown his wife down and
slain her:
"The surest way to charm a woman's tongue
Is--break her neck: a politician did it."
They thought of the stone staircase at Cumnor and shuddered. The people
did not like his way of cheapening their Queen's good name: they did not
like the man who caused scandals to arise round her. In 1560 Anne Dowe
of Brentford was imprisoned for asserting that Elizabeth was with child
by Robert Dudley; and she was the first of a long line of offenders who
were punished for the same assertion.
And just as men hated Dudley for his arrogance, and for his daring to
think even of setting himself beside their Queen, so they loved his
nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, for the grace which his hand brought to
everything which he touched. He fulfilled the ideal of Castiglione's
Courtier. He was the antithesis of the rough, unmannered Dudley. In
Dudley all the cruelty and ostentation and savage power of the time seem
to find expression; whereas in Philip Sidney, all its grace and skill
and poetry were manifest. Men vied with one another in his praises, men
fought for the right to call him friend, and a woman became immortal by
being "Sidney's sister." "Sidney, the Siren of this latter age," writes
Barnefield; "divine Sir Philip," Michael Drayton calls him; and Ben
Jonson, as though in defiance of the charge of exaggeration utters (you
can hear him say it), "the godlike Sidney." Even the ribald Nash lowers
his mad voice to the note of reverence, "Apollo hath resigned his Ivory
Harpe unto Astrophel and he, like Mercury, must lull you a sleep with
his musicke. Sleepe Argus, sleep Ignorance, sleep Impudence, for Mercury
hath Io and onely Io Paean belongeth to Astrophel. Deare Astrophel, that
in the ashes of thy Love livest againe like the Phoenix; o might thy
bodie (as thy name) live againe likewise here amongst us; but the
earthe, the mother of mortality hath snacht thee too soone into her
chilled cold armes, and will not let thee by any meanes be drawne from
her deadly imbrace; and thy divine Soule, carried on an Angels wings to
heaven, is installed in Hermes place sole prolocutor to the Gods." His
life was a poem, which all the men who lived with him, and all the men
who knew his name, were great enough to read and to appreciate; his
death is an example for all time. Fame with its common story cannot
sully the brightness of the superb sacrifice of that superb self.
Dudley expressed the presumptuous vitality of the Court, and Sidney its
vital poetry. A little aloof from the Court, which he was apt to regard
with kindly disdain at its frivolity, moved the staid figure of
Burghley, the Lord High Treasurer of England, Elizabeth's great man of
business, perhaps the finest political intelligence that has ever
thought out a way for a country through the most complicated
difficulties, at a time when disaster crouched ever ready to spring and
involve that country in ruin.
William Cecil had an absolute mastery over every detail; he possessed a
genius for arrangement. Nothing escaped his notice. He was a kind of
machine which attracted all the wild impulses of the time; they passed
into the machine's mouth disordered, unarranged; and they passed out
shaped, controlled by his slow inevitable will. As a statesman he
appears hardly human in his freedom from all personality; he seems a
mask hiding the brain of England, and regulating it to the only end
where success could be. Men rose to fame fiercely struggling, and did
brilliant acts or mad acts, and sank again or settled as the case might
be; but always at the supreme head, always alert, always careful,
impassive as some Eastern Buddha, sat the Lord Burghley, managing the
affairs of the state, managing even the state's impulsive, whimsical
mistress. His impassivity afflicted her at times, so that she played
pranks on him, vainly endeavouring to upset his restraint and his
dignity; but her pranks were hardly heeded. He was English to the solid
backbone, and resisted unequivocally the rage of fashion that went out
towards all that was foreign; and yet his foreign policy was unswerving
and level-headed; he looked upon war as the last terrible resource of
state-craft, in an age in which fighting was regarded as the highroad to
glory, and was loved for its own wild sake. Elizabeth showed her
knowledge of the right word when she called him her "spirit" and her
"oracle"; and the courtiers their discernment of the obvious, when they
called him "old fox." Together the two names describe him with some
accuracy.
