the 'enterprise of England,' as the intended invasion was called, might
not be the easy thing which the seminary priests described it. The
seminary priests had said that so far as England was Protestant at all
it was Protestant only by the accident of its Government, that the
immense majority of the people were Catholic at heart and were thirsting
for a return to the fold, that on the first appearance of a Spanish army
of deliverance the whole edifice which Elizabeth had raised would
crumble to the ground. I suppose it is true that if the world had then
been advanced to its present point of progress, if there had been then
recognised a Divine right to rule in the numerical majority, even
without a Spanish army the seminary priests would have had their way.
Elizabeth's Parliaments were controlled by the municipalities of the
towns, and the towns were Protestant. A Parliament chosen by universal
suffrage and electoral districts would have sent Cecil and Walsingham
into private life or to the scaffold, replaced the Mass in the churches,
and reduced the Queen, if she had been left on the throne, into the
humble servant of the Pope and Philip. It would not perhaps have lasted,
but that, so far as I can judge, would have been the immediate result,
and instead of a Reformation we should have had the light come in the
shape of lightning. But I have often asked my Radical friends what is to
be done if out of every hundred enlightened voters two-thirds will give
their votes one way, but are afraid to fight, and the remaining third
will not only vote but will fight too if the poll goes against them?
Which has then the right to rule? I can tell them which will rule. The
brave and resolute minority will rule. Plato says that if one man was
stronger than all the rest of mankind he would rule all the rest of
mankind. It must be so, because there is no appeal. The majority must be
prepared to assert their Divine right with their right hands, or it will
go the way that other Divine rights have gone before. I will not believe
the world to have been so ill-constructed that there are rights which
cannot be enforced. It appears to me that the true right to rule in any
nation lies with those who are best and bravest, whether their numbers
are large or small; and three centuries ago the best and bravest part of
this English nation had determined, though they were but a third of it,
that Pope and Spaniard should be no masters of theirs. Imagination goes
for much in such excited times. To the imagination of Europe in the
sixteenth century the power of Spain appeared irresistible if she chose
to exert it. Heretic Dutchmen might rebel in a remote province, English
pirates might take liberties with Spanish traders, but the Prince of
Parma was making the Dutchmen feel their master at last. The pirates
were but so many wasps, with venom in their stings, but powerless to
affect the general tendencies of things. Except to the shrewder eyes of
such men as Santa Cruz the strength of the English at sea had been left
out of count in the calculations of the resources of Elizabeth's
Government. Suddenly a fleet of these same pirates, sent out, unassisted
by their sovereign, by the private impulse of a few individuals, had
insulted the sacred soil of Spain herself, sailed into Vigo, pillaged
the churches, taken anything that they required, and had gone away
unmolested. They had attacked, stormed, burnt, or held to ransom three
of Spain's proudest colonial cities, and had come home unfought with.
The Catholic conspirators had to recognise that they had a worse enemy
to deal with than Puritan controversialists or spoilt Court favourites.
The Protestant English mariners stood between them and their prey, and
had to be encountered on an element which did not bow to popes or
princes, before Mary Stuart was to wear Elizabeth's crown or Cardinal
Allen be enthroned at Canterbury. It was a revelation to all parties.
Elizabeth herself had not expected--perhaps had not wished--so signal a
success. War was now looked on as inevitable. The Spanish admirals
represented that the national honour required revenge for an injury so
open and so insolent. The Pope, who had been long goading the lethargic
Philip into action, believed that now at last he would be compelled to
move; and even Philip himself, enduring as he was, had been roused to
perceive that intrigues and conspiracies would serve his turn no
longer. He must put out his strength in earnest, or his own Spaniards
might turn upon him as unworthy of the crown of Isabella. Very
reluctantly he allowed the truth to be brought home to him. He had never
liked the thought of invading England. If he conquered it, he would not
be allowed to keep it. Mary Stuart would have to be made queen, and Mary
Stuart was part French, and might be wholly French. The burden of the
work would be thrown entirely on his shoulders, and his own reward was
to be the Church's blessing and the approval of his own
conscience--nothing else, so far as he could see. The Pope would recover
his annates, his Peter's pence, and his indulgence market.
