1558-1565
Accession of Elizabeth—The beginning of the long duel—Feria
urges Philip to use force—Philip’s many difficulties—He offers
his hand to Elizabeth—The Peace of Cateau Cambresis—The
Franco-Spanish Alliance—Fears of a Catholic League—Philip
marries a French Princess—English Catholics appeal to
Philip—Mary Stuart claims the Crown of England—War with
Scotland—Philip’s efforts to effect a reconciliation—Bishop
Quadra—His relations with Leicester—Intrigue for a Catholic
reaction in England—Mary Stuart approaches Philip—Disgrace
and death of Quadra—A war of tariffs—Guzman de Silva,
ambassador—The interviews of Bayonne—Failure of the Catholic
League
Though Mary’s death had long been foreseen, Feria was distracted when
it came, for change was on all sides, and each change unfavourable to
Spanish interests. “It is very early,” he wrote, “to talk about marriage
yet; but the confusion and instability of these people in all their
affairs make it necessary for us to be the more alert, so as not to
lose the opportunities that may offer, and especially in the matter of
marriage.... The new Queen and the people hold themselves free from your
Majesty, and will listen to any ambassadors who may come to treat of
marriage. Your Majesty understands better than I how important it is that
this affair should go through your hands, which will be difficult except
with great negotiations and expenditure.” He continues by urging Philip
not to allow the Emperor Ferdinand to offer the hand of either of his
sons to Elizabeth, and opines that the English would not favour Savoy,
whilst, he says, the nobles recognise that it would be impossible for the
Queen to marry an Englishman. This was, of course, preliminary to the
suggestion of Feria that Philip should marry Elizabeth himself. “The more
I think of this business the more certain I am that everything depends
upon the husband this woman may take. If he be a suitable one, religious
matters will go on well, and the realm will remain friendly with your
Majesty; but if not, all will be spoilt. If she decides to marry out of
the country she will at once fix her eyes upon your Majesty, although
some of them here will be sure to pitch upon the Archduke Ferdinand.”[137]
Feria, who had lorded over Mary’s Council, found the members now sorely
changed. They had mostly been bribed heavily by him, and the ambassador
roundly abuses them for their ingratitude. They were indeed, such of
them as were included in Elizabeth’s Council, too anxious to clear
themselves from the odium of the past to smile upon the unpopular Spanish
connection; though secretly Lord William Howard, Clinton, and Paget
promised their services to Feria. As for the people at large, the death
of Mary was to them as if a crushing weight had been lifted from their
hearts. Even as she lay dying, the sacred things—the images, relics, and
the like—of which she had enforced the veneration, were openly slighted;
and Feria wrote a few days after her death: “The people are wagging their
tongues a good deal about the Queen’s having sent great sums of money to
your Majesty, and that I have sent you 200,000 ducats since I came. They
say that it is through your Majesty that the country is in such want, and
that Calais was lost; and also that through your not coming to see the
Queen she died of grief.”
Under Cecil’s guidance Elizabeth’s first steps were prudent and wise
in the extreme. The religious burnings were at once stopped, and those
persons who were imprisoned on the charge of heresy were enlarged on
their own recognisances; but most of the members of Mary’s Catholic
Council were retained, though reinforced by seven new Protestant
Councillors, Cecil and Parry being given the most influential duties.
But, moderate though the new rulers were, the Catholics, and especially
the Spanish party, were in dismay. Only a week after the Queen’s
accession Feria wrote to Philip: “The kingdom is entirely in the hands
of young folks, heretics, and traitors, and the Queen favours no man who
served her sister. The old people and the Catholics are dissatisfied, but
dare not open their lips. The Queen seems to me incomparably more feared
than her sister was, and gives her orders as absolutely as her father
did.”
In the meanwhile the new Queen heard Mass, and made no change in
religious observance, but she turned her back upon Bonner when he went to
greet her with the other Bishops, and took care to show that, Catholic or
Protestant, she was not going to be the submissive tool of either Spain
or France, though she professed a desire to be friendly with both. “These
people,” wrote Feria, “try to make it known everywhere that your Majesty
will have no more influence here than if you had not married the late
Queen, and they persuade the present Queen not to be intimate with me. As
she is much taken up with the people, she does as they wish her to do,
and treats foreigners slightingly. I have therefore decided to go slowly
until things settle down and I see who takes the lead. Up to the present
nothing is certain, and every one talks as his wishes lead him. I wonder
they have not sent me crazy. The whole point is the husband she chooses,
and we must try by money arrangements that he shall be one agreeable to
your Majesty.”
Elizabeth declined to receive personally either Feria or Dassonleville
until she approached London, though Feria sent her an amiable message by
Lady Clinton when she arrived at the Charter House, and a splendid ring
from Philip by Controller Parry. At the Charter House on the following
day the ambassador first saluted the Queen. He was a gallant, handsome
gentleman, one of the first nobles in Spain; and Elizabeth was most
gracious to him, taking off her glove as soon as he entered the room,
in order that he might kiss her hand. The chamber was crowded with
people, and it was, of course, no time for political business. He was
only in England, he assured her, in order to serve her and let her royal
brother-in-law know how best he might gratify her wishes, so as to help
forward the good understanding already existing. Feria ventured to touch
lightly upon religion, hoping that she would be careful on that point;
but to this she gave a broad reply, which Feria thought equivocal. When
he left her she had almost allayed his fears, so fine was her diplomacy,
and he sent her that day by Lady Clinton two more rings that had belonged
to Mary—“as I saw she was so fond of her jewels, and I thought best to
give her even the poorest of them.”
He saw her again three days afterwards at Somerset House, where she was
staying, and told her that a truce had been settled between France and
Spain during the peace negotiations. She showed her suspicions in a
moment, thinking that the intention was to isolate her and leave her at
hostilities with France. By means of Cecil, however, Feria persuaded her
that her fears were unfounded; and in another conversation she exerted
all her blandishments upon him to convince him that her leanings were
not towards the French, whilst he further delighted her by telling her
that he had at Whitehall and at her disposal a casket of jewels that
had belonged to her sister. In this sort of intercourse Elizabeth was a
match for any one living. It was not until Feria tried to pledge her to
anything that he found out his powerlessness. He had occupied the royal
residence called Durham Place, in the Strand, as a dwelling house, but he
had also apartments at Whitehall, and he tried hard to obtain a renewal
of these, “although I am much afraid they will not give it to me. I have
little chance of talking to people unless I am inside the Palace, and
they are so suspicious of me that, as the late Chancellor (Heath) plainly
told me, nobody dares to speak to me.... They are very glad to be free of
your Majesty, as though you had done them harm instead of good. Although
in several of my letters to your Majesty I have said how small a party
you have here, I am never satisfied that I have said enough to describe
things as they really are. I am so isolated from them that I am much
embarrassed and puzzled to get the means of discovering what is going on;
for truly they run away from me as if I were the devil. The best way will
be for me to get my foot into the Palace, so as to speak oftener with the
Queen, as she is a woman very fond of argument.”
The great question for the Spaniards was Elizabeth’s marriage. If she
married a Protestant or a man open to French influence, the effect upon
Spanish interests might be disastrous. The gossip on the subject at
Court shifted from day to day—sometimes an English suitor, sometimes
Prince Eric, sometimes one of the Archdukes, Philip’s cousins, being the
favourite. Savoy was always rejected by public voice, because of the fear
that he might drag England into war with France to recover his dominions.
None of the suitors mentioned except Savoy would have suited Spanish
ends. The Archdukes, if they would accept the absolute dictation of their
cousin Philip, would have been the least objectionable of the foreign
Princes: but Philip was not on very good terms with the Austrian branch
of his family at this time; for he was still sore about the succession to
the Empire, and the Archdukes were too much dependent upon the Lutherans
to please him. So the conviction grew in Feria’s mind that the only
satisfactory solution would be for Philip to marry Elizabeth himself. He
proposed to appeal to her pride, and to suggest that it would be beneath
her to match less splendidly than her sister. Little did either he or his
master understand the subtle mind with which they had to deal. Elizabeth
was, of course, anxious to keep on good terms with them, and indeed to
restore England to its former position as the balancing power, but, smile
and coquette as she might, she would never allow herself to be drawn into
a position from which she could not retreat.
Feria—impatient, scornful, and proud—began to tire of this inconclusive
dallying, especially as he saw, both at Court and outside, that the
Protestants were growing bolder, and the Queen herself was relaxing her
orthodox observance. He complained bitterly to Philip that everything was
hidden from him, and that he could learn nothing, though the Queen said
that he knew too much about English affairs; that he was proud, and that
she would be glad if he were recalled. “I am afraid,” he wrote, “that one
fine day we shall find this woman married, and I shall be the last man to
learn anything about it.... I overlook many things and try not to take
offence or to appear inquisitive; but their enmity and evil consciences
make them so suspicious of me that they think I know everything, and in
return for all my efforts to please, I believe that they would like to
see me thrown into the river—that is to say, the Queen and her friends
would—for the Catholics and goodly people are glad that your Majesty
should gain ground here.”
