ARISTOCRATIC PLOTS: 1568-1572
From the beginning of the reign Cecil had never ceased to impress upon
his mistress that a French or Spanish invasion on behalf of the Pope
might at any time be expected, and that she should hurry to meet it by
forming a league with the foreign Protestants of both Confessions, and
vigorously assisting them to carry on a war of religion on the
Continent. He was assuredly too well informed to believe that France and
Spain would cease to counteract each other’s designs on England, or that
Lutherans and Calvinists would heartily combine for mutual defence. The
enemies he really feared were his Catholic countrymen, with whom he
would have to fight for his head if Elizabeth should die. He therefore
desired to force on the struggle in her lifetime, when they would be
rebels, and he would wield the power of the Crown.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, was against interference on the Continent,
because it would be the surest way to bring upon England the calamity of
invasion. She saw as plainly as Cecil did that it would compel her to
throw herself into the arms of her own Protestants and to become, like
her two predecessors, the mere chief of a party; whereas she meant to be
the Queen of all Englishmen, and to tranquillise the natural fears of
each party by letting it see that it would not be sacrificed to the
violence of the other. Moreover the unbridled ascendancy of the
Protestants would mean such alterations in the established worship as
would have driven from the parish churches thousands of the most
military class, peers, squires and their tenantry, who were enduring
Anglicanism with its episcopate, its semi-Catholic prayer-book, and its
claim to belong to the Universal Apostolic Church, because they could
persuade themselves that its variations from the old religion were
unimportant and temporary. And this again would increase the probability
of foreign invasion. For, though to Philip all forms of heresy were
equally damnable and equally marked out for extermination sooner or
later, yet he was in much less hurry to begin with the politically
harmless Lutherans or Anglicans than with the dangerous levellers who
derived their inspiration from Geneva. Now for Elizabeth to gain time
was everything. She had gained ten precious years already by her
moderation. She was to gain twenty more before the slow-moving Spaniard
decided to launch the great Armada.
But though Elizabeth shunned war with Spain she nevertheless recognised
that Philip was the enemy, and that all ways of damaging him short of
war were for her advantage. English and Huguenot corsairs swarmed in the
Channel. Spanish ships were seized. The crews were hanged or made to
walk the plank; the prizes were carried into English ports, and there
sold without disguise or rebuke. These outrages were represented as
reprisals for cruelties inflicted on English sailors who occasionally
fell into the hands of the Inquisition. Practically a ship with a
valuable cargo was treated as fair game whatever its nationality. But
while in the case of other countries it was only individual traders who
suffered, to Spain it meant obstruction of her high road to her Belgic
dominions, then simmering with disaffection.
The English nobles of the old blood disliked these proceedings. Even
Cecil did not conceal from himself that they fostered a spirit of
lawlessness. What the corsairs were doing he would have preferred to see
done by the royal navy. To that Elizabeth would not consent. The
activity of the corsairs gave her all the advantage she could hope to
have from war, without any of its disadvantages. Instead of laying out
her treasure on a navy, she was deriving an income from the piratical
ventures of Hawkins and Drake; while the ships and sailors of this
volunteer navy would be available for the defence of the country
whenever the need should arise. Whatever may be thought of the morality
of her plan, there can be no question as to its efficiency and economy.
Since even these outrages, exasperating as they were, had not goaded
Philip to the point of declaring war, a still more daring provocation
now followed. Some ships, conveying a large sum of money borrowed by
Philip in Genoa for the payment of Alva’s army, having put into English
ports to avoid the corsairs, Elizabeth, with the hearty approval of
Cecil, took possession of the money, and said she would herself borrow
it from the Genoese (December 1568). The Minister hoped this would bring
on a war. The Queen audaciously but more correctly anticipated that
Philip’s resentment would still stop short of that extremity. He
remonstrated: he threatened: he seized all English ships and sailors in
his ports. Elizabeth, undismayed, swept all the Spaniards and Flemings
whom she could find in London into her prisons, and seized their goods,
to a value far greater than that of the English property in Philip’s
grasp.