If the thing was to be done, the Pope, it was clear, ought to pay part
of the cost, and this was what the Pope did not intend to do if he could
help it. The Pope was flattering himself that Drake's performance would
compel Spain to go to war with England whether he assisted or did not.
In this matter Philip attempted to undeceive his Holiness. He instructed
Olivarez, his ambassador at Rome, to tell the Pope that nothing had
been yet done to him by the English which he could not overlook, and
unless the Pope would come down with a handsome contribution peace he
would make. The Pope stormed and raged; he said he doubted whether
Philip was a true son of the Church at all; he flung plates and dishes
at the servants' heads at dinner. He said that if he gave Philip money
Philip would put it in his pocket and laugh at him. Not one maravedi
would he give till a Spanish army was actually landed on English shores,
and from this resolution he was not to be moved.
To Philip it was painfully certain that if he invaded and conquered
England the English Catholics would insist that he must make Mary Stuart
queen. He did not like Mary Stuart. He disapproved of her character. He
distrusted her promises. Spite of Jesuits and seminary priests, he
believed that she was still a Frenchwoman at heart, and a bad woman
besides. Yet something he must do for the outraged honour of Castile. He
concluded, in his slow way, that he would collect a fleet, the largest
and best-appointed that had ever floated on the sea. He would send or
lead it in person to the English Channel. He would command the situation
with an overwhelming force; and then would choose some course which
would be more convenient to himself than to his Holiness at Rome. On the
whole he was inclined to let Elizabeth continue queen, and forget and
forgive if she would put away her Walsinghams and her Drakes, and would
promise to be good for the future. If she remained obstinate his great
fleet would cover the passage of the Prince of Parma's army, and he
would then dictate his own terms in London.
LECTURE VII
ATTACK ON CADIZ
I recollect being told when a boy, on sending in a bad translation of
Horace, that I ought to remember that Horace was a man of intelligence
and did not write nonsense. The same caution should be borne in mind by
students of history. They see certain things done by kings and statesmen
which they believe they can interpret by assuming such persons to have
been knaves or idiots. Once an explanation given from the baser side of
human nature, they assume that it is necessarily the right one, and they
make their Horace into a fool without a misgiving that the folly may lie
elsewhere. Remarkable men and women have usually had some rational
motive for their conduct, which may be discovered, if we look for it
with our eyes open.
Nobody has suffered more from bad translators than Elizabeth. The
circumstances of Queen Elizabeth's birth, the traditions of her father,
the interests of England, and the sentiments of the party who had
sustained her claim to the succession, obliged her on coming to the
throne to renew the separation from the Papacy. The Church of England
was re-established on an Anglo-Catholic basis, which the rival factions
might interpret each in their own way. To allow more than one form of
public worship would have led in the heated temper of men's minds to
quarrels and civil wars. But conscience might be left free under outward
conformity, and those whom the Liturgy did not suit might use their own
ritual in their private houses. Elizabeth and her wise advisers believed
that if her subjects could be kept from fighting and killing one
another, and were not exasperated by outward displays of difference,
they would learn that righteousness of life was more important than
orthodoxy, and to estimate at their real value the rival dogmas of
theology. Had time permitted the experiment to have a fair trial, it
would perhaps have succeeded, but, unhappily for the Queen and for
England, the fire of controversy was still too hot under the ashes.
Protestants and Catholics had been taught to look on one another as
enemies of God, and were still reluctant to take each other's hands at
the bidding of an Act of Parliament. The more moderate of the Catholic
laity saw no difference so great between the English service and the
Mass as to force them to desert the churches where their fathers had
worshipped for centuries. They petitioned the Council of Trent for
permission to use the English Prayer Book; and had the Council
consented, religious dissension would have dissolved at last into an
innocent difference of opinion. But the Council and the Pope had
determined that there should be no compromise with heresy, and the
request was refused, though it was backed by Philip's ambassador in
London. The action of the Papacy obliged the Queen to leave the
Administration in the hands of Protestants, on whose loyalty she could
rely. As the struggle with the Reformation spread and deepened she was
compelled to assist indirectly the Protestant party in France and
Scotland. But she still adhered to her own principle; she refused to
put herself at the head of a Protestant League. She took no step without
keeping open a line of retreat on a contrary policy. She had Catholics
in her Privy Council who were pensioners of Spain. She filled her
household with Catholics, and many a time drove Burghley distracted by
listening to them at critical moments. Her constant effort was to disarm
the antagonism of the adherents of the old belief, by admitting them to
her confidence, and showing them that one part of her subjects was as
dear to her as another.
