ENGLAND AND MARY STUART
1561-1567
[Sidenote: The English Catholics.]
What had hitherto kept the bulk of Elizabeth's subjects from opposition
to her religious system was a disbelief in its permanence. Englishmen
had seen English religion changed too often to believe that it would
change no more. When the Commissioners forced a Protestant ritual on St.
John's College at Oxford, its founder, Sir Thomas White, simply took
away its vestments and crucifixes, and hid them in his house for the
better times that every zealous Catholic trusted would have their turn.
They believed that a Catholic marriage would at once bring such a turn
about; and if Elizabeth dismissed the offer of Philip's hand she played
long and assiduously with that of a son of the Emperor, an archduke of
the same Austrian house. But the alliance with the Scotch heretics
proved a rough blow to this trust: and after the repulse at Leith there
were whispers that the two great Catholic nobles of the border, the
Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, were only waiting for the
failure of the Scotch enterprise to rise on behalf of the older faith.
Whatever their projects were, they were crushed by the Queen's success.
With the Lords of the Congregation masters across the border the
northern Earls lay helpless between the two Protestant realms. In the
mass of men loyalty was still too strong for any dream of revolt; but
there was a growing uneasiness lest they should find themselves heretics
after all, which the failure of the Austrian match and the help given to
the Huguenots was fanning into active discontent. It was this which gave
such weight to the Queen's rejection of the summons to Trent. Whatever
colour she might strive to put upon it, the bulk of her subjects
accepted the refusal as a final break with Catholicism, as a final close
to all hope of their reunion with the Catholic Church.
[Sidenote: Mary Stuart.]
The Catholic disaffection which the Queen was henceforth to regard as
her greatest danger was thus growing into life when in August 1561, but
a few months after the Queen's refusal to acknowledge the Council, Mary
Stuart landed at Leith. Girl as she was, and she was only nineteen, Mary
was hardly inferior in intellectual power to Elizabeth herself, while in
fire and grace and brilliancy of temper she stood high above her. She
brought with her the voluptuous refinement of the French Renascence;
she would lounge for days in bed, and rise only at night for dances and
music. But her frame was of iron, and incapable of fatigue; she galloped
ninety miles after her last defeat without a pause save to change
horses. She loved risk and adventure and the ring of arms; as she rode
in a foray to the north the swordsmen beside her heard her wish she was
a man "to know what life it was to lie all night in the fields, or to
walk on the cawsey with a jack and knapschalle, a Glasgow buckler and a
broadsword." But in the closet she was as cool and astute a politician
as Elizabeth herself; with plans as subtle, and of a far wider and
bolder range than the Queen's. "Whatever policy is in all the chief and
best practised heads of France," wrote an English envoy, "whatever
craft, falsehood, and deceit is in all the subtle brains of Scotland, is
either fresh in this woman's memory, or she can fetch it out with a wet
finger." Her beauty, her exquisite grace of manner, her generosity of
temper and warmth of affection, her frankness of speech, her
sensibility, her gaiety, her womanly tears, her manlike courage, the
play and freedom of her nature, the flashes of poetry that broke from
her at every intense moment of her life, flung a spell over friend or
foe which has only deepened with the lapse of years. Even to Knollys,
the sternest Puritan of his day, she seemed in her later captivity to be
"a notable woman." "She seemeth to regard no ceremonious honour besides
the acknowledgement of her estate royal. She showeth a disposition to
speak much, to be bold, to be pleasant, to be very familiar. She showeth
a great desire to be avenged on her enemies. She showeth a readiness to
expose herself to all perils in hope of victory. She desireth much to
hear of hardiness and valiancy, commending by name all approved hardy
men of her country though they be her enemies, and she concealeth no
cowardice even in her friends."
[Sidenote: Mary's plans.]
Of the stern bigotry, the intensity of passion, which lay beneath the
winning surface of Mary's womanhood, men as yet knew nothing. But they
at once recognized her political ability. Till now she had proved in her
own despite a powerful friend to the Reformation. It was her claim of
the English crown which had seated Elizabeth on the throne, had thrown
her on the support of the Protestants, and had secured to the Queen in
the midst of her religious changes the protection of Philip of Spain. It
was the dread of Mary's ambition which had forced Elizabeth to back the
Lords of the Congregation, and the dread of her husband's ambition which
had driven Scotland to throw aside its jealousy of England and ally
itself with the Queen. But with the death of Francis Mary's position had
wholly changed. She had no longer the means of carrying out her
husband's threats of crushing the Lords of the Congregation by force of
arms. The forces of France were in the hands of Catharine of Medicis;
and Catharine was parted from her both by her dread of the Guises and by
a personal hate. Yet the attitude of the Lords became every day more
threatening. They were pressing Elizabeth to marry the Earl of Arran, a
chief of the house of Hamilton and near heir to the throne, a marriage
which pointed to the complete exclusion of Mary from her realm. Even
when this project failed, they rejected with stern defiance the young
Queen's proposal of restoring the old religion as a condition of her
return. If they invited her to Scotland, it was in the name of the
Parliament which had set up Calvinism as the law of the land. Bitter as
such terms must have been Mary had no choice but to submit to them. To
accept the offer of the Catholic Lords of Northern Scotland with the
Earl of Huntly at their head, who proposed to welcome her in arms as a
champion of Catholicism, was to risk a desperate civil war, a war which
would in any case defeat a project far dearer to her than her plans for
winning Scotland, the project she was nursing of winning the English
realm. In the first months of her widowhood therefore her whole attitude
was reversed. She received the leader of the Protestant Lords, her
half-brother, Lord James Stuart, at her court. She showed her favour to
him by creating him Earl of Murray. She adopted his policy of accepting
the religious changes in Scotland and of bringing Elizabeth by friendly
pressure to acknowledge her right, not of reigning in her stead, but of
following her on the throne. But while thus in form adopting Murray's
policy, Mary at heart was resolute to carry out her own policy too. If
she must win the Scots by submitting to a Protestant system in Scotland,
she would rally round her the English Catholics by remaining a Catholic
herself. If she ceased to call herself Queen of England and only pressed
for her acknowledgement as rightful successor to Elizabeth, she would
not formally abandon her claim to reign as rightful Queen in Elizabeth's
stead. Above all she would give her compliance with Murray's counsels no
legal air. No pressure either from her brother or from Elizabeth could
bring the young Queen to give her royal confirmation to the
Parliamentary Acts which established the new religion in Scotland, or
her signature to the Treaty of Edinburgh. In spite of her habitual
caution the bold words which broke from Mary Stuart on Elizabeth's
refusal of a safe conduct betrayed her hopes. "I came to France in spite
of her brother's opposition," she said, "and I will return in spite of
her own. She has combined with rebel subjects of mine: but there are
rebel subjects in England too who would gladly listen to a call from me.
I am a queen as well as she, and not altogether friendless. And perhaps
I have as great a soul too!"
[Sidenote: Her toleration.]