The fear that Elizabeth would slip through their fingers was accentuated
for the Spaniards by the idea that her proceedings in religion might
induce the Pope to listen to French prompting and excommunicate her,
declaring her throne forfeit to the next Catholic heir, Mary of Scotland,
Dauphiness of France. Anything would have suited Philip better than that,
and it appears to have been this consideration which finally moved him
to dazzle the new Queen, and cut out all the other suitors by proposing
formally to become her husband himself. Elizabeth had, of course, in her
two previous conversations with Feria, understood his veiled allusions
to the subject; and when he had pressed his demand for rooms in the
Palace of Whitehall, Elizabeth, with prudish modesty, sent word by Cecil
that, as she was unmarried and Feria might be her suitor, it would be
improper for him to sleep under the same roof. Feria, recognising the
absurdity of the alleged reason, believed that the refusal was owing to
French intrigue, and urged his master to act promptly. “Your Majesty must
get the affair into your own grasp. We must look to it at once that the
King of France does not get in and spoil the crop that your Majesty has
sown here.” Thus abjured, Philip took the plunge, once more in a pure
spirit of martyrdom—not this time on account of disparity of age or lack
of attraction on the part of his bride-elect, but rather because of her
doubtful orthodoxy.
It is difficult to understand how so sagacious a man as Philip can
have been so blind to the character of his sister-in-law as to have
believed that an offer made in the spirit displayed in his letter to
his ambassador could have been accepted by her. On 10th January, 1559,
the King wrote thus to Feria: “I highly approve of the course you have
adopted in persuading her and the Council that it is not to her interest
to marry a subject. As regards myself, if she should broach the subject
to you, you should treat it in such a way as neither to accept nor reject
the suggestion entirely. In a matter of such grave importance it was
necessary for me to take counsel and consider it maturely in all its
bearings, before I sent you my decision. Many great obstacles present
themselves, and it is difficult for me to reconcile my conscience to it,
as I am obliged to reside in my other dominions, and consequently could
not be much in England, which, apparently, is what they fear; and also
because the Queen has not been sound in religion, and it would not look
well for me to marry her unless she were a Catholic. Besides this, such
a marriage would appear like entering upon a perpetual war with France,
seeing the claims that the Queen of Scots has to the English Crown. The
urgent need for my presence in Spain, which is greater than I can say
here, and the heavy expense I should be put to in England by reason of
the costly entertainment necessary to the people there, together with
the fact that my Treasury is so utterly exhausted as to be unable to
meet the most pressing ordinary expenditure, much less new and onerous
burdens: bearing in mind these and many other difficulties no less
grave, ... I nevertheless cannot lose sight of the enormous importance
of such a match to Christianity and the preservation of religion, which
has been restored in England by the help of God. Seeing the importance
that the country should not relapse into its former errors, which would
cause to our neighbouring dominions serious dangers and difficulties, I
have decided to put aside all other considerations which might be urged
against it, and am resolved to render this service to God, and offer
to marry the Queen of England; and I will use every possible effort to
effect this, if it can be done on the conditions that will be explained
to you. The first and most important is that you should satisfy yourself
that the Queen will profess the same religion that I do, the same that I
ever shall hold, and that she will persevere in the same and uphold it
in the country, doing with that end all that may appear necessary to me.
She will have to obtain secret absolution from the Pope and the necessary
dispensation, so that when I marry her she will be a Catholic, which she
has not hitherto been. In this way it is evident and manifest that I am
serving the Lord in marrying her, and that she has been converted by my
act. You will not propose any conditions until you see how the Queen is
disposed towards the matter itself; and mark well that you must first
broach the subject alone, as she has already opened the door to such an
approach.”[138] Later Philip mentions that the clause in his marriage
treaty with Mary granting Flanders to the issue of the marriage could not
be conceded in the case of Elizabeth.
There are few letters extant that reveal so clearly as this does
the character of Philip. As he points out in his long preamble, the
objections to the match are numerous and grave. Elizabeth was of doubtful
orthodoxy, excommunicate and officially declared a bastard, the daughter
of a woman whom Catholic Spaniards looked upon as the personification of
evil, and yet to marry her the proudest monarch on earth and the champion
of the Church omnipotent was ready to salve his conscience, sacrifice
personal desires and lavish upon a people he loathed the money wrung
painfully from the Castilian subjects that he loved. The talk of his
sacrifice to God no doubt was sincerely uttered and believed by himself,
because he ever identified his political aims with the cause of the
Almighty; but the real reason for his willingness to marry Elizabeth in
spite of everything was primarily to prevent England from slipping away
from his grasp to the irreparable injury of his cause. If England became
a Protestant power under Elizabeth, he foresaw that it would reinforce
the elements in his own dominions with which his great struggle was even
now visible on the horizon; if it became Catholic under Mary Stuart,
matters would be still worse for him, because his great rival France
would then hold the whip hand over him for ever from across the Channel.
It was a dire predicament for a proud, devout monarch to find himself in,
and of the two great evils that threatened, Philip proposed to choose the
lesser in marrying Elizabeth “for the greater glory of God.”
But it takes two persons to make a marriage, and Elizabeth, unlike her
sister, had no notion of allowing herself and England to be made the
tools of another’s ambitions, for she had ambitions of her own, and in
most cases they were not identical with those of her brother-in-law. In
one particular alone they coincided, namely, in the need for excluding
the French from gaining control of England by means of Mary Stuart or
otherwise, and this was the point that restrained Philip from proceeding
to extremities with Elizabeth for thirty years of provocation. Feria,
who was in closer touch with the progress of affairs in England than his
master, must have seen the impracticability of proposing for Elizabeth’s
hand in the spirit of his instructions, and, although he saw her in the
little chamber at Whitehall on the eve of the opening of Parliament
on the 25th January, where she chatted very affably with him, he did
not venture to mention the question of marriage, as he had been told
that Parliament would press her to choose a husband, and thought that
he had better wait until then. But Philip was impatient, the English
Peace Commissioners at Cateau Cambresis, who had now been joined by Lord
William Howard, were standing out firmly for the restoration of Calais
as a condition of the general peace.[139] If Elizabeth showed herself
ready to become Philip’s wife and the obedient tool of his policy, he
was willing to make a stand too on the subject of Calais; but he was
determined not to be kept at war for the sake of the English if Elizabeth
persevered in her proposed Parliamentary action with regard to religious
reform, and he peremptorily instructed Feria to remonstrate earnestly
with her on the subject, and to tell her from him, “as a good and true
brother, who really wishes her well, both on account of our relationship
and because I wish to see her firmly established on the throne, that
I warn her to ponder deeply the evils which may result to England,
particularly so early in her reign, from any change in religion.... You
will enforce this by all the good arguments and persuasions that you
can employ, ... but if you can obtain no success in that way you will
consider whether it will be well to press the Queen by saying that if
this change is made, all idea of my marriage with her must be broken off.
If she has any thoughts that way this may be effective.”[140]
[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH
FROM A PAINTING BY ZUCCHERO IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY]
Feria was in a quandary, for he knew how impossible it was, seeing
Elizabeth’s temper, to deal with her in this way. After two or three
inconclusive interviews with the Queen, in which the question of the
religious changes was pressed and the marriage broadly hinted at, Feria
came to close quarters with her. She began with her usual professions
of disinclination to marry at all, and was proceeding, as he feared, to
decline her brother-in-law’s proposal, when the ambassador stopped her
and said he did not want an answer then. After some coquettish verbal
fencing she promised him that she would give him a good answer if she
gave him one at all. And then came the serious part of the business.
Howard had written to her that Alba had said that they (the Spaniards)
could not stand out for Calais any longer, but must make peace in any
case.[141]
Elizabeth worked herself up into a rage about this, and began to storm
about Mary of Scotland’s claims upon England. She was not so poor that
she could not get what money and soldiers she needed to hold her own,
she said. Her people were all grumbling, she declared, at the waste of
money upon the fleet for Philip’s service and other heavy expenditure
the late Queen had incurred for him; and Feria had much ado to enforce
his view that England owed a deep debt of gratitude to Philip, and the
unreasonableness of expecting that he would keep at war with France for
the sake of a single town like Calais. He was afraid even to speak about
the religious point for fear of exacerbating their relations: “Yet,
although I plainly see her going to perdition, it seems to me that if
the marriage can be carried through, the rest will soon be arranged in
accordance with the glory of God and the wishes of your Majesty. If the
marriage do not take place, all I could say to the Queen about religion
would be of little avail, as she is so badly advised by the heretics who
surround her, and it might even prejudice the principal matter” (_i.e._,
the marriage).
Events thereafter moved apace. To the Queen’s indignation she was
forced to consent to a peace with France, postponing the restitution of
Calais for eight years, to be followed by a peace with Scotland. The
Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity were passed; and every day,
notwithstanding Elizabeth’s diplomatic professions of attachment to Spain
and its King, the hold of the latter over England became less powerful.