For ten years she went on struggling. For ten years she was proudly able
to say that during all that time no Catholic had suffered for his belief
either in purse or person. The advanced section of the Catholic clergy
was in despair. They saw the consciences of their flocks benumbed and
their faith growing lukewarm. They stirred up the rebellion of the
North. They persuaded Pius V. to force them to a sense of their duties
by declaring Elizabeth excommunicated. They sent their missionaries
through the English counties to recover sheep that were straying, and
teach the sin of submission to a sovereign whom the Pope had deposed.
Then had followed the Ridolfi plot, deliberately encouraged by the Pope
and Spain, which had compelled the Government to tighten the reins. One
conspiracy had followed another. Any means were held legitimate to rid
the world of an enemy of God. The Queen's character was murdered by the
foulest slanders, and a hundred daggers were sharpened to murder her
person. The King of Spain had not advised the excommunication, because
he knew that he would be expected to execute it, and he had other things
to do. When called on to act, he and Alva said that if the English
Catholics wanted Spanish help they must do something for themselves. To
do the priests justice, they were brave enough. What they did, and how
far they had succeeded in making the country disaffected, Father Parsons
has told you in the paper which I read to you in a former lecture.
Elizabeth refused to take care of herself. She would show no distrust.
She would not dismiss the Catholic ladies and gentlemen from the
household. She would allow no penal laws to be enforced against
Catholics as such. Repeated conspiracies to assassinate her were
detected and exposed, but she would take no warning. She would have no
bodyguard. The utmost that she would do was to allow the Jesuits and
seminary priests, who, by Parsons's own acknowledgment, were sowing
rebellion, to be banished the realm, and if they persisted in remaining
afterwards, to be treated as traitors. When executions are treated as
martyrdoms, candidates will never be wanting for the crown of glory, and
the flame only burnt the hotter. Tyburn and the quartering knife was a
horrid business, and Elizabeth sickened over it. She hated the severity
which she was compelled to exercise. Her name was defiled with the
grossest calumnies. She knew that she might be murdered any day. For
herself she was proudly indifferent; but her death would and must be
followed by a furious civil war. She told the Privy Council one day
after some stormy scene, that she would come back afterwards and amuse
herself with seeing the Queen of Scots making their heads fly.
Philip was weary of it too. He had enough to do in ruling his own
dominions without quarrelling for ever with his sister-in-law. He had
seen that she had subjects, few or many, who, if he struck, would strike
back again. English money and English volunteers were keeping alive the
war in the Netherlands. English privateers had plundered his gold ships,
destroyed his commerce, and burnt his West Indian cities--all this in
the interests of the Pope, who gave him fine words in plenty, but who,
when called on for money to help in the English conquest, only flung
about his dinner-plates. The Duke of Alva, while he was alive, and the
Prince of Parma, who commanded in the Netherlands in Alva's place,
advised peace if peace could be had on reasonable terms. If Elizabeth
would consent to withdraw her help from the Netherlands, and would allow
the English Catholics the tacit toleration with which her reign had
begun, they were of opinion, and Philip was of opinion too, that it
would be better to forgive Drake and St. Domingo, abandon Mary Stuart
and the seminary priests, and meddle no more with English internal
politics.
Tired with a condition which was neither war nor peace, tired with
hanging traitors and the endless problem of her sister of Scotland,
Elizabeth saw no reason for refusing offers which would leave her in
peace for the rest of her own life. Philip, it was said, would restore
the Mass in the churches in Holland. She might stipulate for such
liberty of conscience to the Holland Protestants as she was herself
willing to allow the English Catholics. She saw no reason why she should
insist on a liberty of public worship which she had herself forbidden at
home. She did not see why the Hollanders should be so precise about
hearing Mass. She said she would rather hear a thousand Masses herself
than have on her conscience the crimes committed for the Mass or against
it. She would not have her realm in perpetual torment for Mr. Cecil's
brothers in Christ.