At his right hand worked Sir Francis Walsingham, who was more astute,
but lacked Burghley's greatness of mind. Walsingham was an admirable
servant: he would never have been successful under the full weight of
responsibility. It was he who developed the system of espionage through
every country in Europe, and brought it to an uncanny perfection. That
system of secret messages was typical of the day; it was so easy to
keep facts hidden, and to pervert them advantageously when news
travelled so slowly, that it was a necessity to have reliable men on
every spot to check statements and to watch events and tendencies. When
Walsingham died in 1590, Burghley showed his indomitable energy by
mastering the intricate cyphers and details connected with the business;
he was then at the good age of seventy.
[Illustration: WILLIAM CECIL, LORD BURGHLEY]
As his health failed, his son, Robert Cecil, took more and more of his
great father's responsibilities upon himself; and "The Little
Secretary," as the queen called him, became gradually the most important
man in the realm. He was craftier than his father, and more adaptable,
but he never rose to the greatness of Lord Burghley. His figure is not
so imposing; there was something under-hand about his conduct, which
does not appear in the slow, diplomatic wisdom of the older man.
There comes a strange interest in knowing that this great intelligence
of Burghley arranged not only the affairs of the State, but the details
of his household with the same impassive power. His steward writes to
him about a new gown which is wanted for his mother: "The gown that you
would make it must be for every day and yet because it comes from you
(except you write to her to the contrary) she will make it her holiday
gown, whereof she hath great store already, both of silk and cloth. But
I think, sir, if you make her one of cloth with some velvet on it, with
your letter to desire her for your sake to wear it daily, she would
accustom herself to it: so as she would forget to go any longer in such
base apparel as she hath used to have a delight in which is too mean for
one of a lower estate than she is."
And of Burghley's earlier days, Roger Ascham gives an attractive glimpse
in his introduction to _The Schoolmaster_, where he shows the man's
methodical life and wide interests; for the renewal of learning did not
at all pass Burghley by; he was an enthusiast about the proper
pronunciation of the Greek tongue, and in 1541 was hotly engaged in the
disputes. But to old Ascham: he writes about the important dinner, in
1563, at which the subject of his book was suggested to him: "M.
Secretary hath this accustomed manner though his head be never so full
of most weightie matters of the Realme, yet, at diner time he doth seeme
to lay them alwaies aside; and findeth ever fit occasion to taulke
pleasantly of other matters, but most gladly of some matter of learning:
wherein he will curteslie heare the minde of the meanest at his table."
It is refreshing to see how in his private life he was a simple-minded
man, who suffered from the gout and was plagued with quack remedies, all
of which he carefully docketed, having no doubt tried their efficacy
before he set them on one side.
Such were the chief figures when Ralegh came to the Court.
Nothing illustrates his rapid rise in favour so well as a letter which
Ralegh writes to Lord Burghley from the Court at Greenwich. The letter
shows that Burghley had asked for his help on behalf of his son-in-law,
the Earl of Oxford, who was bitterly hostile to Ralegh and had, as may
be gathered from the letter, gone out of his way to do him an injury. "I
delivered Her Your Lordship's letter. What I said further, how honorable
and profittabell it weare for Her Majestie to have regard to Your
Lordship's healthe and quiett, I leve to the witnesse of God and good
reporte of Her Highnesse. And the more to witnesse how desirous I am of
Your Lordship's favor and good opinion, I am contente, for your sake, to
laye the sarpente before the fire, as miche as in me lieth, that,
having recovered strengthe, myself may be moste in danger of his poyson
and stinge. For answere, Her Majestie would give me none other, but that
she woulde satisfye Your Lordship, of whom she ever had, and would ever
have, special regard.... I humblie take my lave. From Grenewiche this
present Friday, May 12, 1583."
Here is Lord Burghley using the help of the young man whose valour and
address in Ireland he had observed and whom he had helped to make.
