ELIZABETH AND THE EUROPEAN CONFLICT. 1570-1587
LEADING DATES
Reign of Elizabeth, 1558-1603
The Execution of the Duke of Norfolk 1572
The foundation of the Dutch Republic 1572
The arrival of the Jesuits 1580
The Association 1584
Babington's Plot 1586
Execution of Mary Stuart 1587
1. =The Continental Powers. 1566-1570.=--If the Catholic powers of
the Continent had been able to assist the English Catholics
Elizabeth would hardly have suppressed the rising in the North. It
happened, however, that neither in the Spanish Netherlands nor in
France were the governments in a position to quarrel with her. In
the Netherlands Philip, who burnt and slaughtered Protestants
without mercy, was in =1566= opposed by the nobility, and in =1568=
he sent the Duke of Alva, a relentless soldier, to Brussels with a
Spanish army to establish the absolute authority of the king and the
absolute authority of the Papacy. In =1569= Alva believed himself to
have accomplished his task by wholesale executions, and by the
destruction of the constitutional privileges of the Netherlanders.
His rule was a grinding tyranny, rousing both Catholics and
Protestants to cry out for the preservation of their customs and
liberties from the intruding Spanish army. Alva had therefore no men
to spare to send to aid the English Catholics. In France the civil
war had broken out afresh in =1568=, and in =1569= the Catholics
headed by Henry, Duke of Guise, the son of the murdered Duke Francis
(see p. 436), and by Henry, Duke of Anjou, the brother of the young
king, Charles IX., won victories at Jarnac and Moncontour. Charles
and his mother took alarm lest the Catholics should become too
powerful for the royal authority, and in =1570= a peace was signed
once more, the French king refusing to be the instrument of
persecution and being very much afraid of the establishment of a
Catholic government in England which might give support to the
Catholics of France. Accordingly in =1570=, France would not
interfere in England if she could, whilst Spain could not interfere
if she would.
2. =The Anjou Marriage Treaty and the Ridolfi Plot. 1570-1571.=--For
all that, Elizabeth's danger was great. In =1570= she had done her
best to embroil parties in Scotland lest they should join against
herself. The bulk of the nobility in that country had thrown
themselves on the side of Mary, and were fighting against the new
regent, Lennox, having taken alarm at the growth of the popular
Church organisation of Knox and the Presbyterians, who sheltered
themselves under the title of the little James VI. At home Elizabeth
expected a fresh outbreak, and could not be certain that Alva would
be unable to support it when it occurred. Cecil accordingly pleaded
hard with her to marry the frivolous Duke of Anjou. He thought that
unless she married and had children, her subjects would turn from
her to Mary, who, having already a son, would give them an assured
succession. If she was to marry, an alliance with the tolerant
Government of France was better than any other. Elizabeth indeed
consented to open negotiations for the marriage, though it was most
unlikely that she would ever really make up her mind to it. The
English Catholics, in consequence, flung themselves into the arms of
the king of Spain, and in March =1571=, Ridolfi, a Florentine banker
residing in England, who carried on their correspondence with Alva,
crossed to the Netherlands to inform him that the great majority of
the lay peers had invited him to send 6,000 Spanish soldiers to
dethrone Elizabeth and to put Mary in her place. Norfolk, who had
been released from the Tower (see p. 441), was then to become the
husband of Mary, and it was hoped that there would spring from the
marriage a long line of Catholic sovereigns ready to support the
Papal Church.
3. =Elizabeth and the Puritans.=--Elizabeth's temporising policy had
naturally strengthened the Calvinism of the Calvinistic clergy. In
every generation there are some who ask not what is expedient but
what is true, and the very fact that they aim at truth, in defiance
of all earthly considerations, not merely assures them influence,
but diffuses around them a life and vigour which would be entirely
wanting if all men were content to support that which is politically
or socially convenient. Such were the best of the English Puritans,
so called because, though they did not insist upon the abolition of
Episcopacy or the establishment of the Calvinistic discipline (see
p. 431), they contended for what they called purity of worship,
which meant the rejection of such rites and vestments as reminded
them of what they termed the idolatry of the Roman Church. Elizabeth
and Parker had from time to time interfered, and some of the Puritan
leaders had been deprived of their benefices for refusing to wear
the cap and surplice.
