ELIZABETH (vii), 1583-87--THE END OF QUEEN MARY
[Sidenote: 1583 The Throgmorton Conspiracy]
The collapse of Alençon was the precursor of a comprehensive conspiracy.
Before the Raid of Ruthven (August 1582), the Guise faction in France had
contemplated a descent on Scotland in conjunction with Lennox's friends
there, with a view of course to raising England in favour of Mary.
Alençon's relations with Elizabeth had not made the French King or his
mother, neither of whom loved the Guises, particularly favourable to the
scheme. The Raid destroyed the prospects of the definitely Catholic party
in Scotland; on the other hand, the failure of Alençon affected, though
only slightly, the objections on the part of King Henry. But any enterprise
against England would have to take a somewhat different form. In May, Guise
was planning a fresh scheme of assassination and invasion; [Footnote:
_State Papers, Spanish_, iii., pp. 464, 479.] while as against the
Guise intrigues still going on in Scotland, Elizabeth at the suggestion of
the French ambassador was again proposing diplomatically to release Mary
[Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 465.]--on terms.
[Sidenote: Sanguine Catholic forecast]
The English refugees and the Seminarists suffered from the same sanguine
conviction that two-thirds of the country was thirsting to throw off the
hated yoke of the existing Government, by which Jacobite agents were
eternally possessed in the first half of the eighteenth century; and with a
good deal less reason. For whereas the House of Hanover had no enthusiastic
adherents, while the House of Stuart had many, and the Whig politicians
were for the most part ready to transfer themselves to the other side if
the other side should look like winning: at this time, the most energetic
portion of the population, gentry and commons, including practically all
who had practised the art of war by land or sea, in the Low Countries, in
Ireland, on the Spanish Main and in Spanish waters, were fierily
Protestant, and the Ministers, nearly all irrevocably bound to the Queen,
were singularly prompt and alert men of action. Enthusiasts there were on
the other side, but they were few. Yet in their prolific imaginations, the
enthusiasts multiplied their own numbers pathetically, and believed
passionately in phantom hosts only waiting for the word to draw the sword,
or at least the dagger, in the sacred cause.
Neither the Spaniards nor the Guises appear ever to have allowed themselves
to accept unreservedly the Churchmen's estimate of the state of feeling in
England; but the Spanish Ambassadors, one after another, and Mendoza
certainly not the least, gave more credence to these impressions than they
deserved, placing far too high a value on the assurances of a very small
number of the nobility. It is probable also that the Jesuits greatly
exaggerated the exciting effect of the martyrdom of Campian and his
associates; for these bore no sort of comparison with the burnings of
Mary's reign, of which every man nearing forty years of age was old enough
to have a tolerably vivid personal recollection. At any rate the advices of
Mendoza went far to confirm the declarations of Allen that a determined
Catholic rising might be relied on, in case of an invasion which should
have for its object the substitution of Mary for Elizabeth and the
restoration of the old Religion.
[Sidenote: Divided Counsels]
The counsels however of the plotters were divided. The priests would have
kept the French out of the affair altogether. Philip was as reluctant as
ever to take an English war upon his shoulders until he had completed the
subjugation of the Netherlands. Mendoza, recognising that Guise was not
France--for now as always, Spain could not afford to let France dominate
England--was willing enough that Guise should head an expedition in which
Frenchmen should otherwise play no more than an equal part; on the
hypothesis that, when the revolution was accomplished, circumstances would
compel the new regime to dependence on Spain. All the parties--Guise,
Philip, Allen--were prepared to yield unofficial sanction to the
simplification of the problem by assassination. Even when the different
interests in the scheme had been compromised, prompt action was obviously
essential if the English Government, with its vast network of spies and
secret agents, was not to get wind of the plot. Promptitude however was the
one thing of which Philip was constitutionally incapable, and Guise was
obliged to consent to wait till the following spring.
[Sidenote: The plot discovered]
As a natural result, an active member of the conspiracy, Francis
Throgmorton, was suddenly pounced upon in his house in London. He succeeded
in conveying sundry important documents to Mendoza, but lists of the
English conspirators and other conclusively incriminating documents were
found. The rack did the rest. The unhappy man endured through the first
application: the second conquered him. He told the whole story--possibly
more than the truth, though that is hardly probable; but of course the
persons incriminated denied complicity, and there was in some cases no
other evidence against them, while the confessions of a victim under
torture are--biased.
