EXECUTION OF THE QUEEN OF SCOTS: 1584-1587
Throgmorton’s plot--of which the Queen of Scots was undoubtedly
cognisant, though it was not pressed against her--brought home to every
one the danger in which Elizabeth stood (1584). To the Catholic
conspiracy, the temptation to take her life was enormous. It was
becoming clear that, while she lived, the much talked of insurrection
would never come off. The large majority of Catholics would have nothing
to do with it--still less with foreign invasion. They would obey their
lawful sovereign. But if once Elizabeth were dead, by whatever means,
their lawful sovereign would be Mary. The rebels would be the
Protestants, if they should try to place any one else on the throne. The
Protestants had no organisation. They had no candidate for the crown
ready. It was to be feared that no great noble would step forward to
lead them. Burghley himself, though longing as much as ever for Mary’s
head, had with a prudent eye to all eventualities, contrived some time
before to persuade her that he was her well-wisher. Houses of Commons,
it is true, had shown themselves strongly and increasingly Protestant.
But with the demise of the crown, Parliament, if in being at the time,
would be _ipso facto_ dissolved. The Privy Council, in like manner,
would cease to have any legal existence. Burghley, Walsingham, and the
other new men of whom it was mostly composed, had no power or weight,
except as instruments of the sovereign. Her death would leave them
helpless. The country would take its direction not from them, but from
the great nobles of large ancestral possessions. Nor could they provide
for such an emergency by privately selecting a Protestant successor
beforehand, and privately organising their partisans. It would have been
as much as their lives were worth if their mistress had caught them
doing anything of the kind.
In this dilemma an ingenious plan suggested itself to them. They drew up
a “Bond of Association,” by which the subscribers engaged that, if the
Queen were murdered, they would never accept as successor any one “by
whom _or for whom_” such act should be committed, but would “prosecute
such person to death.”
This was a hypothetical way of excluding Mary and organising a
Protestant resistance to which Elizabeth could make no objection. But
the ministers knew that, as a merely voluntary association without
Parliamentary sanction, it would add little strength or confidence to
the Protestant party. It would not even test their numbers; for no
Marian ventured to refuse the oath. Mary herself desired to be allowed
to take it. The bond was therefore converted into a Statute by
Parliament, though not without some important alterations (March 1585).
It was enacted that if the realm was invaded, or a rebellion instigated,
by _or for_ any one pretending a title to the succession, or if the
Queen’s murder was plotted by any one, or with the privity of any one
that pretended title, such pretender, _after examination and judgment_
by an extraordinary commission to be nominated by the Queen, and
consisting of at least twenty-four privy councillors and lords of
Parliament assisted by the chief judges, should be excluded from the
succession, and that, on proclamation of the sentence and direction by
the Queen, all subjects might and should pursue the offender to death.
If the Queen were murdered, the lords of the Council at the time of her
death, or the majority of them, should join to themselves at least
twelve other lords of Parliament not making title to the crown, and the
chief judges; and if, after examination, they should come to the
above-mentioned conclusion, they should without delay, by all forcible
and possible means, prosecute the guilty persons to death, and should
have power to raise and use such forces as should in that behalf be
needful and convenient; and no subjects should be liable to punishment
for anything done according to the tenor of the Statute.
Here, then, was a legal way provided by which the Protestant ministers
might act against Mary if Elizabeth were murdered. They were in fact
creating a Provisional Government, with power to exclude Mary from the
throne. Whether they would have the courage or strength to do so
remained to be seen; but they would at least have formal law on their
side.
It had never entered into Mary’s plans to wait for Elizabeth’s natural
death. She therefore read the new Act as a sentence of exclusion.
Another blow soon fell on her. In 1584, elated by her son’s victory
over the raiders of Ruthven, and believing that he was willing to
recognise her joint sovereignty and co-operate with a Guise invasion,
she had scornfully refused the last overtures that Elizabeth ever made
to her. She now learnt that he had never intended to accept association
with her, and that he had urged Elizabeth not to release her. In the
following year he had accepted an annual pension of £4000 with some
grumbling at its amount; and a defensive alliance was at length
concluded between the two countries, Mary’s name not being mentioned in
the treaty (July 1586).
As the prospects of the Scottish Queen became darker both in England and
her own country, she grew more desperate and reckless. Early in 1586,
Walsingham contrived a way of regularly inspecting all her most secret
correspondence. He soon discovered that she was encouraging Babington’s
plot for assassinating Elizabeth. Some of the conspirators, though
avowed Catholics, had offices in the royal household; such was
Elizabeth’s easy-going confidence. It was hoped that Parma would at the
moment of the murder land troops on the east coast. Mendoza, now Spanish
ambassador in Paris, warmly encouraged the project.
