Edward and Mary gives an impression merely that he was an exceedingly
astute young man with no principles to speak of. If so, that view must
be corrected. He valued himself on his own complete integrity, and
would have done nothing which he recognised as inconsistent therewith.
He had principles, but not enthusiasms. In politics, as in religion,
he had his own opinions, but in both he admitted a very large body
of _adiaphora_, things which were not questions of principle, though
regarded as such by persons afflicted with enthusiasms. On all such
matters, passive or even active conformity to the policy of _de
facto_ rulers was permissible. He was ready to go to Mass, but not to
take a part in the suppression of Protestantism. He would assent to
Northumberland’s plot, but he would not further it. His integrity drew
a line--lower than a person of finer moral susceptibilities would have
drawn it, but with sufficient firmness and decision, and higher than
most of his more prominent contemporaries. He did not feel called upon
to swim against a stream which would overwhelm him if he did so; but
he made for a backwater. It is often difficult to judge when and where
courage becomes rashness, and prudence cowardice. On the whole, he was
more inclined to be too prudent than too bold; but it was not because
he lacked courage. His conduct might on occasion, though rarely, be
charged as disloyal; it could never fairly be called treacherous. He
was convinced that as a general rule honesty is the best policy, and
justice is the best policy; but in the exceptional cases where he
thought they were not, he chose--the best policy. The principles of
his mistress were the same; but she deviated from the mean of resolute
caution more markedly and more erratically than her minister; she was
more readily rash and more easily frightened; her criterion of justice
was lax, and her sense of honesty very nearly non-existent.
There was this very important difference between the state of affairs
on Queen Elizabeth’s accession and their position between 1546 and
1558. Hitherto a statesman, even if perfectly secure of power, would
still have had a difficult course to steer; but security being wanting,
the lack of it was the gravest of all the difficulties. The course of
safety now was not less intricate; but, in spite of appearances, there
was no longer the same risk of incalculable irregular forces wrecking
the ship. To retain a useful illustration or analogy; it was one thing
to be responsible for bringing the ship home “through billows and
through gales,” and another to carry her through a narrow and devious
channel infested with reefs and sandbanks, in fair weather. The pilot
who judged that he knew every inch of the reefs and sandbanks might
feel that the business was an anxious one; to the less discerning
passenger, he would often seem to be heading his vessel straight for
the rocks; but the pilot himself would not feel any fear of finding
himself helpless. As long as he made no mistakes he would be safe; and
if he made mistakes, it would be his own fault.
After the event, when the developments of a particular situation have
taken place, it is always difficult to realise the aspect the situation
itself presented to the statesman who had to deal with it. Still, the
attempt has to be made.
Almost from time immemorial until the reign of Henry VIII. antagonism
between England and France was traditional; through great part of
that period, alliance between England and the House of Burgundy had
also been traditional, being largely based on the immense importance
of the commercial intercourse between the Low Countries and England.
During Henry VIII.’s reign, Wolsey and the king had broken away from
the theory of animosity to France, but neither of them had held the
Burgundian friendship cheap, and popular sentiment had lost very
little of its anti-Gallic flavour. Further, we are apt not to bear in
mind that, for forty years past, Spain, Burgundy, and the Empire had
been combined under one head; the importance of Burgundy as a factor
in the relations with Charles escapes our attention. More or less
unconsciously, we think almost exclusively of France and the Empire; as
in the coming period we think almost exclusively of France and Spain.
Now in 1558 the dominions of Charles V. were divided between his
brother who became Emperor and his son who was lord of Spain and
Burgundy. Philip, not the Emperor, is the rival of the French monarchy.
The old grounds for seeking friendship with Philip as lord of
Burgundy remain. The new reasons for hostility to Philip as King of
Spain have not yet developed. The reigning Pope had been elected by
French influence. The Council of Trent had not yet defined permanently
the line of cleavage between so-called Catholics and Protestants;
Philip had not assumed the position of the Church’s champion and the
scourge of heretics; his influence in England was understood to have
been exerted, so far as it was exercised at all, in mitigation of
persecution.