In striking contrast with this unflinching attitude towards Spain was
the behaviour of Elizabeth when threatened with war by France, unless
she undertook to close her harbours to the Huguenots, and to forbid her
own corsairs to prey on French commerce. The summons was promptly
obeyed. Full satisfaction was made (April 1569). Yet France was at the
moment a far less formidable antagonist than Spain. The French
government did not possess the means of invading England. On this side
of the Channel the old anti-French feeling was so persistent that all
parties were ready and willing for the fray. The defeat of the Huguenots
at Jarnac (April 1569) may have had something to do with Elizabeth’s
compliance. But what influenced her still more was her perception that
war with France would compel her to place herself under the protection
of Spain; whereas she desired to keep Spain at arm’s-length, and to
maintain a good understanding with France, as did Eliot, Pym, and
Cromwell afterwards, regardless of the rooted prejudices of their
countrymen. Elizabeth probably stood alone in her judgment on this
occasion.
The quarrel with Philip had more serious results at home than abroad. It
was indirectly the cause of the only English rebellion that disturbed
the long reign of Elizabeth.
Most of the nobility and gentry, even when professedly Protestants,
regretted the alienation of England from the Universal Church. If they
had all pulled together they must have had their way, for they were the
military and political class. But their discontent varied widely in its
intensity. There were nobles like Sussex who were resolved to serve
their Queen loyally and zealously, but who, all the same, wished her to
cultivate a good understanding with Philip, to marry the Archduke, to
abstain from assisting the Huguenots, to give no countenance to the
rovers, to recognise Mary as her heir-presumptive and marry her to
Norfolk. There were others like Norfolk, Montagu, Arundel, and
Southampton, who had treasonable relations with the Spanish ambassador,
and aimed at overthrowing Cecil, marrying Mary to Norfolk, and
compelling the Queen to restore the Catholic worship, or at least to
make such changes in the Anglican model as would facilitate a reunion
with Rome when Mary should succeed. A third party, headed by the
Catholic lords of the north, was plotting to depose Elizabeth in favour
of Mary, and to marry the latter to Don John of Austria.
With these powerful nobles in opposition, who, before the Reformation,
could have hurled any sovereign from his throne, where was Elizabeth to
look for support? The town populations were Protestant--too Protestant
indeed for her taste. But the town populations were a minority, and
less military than the landowners and their tenants. She had her Cecils,
Bacons, Walsinghams, Hunsdons, Knollyses, Sadlers, Killegrews, Drurys,
capable and devoted servants, but new men without territorial wealth or
influence, and with no force except what they possessed as wielding the
power of the Crown. It would be difficult to name more than half-a-dozen
peers who zealously promoted her policy. Most of them looked on it
coldly, and would support her only as long as she seemed to be
strongest.
Mary’s rejection of Elizabeth’s terms coincided with the quarrel with
Philip (December 1568). The disaffected nobles thought that the time was
now come for striking a blow. Conscious that the feudal devotion of the
gentry and yeomanry to their local chiefs had in Tudor times been
largely superseded by awe of the central government, they were
importuning Philip to give them the signal for rebellion by sending a
division of Alva’s army from the Netherlands. Philip, cautious as usual,
and afraid of driving England into alliance with France, declined to
send a soldier until either the Norfolk party had overthrown Cecil, or
the northern lords had carried off Mary. Between these two sets of
conspirators there was much jealousy and distrust. The Spanish
ambassador thought the southern scheme the most feasible. Not without
difficulty he persuaded the northern lords to wait till it should be
seen whether the Queen could be induced or compelled to sanction the
marriage of Mary with Norfolk. If she refused, they were to make a dash
on Wingfield, a seat of Lord Shrewsbury’s in Derbyshire where Mary was
staying, while Norfolk was to raise the eastern counties.
All through the summer of 1569 these plots were brewing. Three times
Norfolk and his father-in-law Arundel went to the Council with the
intention of arresting Cecil. Three times their hearts failed them. The
northern lords, who were not members of the Council, came up to London
to see Norfolk bell the cat, but went back, more suspicious than ever,
to make their own preparations. Cecil himself seems to have been
hedging. In his private advice to the Queen he was opposing the Norfolk
marriage, pointing out that free or in prison, married or single, in
England or in Scotland, Mary must always be dangerous, and breathing for
the first time the suggestion that she might lawfully be put to death in
England for complicity in English plots. In the Council he concurred in
a vote that she should be married to an Englishman--in other words, to
Norfolk.
