THE ENGLAND OF ELIZABETH
1558-1561
[Sidenote: Elizabeth's accession.]
Tradition still points out the tree in Hatfield Park beneath which
Elizabeth was sitting when she received the news of her peaceful
accession to the throne. She fell on her knees, and drawing a long
breath, exclaimed at last, "It is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous
in our eyes." To the last these words remained stamped on the golden
coinage of the Queen. The sense never left her that her preservation and
her reign were the issues of a direct interposition of God. Daring and
self-confident indeed as was her temper, it was awed into seriousness by
the weight of responsibility which fell on her with her sister's death.
Never had the fortunes of England sunk to a lower ebb. Dragged at the
heels of Philip into a useless and ruinous war, the country was left
without an ally save Spain. The loss of Calais gave France the mastery
of the Channel, and seemed to English eyes "to introduce the French
King within the threshold of our house." "If God start not forth to the
helm," wrote the Council in an appeal to the country, "we be at the
point of greatest misery that can happen to any people, which is to
become thrall to a foreign nation." The French king in fact "bestrode
the realm, having one foot in Calais and the other in Scotland." Ireland
too was torn with civil war, while Scotland, always a danger in the
north, had become formidable through the French marriage of its queen.
In presence of enemies such as these, the country lay helpless, without
army or fleet, or the means of manning one, for the treasury, already
drained by the waste of Edward's reign, had been utterly exhausted by
the restoration of the Church lands in possession of the Crown and by
the cost of the war with France. But formidable as was the danger from
without, it was little to the danger from within. The country was
humiliated by defeat and brought to the verge of rebellion by the
bloodshed and misgovernment of Mary's reign. The social discontent which
had been trampled down for a while by the horsemen of Somerset remained
a menace to further order. Above all, the religious strife had passed
beyond hope of reconciliation now that the reformers were parted from
their opponents by the fires of Smithfield and the party of the New
Learning all but dissolved. The more earnest Catholics were bound
helplessly to Rome. The temper of the Protestants, burned at home or
driven into exile abroad, had become a fiercer thing, and the
Calvinistic refugees were pouring back from Geneva with dreams of
revolutionary changes in Church and State.
[Sidenote: Her religious policy.]
It was with the religious difficulty that Elizabeth was called first to
deal; and the way in which she dealt with it showed at once the peculiar
bent of her mind. The young Queen was not without a sense of religion;
at moments of peril or deliverance throughout her reign her
acknowledgements of a divine protection took a strange depth and
earnestness. But she was almost wholly destitute of spiritual emotion,
or of any consciousness of the vast questions with which theology strove
to deal. While the world around her was being swayed more and more by
theological beliefs and controversies, Elizabeth was absolutely
untouched by them. She was a child of the Italian Renascence rather than
of the New Learning of Colet or Erasmus, and her attitude towards the
enthusiasm of her time was that of Lorenzo de' Medici towards
Savonarola. Her mind was untroubled by the spiritual problems which were
vexing the minds around her; to Elizabeth indeed they were not only
unintelligible, they were a little ridiculous. She had been brought up
under Henry amidst the ritual of the older Church; under Edward she had
submitted to the English Prayer-Book, and drunk in much of the
Protestant theology; under Mary she was ready after a slight resistance
to conform again to the mass. Her temper remained unchanged through the
whole course of her reign. She showed the same intellectual contempt for
the superstition of the Romanist as for the bigotry of the Protestant.
While she ordered Catholic images to be flung into the fire, she quizzed
the Puritans as "brethren in Christ." But she had no sort of religious
aversion from either Puritan or Papist. The Protestants grumbled at the
Catholic nobles whom she admitted to the presence. The Catholics
grumbled at the Protestant statesmen whom she called to her
council-board. To Elizabeth on the other hand the arrangement was the
most natural thing in the world. She looked at theological differences
in a purely political light. She agreed with Henry the Fourth that a
kingdom was well worth a mass. It seemed an obvious thing to her to hold
out hopes of conversion as a means of deceiving Philip, or to gain a
point in negotiation by restoring the crucifix to her chapel. The first
interest in her own mind was the interest of public order, and she never
could understand how it could fail to be the first in every one's mind.
[Sidenote: Elizabeth's toleration.]
One memorable change marked the nobler side of the policy she brought
with her to the throne. Elizabeth's accession was at once followed by a
close of the religious persecution. Whatever might be the changes that
awaited the country, conformity was no longer to be enforced by the
penalty of death. At a moment when Philip was presiding at _autos-de-fe_
and Henry of France plotting a massacre of his Huguenot subjects, such a
resolve was a gain for humanity as well as a step towards religious
toleration. And from this resolve Elizabeth never wavered. Through all
her long reign, save a few Anabaptists whom the whole nation loathed as
blasphemers of God and dreaded as enemies of social order, no heretic
was "sent to the fire." It was a far greater gain for humanity when the
Queen declared her will to meddle in no way with the consciences of her
subjects. She would hear of no inquisition into a man's private thoughts
on religious matters or into his personal religion. Cecil could boldly
assert in her name at a later time the right of every Englishman to
perfect liberty of religious opinion. Such a liberty of opinion by no
means implied liberty of public worship. On the incompatibility of
freedom of worship with public order Catholic and Protestant were as yet
at one. The most advanced reformers did not dream of contending for a
right to stand apart from the national religion. What they sought was to
make the national religion their own. The tendency of the reformation
had been to press for the religious as well as the political unity of
every state. Even Calvin looked forward to the winning of the nations
to a purer faith without a suspicion that the religious movement which
he headed would end in establishing the right even of the children of
"antichrist" to worship as they would in a Protestant commonwealth. If
the Protestant lords in Scotland had been driven to assert a right of
nonconformity, if the Huguenots of France were following their example,
it was with no thought of asserting the right of every man to worship
God as he would. From the claim of such a right Knox or Coligni would
have shrunk with even greater horror than Elizabeth. What they aimed at
was simply the establishment of a truce till by force or persuasion they
could win the realms that tolerated them for their own. In this matter
therefore Elizabeth was at one with every statesman of her day. While
granting freedom of conscience to her subjects, she was resolute to
exact an outward conformity to the established religion.
[Sidenote: Religion unchanged.]
But men watched curiously to see what religion the Queen would
establish. Even before her accession the keen eye of the Spanish
ambassador had noted her "great admiration for the king her father's
mode of carrying on matters," as a matter of ill omen for the interests
of Catholicism. He had marked that the ladies about her and the
counsellors on whom she seemed about to rely were, like Cecil, "held to
be heretics." "I fear much," he wrote, "that in religion she will not go
right." As keen an instinct warned the Protestants that the tide had
turned. The cessation of the burnings, and the release of all persons
imprisoned for religion, seemed to receive their interpretation when
Elizabeth on her entry into London kissed an English Bible which the
citizens presented to her and promised "diligently to read therein." The
exiles at Strassburg or Geneva flocked home with wild dreams of a
religious revolution and of vengeance upon their foes. But hopes and
fears alike met a startling check. For months there was little change in
either government or religion. If Elizabeth introduced Cecil and his
kinsman, Sir Nicholas Bacon, to her council-board, she retained as yet
most of her sister's advisers. The Mass went on as before, and the Queen
was regular in her attendance at it. As soon as the revival of
Protestantism showed itself in controversial sermons and insults to the
priesthood it was bridled by a proclamation which forbade unlicensed
preaching and enforced silence on the religious controversy. Elizabeth
showed indeed a distaste for the elevation of the Host, and allowed the
Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments to be used in English. But
months passed after her accession before she would go further than this.