4. =Elizabeth and Parliament. 1566.=--From =1566= to =1571=
Elizabeth abstained from summoning a Parliament, having been far
more economical than any one of the last three sovereigns. Early in
her reign she had restored the currency, and after the session of
=1566= had actually returned to her subjects a subsidy which had
been voted to her and which had been already collected.[16] Her
reason for avoiding Parliaments was political. Neither of the Houses
was likely to favour her ecclesiastical policy. The House of Lords
wanted her to go backwards--to declare Mary her successor and to
restore the mass. The House of Commons wanted her to go forwards--to
marry, and have children of her own, and to alter the Prayer Book in
a Puritan direction. In =1566=, if the House of Commons had really
represented the average opinion of the nation, she would have been
obliged to yield. That it did not was partly owing to the imposition
in =1562= of the oath of supremacy upon its members, by which all
who favoured the Pope's authority were excluded from its benches,
but still more on account of the difficulty of packing a Parliament
so as to suit the queen's moderate ideas. Those who admired the
existing Church system were but few. The majority of the nation,
even if those who refused to accept the Royal supremacy were left
out of account, was undoubtedly sufficiently attached to the old
state of things to be favourable at least to Mary's claim to be
acknowledged as heir to the throne. To Elizabeth it was of the first
importance that the influence of the Crown should be used to reduce
the numbers of such men in the House of Commons. If, however, they
were kept out, there was nothing to be done but to favour the
election of Puritans, or at least of those who had a leaning towards
Puritanism. The queen, therefore, having to make her choice between
those who objected to her proceedings as too Protestant and those
who objected to them as not Protestant enough, not unnaturally
preferred the latter.
[Footnote 16: A subsidy was a tax on lands and goods voted by
Parliament to the Crown, resembling in many respects the modern
income-tax.]
5. =A Puritan Parliament. 1571.=--In =1571= Elizabeth had to deal
with a Puritan House of Commons. The House granted supplies, and
wanted to impose new penalties on the Roman Catholics and to
suppress ecclesiastical abuses. One of the members named Strickland,
having proposed to ask leave to amend the Prayer Book, the Queen
ordered him to absent himself from the House. The House was
proceeding to remonstrate when Elizabeth, too prudent to allow a
quarrel to spring up, gave him permission to return. She had her
way, however, and the Prayer Book remained untouched. She was
herself a better representative of the nation than the House of
Commons, but as yet she represented it only as standing between two
hostile parties; though she hoped that the time would come when she
would have a strong middle party of her own.
6. =The Duke of Norfolk's Plot and Execution. 1571-1572.= For the
present Elizabeth's chief enemies were the conspirators who were
aiming at placing Mary on her throne. In April =1571= Ridolfi
reached the Netherlands, and urged Alva to send a Spanish army to
England. Alva was cautious, and thought the attempt dangerous unless
Elizabeth had first been killed or captured. Philip was consulted,
gave his approval to the murder, but afterwards drew back, though he
ordered Alva to proceed with the invasion. In the meanwhile Cecil,
who had just been made Lord Burghley, came upon traces of the plot.
Norfolk was arrested, and before the end of the year everything was
known. Though the proposal of a marriage between Elizabeth and the
Duke of Anjou had lately broken down, she now, in her anxiety to
find support in France against Spain, entered into a negotiation to
marry Anjou's brother, the Duke of Alençon, a vicious lad twenty-one
years younger than herself. Then she was free to act. She drove the
Spanish ambassador out of England, and Norfolk was tried and
convicted of treason. A fresh Parliament meeting in =1572= urged the
queen to consent to the execution of Mary. Elizabeth refused, but
she sent Norfolk to the block.