The main facts at any rate were indisputable--the plan of a Guise invasion,
under Spanish auspices, with the complicity of a number of English
Catholics, as well as of Mendoza. The presumption that Mary was cognisant
of it was supported by Throgmorton's confession, but such presumptions and
such evidence fall short of being absolutely conclusive. [Footnote:
Mendoza's letters of this period (_State Papers, Spanish,_ iii.)
implicate Mary _prima facie_: but do not _necessarily_ mean more
than that her life was endangered by the discoveries.] Under such
conditions however, grave and well founded suspicion was enough to justify
the severest precautionary measures. Northumberland and Arundel [Footnote:
Son of the late Duke of Norfolk. The title came through his mother.] were
thrown into prison; several of the seminarists, already in ward, were
executed; a number of arrests were made; known Catholics all over the
country were placed under strict surveillance, and removed from any
commands they might hold. Mendoza was ordered in uncompromising terms to
leave the country; fleets were manned, and musters levied. The delay had
proved fatal to the combined scheme.
The collapse of two assassination plots, not forming part of the
Throgmorton conspiracy, may be mentioned. One was that of an apparently
half-crazy person named Somerville, who betrayed himself by bragging; the
other, the more curious affair of Parry, who got himself introduced into
the Queen's presence several times, but "let I dare not wait upon I would"
persistently, till he retired with nothing accomplished; to reappear
presently.
[Sidenote: 1584 Death of Orange]
Elizabeth escaped; but death was soon to lay his hand on two personages of
consequence. In May (1584) Alençon decayed out of a world in which accident
only had allowed him for a time to occupy a very disproportionate share of
the political stage. A month later, the most heroic figure of a time when
heroes were rare among politicians was struck down by the hand of a
fanatic. William of Orange, the head, hand, and heart of the great fight
for freedom being waged in the Netherlands, was assassinated by a zealot.
More than ever it seemed that the Hollanders must submit to Philip, unless
the power of France or the power of England were devoted whole-heartedly to
their cause. The death of Alençon made Henry of Navarre the actual heir
presumptive to the throne of France. The King and his mother hated and
feared Protestantism less than they hated and feared the Guises, and
publicly acknowledged Navarre as next in succession.
As usual, Elizabeth's advisers would have had her play boldly for
Protestantism; as usual, she herself was bent on evading the open collision
with Spain. Her hope was to entangle France in the Netherlands war, and
herself to strike in--if she must strike in at all--only when her
intervention would enable her to make her own terms. The French King would
not be inveigled. If he could have relied on her support, or if the Guises
had been somewhat less dangerous, he would have been ready to strike; but
his distrust of the English Queen was too justifiably complete. She was in
fact saved from the absolute necessity of yielding to the persuasions of
Burghley and Walsingham only by the dogged tenacity with which the
Hollanders held out. And while they held out, she still held off.
[Sidenote: The "Association"]
In England however, one fact was more universally and vividly present in
men's minds than any other. In the eyes of every Protestant, the supreme
danger still lay in the death or deposition of Elizabeth and the elevation
of Mary Stewart to the throne. Recent events had brought home the enormous
risks of assassination; and an Association was formed for the defence of
the Queen. A declaration was framed, the signatories whereof bound
themselves by a solemn vow not only to pursue to the death all persons
concerned in any plot against the Queen, but also any person in favour of
whose succession to the throne any attempt should be made against her; to
bar any such person absolutely from the succession; and to treat as
perjured traitors any of the Association who failed to carry out this
oath. It was sufficiently obvious that the declaration was aimed directly
against Mary; but it may be said that the entire nation forthwith enrolled
itself. And with the bulk of them, the enrolment was anything but an empty
form.
[Sidenote: 1584-85 The Association ratified]
At the same time, it was difficult to see how the members of the
Association could carry out their pledge without a breach of the law;
stronger legal measures for the defence of the Queen and the frustration of
assassination as a means to secure the inheritance in any particular
quarter were required. Parliament was summoned at the end of November.
Ministers wished to have definite provision made for carrying on the
Government in case of the Queen's murder; but she would go with them no
further than to sanction the Association, with the entirely laudable
modification that the person for whose sake the deed was done should not be
held _ipso facto_ guilty of complicity. The differences of opinion
were so strong that the session closed without the passing of any Act. In
January however, an accomplice of that Parry already mentioned [Footnote:
See p. 330] denounced him for intending to kill the Queen. Threatened with
the rack, Parry made a full confession, and was hanged, drawn, and
quartered. At the renewed Session in February, it was enacted that an
invasion, rebellion, or attempt on the Queen's person, on behalf of any one
with a claim to the succession, should disqualify such person from the
succession absolutely, if complicity in the attempt should be proved after
due enquiry. A commission was appointed to put the Act in execution in the
event of assassination; and the Association was sanctioned subject to these
provisions. Subsidies were then voted, and parliament prorogued, after an
unusually gracious speech from the throne.