A royal proclamation which ordered the existing form of worship to be
observed "till consultation might be had in Parliament by the Queen and
the Three Estates" startled the prelates; and only one bishop could be
found to assist at the coronation of Elizabeth. But no change was made
in the ceremonies of the coronation; the Queen took the customary oath
to observe the liberties of the Church, and conformed to the Catholic
ritual. There was little in fact to excite any reasonable alarm among
the adherents of the older faith, or any reasonable hope among the
adherents of the new. "I will do," the Queen said, "as my father did."
Instead of the reforms of Edward and the Protectorate, the Protestants
saw themselves thrown back on the reforms of Henry the Eighth. Even
Henry's system indeed seemed too extreme for Elizabeth. Her father had
at any rate broken boldly from the Papacy. But the first work of the
Queen was to open negotiations for her recognition with the Papal Court.
[Sidenote: Elizabeth and Philip.]
What shaped Elizabeth's course in fact was hard necessity. She found
herself at war with France and Scotland, and her throne threatened by
the claim of the girl who linked the two countries, the claim of Mary
Stuart, at once Queen of Scotland and wife of the Dauphin Francis. On
Elizabeth's accession Mary and Francis assumed by the French king's
order the arms and style of English sovereigns: and if war continued it
was clear that their pretensions would be backed by Henry's forces as
well as by the efforts of the Scots. Against such a danger Philip of
Spain was Elizabeth's only ally. Philip's policy was at this time a
purely conservative one. The vast schemes of ambition which had so often
knit both Pope and Protestants, Germany and France, against his father
were set aside by the young king. His position indeed was very different
from that of Charles the Fifth. He was not Emperor. He had little weight
in Germany. Even in Italy his influence was less than his father's. He
had lost with Mary's death the crown of England. His most valuable
possessions outside Spain, the provinces of the Netherlands, were
disaffected to a foreign rule. All the king therefore aimed at was to
keep his own. But the Netherlands were hard to keep: and with France
mistress of England as of Scotland, and so mistress of the Channel, to
keep them would be impossible. Sheer necessity forbade Philip to suffer
the union of the three crowns of the west on the head of a French king;
and the French marriage of Mary Stuart pledged him to oppose her
pretensions and support Elizabeth's throne. For a moment he even dreamed
of meeting the union of France with Scotland by that union of England
with Spain which had been seen under Mary. He offered Elizabeth his
hand. The match was a more natural one than Philip's union with her
sister, for the young king's age was not far from her own. The offer
however was courteously put aside, for Elizabeth had no purpose of
lending England to the ambition of Spain, nor was it possible for her to
repeat her sister's unpopular experiment. But Philip remained firm in
his support of her throne. He secured for her the allegiance of the
Catholics within her realm, who looked to him as their friend while they
distrusted France as an ally of heretics. His envoys supported her cause
in the negotiations at Cateau-Cambresis; he suffered her to borrow money
and provide herself with arms in his provinces of the Netherlands. At
such a crisis Elizabeth could not afford to alienate Philip by changes
which would roughly dispel his hopes of retaining her within the bounds
of Catholicism.
[Sidenote: Elizabeth and the Papacy.]
Nor is there any sign that Elizabeth had resolved on a defiance of the
Papacy. She was firm indeed to assert her father's claim of supremacy
over the clergy and her own title to the throne. But the difficulties in
the way of an accommodation on these points were such as could be
settled by negotiation; and, acting on Cecil's counsel, Elizabeth
announced her accession to the Pope. The announcement showed her purpose
of making no violent break in the relations of England with the Papal
See. But between Elizabeth and the Papacy lay the fatal question of the
Divorce. To acknowledge the young Queen was not only to own her mother's
marriage, but to cancel the solemn judgement of the Holy See in
Catharine's favour and its solemn assertion of her own bastardy. The
temper of Paul the Fourth took fire at the news. He reproached Elizabeth
with her presumption in ascending the throne, recalled the Papal
judgement which pronounced her illegitimate, and summoned her to submit
her claims to his tribunal. Much of this indignation was no doubt merely
diplomatic. If the Pope listened to the claims of Mary Stuart, which
were urged on him by the French Court, it was probably only with the
purpose of using them to bring pressure to bear on Elizabeth and on the
stubborn country which still refused to restore its lands to the Church
and to make the complete submission which Paul demanded. But Cecil and
the Queen knew that, even had they been willing to pay such a price for
the crown, it was beyond their power to bring England to pay it. The
form too in which Paul had couched his answer admitted of no compromise.
The summons to submit the Queen's claim of succession to the judgement
of Rome produced its old effect. Elizabeth was driven, as Henry had been
driven, to assert the right of the nation to decide on questions which
affected its very life. A Parliament which met in January, 1559,
acknowledged the legitimacy of Elizabeth and her title to the crown.
[Sidenote: The Supremacy re-established.]
Such an acknowledgement in the teeth of the Papal repudiation of Anne
Boleyn's marriage carried with it a repudiation of the supremacy of the
Papacy. It was in vain that the clergy in convocation unanimously
adopted five articles which affirmed their faith in transubstantiation,
their acceptance of the supreme authority of the Popes as "Christ's
vicars and supreme rulers of the Church," and their resolve "that the
authority in all matters of faith and discipline belongs and ought to
belong only to the pastors of the Church, and not to laymen." It was in
vain that the bishops unanimously opposed the Bill for restoring the
royal supremacy when it was brought before the Lords. The "ancient
jurisdiction of the Crown over the Estate ecclesiastical and spiritual"
was restored; the Acts which under Mary re-established the independent
jurisdiction and legislation of the Church were repealed; and the clergy
were called on to swear to the supremacy of the Crown and to abjure all
foreign authority and jurisdiction. Further Elizabeth had no personal
wish to go. A third of the Council and at least two-thirds of the people
were as opposed to any radical changes in religion as the Queen. Among
the gentry the older and wealthier were on the conservative side, and
only the younger and meaner on the other. In the Parliament itself Sir
Thomas White protested that "it was unjust that a religion begun in such
a miraculous way and established by such grave men should be abolished
by a set of beardless boys." Yet even this "beardless" Parliament had
shown a strong conservatism. The Bill which re-established the royal
supremacy met with violent opposition in the Commons, and only passed
through Cecil's adroit manoeuvring.
[Sidenote: Prayer-Book restored.]
But the steps which Elizabeth had taken made it necessary to go further.