7. =The Admonition to Parliament. 1572.=--The rising in the North
and the invitation to bring a Spanish army into England could not
but fan the zeal of the Puritans. At the beginning of the reign they
had contented themselves with calling for the abolition of certain
ceremonies. A more decided party now added a demand for the
abolition of episcopacy and the establishment of Presbyterianism and
of the complete Calvinistic discipline. The leader of this party was
Thomas Cartwright, a theological professor at Cambridge, the
university which had produced the greater number of the reformers,
as it now produced the greater number of Puritans. In =1570=,
Cartwright was expelled from his Professorship. He sympathised with
_An Admonition to Parliament_ written in =1572= by two of his
disciples, and himself wrote _A Second Admonition to Parliament_, to
second their views. Cartwright was far from claiming for the
Puritans the position of a sect to be tolerated. He had no thought
of establishing religious liberty in his mind. He declared the
Presbyterian Church to be the only divinely appointed one, and asked
that all Englishmen should be forced to submit to its ordinances.
The civil magistrate was to have no control over its ministers. All
active religious feeling being enlisted either on the Papal or the
Puritanical side, Elizabeth's reformed, but not Puritan, Church
seemed likely to be crushed between two forces. It was saved by the
existence of a large body of men who cared for other things more
than for religious disputes, and who were ready to defend the Queen
as ruler of the nation without any special regard for the
ecclesiastical system which she maintained.
8. =Mariners and Pirates.=--Of all Elizabeth's subjects there were
none who stood their country in such good stead in the impending
conflict with Spain and the Papacy as the mariners. Hardy and
reckless, they cared little for theological distinctions or for
forms of Church government, their first instinct being to fill their
own purses either by honest trade if it might be, or by piracy if
that seemed likely to be more profitable. Even before Elizabeth's
accession, the Channel and the seas beyond it swarmed with English
pirates. Though the pirates cared nothing for the nationality of the
vessels which they plundered, it was inevitable that the greatest
loss should fall on Spain. Spain was the first maritime power in the
world, and her galleons as they passed up to Antwerp to exchange the
silks and spices of the East for the commodities of Europe, fell an
easy prey to the swift and well-armed cruisers which put out from
English harbours. The Spaniards retaliated by seizing English
sailors wherever they could lay their hands upon them, sometimes
hanging them out of hand, sometimes destroying them with starvation
and misery in fetid dungeons, sometimes handing them over to the
Inquisition--a court the function of which was the suppression of
heresy--in other words, to the torture-room or the stake.
9. =Westward Ho!=--Every year the hatred between the mariners of
Spain and England grew more bitter, and it was not long before
English sailors angered the king of Spain by crossing the Atlantic
to trade or plunder in the West Indies, where both the islands and
the mainland of Mexico and South America were full of Spanish
settlements. In those days a country which sent out colonies claimed
the sole right of trading with them; besides which the king of Spain
claimed a right of refusing to foreigners an entrance into his
American dominions because, towards the end of the fifteenth
century, Pope Alexander VI. being called on to mediate between Spain
and Portugal, had drawn a line on the map to the east of which was
to be the Portuguese colony of Brazil, whilst all the rest of
America to the west of it was to be Spanish. From this the Spaniards
reasoned that all America except Brazil was theirs by the gift of
the Pope--which in their eyes was equivalent to the gift of God.
English sailors refusing to recognise this pretension, sailed to the
Spanish settlements to trade, and attacked the Spanish officials who
tried to prevent them. The Spanish settlers were eager to get negro
slaves to cultivate their plantations, and Englishmen were equally
eager to kidnap negroes in Africa and to sell them in the West
Indies. A curious combination of the love of gain and of
Protestantism sprang up amongst the sailors, who had no idea that to
sell black men was in any way wrong. One engaged in this villanous
work explained how he had been saved from the perils of the sea by
'Almighty God, who never suffers his elect to perish!' There was
money enough to be got, and sometimes there would be hard fighting
and the gain or loss of all.