Philip had to make up his mind rapidly after the religious changes in the
English Parliament had been made. It was clear to him then that Elizabeth
would be no fit instrument to his ends. Feria was telling him hotly that
“the only way to deal with these heretics is sword in hand,” and Alba,
in Flanders, was for coercing Elizabeth before she grew strong enough to
resist Spain and the English Catholics combined.
But Philip hated war, and had a supreme belief in his own diplomatic
methods. He was face to face, moreover, with a new development. Always
before France had been the insatiable rival of his house, and France had
been a solid instrument in the hands of its King. But the Reformation
was already confusing the traditional boundaries. Henry II. was growing
apprehensive of the increasing spread of Calvinism in his own dominions,
and a solution after Philip’s own heart was devised by the Churchmen that
drew the Catholic rivals together to face the new danger of Protestantism
throughout Europe. England was no longer to be the balancing power
between them, but the enemy of both, so long as she remained Protestant.
To cement this hopeful attempt to combine Europe politically on new
lines Philip was to marry the eldest daughter of France, the Princess
Elizabeth of Valois, who, so long as he had hopes of marrying Elizabeth,
had been destined for his only son Don Carlos.
The close union of France and Spain caused, as usual, a wave of alarm
to pass over England. Paget and the Spanish party in Elizabeth’s Court
were for continuing the war against France at any cost and clinging to
Philip as the sole chance of safety[142]; and, although the Queen and
Cecil would not go so far as that, they did their best to mollify Feria
and his master. When the ambassador saw the Queen on the 7th April, 1559
(the day that the news of the signing of the peace of Cateau Cambresis
came to London) she was pouting and coquettishly aggrieved that Philip
should have engaged himself to be married to any one but her, as she had
given him no answer yet. Feria retorted crossly that the King could not
wait four months for her answer, and when Cecil told him that they were
quite willing to continue the war against France if Philip liked, the
ambassador answered him rudely, and “I left them that day as bitter as
gall.” Again and again the angry ambassador complained and remonstrated
with the Queen about the religious changes and the licence now taken by
the people. But she outwitted him at every point, kept up an elaborate
pretence of negotiations to marry one of the Austrian Archdukes, who
would depend entirely on Philip, and personally assured Feria that she
was as good a Catholic as her father, the only point upon which she
differed from the Spaniards being the supremacy of the Pope.
Thus England freed herself from Spanish tutelage within six months
of Elizabeth’s accession. Feria said she “was a daughter of the devil
and her chief ministers the greatest scoundrels and heretics in the
land,” and when he went back to join his master in Flanders he breathed
fire and slaughter against England and the Queen, whose diplomacy had
stultified all his efforts. He had done his best to persuade Philip to
pluck a quarrel with England that should give him an excuse for armed
intervention, the deposition of Elizabeth by the Pope, and the patronage
of Catharine Grey as a pretender for Elizabeth’s throne with the aid
of the English Catholics, who, he assured Philip, were all in his
favour.[143] But Philip thought that he had found a better way than by
war and rejected the advice of his fiery councillors. To represent him in
England there remained at Elizabeth’s Court the best possible instrument
that could have been selected in the circumstances, the Bishop of Aquila,
Alvaro de la Quadra, a supple, patient, unscrupulous old ecclesiastic,
who had lived long in Italy and was an adept at sly, stealthy diplomacy,
which so cleverly used religion as the stalking-horse of politics. Bishop
Jewel calls him “a clever, crafty, old fox”; and he needed all his
cunning, for his task for the next five years until it broke his heart
was to keep Elizabeth, heretic though she might be, from joining either
the Protestants or the French against Philip.
For even before the ink was dry that ratified the peace of Cateau
Cambresis, before the pompous ceremonies in England, France, and Spain
that celebrated it were finished, a stroke of Fate had rendered the
union between the two great Catholic Powers unstable, and old political
traditions were reasserting themselves. I have told elsewhere[144] of
the ill-fated feast in Paris, when stern Alba wedded in June, 1559, as
proxy for his master, the beautiful Valois Princess of fourteen. How
her father, the gallant Henry, was stricken down mortally at the joust
that followed, and how the rise of his long-neglected wife, Catharine
de Medici, able and ambitious, soon made the Catholic League a hollow
pretence. She needed not the dominance of the Guises and their Catholic
friends, but so nicely to balance them against the Huguenots that she
herself might hold the scale. She did not send her sweet daughter to
Spain as a pledge for the extirpation of Protestantism root and branch,
as had been intended, but to cajole Philip into helping her personally to
hold her own as ruler of France, whichever faction was paramount, and to
win, if possible, the heir of Spain for her younger daughter, so that her
hold over the country might be perpetuated.
The accession also of young Francis II. and Mary Stuart to the throne of
France, under the dominion of their ambitious Guise uncles, had driven
a great wedge into the unity of the Catholic League. The Guises, who
led the Catholic party in France, were now for a short time masters, on
behalf of the young King and his wife, of the national resources, and
were prepared to use them in furthering their Scottish niece’s claims
to the English throne. This naturally drew Philip more to the side of
Elizabeth, however perverse she might be, and, from the very first,
rendered abortive the Catholic League secretly cemented by the treaty of
Cateau Cambresis. When the death of Francis II., after his short reign,
threw the Guises into the background and made Catharine de Medici Regent
of France, matters were hardly improved. Philip was always a bad hand at
playing another’s game, and though his young French wife lived happily
with him, for he was a good husband, the purpose of her going to Spain
was never achieved, and Philip was as anxious after his French marriage
as before it to prevent his mother-in-law and his English sister-in-law
from making common cause against him. They, knowing this as well as he,
could, and did, always checkmate or paralyse him when they pleased by
simulating friendship with each other, either by marriage talk or by a
pretence of common interest. Whilst Catharine de Medici lived this was
the problem of Europe, and to Philip it proved an insoluble one.
Feria and Alba were for ever advocating the high hand with Elizabeth, but
Philip knew that his hollow union with France had drawn all Protestants
together, so that if he aided the English Catholics to depose Elizabeth
and crush Protestantism in her country, not only would Catholic France
be against him, but the Lutheran Germans would be disturbed, and perhaps
he might let loose the storm, of which the mutterings were already
audible, over his own Netherlands. So, in spite of the Bishop of Aquila’s
soft hints and Feria’s warlike advice, Philip decided, notwithstanding
Elizabeth’s religious recalcitrancy, upon a policy of palliation and
suavity in England. “You must,” he instructed his ambassador, “keep
mainly in view by all means to avoid a rupture. I have already pointed
out the importance of this, but it is so great that I cannot be satisfied
without repeating it many times.” But yet he was ready even thus early
if Elizabeth’s subjects attacked her for her religious measures to take
full advantage of the opportunity for his own advantage, and so to
prevent the French from establishing themselves in England. With these
pacific instructions, therefore, he sent the great sum of 60,000 crowns
“to gain friends,” and says, “I have also ordered, in case of need, that
money shall be raised to fit out a fleet at short notice, so that it may
be ready to carry men over to England if required.”
The difference between Feria’s arrogant methods and the Bishop’s
blandness was soon seen in his intercourse with the Queen. Of her and her
advisers in his letters to Philip he has nothing but violent abuse; but
he was all tolerant kindness when he was with her, and got quite friendly
with the “heretic” Cecil. He was lodged in Durham Place, as Feria had
been, and was in close touch with Lady Mary Sidney and her brother, Lord
Robert Dudley, who was soon to be created Earl of Leicester. During all
the comedy of pretended marriage negotiations with the Archduke Charles
the Bishop dexterously aided or hindered the progress as the interests of
Philip seemed to dictate. If the Archduke was to come as a thoroughgoing
Catholic and obedient servant of Spain well and good, but the moment
there was any talk of his making religious concessions or appearing under
Lutheran auspices, then the wily Bishop smiled upon the perennial second
string of Lord Robert Dudley. In the meanwhile he was hand in glove with
the discontented and dismayed English Catholics, gaining friends amongst
them by money promises and blandishments, whilst his spies were busy
discovering the weak points on the East Coast towards Flanders, making
lists of the Catholic and disaffected English gentry, and whispering to
them of the armed aid that in case of need would be sent by the Catholic
King. To Philip the Bishop wrote often with affected humility, but with
studied significance, saying how surprised the English Catholics were
that he made no move to help them. “Your Majesty,” he wrote, “is the only
hope of the godly and the dread of the wicked, if the latter are not to
be allowed time to combat and weaken the Catholic party.”[145]
But Philip was powerless to stir a finger to help them, much as they
might cry to him. The death of Henry II. and the accession of Mary
Stuart’s husband, as has been pointed out, had suddenly changed the
situation. The claims of the Queen of Scots to the English throne, and
the despatch of a strong French force to Leith to succour the Regent
Mary of Lorraine, hardly pressed as she was by the rebels subsidised by
Elizabeth, precipitated the eventuality that Philip dreaded most—a war
in Scotland between France and the Queen of England. If in such a war
the latter were beaten by the Guises, then farewell to Spanish influence
in England, however Catholic the country might become. Yet Philip dared
not fight on the behalf of heresy against the Catholic French element
and the Guises, or the Huguenots would become all-powerful; whilst if he
interfered in England at all to Elizabeth’s detriment his action would
draw together in close unity the powerful Protestant party in England,
the majority of the Scots who were Reformers, the Huguenots of France,
who were panting for revenge on the Guises, and the Lutherans of Germany
and Holland. With such a combination as this behind her Elizabeth might
adopt a stronger anti-Catholic attitude than ever.