She saw indeed the new strength which was given her by her husband's
death. Her cause was no longer hampered, either in Scotland or in
England, by a national jealousy of French interference. It was with a
resolve to break the league between Elizabeth and the Scotch
Protestants, to unite her own realm around her, and thus to give a firm
base for her intrigues among the English Catholics, that Mary Stuart
landed at Leith. The effect of her presence was marvellous. Her personal
fascination revived the national loyalty, and swept all Scotland to her
feet. Knox, the greatest and sternest of the Calvinistic preachers,
alone withstood her spell. The rough Scotch nobles owned that there was
in Mary "some enchantment whereby men are bewitched." It was clear
indeed from the first that, loyal as Scotland might be, its loyalty
would be of little service to the Queen if she attacked the new
religion. At her entry into Edinburgh the children of the pageant
presented her with a Bible and "made some speech concerning the putting
away of the Mass, and thereafter sang a psalm." It was only with
difficulty that Murray won for her the right of celebrating Mass at her
court. But for the religious difficulty Mary was prepared. While
steadily abstaining from any legal confirmation of the new faith, and
claiming for her French followers freedom of Catholic worship, she
denounced any attempt to meddle with the form of religion she found
existing in the realm. Such a toleration was little likely to satisfy
the more fanatical among the ministers; but even Knox was content with
her promise "to hear the preaching," and brought his brethren to a
conclusion, as "she might be won," "to suffer her for a time." If the
preachers indeed maintained that the Queen's liberty of worship "should
be their thraldom," the bulk of the nation was content with Mary's
acceptance of the religious state of the realm. Nor was it distasteful
to the secular leaders of the reforming party. The Protestant Lords
preferred their imperfect work to the more complete reformation which
Knox and his fellows called for. They had no mind to adopt the whole
Calvinistic system. They had adopted the Genevan Confession of Faith;
but they rejected a book of discipline which would have organized the
Church on the Huguenot model. All demands for restitution of the church
property which they were pillaging they set aside as a "fond
imagination." The new ministers remained poor and dependent, while noble
after noble was hanging an abbot to seize his estates in forfeiture, or
roasting a commendator to wring from him a grant of abbey-lands in fee.
[Sidenote: Mary and Elizabeth.]
The attitude of the Lords favoured the Queen's designs. She was in
effect bartering her toleration of their religion in exchange for her
reception in Scotland and for their support of her claim to be named
Elizabeth's successor. With Mary's landing at Leith the position of the
English Queen had suddenly changed. Her work seemed utterly undone. The
national unity for which she was struggling was broken. The presence of
Mary woke the party of the old faith to fresh hopes and a fresh
activity, while it roused a fresh fear and fanaticism in the party of
the new. Scotland, where Elizabeth's influence had seemed supreme, was
struck from her hands. Not only was it no longer a support; it was again
a danger; for loyalty, national pride, a just and statesmanlike longing
for union with England, united her northern subjects round the Scottish
Queen in her claim to be recognized as Elizabeth's successor, and even
Murray counted on Elizabeth's consent to this claim to bring Mary into
full harmony with his policy, and to preserve the alliance between
England and Scotland. But the question of the succession, like the
question of her marriage, was with Elizabeth a question of life and
death. Her wedding with a Catholic or a Protestant suitor would have
been equally the end of her system of balance and national union, a
signal for the revolt of the party which she disappointed and for the
triumphant dictation of the party which she satisfied. "If a Catholic
prince come here," wrote a Spanish ambassador while pressing her
marriage with an Austrian archduke, "the first Mass he attends will be
the signal for a revolt." It was so with the question of the succession.
To name a Protestant successor from the House of Suffolk would have
driven every Catholic to insurrection. To name Mary was to stir
Protestantism to a rising of despair, and to leave Elizabeth at the
mercy of every fanatical assassin who wished to clear the way for a
Catholic ruler. Yet to leave both unrecognized was to secure the
hostility of both, as well as the discontent of the people at large, who
looked on the settlement of the succession as the primary need of their
national life. From the moment of Mary's landing therefore Elizabeth
found herself thrown again on an attitude of self-defence. Every course
of direct action was closed to her. She could satisfy neither Protestant
nor Catholic, neither Scotland nor England. Her work could only be a
work of patience; the one possible policy was to wait, to meet dangers
as they rose, to watch for possible errors in her rival's course, above
all by diplomacy, by finesse, by equivocation, by delay, to gain time
till the dark sky cleared.
[Sidenote: Mary's succession.]
Nothing better proves Elizabeth's political ability than the patience,
the tenacity, with which for the six years that followed she played this
waiting game. She played it utterly alone. Even Cecil at moments of
peril called for a policy of action. But his counsels never moved the
Queen. Her restless ingenuity vibrated ceaselessly, like the needle of a
compass, from one point to another, now stirring hopes in Catholic, now
in Protestant, now quivering towards Mary's friendship, then as suddenly
trembling off to incur her hate. But tremble and vibrate as it might,
Elizabeth's purpose returned ever to the same unchanging point. It was
in vain that Mary made a show of friendship, and negotiated for a
meeting at York, where the question of the succession might be settled.
It was in vain that to prove her lack of Catholic fanaticism she even
backed Murray in crushing the Earl of Huntly, the foremost of her
Catholic nobles, or that she held out hopes to the English envoy of her
conformity to the faith of the Church of England. It was to no purpose
that, to meet the Queen's dread of her marriage with a Catholic prince
when her succession was once acknowledged, a marriage which would in
such a case have shaken Elizabeth on her throne, Mary listened even to a
proposal for a match with Lord Leicester, and that Murray supported such
a step, if Elizabeth would recognize Mary as her heir. Elizabeth
promised that she would do nothing to impair Mary's rights; but she
would do nothing to own them. "I am not so foolish," she replied with
bitter irony to Mary's entreaties, "I am not so foolish as to hang a
winding-sheet before my eyes." That such a refusal was wise time was to
show. But even then it is probable that Mary's intrigues were not wholly
hidden from the English Queen. Elizabeth's lying paled indeed before the
cool duplicity of this girl of nineteen. While she was befriending
Protestantism in her realm, and holding out hopes of her mounting the
English throne as a Protestant queen, Mary Stuart was pledging herself
to the Pope to restore Catholicism on either side the border, and
pressing Philip to aid her in this holy work by giving her the hand of
his son Don Carlos. It was with this design that she was fooling the
Scotch Lords and deceiving Murray: it was with this end that she strove
in vain to fool Elizabeth and Knox.
[Sidenote: France and the Reformation.]
But pierce through the web of lying as she might, the pressure on the
English Queen became greater every day. What had given Elizabeth
security was the adhesion of the Scotch Protestants and the growing
strength of the Huguenots in France. But the firm government of Murray
and her own steady abstinence from any meddling with the national
religion was giving Mary a hold upon Scotland which drew Protestant
after Protestant to her side; while the tide of French Calvinism was
suddenly rolled back by the rise of a Catholic party under the
leadership of the Guises. Under Catharine of Medicis France had seemed
to be slowly drifting to the side of Protestantism. While the
queen-mother strove to preserve a religious truce the attitude of the
Huguenots was that of men sure of success. Their head, the king of
Navarre, boasted that before the year was out he would have the Gospel
preached throughout the realm, and his confidence seemed justified by
the rapid advance of the new opinions. They were popular among the
merchant class. The _noblesse_ was fast becoming Huguenot. At the court
itself the nobles feasted ostentatiously on the fast days of the Church
and flocked to the Protestant preachings. The clergy themselves seemed
shaken. Bishops openly abjured the older faith. Coligni's brother, the
Cardinal of Chatillon, celebrated the communion instead of mass in his
own episcopal church at Beauvais, and married a wife. So irresistible
was the movement that Catharine saw no way of preserving France to
Catholicism but by the largest concessions; and in the summer of 1561
she called on the Pope to allow the removal of images, the
administration of the sacrament in both kinds, and the abolition of
private masses. Her demands were outstripped by those of an assembly of
deputies from the states which met at Pontoise. These called for the
confiscation of Church property, for freedom of conscience and of
worship, and above all for a national Council in which every question
should be decided by "the Word of God." France seemed on the verge of
becoming Protestant; and at a moment when Protestantism had won England
and Scotland, and appeared to be fast winning southern as well as
northern Germany, the accession of France would have determined the
triumph of the Reformation. The importance of its attitude was seen in
its effect on the Papacy. It was the call of France for a national
Council that drove Rome once more to summon the Council of Trent. It was
seen too in the policy of Mary Stuart. With France tending to Calvinism
it was no time for meddling with the Calvinism of Scotland; and Mary
rivalled Catharine herself in her pledges of toleration. It was seen
above all in the anxiety of Philip of Spain. To preserve the Netherlands
was still the main aim of Philip's policy, and with France as well as
England Protestant, a revolt of the Netherlands against the cruelties of
the Inquisition became inevitable. By appeals therefore to religious
passion, by direct pledges of aid, the Spanish king strove to rally the
party of the Guises against the system of Catharine.