[Illustration: Sir Francis Drake, in his 43rd year: from the
engraving by Elstracke.]
10. =Francis Drake's Voyage to Panama. 1572.=--The noblest of these
mariners was Francis Drake. Sickened by one experience of the slave
trade, and refusing to take any further part in it, he flew at the
wealth of the Spanish Government. In =1572= he sailed for Nombre de
Dios, on the Atlantic side of the isthmus of Panama. Thither were
brought once a year gold and silver from the mines of Peru. In the
governor's house Drake found a pile of silver bars. "I have now," he
said to his men, "brought you to the mouth of the treasury of the
world." He himself was wounded, and his followers, having little
spirit to fight without their leader, were beaten off. "I am
resolved," he said somewhat later to a Spaniard, "by the help of
God, to reap some of the golden harvest which you have got out of
the earth and sent to Spain to trouble the earth." It was his firm
conviction that he was serving God in robbing the king of Spain.
Before he returned some Indians showed him from a tree on the
isthmus the waters of the Pacific, which no civilised people except
the Spaniards had ever navigated. Drake threw himself on his knees,
praying to God to give him life and to allow him to sail an English
vessel on those seas.
11. =The Seizure of Brill, and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
1572.=--Exiles from the Netherlands took refuge on the sea from
Alva's tyranny, and plundered Spanish vessels as Englishmen had done
before. In =1572= a party of these seized Brill and laid the
foundations of the Dutch Republic. They called on Charles IX. of
France to help them, and he (being under the influence of Coligny,
the leader of the Huguenots) was eager to make war on Spain on their
behalf. Charles's mother, Catherine de Medicis, was, however,
alarmed lest the Huguenots should grow too powerful, and frightened
her son with a tale that they were conspiring against him. He was an
excitable youth, and turned savagely on the Huguenots, encouraging a
fearful butchery of them, which is known as the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew, because it took place on August 24, which was St.
Bartholomew's day. Coligny himself was among the victims.
12. =The Growth of the Dutch Republic. 1572-1578.=--By this time the
provinces of Holland and Zeeland had risen against Spain. They
placed at their head the Prince of Orange with the title of
Stadtholder or Lieutenant, as if he had been still the lieutenant of
the king of Spain whom he resisted. The rebels had but a scanty
force wherewith to defend themselves against the vast armies of
Spain. Alva took town after town, sacked them, and butchered man,
woman and child within. In =1574= Leyden was saved from his attack.
Holland is below the sea-level, and the Dutch cut the dykes which
kept off the sea, and when the tide rushed in, sent flat-bottomed
vessels over what had once been land, and rescued the town from the
besiegers. Alva, disgusted at his failure, returned to Spain. In
=1576= his successor Requesens died. Spain, with all the wealth of
the Indies pouring into it, was impoverished by the vastness of the
work which Philip had undertaken in trying to maintain the power of
the Roman Catholic Church in all western Europe. The expenses of the
war in the Netherlands exhausted his treasury, and on the death of
Requesens, the Spanish army mutinied, plundered even that part of
the country which was friendly to Spain, and sacked Antwerp with
barbarous cruelty. Then the whole of the seventeen provinces of the
Netherlands drove out the Spaniards, and bound themselves by the
Pacification of Ghent into a confederate Republic. In =1578=
Alexander, duke of Parma, arrived as the Spanish governor. He was a
great warrior and statesman, and he won over the Catholic provinces
of the southern Netherlands to his side. By the Union of Utrecht the
Prince of Orange formed a new confederate republic of the seven
northern provinces, which were mainly Protestant.