[Sidenote: 1585: France: the Holy League]
Meantime the United Provinces, despairing of an English overlordship, were
again making overtures to France for a Protectorate, or even annexation if
France should insist on that alternative. Relations between the King and
Mendoza, now Ambassador at Paris, were so strained that war seemed all but
inevitable; Henry seems to have been held back only by the well-founded
fear that Elizabeth was intriguing to draw him into the war and frustrate
him in carrying it on. But in that fear he declined the offer of the
Provinces. In March the Guises produced a new development by the open
announcement of the formation of the Holy League, for the exclusion of
Navarre from the succession and the enforcement in France of the decrees of
the Council of Trent.
But for the unconquerable mutual distrust of Henry and Elizabeth, Henry,
relying on English support, would have bidden defiance to the League; but
the memories of St. Bartholomew and Elizabeth's character as an intriguer
made confidence on either side impossible. The great siege of Antwerp
seemed to be on the verge of terminating in a catastrophe for the revolting
States, which would enable Parma to co-operate actively with Guise; and
Henry found himself threatened with excommunication. Before midsummer he
capitulated, and declared for the League. On the other hand, Navarre was
not the man to yield, and while Elizabeth again had the chance of playing a
bold part and espousing his cause heartily, she judged rightly that he was
strong enough unaided to keep the alliance of the League and the Court very
thoroughly occupied for some time to come. As a factor in the Netherlands
question. France was for the present at least a negligible quantity. So she
left Navarre to fight his own battles in France, while she should dole out
to the Netherlanders just so much or so little support as might suffice for
her own ends.
While the French King was surrendering to the League, the Spanish King took
a step which was intended to frighten England, and had as usual the
precisely contrary result. He ordered the seizure of all English ships and
crews on his coasts. The order was carried out; and England instead of
being cowed was forthwith ablaze with defiance. The effect was promptly
apparent.
[Sidenote: Agreement with the States]
The United Provinces were again offering themselves to England. In August
an agreement was arrived at. The Queen was to hold Ostend and Sluys as well
as Flushing and Brille, as security. She was to send over five thousand men
with Leicester in command. Some Queen's troops and large numbers of
volunteers were shipped off in a few days--too late however to save
Antwerp. Still weeks and even months passed before pay or commanders were
allowed to follow. But before the year was out, Sidney, Leicester, and
others had taken up their commands, the last named representing the Queen
of England.
[Sidenote: Drake's raid]
Already, however, an enterprise still more ominous to Spain was in
hand--unofficial, like most other great enterprises of the reign. Letters
of reprisal for the seizure of the English ships had been promptly issued,
and numbers of privateers were quickly in Spanish waters. Among others,
Francis Drake fitted out a flotilla, the Queen being an interested
shareholder in his venture--though even under those conditions he put to
sea before time, lest counter-orders should arrive. The adventurers sailed
into Vigo, demanded the release of all English prisoners in the province,
which was promised, captured some prizes, and betook themselves to the
ocean, with a view to seizing the Spanish Plate Fleet, which was on its way
from America. They just missed the Fleet, but proceeded to San Domingo
(Hayti) which they held to ransom, went on to treat Cartagena in like
manner, and then being attacked by Yellow Fever, came home with the spoils.
Whatever fears of a Spanish war might be entertained by Elizabeth herself,
the English seamen had no qualms as to their own immeasurable superiority,
and desired nothing better than opportunities for demonstrating it.
[Sidenote 1: Elizabeth's intrigues]
[Sidenote 2: 1586 Leicester in the Netherlands]
While Drake was thus congenially employed, Elizabeth was carrying on her
system of inaction and double-dealing. She intrigued--behind the backs of
her ministers--with Parma, for the surrender to him of the towns she held,
on terms which from her point of view were quite good enough for the
Provinces, namely the restitution of their old Constitutional Government
without religious liberty; although in their own view, religious liberty
was primarily essential. Leicester complicated matters for her by
accepting, in flat contradiction to her orders, the formal Governorship of
the United Provinces: finding in fact that if he was to stay in the
Netherlands nothing short of that would prevail against the suspicions of
the Queen's treachery. At home, Burghley himself threatened to resign if
she would not take a straightforward course. Walsingham wrote to Leicester,
with his usual bitterness, of the "peril to safety and honour" from her
behaviour. If she had indeed contemplated the surrender of the cities to
Parma, that plan was frustrated. Still she stormed at Burghley and
Walsingham, flatly and with contumely refused to ratify Leicester's
arrangement, and continued to keep back the pay of the troops. Parma,
though he too was starved in men and money by Philip, continued inch by
inch to absorb the revolted territory. All that Leicester succeeded in
accomplishing by the month of September was the brilliant and entirely
futile action of Zutphen where in one great hour Philip Sidney won death
and immortality (September 22nd). Thereafter, inaction and short supplies
continued to be the rule, on both sides. In November, Leicester was back in
England, where a fresh situation was developing.
