Some people censure as fantastic the scheme of invading England which
the two Pontiffs Pius V and Gregory XIII were always planning, and D.
John as a dreamer, for placing in this project all his aspirations and
ardent desires for glory. But Lord Burghley judged otherwise. He was an
immoral politician, certainly, but the most far-seeing and profound that
England then possessed. In a memorandum all in his own handwriting,
which exists in the British Museum in London, and from which Mignet
quotes, he advises Queen Elizabeth to send prompt aid to the Flemish
rebels. "If the Spaniards succeed in subduing the Low Countries, they
will lose no opportunity of invading England, and will unite their
forces with the malcontents of this kingdom; thus, if D. John finishes
with the States, he will not tarry in turning his arms against Y.M. The
correspondence which is carried on between him and the Queen of Scots
since he arrived in the Low Countries, his interview with the Bishop of
Glasgow, the ambassador of this Queen, and the general opinion that
there is a plan of marriage between him and her, are the reasons which
make for this conclusion. According to those who desire a change of
religion in this kingdom, this marriage is the best and only means for
the return of the kingdom to the Church of Rome. By this marriage D.
John would have a claim to the crown of England, and then it would be
seen that the Pope, the King of France, and the King of Spain, and all
the Catholic Princes would help him; the Pope from religious motives,
the King of France to please the house of Guise and to prevent England
helping the French Protestants, and the King of Spain to settle his
brother advantageously. Therefore, to give aid to the Low Countries is a
means of preservation and defence for this realm."
These grave reasons, which did not seem fantastic to Burghley, decided
Queen Elizabeth and the lords of her Council to help the Flemish rebels
even more openly than they had hitherto done, not only with money, but
also with English and Scotch troops, under the command of Norris. But
they soon saw that the real obstacle to these ends was the person of D.
John, and that nothing and nobody could dismay him or weary out his
patience, or overcome his military skill, and they judged, as Orange had
done before the retreat from Namur, that the shortest and safest way to
conquer this obstacle was to overthrow it by treachery, taking D. John's
life. One warning voice, however, God sent from a prison, and it reached
the ears of D. John, and stopped this new crime.
There was a Spanish merchant in London, a native of Tarragona, called
Antonio de Guaras, rich and respected. He lived in a house belonging to
the Guild of Drapers, with a warehouse and wharf on the Thames, and many
pedlars came there to fit themselves out with things that they
afterwards sold retail, travelling about the counties. But in these
humble pedlars' boats which slowly mounted the Thames, most important
secrets and messages from great personages came to the house of Antonio
de Guaras. The merchant was an Aragonese, and an agent of the Court of
Spain since the time of Henry VIII, and since the arrival of D. John in
Flanders he had constituted himself the most active promoter of the
Spanish invasion of England, and the intermediary between D. John and
the Queen Mary Stuart, at that time a prisoner in Sheffield Castle. D.
John sent his letters for the Queen of Scots to Guaras, and she also
sent him the answers; a very interesting correspondence, of which no
trace remains.
Under the disguise of one of these hucksters the English Jesuit Hort,
whom Gregory XIII had sent to England, together with his Scotch
companion Crichton, to be Papal agent in the business of the Spanish
invasion, came one day to the house of Antonio de Guaras. He came from
Sheffield, and brought a letter in cipher from Mary Stuart for Antonio
de Guaras. He carried it cleverly hidden in a little mirror, which in
these perilous times he always had among his pedlar's wares. In this
letter the Queen of Scots ordered Antonio de Guaras to tell D. John of
the plot that the Council of Queen Elizabeth were scheming against his
life, rumours of which reached Sheffield by one of the many advocates of
the marriage of Mary and D. John, who were numerous, and were working in
England and Scotland. The news was vague, however, as she only talked of
this plot without giving any details, and contented herself by warning
D. John to have a care for his person. "It seems to me that the Lord Don
John should be very careful that he has not near him some greater spies
than faithful servants, English or others."