If Elizabeth could have felt any confidence in Norfolk’s loyalty, it
seems probable that much as she disliked the marriage she would have
yielded to the almost unanimous pronouncement of the nobility in its
favour. But a sure instinct warned her of her danger. “If she consented
she would be in the Tower before four months were over.” After much
deliberation she commanded the Duke on his allegiance to renounce his
project. He gave his promise, but soon retired to his own county, and
sent word to the northern earls that “he would stand and abide the
venture.” But while he was shivering and hesitating, Elizabeth, for
once, was all promptitude and decision. Mary was hurried to Tutbury
Castle. Arundel and Pembroke were summoned to Windsor, and kept under
surveillance. Norfolk himself came in quietly, and was lodged in the
Tower. Thus the southern conspiracy collapsed (September-October 1569).
The Catholic lords and gentlemen of the north who had been awaiting
Norfolk’s signal, were staggered by his tame surrender. Sussex, who was
in command at York, and who, being of the old blood himself, did not
care to see old houses crushed, advised Elizabeth to wink at their
half-begun treason, and be thankful it had not come to fighting. She
winked at the attempted flight to Alva of Southampton and Montagu, and
even affected to trust the latter with the command of the militia called
out in Sussex. She could afford to ignore the disaffection of a southern
noble. A Sussex squire or yeoman, even if he was not a Protestant, would
think twice before he cast in his lot with rebellion. The northern
counties were mainly Catholic. They were much behind the south in
civilisation. The Tudor sovereigns were never seen there. Great families
were still looked up to. Elizabeth knew that though rebellion might be
adjourned, might possibly never come off, it was a constant menace,
which crippled her policy. She determined therefore to have done with
it, once for all, and summoned Northumberland and Westmoreland to
London.
Thus driven into a corner, the two earls burst into rebellion. They
entered Durham in arms, overthrew the communion table in the cathedral,
set up the old altar, and had mass said (Nov. 14, 1569). Next day they
marched south, with the object of rescuing Mary from Tutbury. But when
they were within fifty miles of that place, Shrewsbury and Huntingdon,
in obedience to hurried orders from London, conveyed her to Coventry.
Having thus missed their spring, the rebel earls halted irresolutely for
three days, and then turned back. Their followers dropped away from
them. Clinton and Warwick were on their track, with the musters of the
Midlands; and before the end of December they were fain to fly across
the Border. Northumberland was arrested by Moray. Two years later he was
given up to Elizabeth, and executed. Westmoreland, after being protected
for a time by Ker of Ferniehirst, escaped to the Netherlands, where he
died. England was not again disturbed by rebellion till the great civil
war.
The failure of the northern earls to kindle a general rebellion was due
to the cautious and temporising policy for which Elizabeth has been so
severely blamed by heated partisans. The powerful party which preferred
a Spanish alliance, disliked religious innovation, and looked forward to
the succession of Mary, had not been driven to despair of accomplishing
those ends in a lawful way. Their avowed policy had not been
proscribed--had not even been repudiated. Some of their chief leaders
were on the Council--as we should say, were members of the Government;
others were employed and trusted and visited by the Queen. They objected
to being hurried into civil war by the northern lords, who were not of
the Council, who kept away from London, and were rebels by inheritance
and tradition. They would have nothing to do with the ill-advised
movement; and, as in those days neutrality in the presence of open
insurrection was no more permissible to a nobleman than it would be now
to an officer in the army, they had no choice but to range themselves on
the side of the Government. If Elizabeth had openly branded the Queen of
Scots as a murderess, if she had pointed to Huntingdon or the son of
Catherine Grey as her successor, if she had put herself at the head of a
Protestant league, she might possibly have come victorious out of a
civil war. But a civil war it would have been, and of the worst kind:
one party calling in the Spaniard, and the other, in all probability,
driven to call in the Frenchman.
The assassination of Moray a few weeks later (Jan. 23, 1570) was a
severe blow to Elizabeth, and an irreparable disaster to his own
country. An attempt has been made to create an impression that the
English Queen was somehow responsible for his death, because she did not
march an army into Scotland to support him. He no more wished to receive
an English army into Scotland than Elizabeth wished to send one. Therein
they were both of them wiser than the critics of their own day, or this.