If the Protestants were the less numerous, they were the abler and the
more vigorous party, and the break with Rome threw Elizabeth, whether
she would or no, on their support. It was a support that could only be
bought by theological concessions, and above all by the surrender of the
Mass; for to every Protestant the Mass was identified with the fires of
Smithfield, while the Prayer-Book which it had displaced was hallowed by
the memories of the Martyrs. The pressure of the reforming party indeed
would have been fruitless had the Queen still been hampered by danger
from France. Fortunately for their cause the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis
at this juncture freed Elizabeth's hands. By this treaty, which was
practically concluded in March 1559, Calais was left in French holding
on the illusory pledge of its restoration to England eight years later;
but peace was secured and the danger of a war of succession, in which
Mary Stuart would be backed by the arms of France, for a while averted.
Secure from without, Elizabeth could venture to buy the support of the
Protestants within her realm by the restoration of the English
Prayer-Book. Such a measure was far indeed from being meant as an open
break with Catholicism. The use of the vulgar tongue in public worship
was still popular with a large part of the Catholic world; and the Queen
did her best by the alterations she made in Edward's Prayer-Book to
strip it of its more Protestant tone. To the bulk of the people the book
must have seemed merely a rendering of the old service in their own
tongue. As the English Catholics afterwards represented at Rome when
excusing their own use of it, the Prayer-Book "contained neither impiety
nor false doctrine; its prayers were those of the Catholic Church,
altered only so far as to omit the merits and intercession of the
saints." On such a concession as this the Queen felt it safe to venture
in spite of the stubborn opposition of the spiritual estate. She ordered
a disputation to be held in Westminster Abbey before the Houses on the
question, and when the disputation ended in the refusal of the bishops
to proceed, an Act of Uniformity, which was passed in spite of their
strenuous opposition, restored at the close of April the last
Prayer-Book of Edward, and enforced its use on the clergy on pain of
deprivation.
[Sidenote: Pius the Fourth.]
At Rome the news of these changes stirred a fiercer wrath in Paul the
Fourth, and his threats of excommunication were only held in check by
the protests of Philip. The policy of the Spanish king still bound him
to Elizabeth's cause, for the claims of Mary Stuart had been reserved in
the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis and the refusal of France to abandon them
held Spain to its alliance with the Queen. Vexed as he was at the news
of the Acts which re-established the supremacy, Philip ordered his
ambassador to assure Elizabeth he was as sure a friend as ever, and to
soothe the resentment of the English Catholics if it threatened to break
out into revolt. He showed the same temper in his protest against action
at Rome. Paul had however resolved to carry out his threats when his
death and the interregnum which followed gave Elizabeth a fresh respite.
His successor, Pius the Fourth, was of milder temper and leaned rather
to a policy of conciliation. Decisive indeed as the Queen's action may
seem in modern eyes, it was far from being held as decisive at the time.
The Act of Supremacy might be regarded as having been forced upon
Elizabeth by Paul's repudiation of her title to the crown. The
alterations which were made by the Queen's authority in the Prayer-Book
showed a wish to conciliate those who clung to the older faith. It was
clear that Elizabeth had no mind merely to restore the system of the
Protectorate. She set up again the royal supremacy, but she dropped the
words "Head of the Church" from the royal title. The forty-two Articles
of Protestant doctrine which Cranmer had drawn up were left in abeyance.
If the Queen had had her will, she would have retained the celibacy of
the clergy and restored the use of crucifixes in the churches.
[Sidenote: The Clergy and the oath.]
The caution and hesitation with which she enforced on the clergy the
oath required by the Act of Supremacy showed Elizabeth's wish to avoid
the opening of a religious strife. The higher dignitaries indeed were
unsparingly dealt with. The bishops, who with a single exception refused
to take the oath, were imprisoned and deprived. The same measure was
dealt out to most of the archdeacons and deans. But with the mass of the
parish priests a very different course was taken. The Commissioners
appointed in May 1559 were found to be too zealous in October, and
several of the clerical members were replaced by cooler laymen. The
great bulk of the clergy seem neither to have refused nor to have
consented to the oath, but to have left the Commissioners' summons
unheeded and to have stayed quietly at home. Of the nine thousand four
hundred beneficed clergy only a tenth presented themselves before the
Commissioners. Of those who attended and refused the oath a hundred and
eighty-nine were deprived, but many of the most prominent went unharmed.
At Winchester, though the dean and canons of the cathedral, the warden
and fellows of the college, and the master of St. Cross, refused the
oath, only four of these appear in the list of deprivations. Even the
few who suffered proved too many for the purpose of the Queen. In the
more remote parts of the kingdom the proceedings of the visitors
threatened to wake the religious strife which she was endeavouring to
lull to sleep. On the northern border, where the great nobles, Lord
Dacres and the Earls of Cumberland and Westmoreland, were zealous
Catholics, and refused to let the bishop "meddle with them," the clergy
held stubbornly aloof. At Durham a parson was able to protest without
danger that the Pope alone had power in spiritual matters. In Hereford
the town turned out to receive in triumph a party of priests from the
west who had refused the oath. The University of Oxford took refuge in
sullen opposition. In spite of pressure from the Protestant prelates,
who occupied the sees vacated by the deprived bishops, Elizabeth was
firm in her policy of patience, and in December she ordered the
Commissioners in both provinces to suspend their proceedings.
[Sidenote: The Religious Chaos.]
In part indeed of her effort she was foiled by the bitterness of the
reformers. The London mob tore down the crosses in the streets. Her
attempt to retain the crucifix, or to enforce the celibacy of the
priesthood, fell dead before the opposition of the Protestant clergy.
But to the mass of the nation the compromise of Elizabeth seems to have
been fairly acceptable. They saw but little change. Their old vicar or
rector in almost every case remained in his parsonage and ministered in
his church. The new Prayer-Book was for the most part an English
rendering of the old service. Even the more zealous adherents of
Catholicism held as yet that in complying with the order for attendance
at public worship "there could be nothing positively unlawful." Where
party feeling ran high indeed the matter was sometimes settled by a
compromise. A priest would celebrate mass at his parsonage for the more
rigid Catholics, and administer the new communion in church to the more
rigid Protestants. Sometimes both parties knelt together at the same
altar-rails, the one to receive hosts consecrated by the priest at home
after the old usage, the other wafers consecrated in church after the
new. In many parishes of the north no change of service was made at all.
Even where priest and people conformed it was often with a secret belief
that better times were soon to bring back the older observances. As late
as 1569 some of the chief parishes in Sussex were still merely bending
to the storm of heresy. "In the church of Arundel certain altars do
stand yet, to the offence of the godly, which murmur and speak much
against the same. In the town of Battle when a preacher doth come and
speak anything against the Pope's doctrine they will not abide but get
them out of the church. They have yet in the diocese in many places
thereof images hidden and other popish ornaments ready to set up the
mass again within twenty-four hours warning. In many places they keep
yet their chalices, looking to have mass again." Nor was there much new
teaching as yet to stir up strife in those who clung to the older
faith. Elizabeth had no mind for controversies which would set her
people by the ears. "In many churches they have no sermons, not one in
seven years, and some not one in twelve." The older priests of Mary's
days held their peace. The Protestant preachers were few and hampered by
the exaction of licences. In many cases churches had "neither parson,
vicar, nor curate, but a sorry reader." Even where the new clergy were
of higher intellectual stamp they were often unpopular. Many of those
who were set in the place of the displaced clergy roused disgust by
their violence and greed. Chapters plundered their own estates by leases
and fines and by felling timber. The marriages of the clergy became a
scandal, which was increased when the gorgeous vestments of the old
worship were cut up into gowns and bodices for the priests' wives. The
new services sometimes turned into scenes of utter disorder where the
ministers wore what dress they pleased and the communicant stood or sat
as he liked; while the old altars were broken down and the
communion-table was often a bare board upon trestles. Only in the few
places where the more zealous of the reformers had settled was there any
religious instruction. "In many places," it was reported after ten years
of the Queen's rule, "the people cannot yet say their commandments, and
in some not the articles of their belief." Naturally enough, the bulk
of Englishmen were found to be "utterly devoid of religion," and came to
church "as to a May game."