But what Philip dreaded even more than this was the encouragement that
such a strong combination of Protestants would give to the Flemings,
who were already straining in the leash to escape from the Spanish
religious system. Philip sent envoys to England and France to urge,
both by persuasion and threats, that the peace should be kept (March,
1560), but, as usual, his step was too late to prevent hostilities. The
Bishop of Aquila, in his private letters to Feria, was scornful of his
master’s methods. “If these envoys from his Majesty are only coming to
talk, they will do more harm than good, as the Catholics here expect much
more than that.... The Queen is greatly alarmed, and this is the time to
do what ought to have been done before; but if we are always to be on
the defensive and to palliate everything, I can only pray for patience,
though I well know we shall never have such an opportunity again. All
here are with us, and the very heretics are sick of it.”[146] The Bishop
dared not write in this strain to Philip, though he said as much as he
could; but the King saw, if his advisers did not, that he could not take
up arms against Elizabeth without playing the French game, and it was
equally impossible for him to fight his Catholic French allies on behalf
of the heretic Queen. All he could do, therefore, was talk.
The result of the short war in Scotland was favourable to Elizabeth, and
the pressing danger passed; but Philip’s threat to aid the French if she
insisted upon continuing the hostilities brought home to Elizabeth and
her minister that the Catholic League was still a danger to them. An
attempt was made to persuade the Spaniards that the Queen would really
marry the Archduke at once and follow Philip’s advice, the object being
to weaken the friendship between Spain and France; but Lord Robert
Dudley’s philandering was now so open, and Elizabeth so obviously
fond of him, that the new pretence about the Archduke and her sudden
Catholic professions deceived nobody.[147] Even Cecil lost heart at the
difficulties created by this infatuation of the Queen for Dudley, and the
Spanish ambassador chuckled with delight that the “heretics” were falling
out amongst themselves and the Catholic cause was looking brighter.
As soon as the death of Dudley’s wife set him free he made an attempt,
which for a time hoodwinked Bishop Quadra, to gain the support of Spain
for his suit, and even wily Philip believed that England was going to
fall under his sway again by means of the Queen’s lover, a belief that
proved that he still failed to gauge Elizabeth’s true character. The
intermediary in this case was Sir Henry Sidney, who, being a kinsman
of the English Countess of Feria and the husband of Robert Dudley’s
sister, was _persona grata_ at Durham House. He came to Bishop Quadra
late in January, 1561, and after much circumlocution remarked that he was
surprised that it had not been suggested to Philip that the opportunity
offered “for gaining over Lord Robert by extending a hand to him now in
the matter of his marriage with the Queen, and he would thereafter serve
and obey your Majesty like one of your own vassals.” The Bishop was cool
about it, for Dudley’s character was bad, and many evil tales were afloat
about his wife’s recent death. The King of Spain, said the Bishop, had
no need to win the Queen of England’s goodwill. She had not, moreover,
shown herself very ready hitherto to take his advice upon anything, and
it was not sure that she would do so in the matter of her marriage with
Lord Robert. Sidney admitted that the rumours about the foul play upon
Amy Robsart were generally believed, but he said they were untrue. The
Queen, however, was really in love with Robert, and was most anxious to
settle the religious question by the help of him as her husband. Yes,
said the Bishop, that no doubt is very praiseworthy and necessary; but he
did not see why the religious matter should be mixed up with so mundane
a business as marrying Dudley. It ought to be undertaken whether the
Queen was married or single. Sidney quite agreed. Matters in the country
were in a bad way, he admitted, but the Queen and Robert were anxious
to put things right, and he swore most solemnly that they intended to
restore the Catholic religion in England by means of a General Council of
the Church, in which England would join if King Philip would patronise
the bridegroom and urge Elizabeth to marry him. The Bishop reminded
Sidney that he had been led astray several times before by such talk
when the Queen wanted for her own ends to appear friendly to Spain. It
was, moreover, very improper to make religion the excuse. If Lord Robert
repented of his heresy and wanted to recant there was nothing to prevent
him from doing so without bargaining about it, and the interview ended
by Sidney’s promising to bring Lord Robert himself to Durham House to
satisfy the Bishop of his _bonâ fides_.
In his letter to the King the Churchman expresses himself as being much
shocked at the barefacedness of the proposal; but he goes on to say
that he believes that it is only by this means that the Queen can be
brought round to the Spanish side. The gossip about her and Dudley, he
says, is so scandalous that she will not dare to marry him without some
strong support; and there was no price she would not pay to obtain it.
Such a tendency as that shown in Sidney’s proposal would, of course, be
strenuously opposed by most of Elizabeth’s advisers; and Paget, with
Cecil and his friends, attempted a diversion by strongly advocating a
close alliance with France, where the young King Francis II. had recently
died, and Catharine de Medici had become supreme. The Dudley intrigue
with Spain, however, went on, though probably, as we see now, without
the full knowledge of the Queen. Lord Robert at length came with Sidney
to see the Bishop on the 13th February, and professed his readiness to
be the humble servant of King Philip if he would recommend the Queen to
marry him. Quadra was cautious. He had no special instructions, he said,
and the King was now in Spain, a long way off; but he would promise
Dudley that he would, the next time he saw the Queen, urge her to marry;
and if she mentioned any particular person he (the Bishop) would enlarge
upon Lord Robert’s good qualities and King Philip’s affection for him.
Two days later the smooth-tongued old Bishop found himself alone with the
Queen, and ventured to say how glad he was to hear that her marriage was
seriously under discussion at last. If she wished to consult the King
of Spain on the matter the Bishop was very much at her service, though
no instructions from Spain had been sent to him. The Queen talked wide
of the subject for some time; but she said at last that she knew she was
no angel, and would make the Bishop her confessor. She would not deny
that she had some affection for Lord Robert for his good qualities, but
had not decided to marry him or any one else. But she saw every day the
necessity for her marriage, and that to satisfy the English humour it was
desirable that she should marry an Englishman. What would the King of
Spain think, she asked, if she married one of her servants? The Bishop
said he did not know, but would ask if she directed him to do so; and
then he launched out into warm praise of Dudley. Elizabeth promised to do
nothing without Philip’s advice, and told the Bishop that when the time
came she would speak to him on the subject. The Bishop, in relating the
interview, says that he humoured her thus “because he saw the heretics so
busy forming combinations with England, France, Scotland, and Germany,
and, above all, because your Majesty’s neighbouring States are so pressed
that a perverse decision of this woman might prejudice them, though she
herself were ruined by it.”[148]
The Bishop, for all his sanctimonious horror that religion should be
used in political bargaining, was really quite willing to carry through
the deal and to patronise the marriage of Elizabeth and Dudley if he
were assured of the payment. That Dudley was ready to promise anything
and everything is also certain, but it is more than doubtful whether
Elizabeth was aware of what he was promising. It suited her at the
moment to meet the Catholic league between France and Spain, hollow as
it was, by threatening combinations of Protestants; whilst at the same
time, as a second string to her bow, cajoling the Spaniards into the idea
that she was willing to be reconciled to them, and had Catholic leanings.
When Bishop Quadra saw Dudley the next day Lord Robert was profuse in
his thanks, for he knew from the Queen word for word what had passed. It
had only been timidity that had prevented the Queen from deciding on the
spot, he said, and he begged the Bishop to revert to the subject when he
saw her again. His promises knew no bounds. Everything in England, even
religion, he said, should be put into the hands of King Philip; and if
the sending of a representative to the Council of the Church were not
enough he would go himself. To this the Bishop replied that he would do
his best to forward matters, but again, in shocked tones, he begged Lord
Robert not to mention religion in the matter on any account. What the
Queen and Dudley did about _that_ concerned their own consciences. Of
course the Catholic King would be delighted to see all these religious
dissensions settled, but it should not be a matter of bargain. “I am thus
cautious with these people, because if they are playing false, which is
quite possible, I do not wish to give them the opportunity of saying that
we offered them your Majesty’s favour in return for their changing their
religion.”