On the other hand, antagonism between French and English interests
was acute. England, drawn into a French war in Mary’s reign, had just
lost her last foothold on French soil--Calais, which she had held
for three hundred years; and though the loss might not be of great
political or strategical consequence, its importance was magnified
by popular sentiment. But apart from this: the young Queen of Scots
had married the French Dauphin, only in this same year; and as a mere
question of legitimacy, there was no possible doubt that her title to
the throne of England was very much better than that of Elizabeth, who
had been declared illegitimate by the English Courts of Justice, which
judgment had never been formally reversed. The natural outcome of this
marriage would be to bind France and Scotland together in all and more
than all the intimacy of that ancient alliance between them which for
three centuries had been a thorn in the side of English kings. Beyond
that, the future Queen of France and Scotland would have a very much
more tenable claim to the throne of England than ever an English
king had had to the throne of France. Moreover, there was a special
danger threatening under the existing circumstances. Mary was half a
Guise by birth; her Guise mother was now Regent in Scotland; she was
almost wholly Guise by breeding. The presumption was enormous that the
ascendency of that powerful and ambitious family in France and their
influence in Scotland would become more dominant than ever; the Guises
were strongly anti-English, and it was the head of that house who
had just achieved the galling triumph at Calais; while the fanatical
Catholics looked to them as their leaders. A more active animosity,
therefore, towards Protestantism was to be anticipated from France than
from Spain.
The Spanish Minister in England, naturally enough under these
conditions, took it for granted that the countenance of Philip was what
the new Government would most urgently need--that he would merely have
to speak and his instructions would be humbly obeyed. To his extreme
astonishment, he discovered that nothing was further from Cecil’s mind.
Cecil and his mistress signified quite clearly that they would judge
for themselves whether they would take his advice or not. At any rate,
they were going to do a good many things entirely regardless of their
being in flat opposition to his wishes. The Spaniard declared to his
master that Queen and Minister were rushing headlong to destruction;
but they were doing nothing of the kind. What Cecil saw was that
Philip could not at any price afford to withdraw his countenance from
Elizabeth; because the only alternative to Elizabeth was Mary Stewart,
and in that case Mary would unite the crowns of France, England, and
Scotland. If France moved against England to the danger of Elizabeth’s
throne, Philip would have no choice but to interfere on behalf of the
Queen--she need not buy support which he could not afford to withhold.
He might call the tune, but she need not dance to it unless it suited
her.
Within a short period, the French King, Henry II., was mortally injured
in a tournament. The Dauphin succeeded, and his wife became Queen of
France, as well as of Scotland. Then the situation was modified by the
death of Francis and the accession of Charles IX. to the throne, and to
power of the Queen-Mother, Catherine de Medici, and the middle party
who came to be known by the title of the “Politiques.” With them the
Guises were out of favour, and could no longer count on wielding the
power of France to advance Mary’s interests; yet their popularity and
strength in the country were still sufficient to keep the chance of
their recovering their ascendency as a menace which Philip could not
disregard. The change, in short, cut both ways: it was not quite so
imperative for Philip that he should support Elizabeth, but then it was
not so necessary for Elizabeth to have his support.
Thus throughout the first decade of the reign Cecil calculated with
perfect accuracy that Philip would not attack Elizabeth, whatever she
might do, because he could not risk the accession of Mary Stewart in
her place; and that France would not make a direct attack, because that
would compel the intervention of Philip. Hence he could go his own way
safely in dealing both with domestic affairs and with the everlasting
problem of Scotland. There was another matter, that of the Queen’s
marriage, in which Cecil might judge and advise as he thought fit, but
the Queen herself never had the slightest intention of following any
but her own counsel, or of revealing even to her most trusted minister
what that counsel might really be.
IV
DOMESTIC AND SCOTTISH POLICY
Now, as concerned domestic affairs, two matters were of first-rate
importance. One was religion; the other finance.