[Sidenote: The Civil War.]
But Philip's intrigues were hardly needed to rouse the French Catholics
to arms. If the Guises had withdrawn from court it was only to organize
resistance to the Huguenots. They were aided by the violence of their
opponents. The Huguenot lords believed themselves irresistible; they
boasted that the churches numbered more than three hundred thousand men
fit to bear arms. But the mass of the nation was hardly touched by the
new Gospel; and the Guises stirred busily the fanaticism of the poor.
The failure of a conference between the advocates of either faith was
the signal for a civil war in the south. Catharine strove in vain to
allay the strife at the opening of 1562 by an edict of pacification;
Guise struck his counter-blow by massacring a Protestant congregation at
Vassy, by entering Paris with two thousand men, and by seizing the
Regent and the King. Conde and Coligni at once took up arms; and the
fanaticism of the Huguenots broke out in a terrible work of destruction
which rivalled that of the Scots. All Western France, half Southern
France, the provinces along the Loire and the Rhone, rose for the
Gospel. Only Paris and the north of France held firmly to Catholicism.
But the plans of the Guises had been ably laid. The Huguenots found
themselves girt in by a ring of foes. Philip sent a body of Spaniards
into Gascony, Italians and Piedmontese in the pay of the Pope and the
Duke of Savoy marched upon the Rhone. Seven thousand German mercenaries
appeared in the camp of the Guises. Panic ran through the Huguenot
forces; they broke up as rapidly as they had gathered; and resistance
was soon only to be found in Normandy and in the mountains of the
Cevennes.
[Sidenote: Elizabeth and the Huguenots.]
Conde appealed for aid to the German princes and to England: and grudge
as she might the danger and cost of such a struggle, Elizabeth saw that
her aid must be given. She knew that the battle with her opponent had to
be fought abroad rather than at home. The Guises were Mary's uncles; and
their triumph meant trouble in Scotland and worse trouble in England. In
September therefore she concluded a treaty with the Huguenots at Hampton
Court, and promised to supply them with six thousand men and a hundred
thousand crowns. The bargain she drove was a hard one. She knew that the
French had no purpose of fulfilling their pledge to restore Calais, and
she exacted the surrender of Havre into her hands as a security for its
restoration. Her aid came almost too late. The Guises saw the need of
securing Normandy if English intervention was to be hindered, and a
vigorous attack brought about the submission of the province. But the
Huguenots were now reinforced by troops from the German princes; and at
the close of 1562 the two armies met on the field of Dreux. The strife
had already widened into a general war of religion. It was the fight,
not of French factions, but of Protestantism and Catholicism, that was
to be fought out on the fields of France. The two warring elements of
Protestantism were represented in the Huguenot camp where German
Lutherans stood side by side with the French Calvinists. On the other
hand the French Catholics were backed by soldiers from the Catholic
cantons of Switzerland, from the Catholic states of Germany, from
Catholic Italy, and from Catholic Spain. The encounter was a desperate
one, but it ended in a virtual triumph for the Guises. While the German
troops of Coligni clung to the Norman coast in the hope of subsidies
from Elizabeth, the Duke of Guise was able to march at the opening of
1563 on the Loire, and form the siege of Orleans.
[Sidenote: Mary and Protestantism.]
In Scotland Mary Stuart was watching her uncle's progress with
ever-growing hope. The policy of Murray had failed in the end to which
she mainly looked. Her acceptance of the new religion, her submission to
the Lords of the Congregation, had secured her a welcome in Scotland and
gathered the Scotch people round her standard. But it had done nothing
for her on the other side of the border. Two years had gone by, and any
recognition of her right of succession to the English crown seemed as
far off as ever. But Murray's policy was far from being Mary's only
resource. She had never surrendered herself in more than outer show to
her brother's schemes. In heart she had never ceased to be a bigoted
Catholic, resolute for the suppression of Protestantism as soon as her
toleration of it had given her strength enough for the work. It was this
that made the strife between the two Queens of such terrible moment for
English freedom. Elizabeth was fighting for more than personal ends. She
was fighting for more than her own occupation of the English throne.
Consciously or unconsciously she was struggling to avert from England
the rule of a Queen who would have undone the whole religious work of
the past half-century, who would have swept England back into the tide
of Catholicism, and who in doing this would have blighted and crippled
its national energies at the very moment of their mightiest
developement. It was the presence of such a danger that sharpened the
eyes of Protestants on both sides the border. However she might tolerate
the reformed religion or hold out hopes of her compliance with a
reformed worship, no earnest Protestant either in England or in Scotland
could bring himself to see other than an enemy in the Scottish Queen.
Within a few months of her arrival the cool eye of Knox had pierced
through the veil of Mary's dissimulation. "The Queen," he wrote to
Cecil, "neither is nor shall be of our opinion." Her steady refusal to
ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh or to confirm the statutes on which the
Protestantism of Scotland rested was of far greater significance than
her support of Murray or her honeyed messages to Elizabeth. While the
young Queen looked coolly on at the ruin of the Catholic house of
Huntly, at the persecution of Catholic recusants, at so strict an
enforcement of the new worship that "none within the realm durst more
avow the hearing or saying of Mass than the thieves of Liddesdale durst
avow their stealth in presence of an upright judge," she was in secret
correspondence with the Guises and the Pope. Her eye was fixed upon
France. While Catharine of Medicis was all-powerful, while her edict
secured toleration for the Huguenots on one side of the sea, Mary knew
that it was impossible to refuse toleration on the other. But with the
first movement of the Duke of Guise fiercer hopes revived. Knox was
"assured that the Queen danced till after midnight because that she had
received letters that persecution was begun in France, and that her
uncles were beginning to stir their tail, and to trouble the whole realm
of France." Whether she gave such open proof of her joy or no, Mary woke
to a new energy at the news of Guise's success. She wrote to Pope Pius
to express her regret that the heresy of her realm prevented her sending
envoys to the Council of Trent. She assured the Cardinal of Lorraine
that she would restore Catholicism in her dominions, even at the peril
of her life. She pressed on Philip of Spain a proposal for her marriage
with his son, Don Carlos, as a match which would make her strong enough
to restore Scotland to the Church.
[Sidenote: The Papal Brief.]