At the same time the Bishop urged upon his master that the moment had now
come for action: either this bargain must be struck with Dudley, or help
must be given to the enemies of the existing _régime_ to revolutionise
England. “To let these affairs drift at the mercy of chance neither
secures England to us nor punishes evil, and must end in disadvantage
to your Majesty.” Philip was just as sanctimonious in profession and as
pliable in practice as his ambassador. “Our principal aim,” he wrote
in reply, “is directed to the service of our Lord, the maintenance of
religion, and the settlement and pacification of England, and, as we see
that Sidney’s proposals tend to this, and further bearing in mind that
God if He wills can extract good from evil, we have decided that the
negotiation suggested by Sidney should be listened to.” Dudley was to
be helped to marry the Queen, but “the bargain and its payment must be
clearly set forth in writing signed by Elizabeth herself, and she must
give some earnest of her sincerity by liberating the Catholics she has
in prison, she must undertake to send Catholic bishops and ambassadors
to the Council of the Church, and submit herself unconditionally to
its decisions. And, besides all this, she must begin by giving full
toleration to Catholic worship.”
This, again, shows that Philip was utterly at sea as regards the real
condition of England at the time, and was still ignorant of Elizabeth’s
character and position. Such demands as those he formulated as a
preliminary were utterly out of the question, even as a final concession.
Before this letter was received in London the insincerity of Elizabeth
in the matter began to appear. The Earl of Bedford was sent to France,
ostensibly to condole with Catharine for the death of Francis II.; but
also to suggest that the French bishops—and especially those of Huguenot
leaning—should join her in sending representatives to the Council, but
not at Trent, as had been agreed, but somewhere else on this side
of the Alps. The cleverness of this move is apparent. Catharine and
Elizabeth would in such case seem to be making common cause, which
would paralyse Philip; and at the same time the Catholics in England
would be tranquillised with the idea that a Council of the Church would
settle matters to their liking. Catharine, however, did not jump at the
bait, as just then in the first days of her Regency she did not wish to
quarrel with her Spanish son-in-law, or to drive the Catholic Guises to
desperation by seeming to join with Elizabeth against them.
As soon as this became evident the English Queen grew cool about the
Council, much to Dudley’s annoyance, who still tried to keep her up to
the mark. She sent Cecil to the Spanish Bishop, asking him to move Philip
to write to her recommending her to marry an Englishman, hinting at the
same time that this was in Philip’s interest, as she might otherwise
marry a foreign enemy of his. Cecil said that her idea was to bring
Philip’s letter before a committee of peers, prelates, and commoners,
all friends of Dudley, and they would recommend the marriage. This was
all very well, said the Bishop, but how about Lord Robert’s religious
pledges? But Cecil had no intention, nor probably had the Queen, of
carrying out any such promises; and this new proposal was really intended
to upset Dudley’s plan. So, gradually, a barrier of limitations and
conditions was introduced by Cecil, which made the affair impossible. The
Anglican and Lutheran bishops were to sit in the Council; certain points
of doctrine must be settled beforehand; the Pope or his legate might be
President but not ruler of the Council; and the place of meeting must
be mutually agreed upon by all the princes. Dudley alternately fumed
and sulked at this diversion by his opponents, and tried desperately to
keep the Spanish Bishop in hand. It had, of course, been evident to the
latter at once that Philip’s attitude as shown in his instructions was
impossible. “Elizabeth,” he said, “had not entered into the business so
humbly and submissively that he could lay down the law to her and insist
upon her pledging herself in writing”; besides, it would be most unwise
to give the “heretics” the opportunity, if they were playing false, of
proving that they had got Philip to bargain for his political help in
return for religious concessions.
[Illustration: ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER
FROM A PAINTING AT THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY]
In the meanwhile, encouraged by this philandering, a Papal Nuncio was
hurrying across Europe to be ready at a moment’s notice to sail from
Flanders to England and invite the representatives of Elizabeth to the
Council of Trent. This Nuncio, the Abbé Martinengo, was to be received at
Greenwich privately, and not to go through the streets of London, which
it was thought would not be safe. Dudley was again in the seventh heaven
of blissful anticipation, and ready, if he was the Queen’s husband, to
lay England and the faith he had professed at Philip’s feet. He would
restore the Catholic Church, he promised, the Queen should give a good
answer to the Nuncio about the Council of the Church, and some of the
Protestant bishops even, he said, were beginning to waver. But Cecil saw
which way matters were tending, and promptly stepped in with another
diversion. Protestant feeling in England was already becoming excited
at the rumour that a Papal Nuncio was on his way to see the Queen, and
Bishop Quadra found himself a prey to intense unpopularity for having, it
was said, plotted to bring about a Catholic revolution. The Nuncio was
informed that he would not be allowed to land in England (April, 1561),
Sidney was hurried off to his post in Wales, Dudley retired before the
storm, and Cecil, triumphant, had the satisfaction of knowing that he had
prevented England from being dragged into Philip’s clutches again by the
ambition of a worthless courtier, aided by the Queen’s momentary weakness.
Bishop Quadra was deeply mortified by the way in which he had been
misled, and became more desirous than ever that strong measures should
be taken to aid the Catholics to rebel against Elizabeth. After
unsuccessfully approaching the French Huguenots to obtain help from them
for his marriage with the Queen, Dudley had the impudence, in January,
1562, to approach Quadra again and offer his servile obedience to Spain
in return for the aid of King Philip towards his marriage; but the bait
was stale, for, as the Bishop wrote, the Catholics thoroughly distrusted
Dudley now, and he was of no use any longer as a Spanish instrument.
Though Philip had failed again to secure England as a satellite, the
need for his doing so was as urgent as ever, for the Netherlands were
seething in discontent, the Huguenots in France were being supported for
the time by the Regent Catharine, and it looked as if the stronger coming
combination in Europe would not be Catholic but Protestant. To counteract
this threatening state of affairs it was necessary for Philip to try a
new tack. The massacre of Vassy had precipitated the opening of the first
war of religion in France (March, 1562), and this made it expedient for
him to strengthen the Guises. So a proposal, upon which, when Cardinal
Lorraine had made it a year before, he had looked upon coldly, was now
regarded with favour. This was no less than the marriage of the widowed
Mary Stuart, now in Scotland, and on ill terms with Catharine, with
Philip’s heir, Don Carlos. It was not such a match as the Spanish King in
ordinary circumstances would have considered adequate for his son; but
as Mary was the Catholic heiress of England, and might by a turn of the
wheel become Queen of Britain she was a useful countercheck to Protestant
combinations.
As soon as the project got wind Elizabeth, Catharine de Medici, and the
Scottish Protestants, led by the Earl of Murray, sought an antidote to
the threatened evil. The Darnley match was positively patronised both by
Elizabeth and Catharine, and Lethington posted off to London eager to
negotiate a friendly understanding between England and Scotland before
his Catholic mistress should fall into the marriage net of Spain. But the
war between Catholics and Protestants in France was now blazing fiercely,
and the Guises were fighting for their lives, unable to help their niece
or interfere in any way with Elizabeth’s game in Scotland. This made
her for the time the mistress of the situation, and she could afford to
deal high-handedly with the Queen of Scots, especially after the Duke
of Guise himself had been assassinated before Orleans (February, 1563).
She threw all her power on the Huguenot side in the struggle, allowing
English contingents to join in the fight and subsiding Condé with money.
Mary Stuart’s Protestant advisers had tried hard to negotiate an alliance
between England and Scotland on Protestant lines in conjunction with
the recognition of Mary as Elizabeth’s heiress under the same auspices;
and once more Lethington went to London, in February, 1563, to urge his
point. He found the Queen coolly evasive, for she had nothing to fear
from Mary or her French kinsmen now, and she knew that Philip would
not dare to attack her or interfere forcibly in Scotland whilst the
Protestants in France were in the ascendant.
Lethington, of course with Mary’s acquiescence, then shifted his ground.
He and Murray had always been strong partisans of England, with the idea
of securing the succession to Mary of a Protestant Britain; but, out of
patience at last with this new rebuff from Elizabeth, they determined
to throw over England and Protestantism, and marry Mary to a nominee of
Philip and defy Elizabeth to do her worst. So, at dead of night, again
and again, Lethington, the Scottish minister, landed from his boat at
the dark stairs of Durham House, and remained for hours closeted with
Bishop Quadra. The Bishop himself was daily growing more bitter against
Elizabeth. She had now openly aided the French Protestants against the
Catholics. She had treated him personally with marked contumely, raiding
his house on the pretext that people other than his own servants attended
Mass there, for she knew she could do all this now with impunity, because
Philip could not afford to quarrel with her whilst the Catholics in
France were in a bad way. So the Bishop listened eagerly as the Scot told
him how the Queen of England had deceived his mistress, and now again
had evaded the question of her succession; how she had artfully stepped
in by intrigue, and had rendered abortive all the negotiations for the
marriage of Mary with a fitting foreign prince, and had tried to drive
her into some unworthy marriage. “Had she not better accept any marriage
that the Queen of England proposes for her?” asked Quadra, as a feeler,
“if in return she obtains her recognition as the heiress of the English
Crown?” No, replied Lethington, emphatically. They had made up their mind
that the only way was to force Elizabeth, by marrying Mary to a powerful
Catholic prince, with sufficient force behind him to maintain the rights
of the Queen of Scots. And then, after a little fencing on both sides,
he proposed that Don Carlos should become King Consort of Scotland, and
afterwards of Great Britain, with Mary for his wife. Mary was, he said,
quite resolved never to marry a Protestant or to accept any husband on
the bidding of the Queen of England, and if her approaches to Spain were
not well received she would offer to marry her young brother-in-law,
Charles IX.