Ralegh is now prominent among the courtiers; he takes a leading part in
the life of the Court, and the life of the Court is brilliant and
occupied. The town was too small and the streets of the town too narrow
for the courtiers to hold themselves aloof, as money allows the
fashionable to do now; no special quarter of the town was assigned to
them. They kept themselves distinct from the townspeople without the
help of locality or space. The laws helped them, however, in the matter
of dress. Curious sumptuary laws were still in force, which forbade any
one under the degree of baron to have more than three linings to his
breeches; which forbade any one whose income was less than L100 a year
to wear satin, damask, silk, camlet, or taffeta, and any one who was not
worth more than L200 to wear velvet or embroidery. "The English," writes
Van Meteron, a Dutch historian and contemporary, "dress in elegant light
and costly garments but they are very inconstant and desirous of
novelties, changing their fashions every year, both men and women. When
they go abroad riding or travelling, they don their best clothes,
contrary to the practice of other nations." And to this craze for
constant novelty in dress a contemporary poem bears amusing witness--
"Hees Hatted Spanyard-like, and bearded to,
Ruft Itallyon-like, pac'd like them also;
His hose and doublet Frenche: his boots and shoes
Are fashond Pole in heeles, but French in toes.
Oh! hees complete: what shall I descant on?
A compleate Foole? noe, compleate Englishe mon."
This fashion of dress lent wide scope to bad taste, and such books as
Dekker's delightful _Guls Hornbook_ show how hard gulls tried to be
gallants and how ridiculously they often failed. And it gave the genuine
courtier full scope for magnificence. Ralegh could wear white satin and
pearls.
Not only in dress was the courtier distinct, but also in language.
Fashions in speech were constantly in vogue. None was more pronounced
than the fashion set by John Lyly, who wrote elegant court plays and the
novel _Euphues_. Of Euphues with his instructive letters and sound moral
tone Sir Charles Grandison is the direct descendant: Richardson owed as
much to Lyly, as Defoe to Thomas Nash or Fielding to Defoe. But that is
a literary by-path which leads to the history of fiction. His immediate
influence was on the speech of the courtiers and the language of the
Court. "That beautie in Court which could not parley Euphuisme was as
shee which now there speaks not French." John Lyly came to Court about
1577 and was helped by Lord Burghley; perhaps the rage of affectation
which he started, gave the stern Lord Treasurer a distaste for poets and
was one of the reasons which made him disinclined to favour Spenser
afterwards. Probably Lyly seemed innocuous enough at first, with his
modest desire to lie shut in a lady's casket rather than open in a
scholar's library. No one could have foreseen the frenzied fashion which
he inaugurated and which with its stilted periphrases must have been
sorely irritating to the great matter-of-fact man of business. No wonder
he looked askance at poets. Euphuism, as the jargon is called, has been
described many times; it was the first effort in English towards
ornament in speech. In itself it was wholly good; in its excess it was
wholly bad.
As a fashion of speech it must have been not a little wearisome. And
indeed that proved to be the case; for its place was taken about as soon
as dull people were beginning to obtain the knack of it by another
fashion, no less elaborate, but of a different manner of elaborateness
taken from Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_. Here a jingle on one word was
the effect to be obtained, as for example, "Each senselesse thing had
sense of pity; only they that had sense were senselesse." This fashion
set by a writer upon the speech of the fashionable finds a modern
counterpart in the influence of Oscar Wilde, with this difference that
his pointed epigram becomes feeble nonsense and his genius for using the
right word degenerates into amiable talk about passionate neckties and
purple sin; whereas with Lyly's and Sidney's manner no imitation could
be feebler or more exaggerated than the original often is--not always.
Lyly has real wit and fancy, especially in his charming court plays, as
when he writes, "They give us pap with a spoon before we can speak, and
when we speake for that we love, pap with a hatchet"; there he is
inimitable.
The common task of dress and language was sufficiently elaborate to keep
a courtier of average intelligence busy. And when he was equipped in
mind and body there were countless ceremonies and functions at which his
presence was expected. The Queen was in continual progress, and every
progress was a pageant, whether by land or river, whether she were
journeying from one palace to another, or visiting a university to
encourage learning, a town or a noble subject to show her gracious
favour and to give her subjects the opportunity of proving by their
hospitality their loyalty. She kept in constant touch with her people.