The echo of the French conflict was felt in England as in the north. The
English Protestants saw in it the approach of a struggle for life and
death at home. The English Queen saw in it a danger to her throne. So
great was Elizabeth's terror at the victory of Dreux that she resolved
to open her purse-strings and to hire fresh troops for the Huguenots in
Germany. But her dangers grew at home as abroad. The victory of Guise
dealt the first heavy blow at her system of religious conformity. Rome
had abandoned its dreams of conciliation on her refusal to own the
Council of Trent, and though Philip's entreaties brought Pius to suspend
the issue of a Bull of Deposition, the Papacy opened the struggle by
issuing in August 1562 a brief which pronounced joining in the Common
Prayer schismatic and forbade the attendance of Catholics at church. On
no point was Elizabeth so sensitive, for on no point had her policy
seemed so successful. Till now, whatever might be their fidelity to the
older faith, few Englishmen had carried their opposition to the Queen's
changes so far as to withdraw from religious communion with those who
submitted to them. But with the issue of the brief this unbroken
conformity came to an end. A few of the hotter Catholics withdrew from
church. Heavy fines were laid on them as recusants; fines which, as
their numbers increased, became a valuable source of supply for the
royal exchequer. But no fines could compensate for the moral blow which
their withdrawal dealt. It was the beginning of a struggle which
Elizabeth had averted through three memorable years. Protestant
fanaticism met Catholic fanaticism, and as news of the massacre at Vassy
spread through England the Protestant preachers called for the death of
"Papists." The tidings of Dreux spread panic through the realm. The
Parliament which met again in January 1563 showed its terror by
measures of a new severity. There had been enough of words, cried one
of the Queen's ministers, Sir Francis Knollys, "it was time to draw the
sword."
[Sidenote: The Test Act.]
The sword was drawn in the first of a series of penal statutes which
weighed upon English Catholics for two hundred years. By this statute an
oath of allegiance to the Queen and of abjuration of the temporal
authority of the Pope was exacted from all holders of office, lay or
spiritual, within the realm, with the exception of peers. Its effect was
to place the whole power of the realm in the hands either of Protestants
or of Catholics who accepted Elizabeth's legitimacy and her
ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the teeth of the Papacy. The oath of
supremacy was already exacted from every clergyman and every member of
the universities. But the obligation of taking it was now widely
extended. Every member of the House of Commons, every officer in the
army or the fleet, every schoolmaster and private tutor, every justice
of the peace, every municipal magistrate, to whom the oath was tendered,
was pledged from this moment to resist the blows which Rome was
threatening to deal. Extreme caution indeed was used in applying this
test to the laity, but pressure was more roughly put on the clergy. A
great part of the parish priests, though they had submitted to the use
of the Prayer-Book, had absented themselves when called on to take the
oath prescribed by the Act of Uniformity, and were known to be Catholics
in heart. As yet Elizabeth had cautiously refused to allow any strict
enquiry into their opinions. But a commission was now opened by her
order at Lambeth, to enforce the Act of Uniformity in public worship;
while thirty-nine of the Articles of Faith drawn up under Edward the
Sixth, which had till now been left in suspense by her Government, were
adopted in Convocation as a standard of faith, and acceptance of them
demanded from all the clergy.
[Sidenote: Mary and Knox.]
With the Test Act and the establishment of the High Commission the
system which the Queen had till now pursued in great measure ceased.
Elizabeth had "drawn the sword." It is possible she might still have
clung to her older policy had she foreseen how suddenly the danger which
appalled her was to pass away. At this crisis, as ever, she was able to
"count on Fortune." The Test Act was hardly passed when in February 1563
the Duke of Guise was assassinated by a Protestant zealot, and with his
murder the whole face of affairs was changed. The Catholic army was
paralyzed by its leader's loss, while Coligni, who was now strengthened
with money and forces from England, became master of Normandy. The war
however came quietly to an end; for Catharine of Medicis regained her
power on the Duke's death, and her aim was still an aim of peace. A
treaty with the Huguenots was concluded in March, and a new edict of
Amboise restored the truce of religion. Elizabeth's luck indeed was
chequered by a merited humiliation. Now that peace was restored Huguenot
and Catholic united to demand the surrender of Havre; and an outbreak of
plague among its garrison compelled the town to capitulate. The new
strife in which England thus found itself involved with the whole realm
of France moved fresh hopes in Mary Stuart. Mary had anxiously watched
her uncle's progress, for his success would have given her the aid of a
Catholic France in her projects on either side of the border. But even
his defeat failed utterly to dishearten her. The war between the two
Queens which followed it might well force Catharine of Medicis to seek
Scottish aid against England, and the Scottish Queen would thus have
secured that alliance with a great power which the English Catholics
demanded before they would rise at her call. At home troubles were
gathering fast around her. Veil her hopes as she might, the anxiety with
which she had followed the struggle of her kindred had not been lost on
the Protestant leaders, and it is probable that Knox at any rate had
learned something of her secret correspondence with the Pope and the
Guises. The Scotch Calvinists were stirred by the peril of their
brethren in France, and the zeal of the preachers was roused by a
revival of the old worship in Clydesdale and by the neglect of the
Government to suppress it. In the opening of 1563 they resolved "to put
to their own hands," and without further plaint to Queen or Council to
carry out "the punishment that God had appointed to idolaters in his
law." In Mary's eyes such a resolve was rebellion. But her remonstrances
only drew a more formal doctrine of resistance from Knox. "The sword of
justice, madam, is God's," said the stern preacher, "and is given to
princes and rulers for an end; which, if they transgress, they that in
the fear of God execute judgements when God has commanded offend not
God. Neither yet sin they that bridle kings who strike innocent men in
their rage." The Queen was forced to look on while nearly fifty
Catholics, some of them high ecclesiastics, were indicted and sent to
prison for celebrating mass in Paisley and Ayrshire.
[Sidenote: Peace with France.]
The zeal of the preachers was only heightened by the coolness of the
Lords. A Scotch Parliament which assembled in the summer of 1563
contented itself with securing the spoilers in their possession of the
Church lands, but left the Acts passed in 1560 for the establishment of
Protestantism unconfirmed as before. Such a silence Knox regarded as
treason to the faith. He ceased to have any further intercourse with
Murray, and addressed a burning appeal to the Lords, "Will ye betray
God's cause when ye have it in your hands to establish it as ye please?
The Queen, ye say, will not agree with you. Ask ye of her that which by
God's word ye may justly require, and if she will not agree with ye in
God, ye are not bound to agree with her in the devil!" The inaction of
the nobles proved the strength which Mary drew from the attitude of
France. So long as France and England were at war, so long as a French
force might at any moment be despatched to Mary's aid, it was impossible
for them to put pressure on the Queen; and bold as was the action of the
preachers the Queen only waited her opportunity for dealing them a fatal
blow. But whatever hopes Mary may have founded on the strife, they were
soon brought to an end. Catharine used her triumph only to carry out her
system of balance, and to resist the joint remonstrance of the Pope, the
Emperor, and the King of Spain against her edict of toleration. The
policy of Elizabeth, on the other hand, was too much identified with
Catharine's success to leave room for further hostilities; and a treaty
of peace between the two countries was concluded in the spring of 1564.
[Sidenote: Darnley.]
The peace with France marked a crisis in the struggle between the rival
Queens. It left Elizabeth secure against a Catholic rising and free to
meet the pressure from the north. But it dashed the last hopes of Mary
Stuart to the ground. The policy which she had pursued from her landing
in Scotland had proved a failure in the end at which it aimed. Her
religious toleration, her patience, her fair speeches, had failed to win
from Elizabeth a promise of the succession. And meanwhile the Calvinism
she hated was growing bolder and bolder about her. The strife of
religion in France had woke a fiercer bigotry in the Scotch preachers.
Knox had discovered her plans of reaction, had publicly denounced her
designs of a Catholic marriage, and had met her angry tears, her threats
of vengeance, with a cool defiance. All that Murray's policy seemed to
have really done was to estrange from her the English Catholics. Already
alienated from Mary by her connexion with France, which they still
regarded as a half-heretic power, and by the hostility of Philip, in
whom they trusted as a pure Catholic, the adherents of the older faith
could hardly believe in the Queen's fidelity to their religion when they
saw her abandoning Scotland to heresy and holding out hopes of her
acceptance of the Anglican creed. Her presence had roused them to a new
energy, and they were drifting more and more as the strife waxed warmer
abroad to dreams of forcing on Elizabeth a Catholic successor. But as
yet their hopes turned not so much to Mary Stuart as to the youth who
stood next to the Scottish Queen in the line of blood. Henry Stuart,
Lord Darnley, was a son of the Countess of Lennox, Margaret Douglas, a
daughter of Margaret Tudor by her second marriage with the Earl of
Angus. Lady Lennox was the successor whom Mary Tudor would willingly
have chosen in her sister's stead, had Philip and the Parliament
suffered her; and from the moment of Elizabeth's accession the Countess
had schemed to drive her from the throne. She offered Philip to fly with
her boy to the Low Countries and to serve as a pretender in his hands.