[Sidenote: Parker.]
To modern eyes the Church under Elizabeth would seem little better than
a religious chaos. But England was fairly used to religious confusion,
for the whole machinery of English religion had been thrown out of gear
by the rapid and radical changes of the last two reigns. And to the
Queen's mind a religious chaos was a far less difficulty than the
parting of the nation into two warring Churches which would have been
brought about by a more rigorous policy. She trusted to time to bring
about greater order; and she found in Matthew Parker, whom Pole's death
at the moment of her accession enabled her to raise to the See of
Canterbury, an agent in the reorganization of the Church whose patience
and moderation were akin to her own. To the difficulties which Parker
found indeed in the temper of the reformers and their opponents new
difficulties were sometimes added by the freaks of the Queen herself. If
she had no convictions, she had tastes; and her taste revolted from the
bareness of Protestant ritual and above all from the marriage of
priests. "Leave that alone," she shouted to Dean Nowell from the royal
closet as he denounced the use of images--"stick to your text, Master
Dean, leave that alone!" When Parker was firm in resisting the
introduction of the crucifix or of celibacy, Elizabeth showed her
resentment by an insult to his wife. Married ladies were addressed at
this time as "Madam," unmarried ladies as "Mistress"; but the marriage
of the clergy was still unsanctioned by law, for Elizabeth had refused
to revive the statute of Edward by which it was allowed, and the
position of a priest's wife was legally a very doubtful one. When Mrs.
Parker therefore advanced at the close of a sumptuous entertainment at
Lambeth to take leave of the Queen, Elizabeth feigned a momentary
hesitation. "Madam," she said at last, "I may not call you, and Mistress
I am loath to call you; however, I thank you for your good cheer." But
freaks of this sort had little real weight beside the steady support
which the Queen gave to the Primate in his work of order. The vacant
sees were filled with men from among the exiles, for the most part
learned and able, though far more Protestant than the bulk of their
flocks; the plunder of the Church by the nobles was checked; and at the
close of 1559 England seemed to settle quietly down in a religious
peace.
[Sidenote: England Protestant.]
But cautious as had been Elizabeth's movements and skilfully as she had
hidden the real drift of her measures from the bulk of the people, the
religion of England was changed. The old service was gone. The old
bishops were gone. The royal supremacy was again restored. All connexion
with Rome was again broken. The repudiation of the Papacy and the
restoration of the Prayer-Book in the teeth of the unanimous opposition
of the priesthood had established the great principle of the
Reformation, that the form of a nation's faith should be determined not
by the clergy but by the nation itself. Different therefore as was the
temper of the government, the religious attitude of England was once
more what it had been under the Protectorate. At the most critical
moment of the strife between the new religion and the old England had
ranged itself on the side of Protestantism. It was only the later
history of Elizabeth's reign which was to reveal of what mighty import
this Protestantism of England was to prove. Had England remained
Catholic the freedom of the Dutch Republic would have been impossible.
No Henry the Fourth would have reigned in France to save French
Protestantism by the Edict of Nantes. No struggle over far-off seas
would have broken the power of Spain and baffled the hopes which the
House of Austria cherished of winning a mastery over the western world.
Nor could Calvinism have found a home across the northern border. The
first result of the religious change in England was to give a new
impulse to the religious revolution in Scotland.
[Sidenote: Scotch Calvinism.]
In the midst of anxieties at home Elizabeth had been keenly watching the
fortunes of the north. We have seen how the policy of Mary of Guise had
given life and force to the Scottish Reformation. Not only had the
Regent given shelter to the exiled Protestants and looked on at the
diffusion of the new doctrines, but her "fair words" had raised hopes
that the government itself would join the ranks of the reformers. Mary
of Guise had regarded the religious movement in a purely political
light. It was as enemies of Mary Tudor that she gave shelter to the
exiles, and it was to avoid a national strife which would have left
Scotland open to English attack in the war which closed Mary's reign
that the Regent gave "fair words" to the preachers. But with the first
Covenant, with the appearance of the Lords of the Congregation in an
avowed league in the heart of the land, with their rejection of the
state worship and their resolve to enforce a change of religion, her
attitude suddenly altered. To the Regent the new religion was henceforth
but a garb under which the old quarrel of the nobles was breaking out
anew against the Crown. Smooth as were her words, men knew that Mary of
Guise was resolute to withstand religious change. But Elizabeth's
elevation to the throne gave a new fire to the reformers. Conservative
as her earlier policy seemed, the instinct of the Protestants told them
that the new Queen's accession was a triumph for Protestantism. The
Lords at once demanded that all bishops should be chosen by the nobles
and gentry, each priest by his parish, and that divine service should
be henceforth in the vulgar tongue. These demands were rejected by the
bishops, while the royal court in May 1559 summoned the preachers to its
bar and on their refusal to appear condemned them to banishment as
rebels. The sentence was a signal for open strife. The Protestants,
whose strength as yet lay mainly in Fife, had gathered in great numbers
at Perth, and the news stirred them to an outbreak of fury. The images
were torn down from the churches, the monasteries of the town were
sacked and demolished. The riot at Perth was followed by a general
rising. The work of destruction went on along the east coast and through
the Lowlands, while the "Congregation" sprang up everywhere in its
train. The Mass came to an end. The Prayer-Book of Edward was heard in
the churches. The Lords occupied the capital and found its burghers as
zealous in the cause of reformation as themselves. Throughout all these
movements the Lords had been in communication with England, for the old
jealousy of English annexation was now lost in a jealousy of French
conquest. Their jealousy had solid grounds. The marriage of Mary Stuart
with the Dauphin of France had been celebrated in April 1558 and three
days before the wedding the girl-queen had been brought to convey her
kingdom away by deed to the House of Valois. The deed was kept secret;
but Mary's demand of the crown matrimonial for her husband roused
suspicions. It was known that the government of Scotland was discussed
at the French council-board, and whispers came of a suggestion that the
kingdom should be turned into an appanage for a younger son of the
French king. Meanwhile French money was sent to the Regent, a body of
French troops served as her bodyguard, and on the advance of the Lords
in arms the French Court promised her the support of a larger army.
[Sidenote: Scotland and Elizabeth.]
Against these schemes of the French Court the Scotch Lords saw no aid
save in Elizabeth. Their aim was to drive the Frenchmen out of Scotland;
and this could only be done by help both in money and men from England.