Guaras, alarmed, hastened to communicate this warning to D. Bernardino
de Mendoza, then ambassador of the Catholic King in London, and a great
partisan of Mary Stuart, who, having more means of action and of
espionage, at last succeeded in unravelling the mystery, as far as was
necessary, and could thus write to Philip II on the 17th of May: "Here
for many days there is talk in the house of Leicester of killing H.H.
(D. John), the talk being renewed by the good opportunity of the war. Of
this I have advised H.H., and also that this Queen on the 10th set free
Edmond Ratcliffe, brother of the Earl of Sussex, who has been confined
in the Tower of London for three years, and because of giving him
liberty very secretly he has been exiled from this kingdom, which is a
thing very seldom or never done, he resolved the moment he regained his
liberty to go and serve H.H.; I have been advised that he is an
intemperate youth, and daring enough for anything, they tell me, so his
sudden liberation and determination can with great reason engender
suspicion."
D. Bernardino did, as he notifies in this letter, write to D. John, and
also sent him a portrait of Ratcliffe, that he should recognise him and
be prepared at once if he came. The assassin did not fail to arrive. D.
John was in his camp at Tirlemont, and when giving audiences one day,
suddenly saw Edmond Ratcliffe enter his tent, humbly begging the favour
of a hearing. He had entered the camp, in spite of the vigilance of the
sentries, and had hidden two light Hungarian horses in a wood near to
ensure his flight, in the event of his being able to strike the blow. D.
John knew him in a moment, from the picture D. Bernardino had sent, and
without displaying the least surprise or mistrust, graciously ordered
him to speak. At the same time he called his valet Bernardino Ducarte in
the most natural manner, and secretly gave him an order for the Captain
of the Guard to take the gentleman, whenever he left the tent, and give
him over to the Provost-General of the camp. Ratcliffe explained to D.
John, with the most refined hypocrisy, who he was and what he wanted. He
said that he was a son of the old Earl of Sussex and a Catholic, but
having disagreed with his eldest brother on religious questions, and
wishing to assure living and dying in the Roman faith, he had fled from
England to offer his services to the Catholic King, and only begged D.
John for a post in the army, and pay according to his grade, as he had a
wife and little children to keep. And as he spoke the miscreant was
waiting and calculating where to give the wound.
D. John listened to him, looking him up and down, and not losing a
single one of his movements, at last answering him affably, praising his
religious faith and his ideas, and promising, in the name of the King,
to help him to fulfil them. While this conversation was being carried on
the two walked slowly about in the tent, and Ratcliffe tried to arrange
that the walk should be prolonged outside, as was D. John's custom when
finishing audiences, in order that, amused by the talk, he should go on
a few steps. His intention was then to plunge a poisoned dagger, which
he had ready, in D. John's heart, leave the weapon in the wound, and
hurry off to the wood, where his horses were waiting. But D. John, as if
he liked to sport with danger, went to the door, took a step or two
outside, and then returned to the end of the tent, until, intimating
that the audience was over, he took leave of Ratcliffe until the next
day, "when he would seek employment for him." Ratcliffe retired,
promising himself to do on the second visit what he had failed to do on
the first; but hardly had he set foot outside the tent than D. John's
Captain of the Guard arrested him, and handed him over to the Provost.
Ratcliffe protested his innocence at first, but being put to the torture
he confessed fully all we have told. He was not executed during the
lifetime of D. John, but after his death Alexander Farnese ordered him
to be decapitated with his accomplice, also an Englishman, who waited
with the horses in the wood.
On the 16th of January, 1579, D. Bernardino de Mendoza wrote to Philip
II from London:
"The Prince of Parma has had justice done to the two Englishmen
about whom I wrote on the 16th of May, who left here with orders
to kill the Lord D. John, God rest his soul. The Queen said with
much annoyance, when she received the news from Walsingham, that
it was the result of advice he and others had given, and the
pass to which things were brought, which words Walsingham felt
so much, that he came to this place from Court the next day with
fever."