It was evidently quite necessary that a definite religious settlement
should be arrived at, and that it must be one in which there was a
reasonable prospect of the majority of Englishmen concurring. There
were fervent adherents of the Papacy as restored by Mary; these were
not very numerous. There were fervent adherents of extreme Swiss
doctrines, Calvinistic or Zwinglian; these were also few. There were
many who, like Gardiner in early days, had no love for the Papacy, but
clung to traditional doctrines and ritual; there were not quite so
many who might be called perhaps moderately evangelical; there were a
very great many more who troubled their heads very little one way or
another, and were what we should describe as High or Low, pretty much
according to their environment. The extreme reformers had very nearly
but not quite succeeded in carrying the day during Northumberland’s
ascendency; the extreme Catholics had just had their turn under Mary.
The extremists on both sides were intolerant, and it was quite obvious
that the triumph of either would drive many moderates into joining
the other extreme, and would keep the country in a state of violent
unrest, or, at the best, of sullen submission. The experiment of
trying to maintain traditional doctrine and ritual with the minimum
of modification, while repudiating the Roman authority, had been
tried under Henry; and it was fairly clear that a simple return to
Henry’s standards was impracticable. The course which Cecil laid down
was to adopt a compromise in which the great majority could at any
rate acquiesce; a compromise which, while insisting on conformity,
allowed of a very considerable latitude of interpretation; which would
still pass, in many quarters where it did not satisfy; which was in
short politically adequate. Cecil himself would probably have had no
quite insuperable objection either to attending Mass or to sitting at
Communion; but a compromise which allowed of either course would also
probably have found a less general acceptance than one which excluded
both.
Hardly less important was the restoration of financial stability.
Twelve years before, King Henry had left matters in sufficiently
ill-plight. The Government could not, perhaps, be held responsible
for the existence of severe agricultural depression; but, for its
aggravation, the newly developed class of landlords was largely to
blame, while no one but Somerset had attempted to hold them in check.
In the general ferment, commercial honesty had been on the downgrade.
Among financial officials, corruption had been rampant; and Henry set
the example of one of the grossest forms of dishonesty by debasing
the coinage, paying his debts, when he did pay them, in the debased
coin. Hence in commercial circles credit was bad, while abroad the
national credit was exceedingly low; and the national exchequer was
almost empty. Through the last two reigns, matters had gone from bad
to worse. Cecil took the finances in hand with solid systematic common
sense. A rigid supervision of expenditure and stoppage of waste took
the place of the prevailing laxity. Men of probity were employed by
the Government as its financial agents. The debased coins were called
in, and the new currency issued was of a standard which had never been
surpassed. Loans were repaid with punctuality, and debts discharged.
Almost at once, it followed that fresh loans could be raised at
reasonable rates of interest, instead of at the ruinous charges which
Edward and Mary had to pay; before long, it was hardly necessary to
seek for them abroad--the merchants at home were ready and willing to
come forward. Confidence was restored under a steady Government.
Cecil’s economy may have verged on parsimony, and his mistress was as
sharp in money matters as her grandfather; hard things are always said
of a Government which takes Peace and Retrenchment for its motto. But
peace and retrenchment were a stern necessity, and in many respects
the parsimony has been exaggerated; at any rate, the expenditure
was thoroughly well directed. Later in the reign it would probably
have been sound policy to spend more, particularly in Ireland, where
efficiency was sacrificed to economy; but outside of Ireland the nation
got good value for every penny of outlay. In finance, as in other
matters, Cecil habitually followed the maxims of caution. Consistently
with this attitude, we do not find him striking out new economic
theories. He believed, as nearly every one believed three hundred years
ago, that new industries had very little chance of being established
without the artificial stimulus of monopolies and patents to prevent
competition--a system which always appeals most convincingly to the
monopolist, but less convincingly to the consumer and the would-be
competitor, as Elizabeth found before the end of the reign. Whatever
we may think of the methods adopted to foster and encourage trade
and the development of new industries, Cecil is at least entitled to
full credit for recognising that this was the direction in which the
compensation and the remedy for agricultural depression were to be
sought.