[Sidenote:1585-86 The trapping of Mary]
While the arrangements for armed intervention in the Netherlands were in
progress, Walsingham had been busy preparing for the last act in the
Tragedy of Mary Stewart. The Secretary was foremost among those who held
not only that the captive Queen deserved death, but that her death was more
necessary to the welfare of England than any other event. Yet it was quite
certain that Elizabeth would not assent to her death, unless she thought
she could convince herself and the world that Mary had been actively
engaged in treasonous plots. Recently however at Tutbury under the charge
of Sir Amyas Paulet, she had been guarded so strictly that no surreptitious
correspondence had a chance of passing. Walsingham was confident that if
the opportunity were given, a treasonous correspondence would be opened. It
became his object therefore to give her the opportunity in appearance,
while securing that the channel through which communications passed should
be a treacherous one, and the whole of what was supposed to be secret
should be betrayed to him. To this end, the Queen was removed in December
1585 to Chartley Manor, avowedly in response to her own demands for a less
rigorously unpleasant residence than Tutbury. The instrument of the plot
was a young man named Giffard, supposed to be in the inner counsels of the
Jesuits, actually in Walsingham's service. Through Giffard, communications
were opened between Mary and a devoted adherent of hers in France named
Morgan: but every letter passing was deciphered and copied, and the copies
placed in the Secretary's hands.
[Sidenote: 1586 Babington's plot]
In the late spring, the great Babington conspiracy was set on foot; whereof
the main features were, that Elizabeth was to be assassinated by a group of
half a dozen young men who had places at court and occasional access to her
person. The two leading spirits were Anthony Babington and a Jesuit named
Ballard. Of course a Catholic rising and a foreign invasion were part of
the plan, and Mendoza at Paris was playing his own part. Much of the plot
was confided to Giffard, who reported to Walsingham. The Secretary and his
Queen were satisfied to let the plot develop while they gathered all the
threads in their own hands before striking. The correspondence, as copied
for Walsingham at Chartley, conveyed not details but general intelligence
of what was on foot to Mary, and approval from Mary to the conspirators. In
August, Walsingham's moment came: the conspirators were seized; under
torture or threat of torture they made complete confession. The Scottish
Queen's rooms at Chartley were ransacked, and all her papers impounded.
Again, as after the Throgmorton conspiracy, fleets were manned and musters
called out. In September, the conspirators were tried and executed, and a
Commission was appointed to try Mary herself in October.
[Sidenote: Trial of Mary]
Mary, as before, denied the jurisdiction, professing readiness to answer
only before Parliament. She ignored an invitation from the Queen to obtain
pardon by a confession of guilt. She assented under protest to appear
before the Court, and there avowed that she had consistently appealed to
the Powers of Europe to aid her, as she was entitled to do, but flatly
denied complicity in the Babington plot. The evidence against her was
entirely that of letters--said to be copied from her correspondence, but
quite possibly invented in whole or in part--and the confessions of the
conspirators or of her secretaries, extorted under torture or the fear of
it. Those letters might even have been concocted to suit Walsingham without
his actual privity, by the man who had the task of deciphering and copying
them. Having heard her denial, the Court was transferred from Fotheringay,
where it first sat, to Westminster: and at Westminster, after further
examination of the documents and of Mary's secretaries, it unanimously
pronounced her guilty. The sentence was left for Parliament and the Queen
to settle. The Parliament which had passed the recent Act for the Defence
of the Queen was dissolved, and a new one was summoned. On its meeting in
November, it petitioned for Mary's execution, in accordance with the terms
of the "Association" which Mary herself had offered to join. The
publication of the sentence was received with public acclamation: but
whether the Queen would assent to it remained to be seen.
What then were the guiding considerations, whether of Ethics or of
Expediency?