She intrigued with the partizans of the old religion. Though the house
of Lennox conformed to the new system of English worship, its sympathies
were known to be Catholic, and the hopes of the Catholics wrapped
themselves round its heir. "Should any disaster befall the Queen," wrote
a Spanish ambassador in 1560, "the Catholics would choose Lord Darnley
for King." "Not only," he adds in a later letter, "would all sides agree
to choose him were the Queen to die, but the Catholic Lords, if
opportunity offer, may declare for him at once."
[Sidenote: Mary and Darnley.]
His strongest rival was Mary Stuart, and before Mary landed in Scotland
Lady Lennox planned the union of both their claims by the marriage of
her son with the Scottish Queen. A few days after her landing Mary
received a formal offer of his hand. Hopes of yet greater matches, of a
marriage with Philip's son, Don Carlos, or with the young French king,
Charles the Ninth, had long held the scheme at bay; but as these and her
policy of conciliation proved alike fruitless Mary turned to the
Lennoxes. The marriage was probably planned by David Rizzio, a young
Piedmontese who had won the Scotch Queen's favour, and through whom she
conducted the intrigues, both in England and abroad, by which she
purposed to free herself from Murray's power and to threaten Elizabeth.
Her diplomacy was winning Philip to her cause. The Spanish king had as
yet looked upon Mary's system of toleration and on her hopes from France
with equal suspicion. But he now drew slowly to her side. Pressed hard
in the Mediterranean by the Turks, he was harassed more than ever by the
growing discontent of the Netherlands, where the triumph of
Protestantism in England and Scotland and the power of the Huguenots in
France gave fresh vigour to the growth of Calvinism, and where the
nobles were stirred to new outbreaks against the foreign rule of Spain
by the success of the Scottish Lords in their rising and by the terms of
semi-independence which the French nobles wrested from the Queen. It was
to hold the Netherlands in check that Philip longed for Mary's success.
Her triumph over Murray and his confederates would vindicate the cause
of monarchy; her triumph over Calvinism would vindicate that of
Catholicism both in her own realm and in the realm which she hoped to
win. He sent her therefore assurances of his support, and assurances as
strong reached her from the Vatican. The dispensation which was
secretly obtained for her marriage with Darnley was granted on the
pledge of both to do their utmost for the restoration of the old
religion.
[Sidenote: The Darnley Marriage.]
Secret as was the pledge, the mere whisper of the match revealed their
danger to the Scotch Protestants. The Lords of the Congregation woke
with a start from their confidence in the Queen. Murray saw that the
policy to which he had held his sister since her arrival in the realm
was now to be abandoned. Mary was no longer to be the Catholic ruler of
a Protestant country, seeking peaceful acknowledgement of her right of
succession to Elizabeth's throne; she had placed herself at the head of
the English Catholics, and such a position at once threatened the safety
of Protestantism in Scotland itself. If once Elizabeth were overthrown
by a Catholic rising, and a Catholic policy established in England,
Scotch Protestantism was at an end. At the first rumour of the match
therefore Murray drew Argyle and the Hamiltons round him in a band of
self-defence, and refused his signature to a paper recommending Darnley
as husband to the Queen. But Mary's diplomacy detached from him lord
after lord, till his only hope lay in the opposition of Elizabeth. The
marriage with Darnley was undoubtedly a danger even more formidable to
England than to Scotland. It put an end to the dissensions which had
till now broken the strength of the English Catholics. It rallied them
round Mary and Darnley as successors to the throne. It gathered to their
cause the far greater mass of cautious conservatives who had been
detached from Mary by her foreign blood and by dread of her kinship with
the Guises. Darnley was reckoned an Englishman, and with an English
husband to sway her policy Mary herself seemed to become an
Englishwoman. But it was in vain that the Council pronounced the
marriage a danger to the realm, that Elizabeth threatened Mary with war,
or that she plotted with Murray for the seizure of Mary and the driving
Darnley back over the border. Threat and plot were too late to avert the
union, and at the close of July 1565, Darnley was married to Mary Stuart
and proclaimed king of Scotland. Murray at once called the Lords of the
Congregation to arms. But the most powerful and active stood aloof. As
heir of the line of Angus, Darnley was by blood the head of the house of
Douglas, and, Protestants as they were, the Douglases rallied to their
kinsman. Their actual chieftain, the Earl of Morton, stood next to
Murray himself in his power over the Congregation; he was chancellor of
the realm; and his strength as a great noble was backed by a dark and
unscrupulous ability. By waiving their claim to the earldom of Angus and
the lands which he held, the Lennoxes won Morton to his kinsman's cause,
and the Earl was followed in his course by two of the sternest and most
active among the Protestant Lords, Darnley's uncle, Lord Ruthven, and
Lord Lindesay, who had married a Douglas. Their desertion broke Murray's
strength; and his rising was hardly declared when Mary marched on his
little force with pistols in her belt, and drove its leaders over the
border.
[Sidenote: Mary and Catholicism.]
The work which Elizabeth had done in Scotland had been undone in an
hour. Murray was a fugitive. The Lords of the Congregation were broken
or dispersed. The English party was ruined. And while Scotland was lost
it seemed as if the triumph of Mary was a signal for the general revival
of Catholicism. The influence of the Guises had again become strong in
France, and though Catharine of Medicis held firmly to her policy of
toleration, an interview which she held with Alva at Bayonne led every
Protestant to believe in the conclusion of a league between France and
Spain for a common war on Protestantism. To this league the English
statesmen held that Mary Stuart had become a party, and her pressure
upon Elizabeth was backed by the suspicion that the two great monarchies
had pledged her their support. No such league existed, nor had such a
pledge been given, but the dread served Mary's purpose as well as the
reality could have done. Girt in, as she believed, with foes, Elizabeth
took refuge in the meanest dissimulation, while Mary Stuart imperiously
demanded a recognition of her succession as the price of peace. But her
aims went far beyond this demand. She found herself greeted at Rome as
the champion of the Faith. Pius the Fifth, who mounted the Papal throne
at the moment of her success, seized on the young Queen to strike the
first blow in the crusade against Protestantism on which he was set. He
promised her troops and money. He would support her, he said, so long as
he had a single chalice to sell. "With the help of God and your
Holiness," Mary wrote back, "I will leap over the wall." In England
itself the marriage and her new attitude rallied every Catholic to
Mary's standard; and the announcement of her pregnancy which followed
gave her a strength that swept aside Philip's counsels of caution and
delay. The daring advice of Rizzio fell in with her natural temper. She
resolved to restore Catholicism in Scotland. Yield as she might to
Murray's pressure, she had dexterously refrained from giving legal
confirmation to the resolutions of the Parliament by which Calvinism had
been set up in Scotland; and in the Parliament which she summoned for
the coming spring she trusted to do "some good anent restoring the old
religion." The appearance of the Catholic lords, the Earls of Huntly,
Athol, and Bothwell, at Mary's court showed her purpose to attempt this
religious revolution. Nor were her political schemes less resolute. She
was determined to wring from the coming Parliament a confirmation of
the banishment of the lords who had fled with Murray which would free
her for ever from the pressure of the Protestant nobles. Mistress of her
kingdom, politically as well as religiously, Mary could put a pressure
on Elizabeth which might win for her more than an acknowledgement of her
right to the succession. She still clung to her hopes of the crown; and
she knew that the Catholics of Northumberland and Yorkshire were ready
to revolt as soon as she was ready to aid them.