13. =Quiet Times in England. 1572-1577.=--The Spaniards were no
longer able to interfere in England. Elizabeth was equally safe from
the side of France. In =1574= Charles IX. died, and was succeeded by
Elizabeth's old suitor Anjou as Henry III. There were fresh civil
wars which gave him enough to do at home. In =1573= Elizabeth sent
aid to the party of the young king in Scotland, and suppressed the
last remnants of Mary's party there. In England she pursued her old
policy. Men might think what they would, but they must not discuss
their opinions openly. There must be as little preaching as
possible, and when the clergy began to hold meetings called
prophesyings for discussion on the Scriptures, she ordered Grindal,
who had succeeded Parker as Archbishop of Canterbury, to suppress
them, and on his refusal in =1577= suspended him from his office,
and put down the prophesyings herself.
14. =Drake's Voyage. 1577-1580.=--Elizabeth had no sympathy with the
heroic Netherlanders, who fought for liberty and conscience, but she
had sympathy with the mariners who by fair means or foul brought
treasure into the realm. In =1577= Drake sailed for that Pacific
which he had long been eager to enter. Passing through the Straits
of Magellan, he found himself alone on the unknown ocean with the
'Pelican,' a little ship of 100 tons. He ranged up the coast of
South America, seizing treasure where he landed, but never doing any
cruel deed. The Spaniards, not thinking it possible that an English
ship could be there, took the 'Pelican' for one of their own
vessels, and were easily caught. At Tarapaca, for instance, Drake
found a Spaniard asleep with bars of silver by his side. At another
landing place he found eight llamas laden with silver. So he went
on, till he took a great vessel with jewels in plenty, thirteen
chests of silver coin, eighty pounds' weight of gold, and twenty-six
tons of silver. With all this he sailed home by way of the Cape of
Good Hope, arriving in England in =1580=, being the first commander
who had circumnavigated the globe.[17] The king of Spain was
furious, and demanded back the wealth of which his subjects had been
robbed. Elizabeth gave him good words, but not a penny of money or
money's worth.
[Footnote 17: Magellan died on the way, though his ship completed
the voyage round the world.]
[Illustration: Armour as worn during the reign of Elizabeth: from
the brass of Francis Clopton, 1577, at Long Melford, Suffolk.]
15. =Ireland and the Reformation. 1547.=--Since the death of Henry
VIII. the management of Ireland had been increasingly difficult. An
attempt had been made in the reign of Edward VI. to establish the
reformed religion. All that was then done had been overthrown by
Mary, and what Mary did was in turn overthrown by Elizabeth. As yet,
however, the orders of the English Government to make religious
changes in Ireland were of comparatively little importance. The
power of the Government did not reach far, and even in the districts
to which it extended there was none of that mental preparation for
the reception of the new doctrines which was to be found in England.
The Reformation was accepted by very few, except by English
officials, who were ready to accept anything to please the
Government. Those who clung to the old ways, however, were not at
all zealous for their faith, and there was as yet no likelihood that
any religious insurrection like the Pilgrimage of Grace or the
rising in the North would be heard of in Ireland. The lives of the
Celtic chiefs and the Anglo-Norman lords were passed in
blood-shedding and looseness of life, which made them very unfit to
be champions of any religion whatever.
16. =Ireland under Edward VI. and Mary. 1547-1558.=--The real
difficulty of the English Government in Ireland lay in its relations
with the Irish tribes, whether under Celtic chiefs or Anglo-Norman
lords. At the end of the reign of Edward VI. an attempt had been
made to revert to the better part of the policy of Henry VIII., and
the heads of the tribes were entrusted by the government with powers
to keep order in the hope that they would gradually settle down into
civilisation and obedience. Such a policy required almost infinite
patience on the part of the Government, and the Earl of Sussex, who
was Lord Deputy under Mary, began again the old mischief of making
warlike attacks upon the Irish which he had not force or money
enough to render effectual. It was Mary and not a Protestant
sovereign who first sent English colonists to occupy the lands of
the turbulent Irish in King's County and Queen's County--then much
smaller than at present. A war of extermination at once began. The
natives massacred the intruders and the intruders massacred the
natives, till--far on in Elizabeth's reign--the natives had been all
slaughtered or expelled. There was thus introduced into the heart of
Ireland a body of Englishmen who, no doubt, were far more advanced
in the arts of life than the Irish around them, but who treated the
Irish with utter contempt, and put them to death without mercy.
