Chapter XIII: REIGN OF ELIZABETH (continued) (2)

One of these persons was immediately believed to be the Duke of Norfolk. When he had been ten months a prisoner without any matter having been brought against him of more consequence than that of his having desired to marry the Queen of Scots, provided the Queen of England was willing--which was no treason--and had been brought to no trial, he petitioned to be liberated, contending that though he was wrong in not communicating everything fully to the queen, yet that he had neither committed nor intended any crime, and that his health and circumstances were suffering greatly from his close imprisonment. In consequence, he was removed from the Tower on the 4th of August, 1570, to one of his own houses, under the custody of Sir Henry Neville. He certainly then obtained sufficient variety of prisons, but no more liberty, for he was repeatedly removed from one house to another. He petitioned to be restored to his seat in the Council, but was refused; and in August of 1571 circumstances transpired which occasioned his return to the Tower.

A man of the name of Brown, of Shrewsbury, on the 29th of August carried to the Privy Council a bag of money which he said he had received from Hickford, the Duke of Norfolk's secretary, to carry to Bannister, the duke's steward. The money on being counted in presence of the Council was found to amount to £600. But besides the money there were two papers in cipher; and on this suspicious appearance Hickford, the secretary, was at once arrested, and ordered to decipher the notes, which then showed that the money was intended to be sent to Lord Herries in Scotland, to assist in making fresh efforts on behalf of Mary. Here was treason, and the duke was immediately sent back to the Tower in the custody of Sir Ralph Sadler, Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Henry Neville his old keeper, and Dr. Wilson. The duke denied all knowledge of it; but Bannister, and Barker, another secretary of Norfolk's, being now apprehended, as well as the Bishop of Ross, the rack forced a confession from them. The result was the destruction of the entire conspiracy. The Bishop of Ross, who was immediately arrested, made such revelations, that when the Duke of Norfolk, who had hitherto stoutly denied everything laid to his charge, saw the depositions of the bishop, of Hickford, and Barker, he exclaimed that he had been betrayed and ruined by those in whom he put confidence. On comparing the various answers of these men and of the duke, it would appear that several plans had been in agitation for the liberation of the Queen of Scots; that Norfolk, though he would confess to nothing of the kind, had taken active part in them; that the money lately taken from Hickford had been sent from France for the Scottish friends of Mary. But the most fatal to the duke was the revelation of the mission of Ridolfi, who had it appeared been sent by him to Alva, to the King of Spain, and to the Pope--or rather by Mary, with the cognisance and approbation of the duke.

From further disclosures it appeared that the Pope placed a sum of money at the disposal of Mary, and accompanied it by a letter to Norfolk, regretting that he could send him no further aid this year. Thence Ridolfi hastened to Spain, and reaching Madrid on the 3rd of July, 1571, he delivered his letters to Philip. Meanwhile Philip had received letters from both the Pope and Alva. The Pope urged him to accept the enterprise and rescue England from heresy. The more astute Alva advised him to have nothing to do with it, for he had no faith in the men engaged in it, nor in the soundness of their plans. Philip, however, listened to the scheme, and was so much impressed by it as to determine to undertake the expedition, and to appoint Vitelli its commander. Ridolfi assured the king that he would find plenty ready to co-operate with his forces in England; that he might calculate on an army of 20,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry meeting his troops on landing, led on by the Duke of Norfolk, the Earls of Worcester and Southampton, the Lords Montague, Windsor, and Lumley, with many others; that it was intended to dispatch Elizabeth while on a visit to some country house, and also to destroy with her Cecil, Bacon, Leicester, and Northampton. All this Ridolfi wrote to communicate; but the scheme was suddenly scattered to the winds by the discovery of his money and letters.