[Sidenote: The murder of Rizzio.]
No such danger had ever threatened Elizabeth as this. But again she
could "trust to fortune." Mary had staked all on her union with Darnley,
and yet only a few months had passed since her wedding-day when men saw
that she "hated the King." The boy turned out a dissolute, insolent
husband; and Mary's scornful refusal of his claim of the "crown
matrimonial," which would have given him an equal share of the royal
power with herself, widened the breach between them. Darnley attributed
this refusal to Rizzio's counsels; and his father, Lord Lennox, joined
with him in plotting vengeance against the secretary. They sought aid
from the very party whom Darnley's marriage had been planned to crush.
Though the strength of the Protestant nobles had been broken by the
flight of Murray, the Douglases remained at the court. Morton had no
purpose of lending himself to the ruin of the religion he professed,
and Ruthven and Lindesay were roused to action when they saw themselves
threatened with a restoration of Catholicism, and with a legal
banishment of Murray and his companions in the coming Parliament, which
could only serve as a prelude to their own ruin. Rizzio was the author
of this policy; and when Darnley called on his kinsmen to aid him in
attacking Rizzio, the Douglases grasped at his proposal. Their aid and
their promise of the crown matrimonial were bought by Darnley's consent
to the recall of the fugitive lords and of Murray. The plot of the
Douglases was so jealously hidden that no whisper of it reached the
Queen. Her plans were on the brink of success. The Catholic nobles were
ready for action at her court. Huntly and Bothwell were called into the
Privy Council. At the opening of March 1566 the Parliament which was to
carry out her projects was to assemble; and the Queen prepared for her
decisive stroke by naming men whom she could trust as Lords of the
Articles--a body with whom lay the proposal of measures to the
Houses--and by restoring the bishops to their old places among the
peers. But at the moment when Mary revealed the extent of her schemes by
her dismissal of the English ambassador, the young king, followed by
Lord Ruthven, burst into her chamber, dragged Rizzio from her presence,
and stabbed him in an outer chamber, while Morton and Lord Lindesay with
their followers seized the palace gate. Mary found herself a prisoner
in the hands of her husband and his confederates. Her plans were wrecked
in an hour. A proclamation of the king dissolved the Parliament which
she had called for the ruin of her foes; and Murray, who was on his way
back from England when the deed was done, was received at Court and
restored to his old post at the Council-board.
[Sidenote: Mary's revenge.]
Terrible as the blow had been, it roused the more terrible energies
which lay hid beneath the graceful bearing of the Queen. The darker
features of her character were now to develope themselves. With an
inflexible will she turned to build up again the policy which seemed
shattered in Rizzio's murder. Her passionate resentment bent to the
demands of her ambition. "No more tears," she said when they brought her
news of Rizzio's murder; "I will think upon revenge." But even revenge
was not suffered to interfere with her political schemes. Keen as was
Mary's thirst for vengeance on him, Darnley was needful to the triumph
of her aims, and her first effort was to win him back. He was already
grudging at the supremacy of the nobles and his virtual exclusion from
power, when Mary masking her hatred beneath a show of affection
succeeded in severing the wretched boy from his fellow-conspirators, and
in gaining his help in an escape to Dunbar. Once free, a force of eight
thousand men under the Earl of Bothwell quickly gathered round her, and
with these troops she marched in triumph on Edinburgh. An offer of
pardon to all save those concerned in Rizzio's murder broke up the force
of the Lords; Glencairn and Argyle joined the Queen, while Morton,
Ruthven, and Lindesay fled in terror over the border. But Mary had
learned by a terrible lesson the need of dissimulation. She made no show
of renewing her Catholic policy. On the contrary, she affected to resume
the system which she had pursued from the opening of her reign, and
suffered Murray to remain at the court. Rizzio's death, had in fact
strengthened her position. With him passed away the dread of a Catholic
reaction. Mary's toleration, her pledges of extending an equal
indulgence to Protestantism in England, should she mount its throne, her
marriage to one who was looked upon as an English noble, above all the
hope of realizing through her succession the dream of a union of the
realms, again told on the wavering body of more Conservative statesmen,
like Norfolk, and even drew to her side some of the steadier Protestants
who despaired of a Protestant succession. Even Elizabeth at last seemed
wavering towards a recognition of her as her successor. But Mary aimed
at more than the succession. Her intrigues with the English Catholics
were never interrupted. Her seeming reconciliation with the young king
preserved that union of the whole Catholic body which her marriage had
brought about and which the strife over Rizzio threatened with ruin.
Her court was full of refugees from the northern counties. "Your
actions," Elizabeth wrote in a sudden break of fierce candour, "are as
full of venom as your words are of honey." Fierce words however did
nothing to break the clouds that gathered thicker and thicker round
England: and in June the birth of a boy, the future James the Sixth of
Scotland and First of England, doubled Mary's strength. Elizabeth felt
bitterly the blow. "The Queen of Scots," she cried, "has a fair son, and
I am but a barren stock." The birth of James in fact seemed to settle
the long struggle in Mary's favour. The moderate Conservatives joined
the ranks of her adherents. The Catholics were wild with hope. "Your
friends are so increased," her ambassador, Melville, wrote to her from
England, "that many whole shires are ready to rebel, and their captains
named by election of the nobility." On the other hand, the Protestants
were filled with despair. It seemed as if no effort could avert the rule
of England by a Catholic Queen.
[Sidenote: The developement of England.]
It was at this moment of peril that the English Parliament was again
called together. Its action showed more than the natural anxiety of the
time; it showed the growth of those national forces which far more than
the schemes of Mary or the counter-schemes of Elizabeth were to
determine the future of England. While the two Queens were heaping
intrigue on intrigue, while abroad and at home every statesman held
firmly that national welfare or national misery hung on the fortune of
the one or the success of the other, the English people itself was
steadily moving forward to a new spiritual enlightenment and a new
political liberty. The intellectual and religious impulses of the age
were already combining with the influence of its growing wealth to
revive a spirit of independence in the nation at large. It was
impossible for Elizabeth to understand this spirit, but her wonderful
tact enabled her from the first to feel the strength of it. Long before
any open conflict arose between the people and the Crown we see her
instinctive perception of the changes which were going on around her in
the modifications, conscious or unconscious, which she introduced into
the system of the monarchy. Of its usurpations upon English liberty she
abandoned none. But she curtailed and softened down almost all. She
tampered, as her predecessors had tampered, with personal freedom; there
was the same straining of statutes and coercion of juries in political
trials as before, and an arbitrary power of imprisonment was still
exercised by the Council. The duties she imposed on cloth and sweet
wines were an assertion of her right of arbitrary taxation.
Proclamations in Council constantly assumed the force of law. But,
boldly as it was asserted, the royal power was practically wielded with
a caution and moderation that showed the sense of a growing difficulty
in the full exercise of it. The ordinary course of justice was left
undisturbed. The jurisdiction of the Council was asserted almost
exclusively over the Catholics; and defended in their case as a
precaution against pressing dangers. The proclamations issued were
temporary in character and of small importance. The two duties imposed
were so slight as to pass almost unnoticed in the general satisfaction
at Elizabeth's abstinence from internal taxation. She abandoned the
benevolences and forced loans which had brought home the sense of
tyranny to the subjects of her predecessors. She treated the Privy
Seals, which on emergencies she issued for advances to her Exchequer,
simply as anticipations of her revenue (like our own Exchequer Bills),
and punctually repaid them. The monopolies with which she fettered trade
proved a more serious grievance; but during her earlier reign they were
looked on as a part of the system of Merchant Associations, which were
at that time regarded as necessary for the regulation and protection of
the growing commerce.
