this document, that the English Jesuits and seminary priests were the
innocent missionaries of religion which the modern enemies of
Elizabeth's Government describe them. Father Parsons, the writer of it,
was himself the leader and director of the Jesuit invasion, and cannot
be supposed to have misrepresented the purpose for which they had been
sent over. The point of special interest is the account which he gives
of the state of parties and general feeling in the English people. Was
there that wide disposition to welcome an invading army in so large a
majority of the nation? The question is supposed to have been
triumphantly answered three years later, when it is asserted that the
difference of creed was forgotten, and Catholics and Protestants fought
side by side for the liberties of England. But, in the first place, the
circumstances were changed. The Queen of Scots no longer lived, and the
success of the Armada implied a foreign sovereign. But, next, the
experiment was not tried. The battle was fought at sea, by a fleet
four-fifths of which was composed of Protestant adventurers, fitted out
and manned by those zealous Puritans whose fidelity to the Queen Parsons
himself admitted. Lord Howard may have been an Anglo-Catholic; Roman
Catholic he never was; but he and his brother were the only loyalists in
the House of Howard. Arundel and the rest of his kindred were all that
Parsons claimed for them. How the country levies would have behaved had
Parma landed is still uncertain. It is likely that if the Spanish army
had gained a first success, there might have been some who would have
behaved as Sir William Stanley did. It is observable that Parsons
mentions Leicester and Huntingdon as the only powerful peers on whom the
Queen could rely, and Leicester, otherwise the unfittest man in her
dominions, she chose to command her land army.
The Duke of Alva and his master Philip, both of them distrusted
political priests. Political priests, they said, did not understand the
facts of things. Theological enthusiasm made them credulous of what they
wished. But Father Parsons's estimate is confirmed in all its parts by
the letters of Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in London. Mendoza was
himself a soldier, and his first duty was to learn the real truth. It
may be taken as certain that, with the Queen of Scots still alive to
succeed to the throne, at the time of the scene in the House of Commons,
with which I began this lecture, the great majority of the country party
disliked the Reformers, and were looking forward to the accession of a
Catholic sovereign, and as a consequence to a religious revolution.
It explains the difficulty of Elizabeth's position and the inconsistency
of her political action. Burghley, Walsingham, Mildmay, Knolles, the
elder Bacon, were believing Protestants, and would have had her put
herself openly at the head of a Protestant European league. They
believed that right and justice were on their side, that their side was
God's cause, as they called it, and that God would care for it.
Elizabeth had no such complete conviction. She disliked dogmatism,
Protestant as well as Catholic. She ridiculed Mr. Cecil and his brothers
in Christ. She thought, like Erasmus, that the articles of faith, for
which men were so eager to kill one another, were subjects which they
knew very little about, and that every man might think what he would on
such matters without injury to the commonwealth. To become 'head of the
name' would involve open war with the Catholic powers. War meant war
taxes, which more than half her subjects would resent or resist.
Religion as she understood it was a development of law--the law of moral
conduct. You could not have two laws in one country, and you could not
have two religions; but the outward form mattered comparatively little.
The people she ruled over were divided about these forms. They were
mainly fools, and if she let them each have chapels and churches of
their own, molehills would become mountains, and the congregations would
go from arguing into fighting. With Parliament to help her, therefore,
she established a Liturgy, in which those who wished to find the Mass
could hear the Mass, while those who wanted predestination and
justification by faith could find it in the Articles. Both could meet
under a common roof, and use a common service, if they would only be
reasonable. If they would not be reasonable, the Catholics might have
their own ritual in their own houses, and would not be interfered with.
This system continued for the first eleven years of Elizabeth's reign.
No Catholic, she could proudly say, had ever during that time been
molested for his belief. There was a small fine for non-attendance at
church, but even this was rarely levied, and by the confession of the
Jesuits the Queen's policy was succeeding too well. Sensible men began
to see that the differences of religion were not things to quarrel over.
Faith was growing languid. The elder generation, who had lived through
the Edward and Mary revolutions, were satisfied to be left undisturbed;
a new generation was growing up, with new ideas; and so the Church of
Rome bestirred itself. Elizabeth was excommunicated. The cycle began of
intrigue and conspiracy, assassination plots, and Jesuit invasions.
Punishments had to follow, and in spite of herself Elizabeth was driven
into what the Catholics could call religious persecution. Religious it
was not, for the seminary priests were missionaries of treason. But
religious it was made to appear. The English gentleman who wished to
remain loyal, without forfeiting his faith, was taught to see that a
sovereign under the Papal curse had no longer a claim on his allegiance.