The Scottish Queen was now in the case contemplated by the Statute of
the previous year. But it required all the urgency of the Council to
prevail with Elizabeth to have her brought to trial. Elizabeth’s whole
conduct shows that she would even now have preferred to deal with her
rival as she did in the inquiry into the Darnley murder. She would have
been content to discredit her, to expose her guilt, and, if possible, to
bring her to her knees confessing her crimes and pleading for mercy. But
Mary was not of the temper to confess. Humiliation and effacement were
to her worse than death. She chose to brazen it out with a well-grounded
confidence that, as long as she asserted her innocence, people would
always be found to believe in it, let the evidence be what it would.
Besides, long impunity had convinced her that Elizabeth did not dare to
take her life.
There was nothing for it, therefore, but to bring her to trial. A
Special Commission was nominated under the provisions of the Statute of
1585, consisting of forty-five persons--peers, privy councillors, and
judges--who proceeded to Fotheringay Castle, whither Mary had been
removed.[6] She at first refused their jurisdiction; but on being
informed that they would proceed in her absence, she appeared before
them under protest (October 14, 1586). After sitting at Fotheringay for
two days, the Court adjourned to Westminster, where it pronounced her
guilty (October 25).[7] A declaration was added that her
disqualification for the succession, which followed by the Statute, did
not affect any rights that her son might possess. The verdict was
immediately known; but its proclamation was deferred till Parliament
could be consulted.
A general election had been held while the trial was going on, and
Parliament met four days after its conclusion (October 29). The whole
evidence was gone into afresh. Not a word seems to have been said in
Mary’s favour; and an address was presented to the Queen praying for
execution. If precedents were wanted for the capital punishment of an
anointed sovereign, there were the cases of Agag, Jezebel, Athaliah,
Deiotarus, king of Galatia, put to death by Julius Cæsar, Rhescuporis,
king of Thrace, by Tiberius, and Conradin by Charles of Anjou. In vain
did Elizabeth request them to reconsider their vote, and devise some
other expedient. Usually so deferential to her suggestions, they
reiterated their declaration that “the Queen’s safety could no way be
secured as long as the Queen of Scots lived.”
Elizabeth’s hesitation has been generally set down to hypocrisy. It has
been taken for granted that she desired Mary’s death, and was glad to
have it pressed upon her by her subjects. I believe that her reluctance
was most genuine. If not of generous disposition, neither was she
revengeful or cruel. She had no animosity against her enemies. She
lacked gall. She was never in any hurry to punish the disaffected, or
even to weed them out of her service. She rather prided herself on
employing them even about her person. Since her accession only two
English peers had been put to death, though several had richly deserved
it. She could affirm with perfect truth that, for the last fifteen
years, she, and she alone, had stood between Mary and the scaffold, and
this at great and increasing risk to her own life. There had, perhaps,
been a time when to destroy the prospect of a Catholic succession would
have driven the Catholics into rebellion. But that time had long gone
by, as every one knew. Elizabeth had only two dangers now to fear,
invasion and assassination, the latter being the most threatening. There
would be little inducement to attempt it if Mary were not alive to
profit by it. Yet Elizabeth hesitated. The explanation of her reluctance
is very simple. She flinched from the obloquy, the undeserved obloquy,
which she saw was in store for her. Careless to an extraordinary degree
about her personal danger, she would have preferred, as far as she was
herself concerned, to let Mary live. It was her ministers and the
Protestant party who, for their own interest, were forcing her to shed
her cousin’s blood; and it seemed to her unfair that the undivided odium
should fall, as she foresaw it would fall, on her alone.
The suspense continued through December and January. In the meantime it
became abundantly clear that no foreign court would interfere actively
to save Mary’s life. While she had been growing old in captivity, new
interests had sprung up, fresh schemes had been formed in which she had
no place. She stood in the way of half-a-dozen ambitions. Everybody was
weary of her and her wrongs and her pretensions. The Pope had felt less
interest of late in a princess whose rights, if established, would pass
to a Protestant heir. Philip could not intercede for her even if he had
desired to save her life. He was already at war with England, and, if
she had known it, not with any intention of supporting her claims.[8]
James by his recent treaty with England had tacitly treated his mother
as an enemy. Her scheme for kidnapping and disinheriting him, found
among her papers at Chartley, had been promptly communicated to him.