The subject of the secretary’s financial reforms has carried us on to
a general account of principles which were only gradually illustrated
in the progress of the reign. The third question which engaged his
immediate activities on Elizabeth’s accession was the policy to be
followed in dealing with Scotland.
Traditionally, Scotland was the friend of France and the enemy of
England; from which it followed in a general way that Scottish
malcontents habitually looked to England for open or secret
countenance, and very commonly got it. To foster divisions in Scotland
was one way of preventing her from becoming too actively dangerous a
neighbour, and the plan had been very sedulously followed, especially
throughout the reign of Henry VIII. The Scottish clerics since the
days of Bruce had always been strongly anti-English, a term which was
almost equivalent to Nationalist. Both James and David Beton had been
especially hostile; while, during the progress of the Reformation, the
Cardinal was a rigorous and cruel persecutor of heresy. Henry, with
all his pride of orthodoxy, had no objection to heresy in the northern
kingdom, where Protestant and mal-content were nearly synonymous. Had
England devoted her attention simply to giving the Protestants such
support as would have secured them a predominance conditional on the
support being maintained, diplomacy might have achieved the union of
the crowns by the marriage of King Edward to his cousin of Scotland;
but Henry and Somerset between them, by the re-assertion of English
sovereignty and by the appeal to arms, had roused in Protestants as
well as Catholics the nationalist sentiment which would not endure
subjection to England at any price. The child-queen had been carried
off to France and betrothed to the Dauphin; and in the years that
passed before the actual marriage the Catholics had held the mastery;
Mary of Guise was regent, and her power was maintained by French
support and French troops. Thus the Scots began to realise that there
was a danger, when their own Queen should be Queen of France also, that
Scotland might become an appendage of France. Scotland was no more
willing to be subject to France than to be subject to England.
Thus it was again open to Cecil to adopt the policy, not of exercising
a direct English domination, but of establishing a Protestant
domination, which would in the nature of things be favourable to
England and unfavourable to France--a policy which fitted in precisely
with that of establishing a comprehensive Protestantism in England,
to which he was committed on other counts. He could rely, as we have
already noted, on the fact that Philip, however reluctant, would be
compelled to check aggressive interference on the part of France, if
carried beyond the limit at which England could cope with it unaided.
This, therefore, was the keynote of his Scottish policy--to avoid the
blunder of seeming to threaten Scotland’s independence, to maintain
friendly relations with the Scottish Protestants, and to help them to a
predominance which should yet depend for its security on the goodwill
of England.
It was not till December 1560, that the death of Francis deprived
Mary of the French crown. During these first two years of Elizabeth’s
reign, Philip was kept in play partly by a pretence of negotiations
for the Queen’s marriage to his kinsman the Austrian Archduke Charles;
while the Scottish Protestants, or Lords of the Congregation, as their
chiefs were called, were flattered by the idea of her marriage with
James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, who then stood next in succession to the
Scottish throne--a scheme of which the real motive was the possibility
of dethroning Mary in his favour. But the real business was to get
the French out of Scotland. Cecil at last manœuvred his mistress
into sending armed assistance to the Lords of the Congregation; the
French garrison was cooped up in Leith; in May 1560, Sir William went
to Scotland himself to negotiate; in June Mary of Guise died, and in
the beginning of July the Treaty of Edinburgh secured the Protestant
ascendency in Scotland, and removed the French garrison for ever.
Although Queen Mary refused to ratify the instrument, consistently
declining formally to withdraw her claim to the throne of England
unless she were equally formally recognised as heir presumptive,
Cecil’s great object was achieved, in spite of Elizabeth’s vacillations.
Thirteen months later, Mary, an eighteen-year-old widow, landed in
Scotland. During the seven troublous years she passed in that country,
Cecil’s policy remained the same--to support Scottish Protestantism, to
prevent Mary from making a marriage that would be dangerous to England.