17. =Elizabeth and Ireland. 1558-1578.=--From the time of the
settlement of King's and Queen's Counties all chance of a peaceable
arrangement was at an end. Elizabeth had not money enough to pay an
army capable of subduing Ireland, nor had the Irish tribes
sufficient trust in one another to unite in national resistance.
There was, in fact, no Irish nation. Even Shan O'Neill, the most
formidable Irish opponent of the English Government, who was
predominant in the North during the early part of Elizabeth's reign,
failed because he tried to reduce the other Ulster chiefs to
subjection to himself, and in =1567= was overthrown by the
O'Donnells, and not by an English army. When the English officials
gained power, they were apt to treat the Irish as if they were
vermin to be destroyed. New attempts at colonisation were made, but
the Irish drove out the colonists, and Ireland was in a more chaotic
state than if it had been left to its own disorder.
18. =The Landing at Smerwick, and the Desmond Rising.
1579-1583.=--Elizabeth's servants were the more anxious to subdue
Ireland by the process of exterminating Irishmen, because they
believed that the Irish would welcome Spaniards if they came to
establish a government in Ireland hostile to Elizabeth. On the other
hand, the English Catholics, and especially the English Catholic
clergy in exile on the Continent, fancied, wrongly, that the Irish
were fighting for the papacy, and not for tribal independence, or,
rather, for bare life, which tribal independence alone secured. In
=1579= Sir James Fitzmaurice landed with a few men at Dingle, under
the authority of the Pope, but was soon defeated and slain. In
=1580= a large number of Spaniards and Italians landed at Smerwick,
but was overpowered and slaughtered by Lord Grey, the Lord Deputy.
Then the Earl of Desmond, the head of a branch of the family of
Fitzgerald, all-powerful in Munster, rose. The insurrection was put
down, and Desmond himself slain, in =1583=. It is said that in
=1582= no less than 30,000 perished--mostly of starvation--in a
single year. It is an English witness who tells us of the poor
wretches who survived, that 'out of every corner of the woods and
glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs
could not bear them; they spoke like ghosts crying out of their
graves; they did eat the dead carrions, happy where they could find
them.'
19. =The Jesuits in England. 1580.=--In England the landing of a
papal force at Smerwick produced the greater alarm because Parma
(see p. 450) had been gaining ground in the Netherlands, and the
time might soon come when a Spanish army would be available for the
invasion of England. For the present what the Government feared was
any interruption to the process by which the new religion was
replacing the old. In =1571= there had been an act of Parliament in
answer to the Papal Bull of Deposition (see p. 442), declaring all
who brought Bulls into the country, and all who were themselves
reconciled to the see of Rome, or who reconciled others to be
traitors, but for a long time no use was made by Elizabeth of these
powers. The Catholic exiles, however, had witnessed with sorrow the
gradual decay of their religion in England, and in =1568= William
Allen, one of their number, had founded a college at Douai (removed
in =1578= to Reims) as a seminary for missionaries to England. It
was not long before seminary priests, as the missionaries were
called, began to land in England to revive the zeal of their
countrymen, but it was not till =1577= that one of them, Cuthbert
Mayne, was executed, technically for bringing in a copy of a Bull of
a trivial character, but really for maintaining that Catholics would
be justified in rising to assist a foreign force sent to reduce
England to obedience to the Papacy. There were, in fact, two rival
powers inconsistent with one another. If the Papal power was to
prevail, the Queen's authority must be got rid of. If the Queen's
power was to prevail, the Pope's authority must be got rid of. In
=1580= two Jesuits, Campion and Parsons, landed. They brought with
them an explanation of the Bull of Deposition, which practically
meant that no one need act on it till it was convenient to do so.
They went about making converts and strengthening the lukewarm in
the resolution to stand by their faith.