What he did ask for was money, and the recognition of James. The request
for money Elizabeth was willing to consider, though, as a rule, she did
not believe in paying for any work she could get done gratis. The
recognition of James seems a very simple thing to the critics. But it
was as difficult for Elizabeth as the recognition of the Prince of
Bulgaria is now to Austria, and for similar reasons. She was under no
obligation whatever to Moray. His own interest compelled him to play
her game. But she well knew his value. On hearing of his death she shut
herself up in her chamber, exclaiming, with tears, that she had lost the
best friend she had in the world.
As long as Moray lived, and was able to keep the Marian lords in some
sort of check, Elizabeth judged, and rightly, that she had more to lose
than to gain by any open interference in Scotland. It was no business of
hers to put down anarchy there. Scotch anarchy did not imperil England.
What would imperil England would be the appearance of French troops in
Scotland; and she judged that nothing would be so likely to bring them
there as any pretension to establish an English protectorate. Her
Protestant councillors fretted at her _laisser faire_ policy. But then
they, for personal or at least for sectarian reasons, were eager for
that general European conflagration which she, with superior discernment
and larger patriotism, was trying to avert.
The death of Moray so weakened the King’s party that it became necessary
to give them a little help. Elizabeth gave it in such a way as she
thought would be least likely to excite the jealousy of France. She told
the new Regent Lennox that, though she could not send an army to support
him, she would send one to chastise the Hamiltons and the Borderers, who
were harbouring her rebel the Earl of Westmoreland, and, along with him,
making raids into England. This was done sharply and thoroughly. The
robber holds on the Border, and Hamilton Castle itself, were one after
another taken and blown up by the English Wardens of the Marches (April
and May 1570).
What Elizabeth desired more than anything else was to settle Scotch
affairs, in conjunction with France, on the terms that neither power
should interfere in Scotland. To Cecil this was unsatisfactory, because
the restoration of Mary, on any terms whatever, would, if she survived
Elizabeth, ensure her succession to the English throne, and the ruin of
Cecil himself. He did not want to conciliate Catholics at home or
abroad. He wanted to commit his mistress to an internecine war with
them. In an angry dispute with Arundel at the Council board about this
time, he blurted out his doctrine, that the Queen had no friends but the
Protestants, and that if she restored Mary she would lose them all. No
language could have been more displeasing to Elizabeth, especially in
the presence of crypto-Catholic lords, and she snubbed him unmercifully.
“Mr Secretary, I mean to have done with this business; I shall listen to
the proposals of the French King. I am not going to be tied any longer
to you and your brethren in Christ.”
The peace of St. Germain between the French court and the Huguenots
(August 8, 1570), and the disgrace of the Guises, were followed by
negotiations for a tripartite treaty between England, France, and
Scotland on the basis of the restoration of Mary. Elizabeth, of course,
insisted on the guarantees she had often sketched out. She was
willing--nay, anxious--to leave Scotland alone, if the French would do
the same. The French, on the other hand, felt that the equality of such
an arrangement was more seeming than real, because there were always
English troops lying at Berwick, within sixty miles of Edinburgh. They
haggled over the guarantees, and in the meantime, notwithstanding the
real desire of Catherine and Charles IX. to conclude an alliance with
Elizabeth against Philip, they continued to send money and encouragement
to the Marian lords in Scotland. For if, for any reason, the English
alliance should not come off, they meant to take up Mary’s cause in
earnest, and detach her from her Guise relations by marrying her to the
Duke of Anjou, afterwards Henry III.
All this was known to Elizabeth, and in her extreme anxiety for the
tripartite treaty, she thought the moment was come to dangle the bait
which she always reserved for occasions of special importance. She
informed the French ambassador that she was ready to marry Anjou
herself. It is not to be supposed that she had the least intention of
doing so. She had settled with herself from the first how she would get
out of her proposal when it had served its turn.
A minor motive for this move was the hope that it would reconcile her
Protestant councillors to the restoration of Mary. She did not succeed
with all of them. Some continued to mutter that Anjou was a Papist, that
tripartite treaties were a delusion, and that the only safe course was
to grasp the Scotch nettle and uphold James with the whole force of
England. But upon Cecil the effect was almost comical. He jumped at the
plan. Anything that was likely to make Elizabeth a mother would be
salvation to him. Whether the Queen at the mature age of thirty-seven
was likely to be happy with a husband of twenty was a question that did
not give him a moment’s concern. She was not too old to have two or
three children, and, that result once achieved, Mary might go to
Scotland or anywhere else for what he cared, and do her worst. The
sanguine man already saw visions of a converted Valois heading an
Anglo-French crusade against Philip, and establishing the reformed faith
throughout Europe. Walsingham his right-hand man, then ambassador at
Paris, was equally bitten. This was in the year before the massacre of
St. Bartholomew.