[Sidenote: The advance of the Parliament.]
The political developement of the nation is seen still more in the
advance of the Parliament during Elizabeth's reign. The Queen's thrift
enabled her in ordinary times of peace to defray the current expenses of
the Crown from its ordinary revenues. But her thrift was dictated not so
much by economy as by a desire to avoid summoning fresh Parliaments. We
have seen how boldly the genius of Thomas Cromwell set aside on this
point the tradition of the New Monarchy. His confidence in the power of
the Crown revived the Parliament as an easy and manageable instrument of
tyranny. The old forms of constitutional freedom were turned to the
profit of the royal despotism, and a revolution which for the moment
left England absolutely at Henry's feet was wrought out by a series of
parliamentary statutes. Throughout Henry's reign Cromwell's confidence
was justified by the spirit of slavish submission which pervaded the
Houses. But the effect of the religious change for which his measures
made room began to be felt during the minority of Edward the Sixth; and
the debates and divisions on the religious reaction which Mary pressed
on the Parliament were many and violent. A great step forward was marked
by the effort of the Crown to neutralize by "management" an opposition
which it could no longer overawe. Not only was the Parliament packed
with nominees of the Crown but new constituencies were created whose
members would follow implicitly its will. For this purpose twenty-two
new boroughs were created under Edward, fourteen under Mary; some,
indeed, places entitled to representation by their wealth and
population, but the bulk of them small towns or hamlets which lay wholly
at the disposal of the Royal Council.
[Sidenote: Elizabeth and the Houses.]
Elizabeth adopted the system of her two predecessors both in the
creation of boroughs and the recommendation of candidates; but her keen
political instinct soon perceived the inutility of both expedients. She
saw that the "management" of the Houses, so easy under Cromwell, was
becoming harder every day. The very number of the members she called up
into the Commons from nomination boroughs, sixty-two in all, showed the
increasing difficulty which the government found in securing a working
majority. The rise of a new nobility enriched by the spoils of the
Church and trained to political life by the stress of events around them
was giving fresh vigour to the House of Lords. The increased wealth of
the country gentry as well as the growing desire to obtain a seat among
the Commons brought about the cessation at this time of the old payment
of members by their constituencies. A change too in the borough
representation, which had long been in progress but was now for the
first time legally recognized, tended greatly to increase the vigour and
independence of the Lower House. By the terms of the older writs borough
members were required to be chosen from the body of the burgesses; and
an act of Henry the Fifth gave this custom the force of law. But the
passing of such an act shows that the custom was already widely
infringed, and by Elizabeth's day act and custom alike had ceased to
have force. Most seats were now filled by representatives who were
strange to the borough itself, and who were often nominees of the great
landowners round. But they were commonly men of wealth and blood whose
aim in entering Parliament was a purely political one, and whose
attitude towards the Crown was far bolder and more independent than that
of the quiet tradesmen who preceded them. Elizabeth saw that
"management" was of little avail with a house of members such as these;
and she fell back as far as she could on Wolsey's policy of practical
abolition. She summoned Parliaments at longer and longer intervals. By
rigid economy, by a policy of balance and peace, she strove, and for a
long time successfully strove, to avoid the necessity of assembling them
at all. But Mary of Scotland and Philip of Spain proved friends to
English liberty in its sorest need. The struggle with Catholicism forced
Elizabeth to have more frequent recourse to her Parliaments, and as she
was driven to appeal for increasing supplies the tone of the Houses rose
higher and higher.
[Sidenote: The struggle with the Parliament.]
What made this revival of Parliamentary independence more important was
the range which Cromwell's policy had given to Parliamentary action. In
theory the Tudor statesman regarded three cardinal subjects, matters of
trade, matters of religion, and matters of State, as lying exclusively
within the competence of the Crown. But in actual fact such subjects
had been treated by Parliament after Parliament. The whole religious
fabric of the realm rested on Parliamentary enactments. The very title
of Elizabeth rested in a Parliamentary statute. When the Houses
petitioned at the outset of her reign for the declaration of a successor
and for the Queen's marriage it was impossible for her to deny their
right to intermeddle with these "matters of State," though she rebuked
the demand and evaded an answer. But the question of the succession was
a question too vital for English freedom and English religion to remain
prisoned within Elizabeth's council-chamber. It came again to the front
in the Parliament which the pressure from Mary Stuart forced Elizabeth
to assemble after six prorogations and an interval of four years in
September 1566. The Lower House at once resolved that the business of
supply should go hand in hand with that of the succession. Such a step
put a stress on the monarchy which it had never known since the War of
the Roses. The Commons no longer confined themselves to limiting or
resisting the policy of the Crown; they dared to dictate it. Elizabeth's
wrath showed her sense of the importance of their action. "They had
acted like rebels!" she said, "they had dealt with her as they dared not
have dealt with her father." "I cannot tell," she broke out angrily to
the Spanish ambassador, "what these devils want!" "They want liberty,
madam," replied the Spaniard, "and if princes do not look to themselves
and work together to put such people down they will find before long
what all this is coming to!" But Elizabeth had to front more than her
Puritan Commons. The Lords joined with the Lower House in demanding the
Queen's marriage and a settlement of the succession, and after a furious
burst of anger Elizabeth gave a promise of marriage, which she was no
doubt resolved to evade as she had evaded it before. But the subject of
the succession was one which could not be evaded. Yet any decision on it
meant civil war. It was notorious that if the Commons were resolute to
name the Lady Catharine Grey, the heiress of the House of Suffolk,
successor to the throne, the Lords were as resolute to assert the right
of Mary Stuart. To settle such a matter was at once to draw the sword.
The Queen therefore peremptorily forbade the subject to be approached.
But the royal message was no sooner delivered than Wentworth, a member
of the House of Commons, rose to ask whether such a prohibition was not
"against the liberties of Parliament." The question was followed by a
hot debate, and a fresh message from the Queen commanding "that there
should be no further argument" was met by a request for freedom of
deliberation while the subsidy bill lay significantly unnoticed on the
table. A new strife broke out when another member of the Commons, Mr.
Dalton, denounced the claims put forward by the Scottish Queen.
Elizabeth at once ordered him into arrest. But the Commons prayed for
leave "to confer upon their liberties," and the Queen's prudence taught
her that it was necessary to give way. She released Dalton; she
protested to the Commons that "she did not mean to prejudice any part of
the liberties heretofore granted them"; she softened the order of
silence into a request. Won by the graceful concession, the Lower House
granted the subsidy and assented loyally to her wish. But the victory
was none the less a real one. No such struggle had taken place between
the Crown and the Commons since the beginning of the New Monarchy; and
the struggle had ended in the virtual defeat of the Crown.
[Sidenote: Shane O'Neill.]
The strife with the Parliament hit Elizabeth hard. It was "secret foes
at home," she told the House as the quarrel passed away in a warm
reconciliation, "who thought to work me that mischief which never
foreign enemies could bring to pass, which is the hatred of my Commons.
Do you think that either I am so unmindful of your surety by succession,
wherein is all my care, or that I went about to break your liberties?
No! it never was my meaning; but to stay you before you fell into the
ditch." But it was impossible for her to explain the real reasons for
her course, and the dissolution of the Parliament in January 1567 left
her face to face with a national discontent added to the ever-deepening
peril from without. To the danger from the north and from the east was
added a danger from the west. The north of Ireland was in full revolt.