If he disobeyed the Pope, he had ceased to be a member of the Church of
Christ. The Papal party grew in coherence, while, opposed to them as
their purpose came in view, the Protestants, who at first had been
inclined to Lutheranism, adopted the deeper and sterner creed of Calvin
and Geneva. The memories of the Marian cruelties revived again. They saw
themselves threatened with a return to stake and fagot. They closed
their ranks and resolved to die rather than submit again to Antichrist.
They might be inferior in numbers. A _plébiscite_ in England at that
moment would have sent Burghley and Walsingham to the scaffold. But the
Lord could save by few as well as by many. Judah had but two tribes out
of the twelve, but the words of the men of Judah were fiercer than the
words of Israel.
One great mistake had been made by Parsons. He could not estimate what
he could not understand. He admitted that the inhabitants of the towns
were mainly heretic--London, Bristol, Plymouth, and the rest--but he
despised them as merchants, craftsmen, mean persons who had no heart to
fight in them. Nothing is more remarkable in the history of the
sixteenth century than the effect of Calvinism in levelling distinctions
of rank and in steeling and ennobling the character of common men. In
Scotland, in the Low Countries, in France, there was the same
phenomenon. In Scotland, the Kirk was the creation of the preachers and
the people, and peasants and workmen dared to stand in the field against
belted knights and barons, who had trampled on their fathers for
centuries. The artisans of the Low Countries had for twenty years defied
the whole power of Spain. The Huguenots were not a fifth part of the
French nation, yet defeat could never dishearten them. Again and again
they forced Crown and nobles to make terms with them. It was the same in
England. The allegiance to their feudal leaders dissolved into a higher
obligation to the King of kings, whose elect they believed themselves to
be. Election to them was not a theological phantasm, but an enlistment
in the army of God. A little flock they might be, but they were a
dangerous people to deal with, most of all in the towns on the sea. The
sea was the element of the Reformers. The Popes had no jurisdiction over
the winds and waves. Rochelle was the citadel of the Huguenots. The
English merchants and mariners had wrongs of their own, perpetually
renewed, which fed the bitterness of their indignation. Touch where they
would in Spanish ports, the inquisitor's hand was on their ships' crews,
and the crews, unless they denied their faith, were handed over to the
stake or the galleys. The Calvinists are accused of intolerance. I fancy
that even in these humane and enlightened days we should not be very
tolerant if the King of Dahomey were to burn every European visitor to
his dominions who would not worship Mumbo Jumbo. The Duke of Alva was
not very merciful to heretics, but he tried to bridle the zeal of the
Holy Office in burning the English seamen. Even Philip himself
remonstrated. It was to no purpose. The Holy Office said they would
think about it, but concluded to go on. I am not the least surprised if
the English seamen were intolerant. I should be very much surprised if
they had not been. The Queen could not protect them. They had to protect
themselves as they could, and make Spanish vessels, when they could
catch them, pay for the iniquities of their rulers.
With such a temper rising on both sides, Elizabeth's policy had but a
poor chance. She still hoped that the better sense of mankind would keep
the doctrinal enthusiasts in order. Elizabeth wished her subjects would
be content to live together in unity of spirit, if not in unity of
theory, in the bond of peace, not hatred, in righteousness of life, not
in orthodoxy preached by stake and gibbet. She was content to wait and
to persevere. She refused to declare war. War would tear the world in
pieces. She knew her danger. She knew that she was in constant peril of
assassination. She knew that if the Protestants were crushed in
Scotland, in France, and in the Low Countries, her own turn would
follow. To protect insurgents avowedly would be to justify insurrection
against herself. But what she would not do openly she would do secretly.
What she would not do herself she let her subjects do. Thousands of
English volunteers fought in Flanders for the States, and in France for
the Huguenots. When the English Treasury was shut to the entreaties of
Coligny or William of Orange the London citizens untied their
purse-strings. Her friends in Scotland fared ill. They were encouraged
by promises which were not observed, because to observe them might bring
on war. They committed themselves for her sake. They fell one after
another--Murray, Morton, Gowrie--into bloody graves. Others took their
places and struggled on. The Scotch Reformation was saved. Scotland was
not allowed to open its arms to an invading army to strike England
across the Border. But this was held to be their sufficient recompense.
They cared for their cause as well as for the English Queen, and they
had their reward. If they saved her they saved their own country. She
too did not lie on a bed of roses. To prevent open war she was exposing
her own life to the assassin. At any moment a pistol-shot or a stab with
a dagger might add Elizabeth to the list of victims. She knew it, yet
she went on upon her own policy, and faced in her person her own share
of the risk. One thing only she did. If she would not defend her friends
and her subjects as Queen of England, she left them free to defend
themselves. She allowed traitors to be hanged when they were caught at
their work. She allowed the merchants to fit out their privateer fleets,
to defend at their own cost the shores of England, and to teach the
Spaniards to fear their vengeance.