This was Elizabeth's personal feeling. It could not be openly avowed.
The States might then surrender to Philip in despair, and obtain better
securities for their political liberties than she was ready to ask for
them. They might then join the Spaniards and become her mortal enemies.
But she had a high opinion of her own statecraft. Her Catholic friends
assured her that, once at peace with Philip, she would be safe from all
the world. At this moment accident revealed suddenly another chasm which
was opening unsuspected at her feet.
Both Philip and she were really wishing for peace. A treaty of peace
between the Catholic King and an excommunicated princess would end the
dream of a Catholic revolution in England. If the English peers and
gentry saw the censures of the Church set aside so lightly by the most
orthodox prince in Europe, Parsons and his friends would preach in vain
to them the obligation of rebellion. If this deadly negotiation was to
be broken off, a blow must be struck, and struck at once. There was not
a moment to be lost.
The enchanted prisoner at Tutbury was the sleeping and waking dream of
Catholic chivalry. The brave knight who would slay the dragon, deliver
Mary Stuart, and place her on the usurper's throne, would outdo Orlando
or St. George, and be sung of for ever as the noblest hero who had ever
wielded brand or spear. Many a young British heart had thrilled with
hope that for him the enterprise was reserved. One of these was a
certain Anthony Babington, a gentleman of some fortune in Derbyshire. A
seminary priest named Ballard, excited, like the rest, by the need of
action, and anxious to prevent the peace, fell in with this Babington,
and thought he had found the man for his work. Elizabeth dead and Mary
Stuart free, there would be no more talk of peace. A plot was easily
formed. Half a dozen gentlemen, five of them belonging to or connected
with Elizabeth's own household, were to shoot or stab her and escape in
the confusion; Babington was to make a dash on Mary Stuart's
prison-house and carry her off to some safe place; while Ballard
undertook to raise the Catholic peers and have her proclaimed queen.
Elizabeth once removed, it was supposed that they would not hesitate.
Parma would bring over the Spanish army from Dunkirk. The Protestants
would be paralysed. All would be begun and ended in a few weeks or even
days. The Catholic religion would be re-established and the hated heresy
would be trampled out for ever. Mary Stuart had been consulted and had
enthusiastically agreed.
This interesting lady had been lately profuse in her protestations of a
desire for reconciliation with her dearest sister. Elizabeth had almost
believed her sincere. Sick of the endless trouble with Mary Stuart and
her pretensions and schemings, she had intended that the Scotch queen
should be included in the treaty with Philip, with an implied
recognition of her right to succeed to the English throne after
Elizabeth's death. It had been necessary, however, to ascertain in some
way whether her protestations were sincere. A secret watch had been kept
over her correspondence, and Babington's letters and her own answers had
fallen into Walsingham's hands. There it all was in her own cipher, the
key to which had been betrayed by the carelessness of a confederate. The
six gentlemen who were to have rewarded Elizabeth's confidence by
killing her were easily recognised. They were seized, with Babington and
Ballard, when they imagined themselves on the eve of their triumph.
Babington flinched and confessed, and they were all hanged. Mary Stuart
herself had outworn compassion. Twice already on the discovery of her
earlier plots the House of Commons had petitioned for her execution. For
this last piece of treachery she was tried at Fotheringay before a
commission of Peers and Privy Councillors. She denied her letters, but
her complicity was proved beyond a doubt. Parliament was called, and a
third time insisted that the long drama should now be ended and loyal
England be allowed to breathe in peace. Elizabeth signed the warrant.
France, Spain, any other power in the world would have long since made
an end of a competitor so desperate and so incurable. Torn by many
feelings--natural pity, dread of the world's opinion--Elizabeth paused
before ordering the warrant to be executed. If nothing had been at stake
but her own life, she would have left the lady to weave fresh plots and
at last, perhaps, to succeed. If the nation's safety required an end to
be made with her, she felt it hard that the duty should be thrown on
herself. Where were all those eager champions who had signed the
Association Bond, who had talked so loudly? Could none of them be found
to recollect their oaths and take the law into their own hands?