This latter declaration, we may well suppose, was only for the purpose of
forcing the hand of Philip, for the match would certainly not have been
allowed by Catharine de Medici. The old Bishop, aware of this, passed it
over with a smile, and said that there was nothing the Queen of England
dreaded more than a marriage between Mary Stuart and a friend of Spain.
She had been at infinite pains lately to make them believe that she was
a Catholic, but now that her friends the Huguenots were in the ascendant
she had become less anxious to conciliate them. But were not the Scots
Protestants too? he asked. Lethington, Protestant and friend of Knox
though he was, minimised the difference between the creed of Scotland and
Spain. Religion, he assured the Spaniard, was not really at the bottom of
their trouble in Scotland. Both Elizabeth and Catharine, he said, were in
mortal fear of the marriage of Don Carlos and Mary of Scotland, as well
they might be; for not only would the Prince thus win the most chaste
and beautiful bride in the world, “but he would also succeed to almost
universal monarchy by adding to the dominions already possessed by your
Majesty two entire islands, this and Ireland, the possession of which
would give no trouble whatever, having regard to the attachment which the
Catholics bear to this marriage and the union of England and Scotland.”
Bishop Quadra, well aware of the vast importance of such a declaration
from one of the leaders of the Scottish Protestants, tried to extract
precise religious pledges from him. But Lethington had said all he
wished to say in the four hours’ conference, and the Bishop, full of
encouragement, promised to obtain promptly the King’s answer to the
proposal. Lethington’s next move was to approach the discontented
English Catholic nobles, already in a ferment at Dudley’s insolence and
Cecil’s religious policy. Almost to a man they assured the Scot of their
enthusiastic support of a Spanish marriage for Mary and the acceptance
of the revolutionary changes that such a marriage would produce in
England. “Only let her marry the heir of Spain and we will salute her as
our leader,” they said. This could only mean that with Spanish aid Mary
and Carlos were to be placed upon the throne of a united Britain, and
that Philip would regain the paramountcy he had lost. Elizabeth’s spies
soon got wind of all this, and her counter move was a most extraordinary
one—no other, indeed, than to offer Dudley as Mary’s husband, with the
assurance of her succession to the English Crown after Elizabeth’s
death without issue. It was a mere feint and never meant seriously by
Elizabeth, but it divided Scottish opinion and unsettled poor Mary
herself, and shows how much more than a match Elizabeth was for Philip in
diplomacy.
Whilst she, with consummate skill and daring, was ready with such
a diversion as this, the Spanish King was pondering, considering,
discussing, and receiving reports upon every phase of the Scottish offer.
The opportunity was a supreme one for him, and if he had been prompt
and bold to seize the chance he might have won England and Scotland by
this means. It is true that Don Carlos was a weak, half-witted boy of
degenerate type, though this was not generally known at the time, but it
would have been sufficient to betroth him to Mary for his father to have
gained a right to interfere in Scotland. The Catholics of England were
on the alert for any such opportunity, and the Scots, as we have seen by
Lethington’s action, were ready to welcome any power strong enough to
defend their country from the intrigues by which Elizabeth sought to sap
the independence of their ancient realm.
But promptitude was impossible where Philip was concerned. It took him
three months to answer the important letter of Bishop Quadra telling
him of Lethington’s offer, and when the reply came to London, in June,
1563, it was thoroughly characteristic of the writer. As usual, he wanted
to pledge everybody else up to the hilt, whilst himself remaining free
behind bland generalities. His greatest praise was for the Bishop’s
prudence in hearing what Lethington had said without giving him any
plain answer. “And seeing that the bringing about of this marriage
may perhaps be the beginning of a reformation in religious matters in
England, I have decided to entertain the negotiation You will have it
conducted in the same way that it has been commenced if you consider
that safe and secret, telling them [the Scots] to inform you of all the
engagements and understandings they have in England; and you, who know
how valuable such knowledge will be to me, will keep me fully informed
of everything. You will advise me step by step of all that happens, but
without settling anything except to discover the particulars referred to
above, until I send you instructions. You may tell them of my intentions,
but urge them above all to use the utmost secrecy in the business and all
connected with it, as all the benefit to be derived depends absolutely
upon nothing being heard of it until it is an accomplished fact. If it
becomes known that I am concerned in any such negotiations, the French
will be greatly alarmed and will spare no efforts to frustrate them—or
at least to counteract any profitable result that may arise. As for that
Queen of England and her heretics, they are so deeply concerned that it
is easy to judge what they would do if they heard of it; so, as I say,
it is absolutely necessary that you should keep secret and urge secrecy
upon all persons with whom you treat.” Philip knew that Cardinal Lorraine
was now pressing his niece to marry the Archduke Charles, Elizabeth’s
former suitor; but Lethington had scouted him as being useless for their
purpose, as being poor and powerless, and Philip was willing to cut
out his own close kinsman if he could thus gain England and Scotland
for his son, or rather for himself,[149] and above all avoid another
French domination of Scotland, which was threatened by Mary’s pretended
willingness to marry the King of France.
When Philip’s letter arrived in London the old Bishop was under a cloud.
He was accused of holding communication with Arthur Pole in the Tower. It
was known that he had been receiving in Durham House emissaries of the
Irish Catholics; and Cecil’s spies reported that suspicious boats came
often at night to the water gate. To make matters worse, one day in May a
hanger-on of the Bishop’s household, an Italian serving lad, had shot at
from the back gate of Durham House a Huguenot captain who was swaggering
down the Strand towards Whitehall. The would-be assassin had taken refuge
in the house, and had sought sanctuary in the Bishop’s own chamber,
whence he was smuggled away by boat by the servants and escaped. Search
and violation of diplomatic domicile by the officers of the law followed.
The Bishop’s servants were interrogated, the house itself placed in the
custody of an officer of the Queen, and the old Bishop, with bitterness
in his heart, found himself shunned by all and powerless.[150]
So when Philip’s impossible instructions reached the Bishop, affairs
had changed. Lethington had been plainly told by Elizabeth that she was
well aware that he was plotting to marry his mistress to Don Carlos or
the Archduke, but that if she married either she must face her enmity,
whereas if she married a friend of England she would make her the heir
to her throne. Lethington and the Scots were therefore already wavering,
for the fear was that if Mary wedded a Spanish nominee, Elizabeth would
make Darnley her heir. The Catholics, too, not unnaturally, seeing the
Countess of Lennox, Darnley’s mother, suddenly taken into high favour
with Elizabeth, were thinking what an ideal arrangement it would be to
marry Mary and her cousin Darnley with Elizabeth’s blessing, and the
assured joint succession to her crown. The Bishop knew all this, and had
well nigh lost heart when Philip’s letter arrived. He saw how impossible
his master’s methods were in the face of Elizabeth’s rapid changes of
policy and fertility of resource; for how could he keep the English
Catholics in hand and learn all their combinations, or even get them to
make any, on vague secret encouragement which might mean nothing? To
the Duke of Alba he wrote: “The remedy is a weak one for so dangerous
a malady. When they see that instead of giving them a firm reply we
come only with halting proposals and inquiries, I know not what they
will think. It is useless to ask them to give me information as to the
amount of support the Queen of Scots can rely upon in England for the
information of his Majesty. Lethington knows well that all this has been
done long ago, for, of course, I could not hide my communications from
him. We have been approached by the same people about the marriage ...
and they have given to Lethington lists of the Catholics and others who
would raise troops for the Queen of Scots.”
Almost hopeless of success, therefore, the Bishop sent one of his
most confidential servants to Scotland to tell Mary verbally that the
ambassador had a very important communication for her if she would send
a trustworthy agent to London to receive it. This messenger, Luis de
Paz, left London in the middle of July, 1563, and eventually reached
Mary whilst she was travelling in the Western Highlands. She had been
ardently expecting Philip’s answer, and had with difficulty held off the
other suitors, the Archduke Charles and Eric of Sweden, until it arrived.