Nor was the English Council slow to promise help. To Elizabeth indeed
the need of supporting rebels against their sovereign was a bitter one.
The need of establishing a Calvinistic Church on her frontier was yet
bitterer. It was not a material force which upheld the fabric of the
monarchy, as it had been built up by the Houses of York and of Tudor,
but a moral force. England held that safety against anarchy within and
against attacks on the national independence from without was to be
found in the Crown alone, and that obedience to the Crown was the first
element of national order and national greatness. In their religious
reforms the Tudor sovereigns had aimed at giving a religious sanction
to the power which sprang from this general conviction, and at hallowing
their secular supremacy by blending with it their supremacy over the
Church. Against such a theory, either of Church or State, Calvinism was
an emphatic protest, and in aiding Calvinism to establish itself in
Scotland the Queen felt that she was dealing a heavy blow to her
political and religious system at home. But, struggle as she might
against the necessity, she had no choice but to submit. The assumption
by Francis and Mary of the style of king and queen of England, the
express reservation of this claim, even in the treaty of
Cateau-Cambresis, made a French occupation of Scotland a matter of life
and death to the kingdom over the border. The English Council believed
"that the French mean, after their forces are brought into Scotland,
first to conquer it,--which will be neither hard nor long--and next that
they and the Scots will invade this realm." They were soon pressed to
decide on their course. The Regent used her money to good purpose, and
at the approach of her forces the Lords withdrew from Edinburgh to the
west. At the end of August two thousand French soldiers landed at Leith,
as the advance guard of the promised forces, and entrenched themselves
strongly. It was in vain that the Lords again appeared in the field,
demanded the withdrawal of the foreigners, and threatened Mary of Guise
that as she would no longer hold them for her counsellors "we also will
no longer acknowledge you as our Regent." They were ordered to disperse
as traitors, beaten off from the fortifications of Leith, and attacked
by the French troops in Fife itself.
[Sidenote: Elizabeth's action.]
The Lords called loudly for aid from the English Queen. To give such
assistance would have seemed impossible but twelve months back. But the
appeal of the Scots found a different England from that which had met
Elizabeth on her accession. The Queen's diplomacy had gained her a year,
and her matchless activity had used the year to good purpose. Order was
restored throughout England, the Church was reorganized, the debts of
the Crown were in part paid off, the treasury was recruited, a navy
created, and a force made ready for action in the north. Neither
religiously nor politically indeed had Elizabeth any sympathy with the
Scotch Lords. Knox was to her simply a firebrand of rebellion; her
political instinct shrank from the Scotch Calvinism with its protest
against the whole English system of government, whether in Church or
State; and as a Queen she hated revolt. But the danger forced her hand.
Elizabeth was ready to act, and to act even in the defiance of France.
As yet she stood almost alone in her self-reliance. Spain believed her
ruin to be certain. Her challenge would bring war with France, and in a
war with France the Spanish statesmen held that only their master's
intervention could save her. "For our own sake," said one of Philip's
ministers, "we must take as much care of England as of the Low
Countries." But that such a care would be needed Granvelle never
doubted; and Philip's councillors solemnly debated whether it might not
be well to avoid the risk of a European struggle by landing the six
thousand men whom Philip was now withdrawing from the Netherlands on the
English shore, and coercing Elizabeth into quietness. France meanwhile
despised her chances. Her very Council was in despair. The one minister
in whom she dared to confide throughout these Scotch negotiations was
Cecil, the youngest and boldest of her advisers, and even Cecil trembled
for her success. The Duke of Norfolk refused at first to take command of
the force destined as he held for a desperate enterprise. Arundel, the
leading peer among the Catholics, denounced the supporters of a Scottish
war as traitors. But lies and hesitation were no sooner put aside than
the Queen's vigour and tenacity came fairly into play. In January 1560,
at a moment when D'Oysel, the French commander, was on the point of
crushing the Lords of the Congregation, an English fleet appeared
suddenly in the Forth and forced the Regent's army to fall back upon
Leith.
[Sidenote: The Huguenot rising.]
Here however it again made an easy stand against the Protestant attacks,
and at the close of February the Queen was driven to make a formal
treaty with the Lords by which she promised to assist them in the
expulsion of the strangers. The treaty was a bold defiance of the power
from whom Elizabeth had been glad to buy peace only a year before, even
by the sacrifice of Calais. But the Queen had little fear of a
counter-blow from France. The Reformation was fighting for her on the
one side of the sea as on the other. From the outset of her reign the
rapid growth of the Huguenots in France had been threatening a strife
between the old religion and the new. It was to gird himself for such a
struggle that Henry the Second concluded the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis;
and though Henry's projects were foiled by his death, the Duke of Guise,
who ruled his successor, Francis the Second, pressed on yet more
bitterly the work of persecution. It was believed that he had sworn to
exterminate "those of the religion." But the Huguenots were in no mood
to bear extermination. Their Protestantism, like that of the Scots, was
the Protestantism of Calvin. As they grew in numbers, their churches
formed themselves on the model of Geneva, and furnished in their synods
and assemblies a political as well as a religious organization; while
the doctrine of resistance even to kings, if kings showed themselves
enemies to God, found ready hearers, whether among the turbulent French
_noblesse_, or among the traders of the towns who were stirred to new
dreams of constitutional freedom. Theories of liberty or of resistance
to the crown were as abhorrent to Elizabeth as to the Guises, but again
necessity swept her into the current of Calvinism. She was forced to
seize on the religious disaffection of France as a check on the dreams
of aggression which Francis and Mary had shown in assuming the style of
English Sovereigns. The English ambassador, Throckmorton, fed the alarms
of the Huguenots and pressed them to take up arms. It is probable that
the Huguenot plot which broke out in the March of 1560 in an attempt to
surprise the French Court at Amboise was known beforehand by Cecil; and,
though the conspiracy was ruthlessly suppressed, the Queen drew fresh
courage from a sense that the Guises had henceforth work for their
troops at home.
[Sidenote: Treaty of Edinburgh.]
At the end of March therefore Lord Grey pushed over the border with 8000
men to join the Lords of the Congregation in the siege of Leith. The
Scots gave little aid; and an assault on the town signally failed.
Philip too in a sudden jealousy of Elizabeth's growing strength demanded
the abandonment of the enterprise, and offered to warrant England
against any attack from the north if its forces were withdrawn. But
eager as Elizabeth was to preserve Philip's alliance, she preferred to
be her own security. She knew that the Spanish king could not abandon
her while Mary Stuart was queen of France, and that at the moment of his
remonstrances Philip was menacing the Guises with war if they carried
out their project of bringing about a Catholic rising by a descent on
the English coast. Nor were the threats of the French Court more
formidable. The bloody repression of the conspiracy of Amboise had only
fired the temper of the Huguenots; southern and western France were on
the verge of revolt; the House of Bourbon had adopted the reformed
faith, and put itself at the head of the Protestant movement. In the
face of dangers such as these the Guises could send to Leith neither
money nor men. Elizabeth therefore remained immoveable while famine did
its work on the town. At the crisis of the siege the death of Mary of
Guise threw the direct rule over Scotland into the hands of Francis and
Mary Stuart; and the exhaustion of the garrison forced the two
sovereigns to purchase its liberation by two treaties which their envoys
concluded at Edinburgh in June 1560. That with the Scotch pledged them
to withdraw for ever the French from the realm, and left the government
of Scotland to a Council of the Lords. The treaty with England was a
more difficult matter. Francis and Mary had forbidden their envoys to
sign any engagement with Elizabeth as to the Scottish realm, or to
consent to any abandonment of their claims on the royal style of
England. It was only after long debate that Cecil wrested from them the
acknowledgement that the realms of England and Ireland of right
appertained to Elizabeth, and a vague clause by which the French
sovereigns promised the English Queen that they would fulfil their
pledges to the Scots.