But how long was all this to last? How long were loyal citizens to feel
that they were living over a loaded mine?--throughout their own country,
throughout the Continent, at Rome and at Madrid, at Brussels and at
Paris, a legion of conspirators were driving their shafts under the
English commonwealth. The Queen might be indifferent to her own danger,
but on the Queen's life hung the peace of the whole realm. A stroke of a
poniard, a touch of a trigger, and swords would be flying from their
scabbards in every county; England would become, like France, one wild
scene of anarchy and civil war. No successor had been named. The Queen
refused to hear a successor declared. Mary Stuart's hand had been in
every plot since she crossed the Border. Twice the House of Commons had
petitioned for her execution. Elizabeth would neither touch her life nor
allow her hopes of the crown to be taken from her. The Bond of
Association was but a remedy of despair, and the Act of Parliament would
have passed for little in the tempest which would immediately rise. The
agony reached a height when the fatal news came from the Netherlands
that there at last assassination had done its work. The Prince of
Orange, after many failures, had been finished, and a libel was found in
the Palace at Westminster exhorting the ladies of the household to
provide a Judith among themselves to rid the world of the English
Holofernes.
One part of Elizabeth's subjects, at any rate, were not disposed to sit
down in patience under the eternal nightmare. From Spain was to come the
army of deliverance for which the Jesuits were so passionately longing.
To the Spaniards the Pope was looking for the execution of the Bull of
Deposition. Father Parsons had left out of his estimate the Protestant
adventurers of London and Plymouth, who, besides their creed and their
patriotism, had their private wrongs to revenge. Philip might talk of
peace, and perhaps in weariness might at times seriously wish for it;
but between the Englishmen whose life was on the ocean and the Spanish
Inquisition, which had burned so many of them, there was no peace
possible. To them, Spain was the natural enemy. Among the daring spirits
who had sailed with Drake round the globe, who had waylaid the Spanish
gold ships, and startled the world with their exploits, the joy of whose
lives had been to fight Spaniards wherever they could meet with them,
there was but one wish--for an honest open war. The great galleons were
to them no objects of terror. The Spanish naval power seemed to them a
'Colossus stuffed with clouts.' They were Protestants all of them, but
their theology was rather practical than speculative. If Italians and
Spaniards chose to believe in the Mass, it was not any affair of theirs.
Their quarrel was with the insolent pretence of Catholics to force their
creed on others with sword and cannon. The spirit which was working in
them was the genius of freedom. On their own element they felt that
they could be the spiritual tyrants' masters. But as things were going,
rebellion was likely to break out at home; their homesteads might be
burning, their country overrun with the Prince of Parma's army, the
Inquisition at their own doors, and a Catholic sovereign bringing back
the fagots of Smithfield.
The Reformation at its origin was no introduction of novel heresies. It
was a revolt of the laity of Europe against the profligacy and avarice
of the clergy. The popes and cardinals pretended to be the
representatives of Heaven. When called to account for abuse of their
powers, they had behaved precisely as mere corrupt human kings and
aristocracies behave. They had intrigued; they had excommunicated; they
had set nation against nation, sovereigns against their subjects; they
had encouraged assassination; they had made themselves infamous by
horrid massacres, and had taught one half of foolish Christendom to hate
the other. The hearts of the poor English seamen whose comrades had been
burnt at Seville to make a Spanish holiday, thrilled with a sacred
determination to end such scenes. The purpose that was in them broke
into a wild war-music, as the wind harp swells and screams under the
breath of the storm. I found in the Record Office an unsigned letter of
some inspired old sea-dog, written in a bold round hand and addressed to
Elizabeth. The ships' companies which in summer served in Philip's
men-of-war went in winter in thousands to catch cod on the Banks of
Newfoundland. 'Give me five vessels,' the writer said, 'and I will go
out and sink them all, and the galleons shall rot in Cadiz Harbour for
want of hands to sail them. But decide, Madam, and decide quickly. Time
flies, and will not return. _The wings of man's life are plumed with the
feathers of death._'
The Queen did not decide. The five ships were not sent, and the poor
Castilian sailors caught their cod in peace. But in spite of herself
Elizabeth was driven forward by the tendencies of things. The death of
the Prince of Orange left the States without a Government. The Prince of
Parma was pressing them hard. Without a leader they were lost. They
offered themselves to Elizabeth, to be incorporated in the English
Empire. They said that if she refused they must either submit to Spain
or become provinces of France. The Netherlands, whether Spanish or
French, would be equally dangerous to England. The Netherlands once
brought back under the Pope, England's turn would come next; while to
accept the proposal meant instant and desperate war, both with France
and Spain too--for France would never allow England again to gain a foot
on the Continent. Elizabeth knew not what to do. She would and she would
not. She did not accept; she did not refuse. It was neither No nor Yes.