And on her progresses she was accompanied by her principal courtiers,
who were themselves followed by a suite of gentlemen retainers. In this
excellent display of the superficial side of life--the very panoply of
existence--Ralegh by his wit and by his bearing was conspicuous. He was
as famous for his power of turning a neat phrase as he was famous for
his power of wearing with grace a fortune in one suit. Many men were
obliged to give all their attention to the brilliant outside of things
to keep pace at all with the changes of phrase and habit; and would
never be at ease in either. Ralegh owed his envied distinction in both
chiefly to the reason that he always held them at their proper value.
His nature was magnificent, and instinct led him naturally to a height
which others could not climb to with the greatest conscious effort. In
that he was like his mistress, Queen Elizabeth.
It is fitting that such life should be gorgeously caparisoned; there was
no homespun in its disposition.
But there is another side to the picture of this Court, a second party
in the Court and the country. For some fifteen years another woman had
been living under restraint in England--a woman who was the mother of a
king; who had been queen of two kingdoms and aspired to be queen of a
third; she was of great personal power though not so powerful as
Elizabeth. She was a devout Catholic and was called Mary, Queen of
Scots. A large number of gentlemen had remained faithful to their
religion. These Catholics were divided roughly into two classes, those
who were faithful to their religion and to their country, and those who
were primarily faithful to their religion and would stop at nothing to
establish Catholicism again in England They looked on Mary, Queen of
Scots, as their rightful head. The moderate Catholics wanted to make
sure that she would succeed Elizabeth; the fanatical Catholics wanted to
kill the usurper at once and let Mary reign in her stead.
As years passed by and Elizabeth remained unmarried and averse to the
mention even of a successor, the question became acute, not in England
only but throughout Europe. Spain and France were anxious to have a
Catholic sovereign in England; but neither wanted the other to have the
added strength of England as a dependency. Elizabeth kept playing them
off one against the other with her various matrimonial schemes; and Mary
was in correspondence with them, trying to exact promises of assistance.
Intrigue grew more and more involved. At last matters came to a head. It
became recognized, after the dismissal of the Duc d'Anjou as a suitor,
that Time itself would no longer permit a marriage for Elizabeth. The
Catholics in larger numbers resolved that her death was imperative and
the death of her strong supporters. Elizabeth with the fearlessness of
true strength had allowed Mary great freedom of correspondence in her
confinement. Now she cut her off from the outside world, until a
diplomatic necessity arose to know exactly how far foreign powers were
prepared to support Mary, how far they were speaking their true
intentions in their dealings with Elizabeth. Walsingham had spies in
every influential Catholic household in England, at all the Courts and
even the Jesuitical centres in Spain and France. But the information was
not yet sufficient. Nothing illustrates more effectively the
extraordinary difficulty of obtaining accurate news in those days of
slow travelling and messengers, than the elaborate method which
Walsingham and Elizabeth were obliged to arrange at this juncture. It is
a mistake to suppose it illustrates the treachery and deceitfulness of
the times. The times have changed not in moral tone but in quickness of
transit. Men are very much the same; but steam and electricity, the
telegraph, the telephone, and a postal system have altered the aspect of
affairs and the methods of conducting business or intrigue.
The plan they contrived was both ingenious and successful. With the help
of one Gilbert Gifford, trained in unscrupulous cunning by the Jesuits,
they encouraged Mary to open a correspondence with her confederates
abroad, and they tapped this correspondence at the fountain-head. Mary
was removed to Chartley, near the home of Gifford, whose family was
staunchly Catholic. A brewer at Burton supplied Chartley with beer. Into
the cask of specially good beer for Mary and her attendants and
secretaries was fitted a water-tight box, and in this box were placed
the letters. With the brewer was staying Walsingham's secretary
Phillipps, a thin red-haired man skilled in cypher, and he transcribed
all the letters at Burton before they were sent through an underground
post, which had been carefully arranged by the young and
innocent-looking Gilbert Gifford, to the Jesuit agency in London. Only
six people knew of the whole scheme. Elizabeth, Walsingham, Gifford,
Phillipps, Paulet, Mary's Puritan keeper, and the brewer of Burton. The
brewer was evidently a man whose business instinct was fully developed.