[Sidenote: Elizabeth's character.]
Stubborn however as was the resistance of the French envoys the
signature of the treaty proclaimed Elizabeth's success. The issue of the
Scotch war revealed suddenly to Europe the vigour of the Queen and the
strength of her throne. What her ability really was no one, save Cecil,
had as yet suspected. There was little indeed in her outward demeanour
to give any indication of her greatness. To the world about her the
temper of Elizabeth recalled in its strange contrasts the mixed blood
within her veins. She was at once a daughter of Henry and of Anne
Boleyn. From her father she inherited her frank and hearty address, her
love of popularity and of free intercourse with the people, her
dauntless courage and her amazing self-confidence. Her harsh, manlike
voice, her impetuous will, her pride, her furious outbursts of anger
came to her with her Tudor blood. She rated great nobles as if they were
schoolboys; she met the insolence of Lord Essex with a box on the ear;
she broke now and then into the gravest deliberations to swear at her
ministers like a fishwife. Strangely in contrast with these violent
outlines of her father's temper stood the sensuous, self-indulgent
nature she drew from Anne Boleyn. Splendour and pleasure were with
Elizabeth the very air she breathed. Her delight was to move in
perpetual progresses from castle to castle through a series of gorgeous
pageants, fanciful and extravagant as a caliph's dream. She loved gaiety
and laughter and wit. A happy retort or a finished compliment never
failed to win her favour. She hoarded jewels. Her dresses were
innumerable. Her vanity remained, even to old age, the vanity of a
coquette in her teens. No adulation was too fulsome for her, no flattery
of her beauty too gross. She would play with her rings that her
courtiers might note the delicacy of her hands; or dance a coranto that
an ambassador, hidden dexterously behind a curtain, might report her
sprightliness to his master. Her levity, her frivolous laughter, her
unwomanly jests gave colour to a thousand scandals. Her character in
fact, like her portraits, was utterly without shade. Of womanly reserve
or self-restraint she knew nothing. No instinct of delicacy veiled the
voluptuous temper which broke out in the romps of her girlhood and
showed itself almost ostentatiously through her later life. Personal
beauty in a man was a sure passport to her liking. She patted handsome
young squires on the neck when they knelt to kiss her hand, and fondled
her "sweet Robin," Lord Leicester, in the face of the Court.
It was no wonder that the statesmen whom she outwitted held Elizabeth to
be little more than a frivolous woman, or that Philip of Spain wondered
how "a wanton" could hold in check the policy of the Escurial. But the
Elizabeth whom they saw was far from being all of Elizabeth. Wilfulness
and triviality played over the surface of a nature hard as steel, a
temper purely intellectual, the very type of reason untouched by
imagination or passion. Luxurious and pleasure-loving as she seemed, the
young Queen lived simply and frugally, and she worked hard. Her vanity
and caprice had no weight whatever with her in state affairs. The
coquette of the presence-chamber became the coolest and hardest of
politicians at the council-board. Fresh from the flattery of her
courtiers, she would tolerate no flattery in the closet; she was herself
plain and downright of speech with her counsellors, and she looked for a
corresponding plainness of speech in return. The very choice of her
advisers indeed showed Elizabeth's ability. She had a quick eye for
merit of any sort, and a wonderful power of enlisting its whole energy
in her service. The sagacity which chose Cecil and Walsingham was just
as unerring in its choice of the meanest of her agents. Her success
indeed in securing from the beginning of her reign to its end, with the
single exception of Leicester, precisely the right men for the work she
set them to do sprang in great measure from the noblest characteristic
of her intellect. If in loftiness of aim the Queen's temper fell below
many of the tempers of her time, in the breadth of its range, in the
universality of its sympathy it stood far above them all. Elizabeth
could talk poetry with Spenser and philosophy with Bruno; she could
discuss Euphuism with Lilly, and enjoy the chivalry of Essex; she could
turn from talk of the last fashions to pore with Cecil over despatches
and treasury books; she could pass from tracking traitors with
Walsingham to settle points of doctrine with Parker, or to calculate
with Frobisher the chances of a north-west passage to the Indies. The
versatility and many-sidedness of her mind enabled her to understand
every phase of the intellectual movement about her, and to fix by a sort
of instinct on its higher representatives.
It was only on its intellectual side indeed that Elizabeth touched the
England of her day. All its moral aspects were simply dead to her. It
was a time when men were being lifted into nobleness by the new moral
energy which seemed suddenly to pulse through the whole people, when
honour and enthusiasm took colours of poetic beauty, and religion became
a chivalry. But the finer sentiments of the men about her touched
Elizabeth simply as the fair tints of a picture would have touched her.
She made her market with equal indifference out of the heroism of
William of Orange or the bigotry of Philip. The noblest aims and lives
were only counters on her board. She was the one soul in her realm whom
the news of St. Bartholomew stirred to no thirst for vengeance; and
while England was thrilling with the triumph over the Armada, its Queen
was coolly grumbling over the cost, and making her profit out of the
spoiled provisions she had ordered for the fleet that saved her. No
womanly sympathy bound her even to those who stood closest to her life.
She loved Leicester indeed; she was grateful to Cecil. But for the most
part she was deaf to the voices either of love or gratitude. She
accepted such services as were never rendered to any other English
sovereign without a thought of return. Walsingham spent his fortune in
saving her life and her throne, and she left him to die a beggar. But,
as if by a strange irony, it was to this very lack of womanly sympathy
that she owed some of the grandest features of her character. If she was
without love she was without hate. She cherished no petty resentments;
she never stooped to envy or suspicion of the men who served her. She
was indifferent to abuse. Her good humour was never ruffled by the
charges of wantonness and cruelty with which the Jesuits filled every
Court in Europe. She was insensible to fear. Her life became at last a
mark for assassin after assassin, but the thought of peril was the
thought hardest to bring home to her. Even when Catholic plots broke out
in her very household she would listen to no proposals for the removal
of Catholics from her court.