The overture of Elizabeth was very welcome to the French court.
Negotiations for the match were soon opened, and continued during the
first six months of 1571. At the same time, both the Scotch factions
were summoned to accept the tripartite arrangement. Mary was at first
eager for it, and instructed her agent, the Bishop of Ross, to swallow
every condition that might be imposed. She looked on it as the only
means of obtaining her release. But there is ample proof that she
intended to throw its stipulations to the winds and fight for her own
cause when once she should get back to Scotland. In playing this
perfidious game, she had confidently counted on the help of France. The
Regent’s party, however, declined the treaty. They dreaded Mary’s
return, and they had no wish to shake hands with the Marian lords or
admit them to a share in the Government. The tripartite scheme thus fell
through. Mary herself ceased to care for it as soon as she heard of the
projected match between Elizabeth and Anjou. She saw that if France was
going to co-operate heartily with England, her sovereignty in Scotland
would be merely nominal. She might almost as well remain with Lord
Shrewsbury.
To remain quietly in England and be content with her position as
heir-presumptive to the English crown was indeed the best and safest
course open to her. She had only to acquiesce in it and give up
plotting, and she might have lived here in considerable magnificence,
and with as much freedom as she could desire. If she wished for a
husband, she might have married any Englishman of whose loyalty
Elizabeth could feel assured. It was of the greatest importance to both
countries that she should bear more children. For it must be remembered
that if James had died in his childhood, his next heir was a Hamilton,
who had no title to the English throne.
If the proposed Anjou match had not produced the full results which
Elizabeth hoped, it had at least defeated the plans and disorganised the
party of her rival. It had served its turn; and all that now remained
was to get out of it as decently as possible. The old pretext for
breaking off the Austrian match was reproduced. Anjou could not be
allowed to have a private mass; and when, in its eagerness, the French
court seemed disposed to give way on this point, Elizabeth began to talk
about a restitution of Calais. Ruefully did poor Cecil watch the
vanishing of his dream. It was to no purpose that he tried to frighten
Elizabeth by representing that a jilted prince would be converted into
an angry enemy. She knew better. Anjou comprehended that she did not
mean to have him, and, to avoid the indignity of a refusal, himself
broke off negotiations. But, as Elizabeth had calculated, the new
alliance did not suffer. The French King went out of his way to say that
“for her upright dealing he would honour the Queen of England during
his life,” and Catherine, most unsentimental of women, had another
suitor to offer--her youngest son Alençon, then just turned seventeen!
While the negotiations for the Anjou match were going on, what is known
as the Ridolfi Plot was hatching against Elizabeth. Ridolfi, an Italian
banker in London, and secretly an agent of the Pope, was in close
relations with Norfolk and the other peers who for two years had been
dabbling in treason. They were still pressing Philip to invade England;
but he and Alva were less than ever disposed to undertake the venture
since the pitiful collapse of the northern insurrection. In order to
impress Philip with the importance of the conspiracy, Ridolfi went to
Madrid, and showed Philip a letter purporting to be written by Norfolk,
to which was attached a list of noblemen stated to be favourable to the
cause. It contained the names of forty out of the sixty-seven peers then
existing, while, of the rest, some were marked as neutral, and fifteen
at most as true to Elizabeth. The classification was on the face of it
absurdly untrustworthy. But correct or incorrect, it did not weigh with
Philip. He wanted deeds, not lists of names, and Ridolfi was informed
that, unless Elizabeth were first assassinated or imprisoned, not a
Spanish soldier could be sent to England.
Whatever secret disaffection might prevail among the peers, the temper
displayed by the new House of Commons, elected in the spring of 1571,
was not of a kind to encourage Elizabeth’s enemies at home or abroad.