Not only did he receive large and complicated bribes from Elizabeth and
from Mary, but he demanded also a higher price for his beer. This demand
shocked the good Paulet unspeakably, and throws an interesting sidelight
upon the moral sense of the day, and proves that it worked as subtly
then as it works now.
From this correspondence Elizabeth learned, what her strange foresight
taught her to expect, that France and Spain were too frightened of each
other to take any resolute step against her in favour of Mary. But it
happened also that she learnt something quite unexpected and of extreme
importance, and that was the plot which is known as the Babington
conspiracy. She was able to thwart a national calamity and to preserve
her own life.
Among the most fanatical of the Catholic disaffected was a Jesuit, named
John Ballard. He had obtained a private bull from Gregory XIII.,
sanctioning the murder of Elizabeth, and was unremitting in his efforts
to find a man daring enough to undertake the task. He travelled through
England, disguised in blue velvet, as Captain Fortescue, rousing all the
Catholic gentlemen to concerted action, and convincing them that
Elizabeth's death was a papal necessity. Lord Arundel vouched that he
could answer for the Tower, though he was a prisoner within its walls;
his uncle, Lord Henry, would raise the eastern counties; Sir William
Courtenay promised to seize Plymouth; Lord Montague, Lord Vaux, Lord
Stourton, Lord Windsor, and many others, whose names on earth are dark,
swore a great oath to stand by the cause and by themselves. Everything
was in readiness for a general rising so soon as the blow should fall
which should rid England of Elizabeth. The letters of Mendoza, the
Spanish ambassador, show how confident he is of a complete revolution.
Certainly Elizabeth had need of staunch friends whom she was wise to
bind to herself by every tie her personality could fashion, and staunch
friends she possessed and held in her possession.
And now the men were found at last by Ballard who were ready to strike
the blow. They were men who waited upon the Queen's person. The chief
amongst them was Anthony Babington, of Dethick, in Derbyshire. He had
been a page at Sheffield when the Queen of Scots was first in charge of
Lord Shrewsbury, and, like many other men, young and old, who came under
the fascination of her influence, he was passionately devoted to her,
with all the strength of devotion that a beautiful woman in
distress--still more, a beautiful queen--must inevitably arouse. The
spirit of chivalry which the great rival Queens infuse into these plots
takes away the sordidness and pettiness which breathes from mere
political intrigue, and lends a poignant majesty to the terrible
dramatic end of it all. This Anthony Babington obtained the help of
Charles Tilney, one of Elizabeth's gentleman pensioners, of Edward
Abington, the son of her under-treasurer, of Jones, of Dunn, of Robert
Barnwell, who was an Irishman on a visit to the Court, and of other
young men. Walsingham and Elizabeth knew of them all, and watched them
continually. Elizabeth's bravery was magnificent Any moment she might
have met death at the hand of an assassin; but she remained undaunted.
Her fearlessness no doubt affected the conspirators, though quite
unconsciously. They did not know that their every action was watched.
Like many other young enthusiasts, they were reckless and self-confident
to the verge of lunacy, and as soon as they came to realize that their
plot was found out, they lost their heads completely. Abject fear took
the place of their courage. They saw the resistless power that was
ranged against them, waiting. They fled; but it was too late. The plot
was revealed to the public. Ignominy and shameful death awaited the men
who hoped to be welcomed as the saviours of their religion, the daring
knights of their queen-lady. Their names were proclaimed and the nature
of their intentions. Babington had fled to St. John's Wood, which was
then a "forest interspersed with farms," and from there he managed to
make his way to Harrow, where he with four others lay hid on haystacks
and in the straw of barns. But they did not remain long undiscovered.
Amid the ringing of bells and the wildest rejoicings they were taken
back to London. And very soon they were hung, drawn and quartered
publicly.