If any trace of her sex lingered in the Queen's actual statesmanship,
it was seen in the simplicity and tenacity of purpose that often
underlies a woman's fluctuations of feeling. It was the directness and
steadiness of her aims which gave her her marked superiority over the
statesmen of her time. No nobler group of ministers ever gathered round
a council-board than those who gathered round the council-board of
Elizabeth. But she was the instrument of none. She listened, she
weighed, she used or put by the counsels of each in turn, but her policy
as a whole was her own. It was a policy, not of genius, but of good
sense. Her aims were simple and obvious: to preserve her throne, to keep
England out of war, to restore civil and religious order. Something of
womanly caution and timidity perhaps backed the passionless indifference
with which she set aside the larger schemes of ambition which were ever
opening before her eyes. In later days she was resolute in her refusal
of the Low Countries. She rejected with a laugh the offers of the
Protestants to make her "head of the religion" and "mistress of the
seas." But her amazing success in the end sprang mainly from this wise
limitation of her aims. She had a finer sense than any of her
counsellors of her real resources; she knew instinctively how far she
could go and what she could do. Her cold, critical intellect was never
swayed by enthusiasm or by panic either to exaggerate or to
underestimate her risks or her power. Of political wisdom indeed in its
larger and more generous sense Elizabeth had little or none; but her
political tact was unerring. She seldom saw her course at a glance, but
she played with a hundred courses, fitfully and discursively, as a
musician runs his fingers over the keyboard, till she hit suddenly upon
the right one. Her nature was essentially practical and of the present.
She distrusted a plan in fact just in proportion to its speculative
range or its outlook into the future. Her notion of statesmanship lay in
watching how things turned out around her, and in seizing the moment for
making the best of them.
Such a policy as this, limited, practical, tentative as it always was,
had little of grandeur and originality about it; it was apt indeed to
degenerate into mere trickery and finesse. But it was a policy suited to
the England of her day, to its small resources and the transitional
character of its religious and political belief, and it was eminently
suited to Elizabeth's peculiar powers. It was a policy of detail, and in
details her wonderful readiness and ingenuity found scope for their
exercise. "No War, my Lords," the Queen used to cry imperiously at the
council-board, "No War!" but her hatred of war sprang not so much from
aversion to blood or to expense, real as was her aversion to both, as
from the fact that peace left the field open to the diplomatic
manoeuvres and intrigues in which she excelled. Her delight in the
consciousness of her ingenuity broke out in a thousand puckish freaks,
freaks in which one can hardly see any purpose beyond the purpose of
sheer mystification. She revelled in "bye-ways" and "crooked ways." She
played with grave cabinets as a cat plays with a mouse, and with much of
the same feline delight in the mere embarrassment of her victims. When
she was weary of mystifying foreign statesmen she turned to find fresh
sport in mystifying her own ministers. Had Elizabeth written the story
of her reign she would have prided herself, not on the triumph of
England or the ruin of Spain, but on the skill with which she had
hoodwinked and outwitted every statesman in Europe during fifty years.
Nothing is more revolting, but nothing is more characteristic of the
Queen, than her shameless mendacity. It was an age of political lying,
but in the profusion and recklessness of her lies Elizabeth stood
without a peer in Christendom. A falsehood was to her simply an
intellectual means of meeting a difficulty; and the ease with which she
asserted or denied whatever suited her purpose was only equalled by the
cynical indifference with which she met the exposure of her lies as soon
as their purpose was answered. Her trickery in fact had its political
value. Ignoble and wearisome as the Queen's diplomacy seems to us now,
tracking it as we do through a thousand despatches, it succeeded in its
main end, for it gained time, and every year that was gained doubled
Elizabeth's strength. She made as dexterous a use of the foibles of her
temper. Her levity carried her gaily over moments of detection and
embarrassment where better women would have died of shame. She screened
her tentative and hesitating statesmanship under the natural timidity
and vacillation of her sex. She turned her very luxury and sports to
good account. There were moments of grave danger in her reign when the
country remained indifferent to its perils, as it saw the Queen give her
days to hawking and hunting, and her nights to dancing and plays. Her
vanity and affectation, her womanly fickleness and caprice, all had
their part in the diplomatic comedies she played with the successive
candidates for her hand. If political necessities made her life a lonely
one, she had at any rate the satisfaction of averting war and
conspiracies by love sonnets and romantic interviews, or of gaining a
year of tranquillity by the dexterous spinning out of a flirtation.
As we track Elizabeth through her tortuous mazes of lying and intrigue,
the sense of her greatness is almost lost in a sense of contempt. But,
wrapped as they were in a cloud of mystery, the aims of her policy were
throughout temperate and simple, and they were pursued with a rare
tenacity. The sudden acts of energy which from time to time broke her
habitual hesitation proved that it was no hesitation of weakness.
Elizabeth could wait and finesse; but when the hour was come she could
strike, and strike hard. Her natural temper indeed tended to a rash
self-confidence rather than to self-distrust. "I have the heart of a
King," she cried at a moment of utter peril, and it was with a kingly
unconsciousness of the dangers about her that she fronted them for fifty
years. She had, as strong natures always have, an unbounded confidence
in her luck. "Her Majesty counts much on Fortune," Walsingham wrote
bitterly; "I wish she would trust more in Almighty God." The
diplomatists who censured at one moment her irresolution, her delay, her
changes of front, censure at the next her "obstinacy," her iron will,
her defiance of what seemed to them inevitable ruin. "This woman,"
Philip's envoy wrote after a wasted remonstrance, "this woman is
possessed by a hundred thousand devils." To her own subjects, who knew
nothing of her manoeuvres and flirtations, of her "bye-ways" and
"crooked ways," she seemed the embodiment of dauntless resolution. Brave
as they were, the men who swept the Spanish Main or glided between the
icebergs of Baffin's Bay never doubted that the palm of bravery lay with
their Queen.
[Sidenote: Catharine of Medicis.]
It was this dauntless courage which backed Elizabeth's good luck in the
Scottish war. The issue of the war wholly changed her position at home
and abroad. Not only had she liberated herself from the control of
Philip and successfully defied the threats of the Guises, but at a
single blow she had freed England from what had been its sorest danger
for two hundred years. She had broken the dependence of Scotland upon
France. That perpetual peace between England and the Scots which the
policy of the Tudors had steadily aimed at was at last sworn in the
Treaty of Edinburgh. If the Queen had not bound to her all Scotland, she
had bound to her the strongest and most vigorous party among the nobles
of the north. The Lords of the Congregation promised to be obedient to
Elizabeth in all such matters as might not lead to the overthrow of
their country's rights or of Scottish liberties. They were bound to her
not only by the war but by the events that followed the war. A
Parliament at Edinburgh accepted the Calvinistic confession of Geneva as
the religion of Scotland, abolished the temporal jurisdiction of the
bishops, and prohibited the celebration of the Mass. The Act and the
Treaty were alike presented for confirmation to Francis and Mary. They
were roughly put aside, for the French king would give no sanction to a
successful revolt, and Mary had no mind to waive her claim to the
English throne. But from action the two sovereigns were held back by the
troubles in France. It was in vain that the Guises strove to restore
political and religious unity by an assembly of the French notables: the
notables met only to receive a demand for freedom of worship from the
Huguenots of the west, and to force the Government to promise a national
council for the settlement of the religious disputes as well as a
gathering of the States-General. The counsellors of Francis resolved to
anticipate this meeting by a sudden stroke at the heretics; and as a
preliminary step the chiefs of the House of Bourbon were seized at the
court and the Prince of Conde threatened with death. The success of this
measure roused anew the wrath of the young king at the demands of the
Scots, and at the close of 1560 Francis was again nursing plans of
vengeance on the Lords of the Congregation. But Elizabeth's good fortune
still proved true to her. The projects of the Guises were suddenly
foiled by the young king's death. The power of Mary Stuart and her
kindred came to an end, for the childhood of Charles the Ninth gave the
regency over France to the queen-mother, Catharine of Medicis, and the
policy of Catharine secured England and Scotland alike from danger of
attack. Her temper, like that of Elizabeth, was a purely political
temper; her aim was to balance Catholics against Protestants to the
profit of the throne. She needed peace abroad to preserve this political
and religious balance at home, and though she made some fruitless
efforts to renew the old friendship with Scotland, she had no mind to
intrigue like the Guises with the English Catholics nor to back Mary
Stuart's pretensions to the English throne.