Her Council, Burghley, and the rest, knowing her disposition and feeling
that it was life or death to English liberty, took the responsibility on
themselves. They sent the warrant down to Fotheringay at their own risk,
leaving their mistress to deny, if she pleased, that she had meant it to
be executed; and the wild career of Mary Stuart ended on the scaffold.
They knew what they were immediately doing. They knew that if treason
had a meaning Mary Stuart had brought her fate upon herself. They did
not, perhaps, realise the full effects that were to follow, or that with
Mary Stuart had vanished the last serious danger of a Catholic
insurrection in England; or perhaps they did realise it, and this was
what decided them to act.
I cannot dwell on this here. As long as there was a Catholic princess of
English blood to succeed to the throne, the allegiance of the Catholics
to Elizabeth had been easily shaken. If she was spared now, every one of
them would look on her as their future sovereign. To overthrow
Elizabeth might mean the loss of national independence. The Queen of
Scots gone, they were paralysed by divided counsels, and love of country
proved stronger than their creed.
What concerns us specially at present is the effect on the King of
Spain. The reluctance of Philip to undertake the English enterprise (the
'empresa,' as it was generally called) had arisen from a fear that when
it was accomplished he would lose the fruit of his labours. He could
never assure himself that if he placed Mary Stuart on the throne she
would not become eventually French. He now learnt that she had
bequeathed to himself her claims on the English succession. He had once
been titular King of England. He had pretensions of his own, as in the
descent from Edward III. The Jesuits, the Catholic enthusiasts
throughout Europe, assured him that if he would now take up the cause in
earnest, he might make England a province of Spain. There were still
difficulties. He might hope that the English Catholic laity would accept
him, but he could not be sure of it. He could not be sure that he would
have the support of the Pope. He continued, as the Condé de Feria said
scornfully of him, 'meando en vado,' a phrase which I cannot translate;
it meant hesitating when he ought to act. But he saw, or thought he saw,
that he could now take a stronger attitude towards Elizabeth as a
claimant to her throne. If the treaty of peace was to go forward, he
could raise his terms. He could insist on the restoration of the
Catholic religion in England. The States of the Low Countries had made
over five of their strongest towns to Elizabeth as the price of her
assistance. He could insist on her restoring them, not to the States,
but to himself. Could she be brought to consent to such an act of
perfidy, Parma and he both felt that the power would then be gone from
her, as effectually as Samson's when his locks were clipped by the
harlot, and they could leave her then, if it suited them, on a throne
which would have become a pillory--for the finger of scorn to point at.
With such a view before him it was more than ever necessary for Philip
to hurry forward the preparations which he had already commenced. The
more formidable he could make himself, the better able he would be to
frighten Elizabeth into submission.
Every dockyard in Spain was set to work, building galleons and
collecting stores. Santa Cruz would command. Philip was himself more
resolved than ever to accompany the expedition in person and dictate
from the English Channel the conditions of the pacification of Europe.
Secrecy was no longer attempted--indeed, was no longer possible. All
Latin Christendom was palpitating with expectation. At Lisbon, at Cadiz,
at Barcelona, at Naples, the shipwrights were busy night and day. The
sea was covered with vessels freighted with arms and provisions
streaming to the mouth of the Tagus. Catholic volunteers from all
nations flocked into the Peninsula, to take a share in the mighty
movement which was to decide the fate of the world, and bishops,
priests, and monks were set praying through the whole Latin Communion
that Heaven would protect its own cause.
Meantime the negotiations for peace continued, and Elizabeth, strange
to say, persisted in listening. She would not see what was plain to all
the world besides. The execution of the Queen of Scots lay on her spirit
and threw her back into the obstinate humour which had made Walsingham
so often despair of her safety. For two months after that scene at
Fotheringay she had refused to see Burghley, and would consult no one
but Sir James Crofts and her Spanish-tempered ladies. She knew that
Spain now intended that she should betray the towns in the Low
Countries, yet she was blind to the infamy which it would bring upon
her. She left her troops there without their wages to shiver into
mutiny. She named commissioners, with Sir James Crofts at their head, to
go to Ostend and treat with Parma, and if she had not resolved on an act
of treachery she at least played with the temptation, and persuaded
herself that if she chose to make over the towns to Philip, she would be
only restoring them to their lawful owner.