20. =The Recusancy Laws. 1581.=--Elizabeth in her dread of religious
strife had done her best to silence religious discussion and even
religious teaching. Men in an age of religious controversy are eager
to believe something. All the more vigorous of the Protestants were
at this time Puritans, and now the more vigorous of those who could
not be Puritans welcomed the Jesuits with joy. There were never many
Jesuits in England, but for a time they gave life and vigour to the
seminary priests who were not Jesuits. In =1581= Parliament, seeing
nothing in what had happened but a conspiracy against the Crown,
passed the first of the acts which became known as the Recusancy
laws. In addition to the penalties on reconciliation to Rome and the
introduction of Bulls, fines and imprisonment were to be inflicted
for hearing or saying mass, and fines upon lay recusants--that is to
say, persons who refused to go to church. Catholics were from this
time frequently subjected to torture to drive them to give
information which would lead to the apprehension of the priests.
Campion was arrested and executed after cruel torture; Parsons
escaped. If the Government and the Parliament did not see the whole
of the causes of the Jesuit revival, they were not wrong in seeing
that there was political danger. Campion was an enthusiast. Parsons
was a cool-headed intriguer, and he continued from the Continent to
direct the threads of a conspiracy which aimed at Elizabeth's life.
[Illustration: Hall of Burghley House, Northamptonshire, built about
1580: from Drummond's _Histories of Noble British Families_, vol.
i.]
21. =Growing Danger of Elizabeth. 1580-1584.=--Elizabeth was seldom
startled, but her ministers were the more frightened because the
power of Spain was growing. In =1580= Philip took possession of
Portugal and the Portuguese colonies, whilst in the Netherlands
Parma was steadily gaining ground. Elizabeth had long been nursing
the idea of the Alençon marriage (see p. 446), and in =1581= it
seemed as if she was in earnest about it. She entertained the Duke
at Greenwich, gave him a kiss and a ring, then changing her mind
sent him off to the Netherlands, where he hoped to be appointed by
the Dutch to the sovereignty of the independent states. In the
spring of =1582= a fanatic, Jaureguy, tried to murder the Prince of
Orange at Philip's instigation. Through the summer of that year
Parsons and Allen were plotting with Philip and the Duke of Guise,
for the assassination of Elizabeth, on the understanding that as
soon as Elizabeth had been killed, Guise was to send or lead an army
to invade England. They hoped that such an army would receive
assistance from Scotland, where the young James had become the tool
of a Catholic intriguer whom he made Duke of Lennox. Philip,
however, was too dilatory to succeed. In August James was seized by
some Protestant Lords, and Lennox was soon driven from the country.
In =1583= there was a renewal of the danger. The foolish Alençon,
wishing to carve out a principality for himself, made a violent
attack on Antwerp and other Flemish towns which had allied
themselves with him, and was consequently driven from the country;
whilst Parma, taking advantage of this split amongst his enemies,
conquered most of the towns--Antwerp, however, being still able to
resist. He now held part of the coast line, and a Spanish invasion
of England from the Netherlands once more became feasible. In
November =1583= a certain Francis Throgmorton, having been arrested
and racked, made known to Elizabeth the whole story of the intended
invasion of the army of Guise. In January =1584= she sent the
Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, out of England. On June 29 Balthazar
Gerard assassinated the Prince of Orange.
22. =The Association. 1584-1585.=--Those who had planned the murder
of the Prince of Orange were planning the murder of Elizabeth. In
their eyes she was a usurper, who by main force held her subjects
from all hope of salvation by keeping them in ignorance of the
teaching of the true Church, and they accordingly drew the inference
that it was lawful to murder her and to place Mary on her throne.