[Sidenote: The situation reviewed;]
For eighteen years, Mary had been in Elizabeth's power. Elizabeth had held
her captive for the sufficient reason--amongst others--that were she
outside of England and free from restraint, there was nothing to prevent
her from actively agitating the Catholics of Europe to assert her claim to
the English throne. No monarch having in his grip a claimant with an
undeniably strong title to his throne would have allowed that claimant to
escape from his clutches. Few would have hesitated to concoct some more or
less plausible pretext for the claimant's death. Half England considered
that a sufficient pretext was provided by Kirk o' Field; but even assuming
that Mary's guilt in that matter was legally proved, which it assuredly was
not, it is sufficiently obvious that the sovereign of England had no
jurisdiction. Still any monarch situated like Elizabeth would have
maintained, and probably have acted upon, the right to put the captive to
death, if proved to be guilty of complicity in treason or subornation
thereof. Throughout the eighteen years, Elizabeth had deliberately
abstained from seeking to prove definitely that Mary was an accomplice in
the various plots on her behalf, while she was no less careful to leave the
imputation of complicity clinging to her. But now, if the Chartley
correspondence were genuine, the case was decided. The Court, which cannot
be said to have been packed, was satisfied. Again it does not appear that
any monarch, regarding the captive's death as _per se_ desirable,
would have doubted the sufficiency of the ground for her execution.
But hitherto the English Queen had not regarded her rival's death as _per
se_ desirable. Conceivably there was an element of generosity in that
view. Certainly there was the fact that Mary was an anointed Queen, and
Elizabeth had a most profound respect for the sanctity of crowned
heads. But apart from this, there was the purely political argument. Mary
living, and in her power, was an asset. She might always be set at liberty
on terms. Elizabeth hated parting with a political asset even at a high
price, for good value. Hitherto she had reckoned the living Mary as worth
more than Mary's death would be: for Mary might simply be replaced as a
claimant by James, who was not, like his mother, in her power, and might
very well think the crown of England worth a Mass.
[Sidenote: its recent developments]
Now however, a considerable change had come over the situation. Failing
Mary the English Catholics were divided as to the succession. James could
profess filial affection when it suited him; but for some time past he had
dropped that attitude; he had just made a convenient compact with England;
and his mother, making up her mind to his antagonism, had by will
disinherited him and bequeathed her rights to Philip of Spain, who had a
clear claim to the blood Royal of England as descending through his mother
Isabella of Portugal from John of Gaunt. [Footnote: See _Front._
Philip's cousins, however, the duchesses of Braganza and Parma, daughters
of Isabella's brother, had a better title--as they also had to the crown of
Portugal. See p. 303. The exiled Westmorland had a better title still.] The
accession of Philip would suit neither France, nor the Pope; the accession
of James would be at best an uncertain gain to the Catholics; and so Mary's
execution would leave no one claimant for the discontented to rally to. On
the other hand, if Mary were allowed to live, her restoration by Elizabeth
would be almost incredible. Her value as an asset had fallen, the security
given by her death would be much more assured. Political expediency,
therefore, entirely favoured her death, unless the execution would bring
France or Scotland against Elizabeth in arms. France protested earnestly,
but clearly intended nothing stronger than protests, and it very soon
became equally clear that no serious trouble need be feared from James.
[Sidenote: 1587 The sentences carried out]
Still through December and January Elizabeth continued to vacillate. The
sentiment as to the sanctity of an anointed Queen still influenced her; yet
it is sufficiently clear that her real motive for hesitation was the
desire, not to spare Mary, but herself to escape the odium of sanctioning
the execution. At last however the warrant was signed, and received the
Chancellor's seal. Yet she made the Secretary Davison write to Paulet and
urge him to put Mary to death without waiting for the warrant. Paulet
flatly refused. She used such terms to Davison that he feared on his own
responsibility to forward the warrant to the appointed authorities
Shrewsbury and Kent. He went to Burghley: Burghley summoned privately all
members of the Council then in London. They agreed to share the
responsibility for acting without further reference to the Queen. On
February 4th, the letters were issued. On the 7th, in the afternoon, Kent
and Shrewsbury presented themselves at Fotheringay and told Mary that on
the following morning she must die.
[Sidenote: Death of Mary]
It was characteristic of her that during the few hours of life left to her,
she forgot neither loyal servant nor victorious foe. Her last written words
were to bid her friends remember both. When the morrow came, she mounted
the low scaffold in the great hall with unfaltering step, far less moved
outwardly than the six attendants whom she had chosen for her last moments,
a splendid tragic figure; every word, every gesture those of a woman
falsely charged and deeply wronged, majestic in her proud self-control. Was
it merely a superb, an unparalleled piece of acting? [Footnote: See
Appendix C. Mr. Froude is dramatically at his best in telling the story;
but his partisan bias is correspondingly emphasized.] Was it the heroism of
a martyr? The voice of England had doomed her; she appealed to a higher
Tribunal than England. King or Queen never faced their end more
triumphantly. Mary Stewart, royal in the fleeting moments of her
prosperity, royal throughout the long years of her adversity, was never so
supremely royal as in her last hour on earth.