So far as can be judged from its proceedings and debates, it was not
only entirely Protestant, but largely Puritan.[2] A bill was passed by
which any person refusing, on demand, to acknowledge Elizabeth’s right
to the crown was made incapable of succeeding her; a provision which,
though it did not name Mary, could apply to no one else. It was made
high treason to deny that the inheritance of the crown could be
determined by the Queen and Parliament. To affirm in writing that any
particular person was entitled to succeed the Queen, except the Queen’s
issue, or some one established by Parliament, was made punishable with
imprisonment for life, and forfeiture of all property for the second
offence.
The plot which Ridolfi was so busily pushing in 1571 was, in fact, a
continuation of the twin aristocratic conspiracies, one of which had
exploded in the northern insurrection. By forcing that insurrection to
break out before the southern conspirators had made up their minds what
to do, the Government had effectually destroyed what chances of success
the disaffected nobles had ever had. Alva was right in his judgment
that, if the Percys, Nevilles, and Dacres could do so little, the Howard
group, whose estates, vast as they were, lay, for the most part, in more
orderly and civilised parts of the country, could do still less. There
was, indeed, some talk among them of seizing the Queen at the opening of
the Parliament of 1571, just as there had been a talk of arresting Cecil
two years before. But the truth was that insurrection was a played-out
game in England; and if Norfolk had been a ten-times abler and bolder
man than he was, it would have made no difference.
The true history of the time is not to be read in the croakings and
wailings privately exchanged between Cecil, Walsingham, and the rest of
the Protestant junto, angry and alarmed because Elizabeth would not let
them play her cards for her. It is a strange perversity which persists
in adopting their view that she was on the brink of ruin, when the
patent fact is that Protestantism was making rapid strides, that the
Queen’s personal popularity was increasing every day, and that Spain,
France, and Scotland, the only countries with which she was concerned,
were all humble suitors for her alliance on almost any terms that it
might please her to exact. The correspondence of Philip with Alva is
there to prove, that while writhing under the repeated aggressions of
England, he was obliged to put up with them because a war would imperil
his hold on the Netherlands. To all the invitations of the Norfolks and
Northumberlands, the able and well-informed Alva turned a deaf ear,
because he believed Elizabeth too strong to be overthrown. A French
alliance she could always have as long as the Guises were excluded from
power. If they regained their influence the Huguenots would keep them
fully occupied. Scotland, unless foreign troops made their appearance
there, could be no source of danger to England.
Elizabeth’s policy was thus, in its broad lines, as simple as it was
successful. At home it was her wisdom to wink as long as possible at the
disaffection of the few, to win the affection of the many by economical
government, to reserve the persecuting laws for special cases, while
preventing any general and sweeping application of them, and, lastly, to
drive no party to desperation by a too pronounced encouragement of its
opponents. Spain, as being the centre of reaction and the hope of her
disloyal nobles, she meant to harass and weaken as far as she could do
so without bringing on an open war. With Charles IX. and his mother she
desired a defensive alliance, and an understanding that neither country
should send troops into Scotland or permit Spain to do so. In its
general conception, I repeat, this policy was simple and coherent. How
it succeeded we know. There was nothing sentimental about it, though,
where individuals were concerned, Elizabeth’s judgment was sometimes
warped by sentiment. Upon the whole, she kept herself at the English
point of view. Whereas Cecil was compelled by personal considerations to
place himself too much at the point of view of his “brethren in Christ,”
both at home and abroad.
However, a plot there was, and it was necessary that it should be
unravelled and punished. Almost from its inception, Cecil (created Lord
Burghley February 1571), had been more or less on the scent of it. Hints
had come from abroad: spies had been employed: suspected persons had
been closely watched: inferior agents had been imprisoned, questioned,
racked: and enough had been discovered to make it certain that
Englishmen of the highest rank were plotting treason. Who they were
might be suspected, but was not ascertained until a lucky arrest put the
Minister in possession of evidence incriminating Norfolk, Arundel,
Southampton, Lumley, Cobham, the Spanish ambassador, the Bishop of Ross,
and Mary herself (September 1571). Norfolk was sent to the Tower, and
the other peers placed under arrest. The ambassador was dismissed. The
Bishop made ample confessions. Mary, who had hitherto lived as the guest
of Lord Shrewsbury, enjoying field-sports, receiving her friends and
corresponding with whom she would, was confined to a single room, and
carefully cut off, for a time, from all communication with the outer
world. Both in England and abroad it was universally expected that she
would be brought to trial and executed. James was at length officially
styled “King” and his mother “late Queen.” Her partisans in Edinburgh
Castle were informed that she would never be restored, and that, if they
did not surrender the Castle to the Regent Mar, an English force would
be sent to take it. The casket letters had hitherto been withheld from
publication under pressure from Elizabeth; they were now at last given
to the world in the famous “Detection” of Buchanan.