She gave to Quadra’s messenger a favourable verbal reply, but before
he reached Langley, in Buckinghamshire, where the Bishop was staying,
the old Spanish Churchman was dying. He had plaintively written to Alba
shortly before that it was impossible to conduct affairs in England on
Philip’s lines. He had done his best but had been beaten. The English
scorned and contemned him. He had been expelled from the Queen’s house;
he saw his master’s cause daily waning in England, and he knew that only
bold, prompt action would regain the lost ground. The hopelessness of
moving Philip to such action broke the old man’s heart. Luis de Paz had
just time to whisper Mary’s message to him, and the dying man grieved
sorely, he said, that he should thus drop just when he might hope to have
succeeded. “I can do no more,” he sighed, just before he passed away,
and Spanish influence in England was cast further into the background
by his death; for Durham Place during his residence there had been the
secret trysting-place of all those who hated Elizabeth’s rule. In the
absence of any diplomatic channel through which Mary might work the great
combination that she dreamed was to give her the crown of Britain under
Philip’s protection, the clever, strong diplomacy of Elizabeth carried
all before it. Dudley and Darnley were alternately dangled before Mary’s
eyes and then withdrawn, until at length came the Lennox _coup d’état_
and the marriage of the Queen of Scots with her cousin Darnley, which for
a time took her out of the market.
In the meanwhile every day that passed made it more difficult, and
yet more necessary, for the King of Spain to gain the friendship or
control of England. Affairs were going worse and worse with him in the
Netherlands, where the struggle was assuming the character of a duel
to the death between the old traditions of Flemish self-government and
the newer absolutism which had already been fixed upon Castile and now
threatened the ancient patrimony of Burgundy under Philip. The Reformed
religion, or, indeed, any assertion of the lay right of judgment in
matters of faith, was to Philip the embodiment of a rebellious spirit
against the absolute centralised authority which was the essence of
his system of government, and as such had to be crushed at any cost
or sacrifice. Almost openly the English Protestants were sympathising
with their Flemish brethren, and many Protestant refugees were flocking
into England to establish their industries and seek security under a
Protestant Queen. Boldness and good fortune had enabled Elizabeth, on
the other hand, to take advantage of the jealousy of her neighbours and
to gather around her the growing Protestant party which welcomed the
national independence she had attained in so few years, whilst Philip’s
hesitancy had succeeded entirely in disheartening the English Catholics,
who had at first looked upon him as their champion.
The attitude of Elizabeth throughout her intercourse with the Spanish
ambassadors had been such, that she had been able to beguile them
when it suited her, and to checkmate them at pleasure; for whilst
they had to wait for tardy instructions, which when they came always
enjoined impracticable conditions, Elizabeth was opportunist and able
to change her tack at an hour’s notice, to the utter confusion of her
slow antagonist. The hard treatment of Catholics in England and the
welcome accorded to the Flemish Protestant refugees had been met by
Philip by the cruel persecution in Spain of Englishmen, upon the barest
suspicion of heterodoxy; and this had been resented by the recrudescence
of the pillage of Spanish and Flemish ships at sea by English rovers.
Not content with this, Elizabeth attempted to foster the new Flemish
industries in England by imposing restrictions upon the entrance into her
ports of certain manufactured goods coming from Flanders. In retaliation
the Spanish rulers began a regular war of tariffs against England; and
this, by the middle of 1564, had resulted in a general prohibition being
issued on both sides, which practically forbade commercial intercourse
altogether. Envoys went backwards and forwards for months, trying
unsuccessfully to arrange matters; and in these efforts the Flemings were
much more anxious than the English; for the latter had secured a good
inlet for their cloths to the Continent through Embden, and Elizabeth
had given permission for unrestricted export to all other countries but
Flanders and Spain.
The Flemish merchants, on the other hand, were almost bankrupt by the
loss of the English trade, and were clamorous to Philip to remedy the
matter.[151] Elizabeth could afford to stand firm and resist all attempts
to force her into an inferior position in the negotiations. She had taken
Philip’s measure by this time, and knew that whilst his own Netherlands
were seething in revolt, and the Catholic party in France were held in
check by the Huguenots, he dared not seriously injure her. So at last it
was not the Queen of England, but Philip, who had to speak humbly; and in
June, 1564, there arrived in London a Spanish ambassador of rank, a canon
of Toledo, Diego Guzman de Silva, on a new errand. His instructions were
precise, and his position was quite distinct from that formerly held by
haughty Feria and of Bishop Quadra. They had both had for their mission
the forcing of a policy upon a new unstable Queen, whilst Guzman was
sent to seek a redress of grievances, and by diplomacy and moderation to
compass what threats and retaliation had failed to accomplish. Philip’s
hands, indeed, were then too full of his own troubles, both in the
Mediterranean and Flanders, for him to hope to rule other countries,
and bitter as it must have been for him, and still more bitter for the
statesmen of the Alba school, he was forced to speak mildly through his
new ambassador to the heretic Queen to prevent the ruin of his Catholic
Flemish subjects. To this pass had he been brought in six years from the
time when in the days of Mary he had worked his will in England almost
unchecked.
Guzman was instructed to make vigorous remonstrance to the English
Government with regard to the grievances inflicted on Spanish and Flemish
trade in many ways; but he was warned that when he saw Queen Elizabeth
he was “to compliment her with the fairest words you can use.” “You will
tell her, as I write to her, that I send you to reside near her as my
ordinary ambassador, with orders to try to please her in all things,
as, in effect, we wish you to do, using every possible effort to that
end, and to strive to preserve her friendship towards us, and our mutual
alliance. You will assure her that nothing will be wanting on my part to
this end, as she well knows by the acts we have hitherto done, and the
offers we have made to her.” The ambassador was instructed to win over
Lord Robert Dudley, “who is so great a favourite of the Queen, and can
influence her to the extent you have been informed. With kindness you
will try to gain him, and will also strive to make the friendship of
the Queen’s Councillors and officers through whose hands affairs pass,
so that you may the more readily guide them in the way desired.” His
mission was primarily concerned with securing the restoration of Flemish
trade and the reopening of the ports on both sides, though he was also to
watch closely the coming and going of “heretics” between England and the
Netherlands, to persuade Elizabeth, if possible, to extend toleration to
the Catholic worship in England,[152] and he was to spy out the Spanish
Protestants who had sought refuge there.
But, although he said nothing to his new ambassador, it is evident
that Philip was not inclined to accept as permanent his present state
of powerlessness in England, and was patiently biding his time until
circumstances allowed him to obtain control once more. This is seen by
the stress laid upon the importance of gaining Leicester to the Spanish
cause, and still more by the instruction that Guzman was stealthily to
encourage the hopes of the English Catholics, “with such dissimulation
and dexterity as to give no cause for suspicion to the Queen or her
advisers, as it is evident that much evil might follow if the contrary
were the case.” Guzman was an amiable, easy-going Churchman in favour of
peace, and very soon managed to get affairs upon a more friendly footing.
The marriage juggle, by which Elizabeth balanced her own supposed
marriage against that of Mary Stuart; the prospective bridegrooms,
the Archduke Charles, Don Carlos, Don Juan of Austria, the boy King
of France, with Leicester always in reserve, being often changed or
transferred from one Queen to the other, were looked upon by Guzman with
somewhat scornful amusement. He quite understood that these ever-varying
phases of advance and recession obeyed the passing political need of
Elizabeth and Catharine de Medici, and he was never greatly perturbed by
them.
Elizabeth was all graciousness when she received Guzman’s first visit at
Richmond on the 22nd June, 1564. He had had no need to seek Dudley, who
had begun to cultivate his friendship as soon as he arrived, for what
purpose we shall see presently; and the more to do him honour, on the
arrival of the ambassador at the palace landing-stage, young Darnley,
of the blood royal, was awaiting him, to lead him to the Queen. She was
standing, listening to a keyed instrument, when he entered the presence
chamber, led by Lord Chamberlain Howard; and as soon as she saw him she
came forward and embraced him warmly. Speaking at first in Italian and
later in Latin, she expressed her delight at his coming: “As there were
some friendly countries trying to make her believe that your Majesty
would never again have a representative here, and she was glad that
they had turned out false prophets. She said I should be treated and
considered commensurately with the deep interest which for many reasons
she took in your Majesty’s affairs.” Then, as a diversion, she displayed
much curiosity about the mental and physical qualities of young Don
Carlos, and talked some prurient nonsense about Philip’s widowed sister,
Juana, whom she said she might marry, she (Elizabeth) being the husband
and Juana the wife. To impress the ambassador the more with her desire
to be friendly, and to attract attention, as usual, to her own charms,
she said that the King, her good brother, “had seen her when she was
sorrowful, distressed, ill-treated, imprisoned, and afflicted, and that
she had grown greatly since then, and even gave me to understand that
she had greatly changed in appearance.” She promised the ambassador
a prompt settlement of all grievances, and affectionately embracing
him again, handed the somewhat dazzled cleric over to the hospitable
care of her courtiers. Dudley, Pembroke, Northampton, Clinton, Howard,
and Cecil “came separately and embraced me, congratulating me on my
arrival, and expressing their pleasure at my coming;” and so, with much
suave compliment, Guzman, surprised at the warmth of his reception, was
conducted by Darnley to his barge again.