At length the queen determined to bring Norfolk to the bar. She named the Earl of Shrewsbury High Steward, and he summoned six-and-twenty peers, who were in the first place chosen by the ministers, to attend on the 16th of January, 1572, in Westminster Hall. Thither Norfolk was brought by the Lieutenant of the Tower and Sir Peter Carew, and was charged with having compassed and imagined the death of the queen, and with levying war upon her within the realm--1st, By endeavouring to marry the Queen of Scots, and supplying her with money, well knowing that she claimed the Crown of England; 2nd, By sending sums of money to the Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland and other persons concerned in the rebellion in the North, enemies to the queen, and attainted of high treason; 3rd, By despatching Ridolfi to the Pope, Alva, and the King of Spain, recommending them to send forces to depose the queen, and set up the Queen of Scots in her place; he himself marrying the said Queen of Scots. Norfolk was found guilty on the fullest evidence, and the complicity of Mary was also brought to light.

On Saturday, the 8th of February, Elizabeth signed the warrant for Norfolk's execution on the Monday; but late on Sunday night she sent for Cecil--now more commonly called Burleigh--and commanded the execution to be stayed, revoking the warrant, to the great disappointment of the good citizens of London, who had seen all the preparations made for the spectacle. Elizabeth soon after signed a fresh warrant which, as the time of execution approached, she also revoked. As she herself hung back, the preachers and the Commons took it up, and demanded the duke's death, for the security of both the sovereign and the State. When the public excitement had reached its height, then the queen slowly and reluctantly yielded, and issued a third warrant, which she did not revoke, for now it was become the act of the nation rather than her own. On the 2nd of June, 1572, at eight o'clock in the morning, the duke was brought out of the Tower to a scaffold on Tower Hill, the drawing to Tyburn and all its revolting accompaniments being dispensed with on account of his high rank. He addressed the people, confessing the justice of his sentence, though he still denied all treason. On being offered a handkerchief to bind his eyes, he refused, saying he was not afraid of death; and after a prayer he stretched his head across the block, and it was severed at a stroke.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth had been making a gay procession amongst her subjects, and had been royally feasted at the castle of her favourite, Leicester, at Kenilworth, and was at Woodstock, on her return towards town, when she was met by one of the most horrible pieces of news which ever flew across affrighted Europe. This was the massacre of St. Bartholomew.

The pacification which had been patched up between the Romanists and the Huguenots in France had no sincerity in it. All the old hatred and resentment were fomenting beneath the surface. The Huguenots had no faith in the Papists, and the Papists longed to annihilate the Huguenots as heretics. None thirsted so much for their blood as the queen-mother, Catherine de Medicis. She entered into the most subtle and daring schemes for their destruction, and the imbecile Charles IX. was mere wax in her hands. Her plans ripened, the massacre broke out on St. Bartholomew's day, August 24th, 1572, and it continued until many Protestants of all ages had been cruelly murdered.