How many knew of the Queen's imminent danger is not certain. Probably
she kept it from her most intimate friends. Her strength was equal even
to that. Nor is it known how much Ralegh knew of his mistress's danger;
it is not likely that he was entirely ignorant of it, for to him was
given the whole of Babington's estates, which were large and
remunerative. It is certainly a last proof of Queen Elizabeth's amazing
vitality, that in the midst of this dangerous turmoil of plot and
counterplot which surrounded her, she was able to find occasion for the
display of love and affection. For it was during these last desperate
endeavours of the Catholic party that she first drew Ralegh to herself.
She had seen to his advancement, and taken care that he was provided
with the wealth that he needed for his position at Court and that his
personal taste for magnificence desired. She had given him the Farm of
Wines, which, even allowing for the money that one Richard Browne
tricked him out of, brought him in a good income; and, in 1585, he
succeeded Francis, Earl of Bedford, as Lord Warden of the Stannaries,
and shortly afterwards became Lieutenant of the county of Cornwall, and
Vice-Admiral of the counties of Cornwall and Devon. The Queen had need
of staunch friends around her. And it is not due only to a woman's
whim, at which many have mocked, that she kept these men, her
favourites, at Court even sometimes against their will, as when she
prevented Sidney, in 1585, from heading the Virginian colonists, and, a
year or two later, sent Sir Robert Carey to fetch back the Earl of
Essex. Their presence became a necessity to her, because their presence
helped to vouch for her personal safety. It gave her an assurance of
security to see such men by her side, though doubtless their presence
flattered her vanity as well. Moreover, there seems to be something
exhilarating in a woman who could go in perpetual danger and known
danger of murder, and yet keep to the end her woman's desire for
admiration, which is the producer of many graces, and not at all in
itself a proof of pettiness. It depends upon what she considers to be
admirable.
The Babington conspiracy by which Ralegh was ultimately enriched brought
about a crisis between the loyal and disaffected. The result of the
ingenuity of Walsingham and Elizabeth in contriving the plan by which
Mary, Queen of Scots betrayed herself, placed her intentions beyond all
question. It was clear that she intended to stop at nothing; that she
was anxious for Elizabeth's murder. It was certainly the easiest
solution to her difficulties, and she was the protectress of the true
religion, the head of which had sanctioned the murder. She was that most
dangerous of enemies, a sincerely religious woman of great cleverness
and no principles. Without discussing the ethics of murder and
execution, it is easy to understand Mary's position; and it is not easy
to understand Elizabeth's conduct. Mary was found guilty of high
treason, and the law of the land assessed the penalty for high treason
at death. But Elizabeth could not bring herself to sign the death
warrant. It is difficult to understand why. She was supported by the
authority of the kingdom, but she tried to avoid this last
responsibility. Her conduct illustrates the peculiar blend of craft and
sensitiveness which circumstances had developed in her character, and
which, be it noted, were conspicuous traits of many other great
characters of the time--conspicuously, for example, of Bacon and of
Ralegh. She tried to make Walsingham incur the responsibility and the
odium of the deed. She abused him when he demurred at her proposal. And
finally, when she had given her signature, she swore that it had been by
a mistake, and Walsingham, for ever impoverished by her displeasure,
retired indignant to his house at Barnelms. He became hateful to her,
and nothing could reinstate him in her favour. It was as though he were
a tool which she had cut herself in using, which she flung from her in
anger and without compunction.
But at length the day of Mary's death came. That was pre-eminently the
time of pageant and display--the display of gorgeous life in the great
Court functions; the display of dreadful death in the public executions.
Both were combined in dramatic intensity at this last scene of Mary's
life. Hers was a Queen's death.
In November of the year 1586 her sentence was passed. For three months
Europe was agitated by uncertainty whether the sentence would be carried
out, and what would be the result of her death, if it were. For three
months she held her ground as the martyr of her religion, an
unassailable position. For three months she decked her tragedy with the
robes of majesty and of pathetic grace. When Paulet tore down the regal
hangings from her room, saying that they no longer became a traitress,
she hung the crucifix in their place and pointed to it in silence when
he came to her again.