Philip, who was as fond of indirect ways as herself, proposed to quicken
her irresolution.
The harvest had failed in Galicia, and the population were starving.
England grew more corn than she wanted, and, under a special promise
that the crews should not be molested, a fleet of corn-traders had gone
with cargoes of grain to Coruña, Bilbao, and Santander. The King of
Spain, on hearing that Elizabeth was treating with the States, issued a
sudden order to seize the vessels, confiscate the cargoes, and imprison
the men. The order was executed. One English ship only was lucky enough
to escape by the adroitness of her commander. The _Primrose_, of London,
lay in Bilbao Roads with a captain and fifteen hands. The mayor, on
receiving the order, came on board to look over the ship. He then went
on shore for a sufficient force to carry out the seizure. After he was
gone the captain heard of the fate which was intended for him. The mayor
returned with two boatloads of soldiers, stepped up the ladder, touched
the captain on the shoulder, and told him he was a prisoner. The
Englishmen snatched pike and cutlass, pistol and battleaxe, killed seven
or eight of the Spanish boarders, threw the rest overboard, and flung
stones on them as they scrambled into their boats. The mayor, who had
fallen into the sea, caught a rope and was hauled up when the fight was
over. The cable was cut, the sails hoisted, and in a few minutes the
_Primrose_ was under way for England, with the mayor of Bilbao below the
hatches. No second vessel got away. If Philip had meant to frighten
Elizabeth he could not have taken a worse means of doing it, for he had
exasperated that particular part of the English population which was
least afraid of him. He had broken faith besides, and had seized some
hundreds of merchants and sailors who had gone merely to relieve Spanish
distress. Elizabeth, as usual, would not act herself. She sent no ships
from her own navy to demand reparation; but she gave the adventurers a
free hand. The London and Plymouth citizens determined to read Spain a
lesson which should make an impression. They had the worst fears for the
fate of the prisoners; but if they could not save, they could avenge
them. Sir Francis Drake, who wished for nothing better than to be at
work again, volunteered his services, and a fleet was collected at
Plymouth of twenty-five sail, every one of them fitted out by private
enterprise. No finer armament, certainly no better-equipped armament,
ever left the English shores. The expenses were, of course, enormous. Of
seamen and soldiers there were between two and three thousand. Drake's
name was worth an army. The cost was to be recovered out of the
expedition somehow; the Spaniards were to be made to pay for it; but how
or when was left to Drake's judgment. This time there was no second in
command sent by the friends of Spain to hang upon his arm. By universal
consent he had the absolute command. His instructions were merely to
inquire at Spanish ports into the meaning of the arrest. Beyond that he
was left to go where he pleased and do what he pleased on his own
responsibility. The Queen said frankly that if it proved convenient she
intended to disown him. Drake had no objection to being disowned, so he
could teach the Spaniards to be more careful how they handled
Englishmen. What came of it will be the subject of the next lecture.
Father Parsons said the Protestant traders of England had grown
effeminate and dared not fight. In the ashes of their own smoking cities
the Spaniards had to learn that Father Parsons had misread his
countrymen. If Drake had been given to heroics he might have left
Virgil's lines inscribed above the broken arms of Castile at St.
Domingo:
En ego victa situ quam veri effeta senectus
Arma inter regum falsa formidine ludit:
Respice ad hæc.
LECTURE VI
THE GREAT EXPEDITION TO THE WEST INDIES
Queen Elizabeth and her brother-in-law of Spain were reluctant champions
of opposing principles. In themselves they had no wish to quarrel, but
each was driven forward by fate and circumstance--Philip by the genius
of the Catholic religion, Elizabeth by the enthusiasts for freedom and
by the advice of statesmen who saw no safety for her except in daring.
Both wished for peace, and refused to see that peace was impossible; but
both were compelled to yield to their subjects' eagerness. Philip had to
threaten England with invasion; Elizabeth had to show Philip that
England had a long arm, which Spanish wisdom would do well to fear. It
was a singular position. Philip had outraged orthodoxy and dared the
anger of Rome by maintaining an ambassador at Elizabeth's Court after
her excommunication. He had laboured for a reconciliation with a
sincerity which his secret letters make it impossible to doubt. He had
condescended even to sue for it, in spite of Drake and the voyage of the
_Pelican_; yet he had helped the Pope to set Ireland in a flame. He had
encouraged Elizabeth's Catholic subjects in conspiracy after conspiracy.
He had approved of attempts to dispose of her as he had disposed of the
Prince of Orange. Elizabeth had retaliated, though with half a heart, by
letting her soldiers volunteer into the service of the revolted
Netherlands, by permitting English privateers to plunder the Spanish
colonies, seize the gold ships, and revenge their own wrongs. Each,
perhaps, had wished to show the other what an open war would cost them
both, and each drew back when war appeared inevitable.