[Sidenote: Philip's policy.]
With Scotland as an ally and with France at peace Elizabeth's throne at
last seemed secure. The outbreak of the strife between the Old Faith and
the New indeed, if it gave the Queen safety abroad, somewhat weakened
her at home. The sense of a religious change which her caution had done
so much to disguise broke slowly on England as it saw the Queen allying
herself with Scotch Calvinists and French Huguenots; and the compromise
she had hoped to establish in matters of worship became hourly less
possible as the more earnest Catholics discerned the Protestant drift of
Elizabeth's policy. But Philip still held them back from any open
resistance. There was much indeed to move him from his old support of
the Queen. The widowhood of Mary Stuart freed him from his dread of a
permanent annexation of Scotland by France as well as of a French
annexation of England, while the need of holding England as a check on
French hostility to the House of Austria grew weaker as the outbreak of
civil war between the Guises and their opponents rendered French
hostility less possible. Elizabeth's support of the Huguenots drove the
Spanish king to a burst of passion. A Protestant France not only
outraged his religious bigotry, but, as he justly feared, it would give
an impulse to heresy throughout his possessions in the Netherlands which
would make it hard to keep his hold upon them. Philip noted that the
success of the Scotch Calvinists had been followed by the revolt of the
Calvinists in France. He could hardly doubt that the success of the
French Huguenots would be followed by a rising of the Calvinists in the
Low Countries. "Religion" he told Elizabeth angrily "was being made a
cloak for anarchy and revolution." But, vexed as Philip was with her
course both abroad and at home, he was still far from withdrawing his
support from Elizabeth. Even now he could not look upon the Queen as
lost to Catholicism. He knew how her course both at home and abroad had
been forced on her not by religious enthusiasm but by political
necessity, and he still "trusted that ere long God would give us either
a general council or a good Pope who would correct abuses and then all
would go well. That God would allow so noble and Christian a realm as
England to break away from Christendom and run the risk of perdition he
could not believe."
[Sidenote: Pius the Fourth.]
What was needed, Philip thought, was a change of policy in the Papacy.
The bigotry of Paul the Fourth had driven England from the obedience of
the Roman See. The gentler policy of Pius the Fourth might yet restore
her to it. Pius was as averse from any break with Elizabeth as Philip
was. He censured bitterly the harshness of his predecessor. The loss of
Scotland and the threatened loss of France he laid to the charge of the
wars which Paul had stirred up against Philip and which had opened a way
for the spread of Calvinism in both kingdoms. England, he held, could
have been easily preserved for Catholicism but for Paul's rejection of
the conciliatory efforts of Pole. When he ascended the Papal throne at
the end of 1559 indeed the accession of England to the Reformation
seemed complete. The royal supremacy was re-established: the Mass
abolished: the English Liturgy restored. A new episcopate, drawn from
the Calvinistic refugees, was being gathered round Matthew Parker. But
Pius would not despair. He saw no reason why England should not again be
Catholic. He knew that the bulk of its people clung to the older
religion, if they clung also to independence of the Papal jurisdiction
and to the secularization of the Abbey-lands. The Queen, as he believed,
had been ready for a compromise at her accession, and he was ready to
make terms with her now. In the spring of 1560 therefore he despatched
Parpaglia, a follower of Pole, to open negotiations with Elizabeth. The
moment which the Pope had chosen was a critical one for the Queen. She
was in the midst of the Scotch war, and her forces had just been
repulsed in an attempt to storm the walls of Leith. Such a repulse woke
fears of conspiracy among the Catholic nobles of the northern border,
and a refusal to receive the legate would have driven them to an open
rising. On the other hand the reception of Parpaglia would have
alienated the Protestants, shaken the trust of the Lords of the
Congregation in the Queen's support, and driven them to make terms with
Francis and Mary. In either case Scotland fell again under the rule of
France, and the throne of Elizabeth was placed in greater peril than
ever. So great was the Queen's embarrassment that she availed herself of
Cecil's absence in the north to hold out hopes of the legate's admission
to the realm and her own reconciliation with the Papacy. But she was
freed from these difficulties by the resolute intervention of Philip. If
he disapproved of her policy in Scotland he had no mind that Scotland
should become wholly French or Elizabeth be really shaken on her throne.
He ordered the legate therefore to be detained in Flanders till his
threats had obtained from the Pope an order for his recall.
[Sidenote: The Council of Trent.]
But Pius was far from abandoning his hopes. After ten years suspension
he had again summoned the Council of Trent. The cry for Church reform,
the threat of national synods in Spain and in France, forced this
measure on the Pope; and Pius availed himself of the assembly of the
Council to make a fresh attempt to turn the tide of the Reformation and
to win back the Protestant Churches to Catholicism. He called therefore
on the Lutheran princes of Germany to send doctors to the Council, and
in May 1561, eight months after Parpaglia's failure, despatched a fresh
nuncio, Martinengo, to invite Elizabeth to send ambassadors to Trent.
Philip pressed for the nuncio's admission to the realm. His hopes of the
Queen's return to the faith were now being fed by a new
marriage-negotiation; for on the withdrawal of the Archduke of Austria
in sheer weariness of Elizabeth's treachery, she had encouraged her old
playfellow, Lord Robert Dudley, to hope for her hand and to amuse Philip
by pledges of bringing back "the religion," should the help of the
Spanish king enable him to win it. Philip gave his help, but Dudley
remained a suitor, and the hopes of a Catholic revolution became fainter
than ever. The Queen would suffer no landing of a legate in her realm.
The invitation to the Council fared no better. The Lutheran states of
North Germany had already refused to attend. The Council, they held, was
no longer a council of reunion. In its earlier session it had formally
condemned the very doctrine on which Protestantism was based; and to
join it now would simply be to undo all that Luther had done. Elizabeth
showed as little hesitation. The hour of her triumph, when a Calvinistic
Scotland and a Calvinistic France proved the mainstays of her policy,
was no hour of submission to the Papacy. In spite of Philip's entreaties
she refused to send envoys to what was not "a free Christian Council."
The refusal was decisive in marking Elizabeth's position. The long
period of hesitation, of drift, was over. All chance of submission to
the Papacy was at an end. In joining the Lutheran states in their
rejection of this Council, England had definitely ranged itself on the
side of the Reformation.