It is hardly necessary to say that the methods were never qualified
by any touch of magnanimity--that the interests of England solely were
considered, those of Scotland disregarded. How much of what went on, on
the part of England, was Cecil’s doing and how much Elizabeth’s, cannot
well be decided. They may or may not have intended the Darnley marriage
to take place. They did encourage Moray’s revolt on that occasion, and
then repudiate responsibility for it. They knew something--how much is
uncertain--about the Rizzio murder, before it took place. Generally,
we can be tolerably confident that Cecil, unfettered, would have given
Moray a more stable support throughout than it pleased his mistress to
permit. It was Elizabeth’s standing rule to object vehemently to being
considered as having committed herself to anything by any words or acts
in which she might have indulged.
V
CECIL AND PROTESTANTISM
Cecil had been successful in turning the French out of Scotland.
He held steadily, and the queen held unsteadily, to the conviction
that Spain would not move against England for two reasons--one, that
the triumph of the Scots queen would be too advantageous to France;
the other, that the existing commercial war with the Low Countries,
while bad enough for English trade, was threatening to ruin Flanders,
and could hardly fail to do so if any further burden were added.
France, on the other hand, was not likely to be actively dangerous
independently, so long as neither Catholics nor Huguenots could lay
the opposing party prostrate. Nevertheless, Cecil had to be constantly
on guard against the risk of a Catholic combination. If Mary placed
herself under the ægis of Philip, and the Guises and their following
got his active support in France--if he played to the French Catholics
the part which England was playing to the Scottish Protestants--he
might reckon himself free of the fear of French advancement. The thing
was not a probability, but it was a chance against which England had
to be on the watch. Every time, however, that a crisis of this kind
threatened, or that a Spanish ambassador hinted that his master would
feel himself driven into active antagonism, the Secretary refused to
be frightened; direct threats always stiffened his mistress; and his
calculation turned out correct.
At the bottom of Cecil’s whole system of foreign policy was the theory
that Philip as Lord of Burgundy could not, for commercial reasons,
afford to quarrel with England, and as King of Spain was tied by the
danger of strengthening France. Spain, then, was not to be feared, but
France might be; this, however, would be conditional on the Huguenots
being decisively crushed--a consummation not desired by Catherine
and the _Politiques_; but this, in turn, required that the French
Huguenots should have enough support from England to maintain their
power of resistance, if not their domination. As time went on, and
the Protestant Netherlands found themselves in open armed resistance
to Philip, it was in just the same way necessary for England to keep
them from being crushed. Cecil saw the necessity of thus abetting
the Protestants in Scotland, France, and the Netherlands; and, being
a genuine Protestant if not an over-ardent one, did not dislike it.
Elizabeth saw the necessity also, but as in each case the Protestants
were subjects acting in opposition to the Government, she did
dislike it, and lost no opportunity of making the support she gave
as ungracious, as niggardly, and as precarious as she dared, while
she perpetually kept up a sort of pretence to herself as well as to
others that she was not really helping those whom she called rebels.
Yet without the help that was wrung from her, it is doubtful whether
in France, in the Netherlands, or even in Scotland, the issue of the
struggles during her reign would not have been materially different.
Now Cecil’s ideal was one of sober and opulent respectability; he was
not troubled with any notion that the Pope was the Scarlet Woman;
he held generally to the view that subjects ought to conform to the
religion prescribed by Government. But where the views which he himself
held were not prescribed but proscribed, decency compelled sympathy
with the sufferers. Besides, the suppression of Protestantism outside
of England would inevitably mean its suppression in England also, in
course of time. He was thoroughly satisfied that Protestantism was best
for England, and thus, although he had no abstract interest in what
might be good for other countries, for England’s sake he was satisfied
that Protestantism must not be suppressed elsewhere. This was the mark
up to which he had to keep the Queen--who, for her part, was quite
aware that the security of her throne depended on her sustaining the
part laid down for her. But Cecil’s minimum was her maximum, whereas
his maximum--with which she would have nothing to do--was the minimum
that would have satisfied her other great minister, Walsingham.