Under any other Tudor, or under the Stuarts, all the peers arrested
would undoubtedly have lost their heads. Norfolk alone was brought to
trial (January 1572). There was much in the proceedings which, according
to modern notions, was unfair to the accused. But the peers who tried
him felt sure that he was guilty, and they were right. Subsequent
investigations have established beyond a doubt that he had conspired to
bring a foreign army into the country--the worst form that treason can
take. He had done this with contemptible hypocrisy, for a purely selfish
object, and after the most lenient and generous construction had been
placed on his first steps in crime. And yet historians have been found
to make light of the offence, and to pity the malefactor as the victim
of a romantic attachment to a woman whom he had never seen, and whom he
believed to be an adulteress and a murderess.
During the spring of 1572 Elizabeth hesitated to let justice take its
course. She had reigned fourteen years without taking the life of a
single noble. The scaffold on Tower Hill from such long disuse was
falling to pieces, and Norfolk’s sentence had made it necessary to erect
a new one. Elizabeth was loath to break the spell.
Not knowing with any certainty how many of her nobles might have given
more or less approval to the Ridolfi plot, but confident that she could
cow them by letting the voice of the untitled aristocracy and middle
class be heard, she called a new Parliament (May 1572). The response
went beyond her expectation. Of Mary’s well-wishers, once so numerous,
all except a few fanatics had now given her up. Two alternative courses
of action with respect to her were submitted for consideration, with the
intimation that the Queen would accept whichever of them Parliament
should approve. The first was attainder. The second was that she should
be disabled from succession to the crown; that if she attempted treason
again she should “suffer pains of death without further trouble of
Parliament;” and that it should be treason if she assented to any
enterprise to deliver her out of prison. Both houses at once voted to
proceed with the attainder. Elizabeth, we may be sure, was not sorry
for this unmistakable exhibition of feeling. It would open the eyes of
her enemies both at home and abroad. But she had no intention of
proceeding to such extremities this time. Mary should have fair warning.
Accordingly Parliament was desired to “defer” the bill of attainder, and
to proceed with the second measure. But the Commons were in grim
earnest. They immediately resolved that the second bill would be useless
and even mischievous, as it would imply that at present Mary had a right
of succession, whereas she was already disabled by law; and that they
therefore preferred to proceed with the attainder. With this resolution
the Lords concurred.
Here they were on dangerous ground. To rake up the law empowering Henry
VIII. to determine the succession was to disable all the Stuarts, James
included, and so to throw away the opportunity of uniting the crowns.
Elizabeth had always, for excellent reasons, refused to allow this
question to be raised. Accordingly she again directed the House to defer
the attainder; she would not have the Scottish Queen “either enabled or
disabled to or from any manner of _title_ to the crown,” nor “any other
_title_ to the same whatsoever touched at all;” to make sure of which
she would have the second bill drawn by her own law officers. To the
repeated demands of the Commons for the execution of Norfolk, she at
length gave way, and a few days later he was beheaded (June 2, 1572).
The second bill, as drawn by the law officers, passed both Houses. Its
exact terms are not known, for it never received the royal assent.
Burghley who was of opinion (as some one afterwards said about
Strafford) that “stone dead hath no fellow,” bemoaned himself privately
to Walsingham on the disappointment of their hopes; and modern
historians, with whom his authority is final, are loud in their
condemnation of Elizabeth’s vacillation and blindness. Vacillation there
was really none. She had determined from the first not to allow Mary to
be punished. She had gained all she wanted when the temper of Parliament
had been ascertained and displayed to the world. There have always been
plenty of people to accuse her of treachery and cruelty because she put
Mary to death fifteen years later, for complicity in an assassination
plot. How would her name have gone down to posterity if the Scottish
Queen had been executed in 1572 merely for inviting a foreign army to
rescue her from captivity?