From the moment of her accession Elizabeth had realized the risks of the
policy of confiscation and colonization which had been pursued in the
island by her predecessor: and the prudence of Cecil fell back on the
safer though more tedious policy of Henry the Eighth. But the alarm at
English aggression had already spread among the natives; and its result
was seen in a revolt of the north, and in the rise of a leader more
vigorous and able than any with whom the Government had had as yet to
contend. An acceptance of the Earldom of Tyrone by the chief of the
O'Neills brought about the inevitable conflict between the system of
succession recognized by English and that recognized by Irish law. On
the death of the Earl of Tyrone England acknowledged his eldest son as
the heir of his Earldom; while the sept of which he was the head
maintained their older right of choosing a chief from among the members
of the family, and preferred Shane O'Neill, a younger son of less
doubtful legitimacy. The Lord Deputy, the Earl of Sussex, marched
northward to settle the question by force of arms; but ere he could
reach Ulster the activity of Shane had quelled the disaffection of his
rivals, the O'Donnells of Donegal, and won over the Scots of Antrim.
"Never before," wrote Sussex, "durst Scot or Irishman look Englishman
in the face in plain or wood since I came here"; but Shane fired his men
with a new courage, and charging the Deputy's army with a force hardly
half its number drove it back in rout on Armagh. A promise of pardon
induced the Irish chieftain to visit London, and make an illusory
submission, but he was no sooner safe home again than its terms were set
aside; and after a wearisome struggle, in which Shane foiled the efforts
of the Lord Deputy to entrap or to poison him, he remained virtually
master of the north. His success stirred larger dreams of ambition. He
invaded Connaught, and pressed Clanrickard hard; while he replied to the
remonstrances of the Council at Dublin with a bold defiance. "By the
sword I have won these lands," he answered, "and by the sword will I
keep them." But defiance broke idly against the skill and vigour of Sir
Henry Sidney, who succeeded Sussex as Lord Deputy. The rival septs of
the north were drawn into a rising against O'Neill, while the English
army advanced from the Pale; and in 1567 Shane, defeated by the
O'Donnells, took refuge in Antrim, and was hewn to pieces in a drunken
squabble by his Scottish entertainers.
[Sidenote: Bothwell.]
The victory of Sidney marked the turn of the tide which had run so long
against Elizabeth. The danger which England dreaded from Mary Stuart,
the terror of a Catholic sovereign and a Catholic reaction, reached its
height only to pass irretrievably away. At the moment when the Irish
revolt was being trampled under foot a terrible event suddenly struck
light through the gathering clouds in the north. Mary had used Darnley
as a tool to bring about the ruin of his confederates and to further her
policy; but from the moment that she discovered his actual complicity in
the plot for Rizzio's murder she had loathed and avoided him. Ominous
words dropped from her lips. "Unless she were free of him some way,"
Mary was heard to mutter, "she had no pleasure to live." The lords whom
he had drawn into his plot only to desert and betray them hated him with
as terrible a hatred, and in their longing for vengeance a new
adventurer saw the road to power. Of all the border nobles James
Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell, was the boldest and the most
unscrupulous. But, Protestant as he was, he had never swerved from the
side of the Crown; he had supported the Regent, and crossed the seas to
pledge as firm a support to Mary; and his loyalty and daring alike
appealed to the young Queen's heart. Little as he was touched by Mary's
passion, it stirred in the Earl dreams of a union with the Queen; and
great as were the obstacles to such a union which presented themselves
in Mary's marriage and his own, Bothwell was of too desperate a temper
to recoil before obstacles such as these. Divorce would free him from
his own wife. To free himself from Darnley he seized on the hatred
which the lords whom Darnley had deserted and betrayed bore to the king.
Bothwell joined Murray and the English ambassador in praying for the
recall of Morton and the exiles. The pardon was granted; the nobles
returned to court, and the bulk of them joined readily in a conspiracy
to strike down one whom they still looked on as their bitterest foe.
[Sidenote: Darnley's murder.]
Morton alone stood aloof. He demanded an assurance of the Queen's
sanction to the deed; and no such assurance was given him. On the
contrary Mary's mood seemed suddenly to change. Her hatred to Darnley
passed all at once into demonstration of the old affection. He had
fallen sick with vice and misery, and she visited him on his sick-bed,
and persuaded him to follow her to Edinburgh. She visited him again in a
ruinous and lonely house near the palace in which he was lodged by her
order, on the ground that its purer air would further his recovery,
kissed him as she bade him farewell, and rode gaily back to a
wedding-dance at Holyrood. If Mary's passion had drawn her to share
Bothwell's guilt, these acts were but awful preludes to her husband's
doom. If on the other hand her reconciliation was a real one, it only
drove Bothwell to hurry on his deed of blood without waiting for the aid
of the nobles who had sworn the king's death. The terrible secret is
still hid in a cloud of doubt and mystery which will probably never be
wholly dispelled. But Mary had hardly returned to her palace when, two
hours after midnight on the ninth of February 1567, an awful explosion
shook the city. The burghers rushed out from the gates to find the house
of Kirk o' Field destroyed and Darnley's body dead beside the ruins.
[Sidenote: Mary's fall.]
The murder was undoubtedly the deed of Bothwell. It was soon known that
his servant had stored the powder beneath the king's bedchamber and that
the Earl had watched without the walls till the deed was done. But, in
spite of gathering suspicion and of a charge of murder made formally
against Bothwell by Lord Lennox, no serious steps were taken to
investigate the crime; and a rumour that Mary purposed to marry the
murderer drove her friends to despair. Her agent in England wrote to her
that "if she married that man she would lose the favour of God, her own
reputation, and the hearts of all England, Ireland, and Scotland." But
whatever may have been the ties of passion or guilt which united them,
Mary was now powerless in Bothwell's hands. While Murray withdrew to
France on pretext of travel, the young Earl used the plot against
Darnley into which he had drawn the lords to force from them a
declaration that he was guiltless of the murder and their consent to his
marriage with the Queen. He boasted that he would marry Mary, whether
she would or no. Every stronghold in the kingdom was placed in his
hands, and this step was the prelude to a trial and acquittal which the
overwhelming force of his followers in Edinburgh turned into a bitter
mockery. The Protestants were bribed by the assembling of a Parliament
in which Mary for the first time gave her sanction to the laws which
established the reformation in Scotland. A shameless suit for his
divorce removed the last obstacle to Bothwell's ambition; and a seizure
of the Queen as she rode to Linlithgow, whether real or fictitious, was
followed three weeks later by their union on the fifteenth of May. Mary
may have yielded to force; she may have yielded to passion; it is
possible that in Bothwell's vigour she saw the means of at last
mastering the kingdom and wreaking her vengeance on the Lords. But
whatever were her hopes or fears, in a month more all was over. The
horror at the Queen's marriage with a man fresh from her husband's blood
drove the whole nation to revolt. The Catholic party held aloof from a
Queen who seemed to have forsaken them by a Protestant marriage and by
her acknowledgement of the Protestant Church. The Protestant Lords
seized on the general horror to free themselves from a master whose
subtlety and bloodshed had placed them at his feet. Morton and Argyle
rallied the forces of the Congregation at Stirling, and were soon joined
by the bulk of the Scottish nobles of either religion. Their entrance
into Edinburgh roused the capital into insurrection. On the fifteenth of
June Mary and her husband advanced with a fair force to Seton to
encounter the Lords; but their men refused to fight, and Bothwell
galloped off into lifelong exile, while the Queen was brought back to
Edinburgh in a frenzy of despair, tossing back wild words of defiance to
the curses of the crowd.