Decency required that he should make a show of remonstrance and menace.
But he had every reason to desire her death, and his only thought was to
use the opportunity for extorting from Elizabeth a recognition of his
title to the English crown and an increase of his pension. He sent the
Master of Gray to drive this bargain. The very choice of his envoy, the
man who had persuaded him to break with his mother, showed Elizabeth how
the land lay, and she did not think it worth her while to bribe him in
either way. The Marian nobles blustered and called for war. Not one of
them wanted to see Mary back in Scotland or cared what became of her;
but they had got an idea that Philip would pay them for a plundering
raid into England, and the doubly lucrative prospect was irresistible.
James, however, though pretending resentment and really sulky at his
rebuff, knew his own interests too well to quarrel with England. What
the action of the French King was is less certain. Openly he
remonstrated with considerable vigour and persistence; not entering into
the question of Mary’s guilt, but protesting against the punishment of a
Queen and a member of his family. Probably his efforts, so far as they
went, were sincere, for he instructed his ambassador to bribe the
English ministers if possible to save her life. But it was evident that,
however offended Henry III. might be by the execution of his
sister-in-law, he would not be provoked into playing the game of Spain.
A warrant for the execution had been drawn soon after the adjournment of
Parliament, and all through December and January Elizabeth’s ministers
kept urging her to sign it. At length, when the Scotch and French
ambassadors were gone, and with them the last excuse for delay, she
signed it in the presence of Davison (who had lately been made
co-secretary with Walsingham), and directed him to have it sealed
(February 1). What else passed between them on that occasion must always
remain uncertain, because Davison’s four written statements, and his
answers at his trial, differ in important particulars not only from the
Queen’s account but from one another. So much, however, will to most
persons who examine the evidence be very clear. Elizabeth meant the
execution to take place. There is no reason to doubt Davison’s statement
that she “forbade him to trouble her any further, or let her hear any
more thereof till it was done, seeing that for her part she had now
performed all that either in law or reason could be required of her.”
But signing the warrant, as both of them knew, was not enough. The
formal delivery of it to some person, with direction to carry it out,
was the final step necessary. This, by Davison’s own admission, the
Queen managed to evade. He saw that she wished to thrust the
responsibility upon him and Walsingham, and he suspected that she meant
to disavow them. Although, therefore, she had enjoined strict secrecy,
he laid the matter before Hatton and Burghley.
Burghley assembled in his own room the Earls of Derby and Leicester,
Lords Howard of Effingham, Hunsdon, and Cobham, Knollys, Hatton,
Walsingham, and Davison (February 3). These ten were probably the only
privy councillors then at Greenwich.[9] He laid before them Davison’s
statement of what had passed between the Queen and himself at both
interviews. He said that she had done as much as could be expected of
her; that she evidently wished her ministers to take whatever
responsibility remained upon themselves without informing her; and that
they ought to do so. His proposal was agreed to. A letter was written to
the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury instructing them to carry out the
execution. This letter all the ten signed, and it was at once despatched
along with the warrant. They quite understood that Elizabeth would
disavow them. They saw that she wished to have a pretext for saying that
Mary had been put to death without her knowledge, and before she had
finally made up her mind. They were willing to furnish her with this
pretext. Of course there would be more or less of a storm to keep up the
make-believe. But ten privy councillors acting together could not well
be punished.
On Thursday (February 9) the news of the execution arrived. Elizabeth
now learnt for the first time that the responsibility which she had
intended to fix on the two secretaries, one a nobody and the other no
favourite, had been shared by eight others of the Council, including
all its most important members. Storm at them she might and did, and all
the more furiously because they had combined for self-protection. But to
punish the whole ten was out of the question. Yet if no one were
punished, with what face could she tender her improbable explanation to
foreign courts? The unlucky Davison was singled out. He could be charged
with divulging what he had been ordered to keep secret and misleading
the others. He was tried before a Special Commission, fined 10,000
marks, and imprisoned for some time in the Tower. The fine was rigidly
exacted, and it reduced him to poverty. Burghley, whose tool he had been
almost as much as Elizabeth’s, took pains to make his disgrace
permanent, because he wanted the secretaryship for his son, Robert
Cecil.