The day of her execution was the second Wednesday in February, 1587.
Three hundred knights were assembled in the hall of Fotheringay Castle.
When the Provost-Marshal and the Sheriff came to fetch her from her
room, they found her no longer dressed in the customary grey cloth, but
clothed in a robe of black satin. Her hand on the arm of one of the
guard, she passed tall and erect down the broad oak staircase to the
hall. At the end of the hall loomed the scaffold swathed in black; the
dancing flames of a great crackling wood fire moved light shadows across
its blackness, and flickered on the bright steel of the axe which was
leaning against the block. By the block stood the executioners, masked
and in black. She who was cousin to the Queen of England, who was a
married Queen of France and anointed Queen of Scotland, passed up the
hall, followed by her six friends. Her waiting women tried and tried
vainly to keep back their sobs--Elizabeth Kennedy and Barbara Mowbray.
She ascended the black scaffold and sat down--smiling. Beale read aloud
the sentence.
"Madam," said Lord Shrewsbury, "you hear what we are commanded to do."
"You will do your duty," was her reply. Then the Dean of Peterborough
endeavoured to play his accorded part, but three times he broke down in
addressing her. When he at length began to pray, Mary too prayed in
Latin, and at length her voice alone sounded through the hall. No longer
she prayed in Latin as she had prayed at first, she prayed in English
without a falter in her voice. With sublime audacity she prayed that God
might forgive and bless her son, James VI. of Scotland, and her cousin,
Elizabeth of England, and that He might avert His wrath from Elizabeth's
country. She finished; the black mutes stepped forward. The scaffold
creaked under their movement. They asked her forgiveness for what they
were going to do, according to the custom; and forgiveness was granted
them. "I forgive you," she said, "because now I hope that you will end
all my troubles." Her ladies, Elizabeth Kennedy and Barbara Mowbray,
mounted the steps of the black scaffold in order that they might help
her to make ready. They lifted the lawn veil carefully, not to
disarrange her hair. Swiftly they removed the black robe; swiftly they
took her arms from out the black jacket, slashed with velvet, and set
the jacket on one side. Dazzling in crimson satin she stood on the black
scaffold, revealed in red satin between the black mutes, as she drew
over her white arms crimson sleeves, which her ladies, now trembling,
handed to her. But she drew them on as a lady her gloves, without haste.
"Ne criez-vous, j'ai promis pour vous," she turned to them and said. She
knelt and laid her head on the block: it was hard to her soft neck, so
she put her hand underneath, murmuring the Psalm "In Te, Domine,
confido." But the headsman moved her hand away, fearing its softness
might hinder his business. Then he struck, but the blow fell lightly,
and fell on the knot of the hand-kerchief with which her eyes were
bound. He struck again, and had only to move the axe across the block to
cut the last shred of skin. "So perish all the enemies of the Queen,"
called out the Dean of Peterborough, as the executioner held out the
head at his arm's length. Only the strength of her vitality and her
cleverness had kept beauty in her face. The head that was thus held up
at arm's length was the head of an old and wrinkled woman. Death
grinned.
[Illustration: MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS]
As they set about stripping the body, a lap-dog, hidden in her clothes,
howled and lay down crying out by the neck from which the blood was
flowing. It was carried away.
Then all her things--dress, beads, Paternoster, hand-kerchief--were
taken to the great wood fire which still burned merrily, and burned
before all the people. No relics must be left.
Henry Talbot, son of Lord Shrewsbury, was given the account of the
proceedings, and rode off with them post-haste from Fotheringay along
the bad roads to London.
So died Mary, Queen of Scots, and her death was one of the surest, most
definite steps that was ever taken towards cutting England off from
papal authority. Henceforward, England stood alone. Henceforward, the
force of patriotism and of religion were to be combined.
Such things happened in the time of Walter Ralegh. He may have been
present. If he were, the memory of it must have come to his mind some
thirty years later, when he touched the edge of another axe with his
thumb and approved of its sharpness.