All this new-born delight in Spaniards on the part of Elizabeth and her
courtiers was, of course, not without its reason. The fact is that, after
all her aid to Condé and his Huguenots, peace had been made in France
upon terms which gave predominance to the Catholics; and she considered
that Condé had betrayed her in this, as, indeed, he had. Cardinal
Lorraine, the bitter enemy of Elizabeth, was now Catharine de Medici’s
henchman, and was busy negotiating a renewal of the Catholic League,
which boded ill for England and Protestantism if it succeeded. A meeting
was to take place between Catharine and her daughter, Elizabeth, Philip’s
wife, with Alba and Lorraine in the background, to settle an accord
between France and Spain for the utter extermination of Protestantism
throughout the world; and even the Bourbon Huguenot princes of France
had been temporarily silenced. In the circumstances Elizabeth naturally
wooed Spain violently, and before Guzman had been in England a week
he found himself in the centre of a real or feigned conspiracy of the
unprincipled Dudley, to introduce Catholicism into England under Spanish
protection, and depose Elizabeth’s Protestant minister, Cecil. On the
pretext that Cecil had helped in the production of a book by John Hales
in favour of Catharine Grey’s claim to the succession, Dudley’s friends
secretly urged Guzman to recommend Elizabeth to dismiss and punish Cecil,
“as if he were out of the way, the affairs of your Majesty would be more
favourably dealt with, and religious questions as well, because Cecil
and his friends are those who persecute the Catholics and dislike your
Majesty, whereas the other man is regarded as faithful, and the rest of
the Catholics so consider him, and have adopted him as their instrument.”
Dudley again was willing to become the humble servant of Philip if Cecil
could be got out of the way by Guzman’s aid. He hoped still, he told
Guzman, to marry the Queen; “he had an understanding already with the
Pope, and a person was in Rome to represent him.” When, however, Guzman
asked for details of exactly what Lord Robert promised to do with regard
to religion, the answers were vague, and the example of Bishop Quadra,
moreover, was not lost on his successor. The ambassador knew that Philip
was not ready to attack the English Protestants yet, or on the shifty
word of Dudley, but he prepared the ground cleverly for future action.
The first thing, he told the conspirators, was to bring the Queen into
close friendship with the King of Spain, and with the Catholics through
him, as otherwise she would not dare to dismiss her Protestant ministers.
“All people think,” he wrote to the King, “that the only remedy for the
religious trouble is to get these people turned out of power, as they are
the mainstay of the heretics, Lord Robert having the Catholics all on his
side; and I tell them that they must take these things [_i.e._, the need
for fortifying Elizabeth by the friendship of Spain] into consideration
when they are seeking a remedy, and that plenty of opportunities will
offer themselves, if needed later, to raise war or stop trade.[153] The
Catholics are much disturbed, and as they have no other idea than this
they will not abandon it until they see some way of gaining their point.
Certainly, from what I hear, they are very numerous if they dared to
show, or had a leader.”
But desirous as the Queen was to curry favour with the Catholic-Spanish
party, and infatuated as she might be with Dudley, she could not
dispense with Cecil’s services, and Dudley’s hopes again decreased,
notwithstanding Philip’s sympathy expressed through Guzman, who was
instructed to offer him all the aid he sought; but only on a distinct
promise fully to restore the Catholic religion in England in the event
of his marriage.[154] This Dudley could not do, though by innuendo he
promised much, and thus Cecil remained unmolested. Elizabeth on this
occasion was probably a party to Dudley’s action, for she carried matters
almost as far with Guzman herself. She went out of her way several
times to hint broadly at her desire to enter into negotiations for her
marriage with Don Carlos, without the slightest intention, of course, of
ever doing so, even if the health of the Prince had made such a match
possible. She assured Guzman that she was really a Catholic at heart,
“although she had concealed her real feelings in order to prevail with
her subjects.”[155] Some weeks later she ordered a crucifix and ornaments
to be placed upon the altar in her chapel, and Guzman told her that the
preachers were slandering her for it, whereupon she said that she would
order crosses to be placed in all the churches in the realm.[156]
[Illustration: WILLIAM CECIL, LORD BURGHLEY
FROM THE PAINTING BY MARC GHEERAEDTS IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY]
Elizabeth, indeed, was seriously alarmed at the impending Catholic
League, and in addition to redressing the Spanish trade grievances and
lavishing endless blandishments upon Guzman, she made a desperate bid
to draw Catharine de Medici to her side by opening negotiations for her
own marriage with the boy King of France—negotiations as insincere,
doubtless, as the rest, but directed to the same end, namely, the
diversion of France and Spain from their threatening friendship, as
were also the attempts to revive the now almost outworn subject of the
Queens match with the Austrian Archduke. The constant changes perfectly
bewildered Guzman, who found Dudley (now created Earl of Leicester)
blowing hot and cold. The Catholics, on the one hand, were smiled upon by
the Queen, and on the other strong measures were being proposed by Cecil
and his friends to stay the growth of “papistry.” But though Philip wrote
on behalf of the Catholic English bishops in prison, and Guzman urged for
the toleration of Catholic worship, no practical concessions could be
obtained from Elizabeth, much as she might smile and suggest to Guzman,
with whom she had grown personally very intimate.
In the meanwhile the elaborate preparations for the settlement of the
Catholic League by the meeting of the Queens of France and Spain at
Bayonne went on, and rumours came to England which caused Elizabeth
additional alarm late in 1564, that Philip himself was coming to Flanders
in the following year to bring his Flemish subjects into due subjection.
Elizabeth’s amiability then grew more intense than ever. “How much she
wished her dear brother could stay in one of her ports, that she might
regale him!” and Guzman was the object of her constant affectionate
solicitude at the numerous balls, feasts, and tourneys to which she
invited him, often deploring that his master was not there, too, to
enjoy the fun. It must be confessed that, to judge by the relations
between Guzman and the French ambassador in England (de Foix), the
coming national alliance between their respective countries did not look
promising. De Foix had Huguenot leanings, and Guzman always resented
his presence at Court at the same time as himself, Elizabeth on several
occasions having the greatest difficulty in keeping the peace between
them, when by some inadvertence they met in her presence. Indeed, as was
soon afterwards proved, the national jealousy of France and Spain and the
personal interests of Catharine overrode the Catholic religious object of
the League so perseveringly promoted by Cardinal Lorraine and Alba.
On Ash Wednesday, 1565, Elizabeth listened to an open-air sermon preached
by Dr. Nowell, Dean of Saint Paul’s, an ardent Reformer, who probably was
not a politician. In the course of his sermon he condemned the veneration
of images, and Elizabeth angrily told him not to talk upon that subject.
Nowell either did not hear her or did not choose to regard the rebuke,
and continued, when the Queen again raised her voice and peremptorily
commanded him to pass to another subject, as that one was worn out. Soon
afterwards de Foix, in conversation with Guzman, remarked that the Queen
might have avoided so public and marked an interruption of the preacher.
The Spaniard was of another opinion. “I think quite differently,” he
said. “Those who sin publicly must be publicly rebuked; and as this Queen
does, so might your most Christian King do it: when he gets older he
will, I fear, be likely to make more account of the heretics.”
The much feared interview of Bayonne, which the warlike party in Spain
hoped would result in the crushing of Protestantism and the eventual
submission of England to Spanish dictation, took place in these not very
encouraging circumstances in May, 1565. Elizabeth, as a diversion, had
been for months negotiating with Catharine for a French marriage, and
the Queen Regent of France was taken aback when she saw at Bayonne the
articles which she was expected to sign. The total extermination of
Protestantism in France and the world over would have meant her personal
political extinction, and probably that of her son’s realm; for Philip
in that case would have been paramount. What she wanted was not this,
but to be able to play the Guises off against the Bourbons, and keep
Elizabeth always as a potential ally when the Catholics grew too strong
to suit her. At Bayonne, therefore, whilst she ostensibly acceded to
everything dictated by Alba and Lorraine, and led her devoutly Catholic
and hispanolised daughter to believe that France with all its national
power would support her husband’s objects, Catharine no sooner turned her
face towards Paris than she began to introduce all sorts of conditions
and limitations which stultified the whole plan of the Catholic League,
whilst she became more warmly interested than ever in the talk of
Elizabeth’s marriage with one of her sons.
The result of the much discussed conferences of Bayonne, in which Philip
personally had never been very sanguine, finally disillusioned him as to
the practicability of a league with his artful mother-in-law which should
make him master of Europe. He had thenceforward no other policy open
to him than to revert to the traditional national affinities that had
obtained before the religious changes in Europe. He must win England to
his side by fair means or foul. For seven years he had tried to isolate
her by means of a Catholic league and he had failed: he had spoken
arrogantly through Feria, he had tried subtlety through Bishop Quadra,
and he had essayed friendly cordiality by means of Guzman. Elizabeth,
when it suited her, had been amiability itself, she had languished for
a Spanish husband, she had pretended more than once to be a Catholic,
she had smiled, pouted, or frowned, as her aims for the moment required;
but, notwithstanding all this, the English Catholic bishops were still in
durance, Catholic worship was still proscribed, and Philip was further
off than ever he had been from controlling English statecraft for his own
ends.