The strange thing is, that Elizabeth not only expected her transparent
falsehoods to be formally accepted as satisfactory, but hoped that they
would be really believed. Her letter to James was an insult to his
understanding. “I would you knew (though not felt) the extreme dolour
that overwhelms my mind, for that miserable accident which (far contrary
to my meaning) hath befallen.... I beseech you that as God and many more
know how innocent I am in this case, so you will believe me that if I
had bid [bidden] ought I would have bid [abided] by it.... Thus assuring
yourself of me that as I know this [the execution] was deserved, yet if
I had meant it I would never lay it on others’ shoulders, no more will I
not damnify myself that thought it not.”
Little as James cared what became of his mother, it was impossible that
he should not feel humiliated when he was expected to swallow such a
pill as this--and ungilded too. He had no intention of going to war with
the country of which he might now at any moment become the legitimate
King. But to let Elizabeth see that unless he was paid he could be
disagreeable, he winked at raids across the border and coquetted with
the faction who were inviting Philip to send a Spanish army to Scotland.
It was but a passing display of temper. The end of the year (1587) saw
him again drawing close to Elizabeth, and she was able to give her
undivided attention to the coming Armada.
It cannot be seriously maintained that because Mary was not an English
subject she could not be lawfully tried and punished for crimes
committed in England. Those, if any there now be, who adopt her own
contention that, being an anointed Queen, she was not amenable to any
earthly tribunal, but to God alone, are beyond the reach of earthly
argument. The English government had a right to detain her as a
dangerous public enemy. She, on the other hand, had a right to resist
such restraint if she could, and she might have carried conspiracy very
far without incurring our blame. But for good reasons we draw a line at
conspiracy to murder. No government ever did or will let it pass
unpunished. If Napoleon at St. Helena had engaged in conspiracies for
seizing the island, no one could have blamed him, even though they might
have involved bloodshed. But if he had been convicted of plotting the
assassination of Sir Hudson Lowe, he would assuredly have been hanged.
That the execution was a wise and opportune stroke of policy can hardly
be disputed. It broke up the Catholic party in England at the moment
when their disaffection was about to be tempted by the appearance of the
Armada. There had been a time when they had hopes of James. But he was
now known to be a stiff Protestant. Only the small Jesuitical faction
was prepared to accept Philip either as an heir of John of Gaunt or as
Mary’s legatee. There was no other Catholic with a shadow of a claim.
The bulk of the party therefore ceased to look forward to a restoration
of the old religion, and rallied to the cause of national independence.
* * * * *
_NOTE ON PAULET’S ALLEGED REFUSAL TO MURDER MARY._
I have not alluded in the text to the story, generally repeated by
historians, that Elizabeth urged Paulet and Drury to murder Mary
privately. There is no doubt that, after the signature of the
warrant, Walsingham and Davison, by Elizabeth’s direction, urged
Paulet and Drury to put Mary to death, and that they refused. But
was it a private murder that was meant or a public execution
without delivery of the warrant? There is nothing in any of
Davison’s statements inconsistent with the latter and far more
probable explanation. The blacker charge is founded solely on the
two letters which are generally accepted as being those which
passed between the secretaries and Paulet, but which may be
confidently set down as impudent forgeries. They were first given
to the world in 1722 by Dr. George Mackenzie, a violent Marian, who
says that _a copy_ of them was sent him by Mr. Urry of Christ
Church, Oxford, and that they had been found among Paulet’s papers.
Two years later they were printed by Hearne, an Oxford Jacobite and
Nonjuror, who says he got them from _a copy_ furnished him by a
friend unnamed (Urry?), who told him he had _copied_ them in 1717
from a MS. letter-book of Paulet’s. There is also a MS. _copy_ in
the Harleian collection, which contains erasures and
emendations--an extraordinary thing in a copy. It is said to be in
the handwriting of the Earl of Oxford himself. There is nothing to
show whence he copied it.
No one has ever seen the originals of these letters. Neither has
any one, except Hearne’s unnamed friend, seen the “letter-book”
into which Paulet is supposed to have copied them. Where had this
“letter-book” been before 1717? Where was it in 1717? What became
of it after 1717? To none of these questions is there any answer.
The most rational conclusion is that the “letter-book” never
existed, and that the letters were fabricated in the reign of
George I. by some Oxford Jacobite, who thought it easier and more
prudent to circulate _copies_ than to attempt an imitation of
Paulet’s well-known handwriting, with all the other difficulties
involved in forging a manuscript.
But it may be said, Do not the letters fit in with Davison’s
narrative? Of course they do. It was for the very purpose of
putting an odious meaning on that narrative that they were
fabricated. It was known that letters about putting Mary to death
had passed. The real letters had never been seen, and had doubtless
been destroyed. Here therefore was a fine opportunity for
manufacturing spurious ones.