They did not see that they had to do with a nation and not with a
queen alone, and that, whether the nation was as yet Protestant or
not, it was heart and soul with Elizabeth against assassins and
invaders. In November =1584=, at the instigation of the Council, the
mass of Englishmen--irrespective of creed--bound themselves in an
association not only to defend the Queen, but, in case of her
murder, to put to death the person for whose sake the crime had been
committed--or, in other words, to send Mary to the grave instead of
to the throne. In =1585= this association, with considerable
modifications, was confirmed by Parliament. At the same time an act
was passed banishing all Jesuits and seminary priests, and directing
that they should be put to death if they returned.
23. =Growth of Philip's Power. 1584-1585.=--In the meantime Philip's
power was still growing. The wretched Alençon died in =1584=, and a
far distant cousin of the childless Henry III., Henry king of
Navarre, who was a Huguenot, became heir to the French throne. Guise
and the ardent Catholics formed themselves into a league to exclude
Huguenots from the succession, and placed themselves under the
direction of the king of Spain. A civil war broke out once more in
=1585=, and if the league should win (as at first seemed likely)
Philip would be able to dispose of the resources of France in
addition to his own. As Guise had now enough to do at home, Philip
took the invasion of England into his own hands. He had first to
extend his power in the Netherlands. In August the great port of
Antwerp surrendered to Parma. The Dutch had offered to make
Elizabeth their sovereign, and, though she had prudently refused,
she sent an army to their aid, but neutralised the gift by placing
the wretched Leicester at its head, and by giving him not a penny
wherewith to pay his men. In =1586=, after an attempt (after
Alençon's fashion) to seize the government for himself, Leicester
returned to England, having accomplished nothing. What Elizabeth did
not do was done by a crowd of young Englishmen who pressed over to
the Netherlands to fight as volunteers for Dutch freedom. The best
known of these was Sir Philip Sidney, whose head and heart alike
seemed to qualify him for a foremost place amongst the new
generation of Englishmen. Unhappily he was slain in battle near
Zutphen. As he lay dying he handed a cup of water untasted to
another wounded man. 'Thy necessity,' he said to him, 'is greater
than mine.' Parma took Zutphen, and the territory of the Dutch
Republic--the bulwark of England--was the smaller by its loss. By
sea England more than held her own, and in =1586= Drake returned
from a voyage to the West Indies laden with spoils.
24. =Babington's Plot, and the Trial of Mary Stuart. 1586.=--The
Spanish invasion being still delayed, a new plot for murdering
Elizabeth was formed. A number of young Catholics (of whom Anthony
Babington was the most prominent) had been allowed to remain at
Court by Elizabeth, who was perfectly fearless. Acting under the
instructions of a priest named Ballard, they now sought basely to
take advantage of their easy access to her person to assassinate
her. They were detected and executed, and Walsingham, the Secretary
of State who conducted the detective department of the government,
discovered, or said that he had discovered, evidence of Mary
Stuart's approving knowledge of the conspiracy. Elizabeth's servants
felt that there was but one way of saving the life of the queen, and
that was by taking the life of her whose existence made it worth
while to assassinate Elizabeth. Mary was brought to trial and
condemned to death on a charge of complicity in Babington's plot.
When Parliament met it petitioned Elizabeth to execute the sentence.
Elizabeth could not make up her mind. She knew that Mary's execution
would save herself and the country from enormous danger, but she
shrank from ordering the deed to be done. She signed the warrant for
Mary's death, and then asked Mary's gaoler Paulet to save her from
responsibility by murdering his prisoner. On Paulet's refusal she
continued her vacillations, till the Council authorised Davison,
Walsingham's colleague in the Secretaryship, to send off the
warrant without further orders.
25. =Execution of Mary Stuart. 1587.=--On February 8, =1587=, Mary
Stuart was beheaded at Fotheringhay. Elizabeth carried out to the
last the part which she had assumed, threw the blame on Davison,
dismissed him from her service, and fined him heavily. After Mary's
death the attack on England would have to be conducted in open day.
It would be no advantage to Philip and the Pope that Elizabeth
should be murdered if her place was to be taken, not by Mary, but by
Mary's Protestant son, James of Scotland.