A sensation of horror was diffused all over Europe by the news of this unexampled atrocity of bigotry, which was greatly augmented in England by the crowds of Protestants who fled thither for refuge. The body of the nation called for instant war, to avenge on the sanguinary French Government this infamous treatment of the Reformed church. The French ambassador hastened to apologise to the Queen of England for what he termed this unfortunate accident. Burleigh carefully impressed upon Elizabeth the necessity of the death of Mary as "the only means of preventing her own deposition and murder;" and Sandys, the Bishop of London, sent in a paper of necessary precautions to be adopted, the first and foremost of which was to "forthwith cut off the Scottish queen's head." The nation also clamoured for her execution. Elizabeth listened to the advice, but was too politic to imbrue her hands in the blood of the Queen of Scotland, without exerting herself first to transfer the odium to some other person. Killigrew was therefore sent down to Scotland to see if the execution of the queen could not be effected there. His ostensible mission was to arrange, if possible, the terms of an armistice between the adherents of Mary and those of the young king in Scotland, at the head of which parties were Huntly and Morton. But the private and real object was to lead the Protestant lords to the point of removing Mary from the hands of Elizabeth, "to receive that she had deserved by order of justice." But before an answer could be received the Regent Mar died suddenly. This occurred on the 28th of October, 1572, and on the 9th of November Morton, by the influence of Elizabeth, was elected Regent in his place. Thus Elizabeth had obtained the appointment to be guardian of the young king of the very man who had for many years been in her pay, and was ready to execute any designs demanded by her policy. Both Mary and her son might now be said to be in her hands. No sooner was Morton in power than he managed, with the help of Elizabeth, who had always _weighty_ persuasions at hand, to bring over Mary's chief friends the Hamiltons, and Huntley's people the Gordons, and he demanded the immediate and unconditional surrender of the castle of Edinburgh. Kirkaldy, Maitland, and Hume, who held it, however, refused to give it up, and thus put them at the mercy of their enemies. On this, Elizabeth ordered Drury, the marshal of Berwick, to advance to Edinburgh with a strong force furnished with a powerful battering train, and, if necessary, lay the castle in ashes. In this extremity the besieged lords, and Mary from her prison in England, implored the King of France to hasten to their assistance, and not to allow Elizabeth to extinguish the last spark of opposition in Scotland. But Charles replied that it was quite out of his power, for Elizabeth, on the very first movement, would send a fleet to La Rochelle, where he was besieging the Huguenots. The castle was consequently compelled to surrender on the 9th of June, 1573, after a siege of thirty-four days, and the King's party was for the time being triumphant.

Though the French king had refused to assist Mary's party in Scotland in their last extremity, for fear of Elizabeth's affording aid to the Huguenots besieged in La Rochelle by the Duke of Anjou, that did not prevent Elizabeth assisting the Rochellais. She allowed a strong fleet of Englishmen, under the nominal command of the Count de Montgomery, to assemble in Plymouth for their relief, and she promised them further help. To avert this, Charles IX. endeavoured to flatter Elizabeth into neutrality. He requested her to stand godmother to his infant daughter. The French Protestants, however, were so incensed at Elizabeth's compliance, which they regarded as an act of apostacy, that they attacked the squadron which conveyed the English ambassador, Elizabeth's proxy, seized one of his ships, slew some of his attendants, and put his own life in peril. Charles IX. saw in this a favourable opportunity for inducing Elizabeth to cause the Plymouth fleet to disperse. He therefore despatched an ambassador before the queen's anger could cool, requesting her to refuse a promised loan to these audacious Rochellais, and to disperse the hostile fleet at Plymouth. But Elizabeth referred the envoy to her ministers on that point, who assured him that they had no power whatever to impede the sailing of the fleet, for that Englishmen sailed on the plea of traffic wherever they pleased; and if they committed any acts of hostility on friendly powers, they were at the mercy of those powers to seize them and treat them as pirates.

Elizabeth was soon, however, punished for this flagrant equivocation. Montgomery sailed in April; but on discovering the strength of the French fleet moored under the forts and batteries of La Rochelle he was seized with terror, and returned to Plymouth without striking a blow. Elizabeth, indignant at his failure, then sent him word that she was highly displeased at his presuming to unfurl the English flag, and forbade his access to any of the English ports. In June, 1574, he was taken prisoner in Normandy, and on the 26th of that month he was executed as a traitor in Paris. The bravery of the people of La Rochelle, however, and the election of the Duke of Anjou to the throne of Poland, saved that city. A new pacification was entered into, but the peace of France was again disturbed by a coalition between the heads of the Huguenots and the Marshals Montmorency, De Cossé, and Damfont, the Papal leaders called the Politiques. This league was formed to get possession of the king, whose health was now fast failing, remove Catherine and the Duke of Guise from power, and proclaim Alençon as the successor to the crown in the absence of Anjou in Poland. Elizabeth was actively engaged in all these movements, especially in advising Alençon to place himself at the head of affairs. But the watchful genius of Catherine discovered and defeated the plot: Montmorency and Cossé were committed to the Bastille, Alençon and the King of Navarre were so closely watched that they were stopped in five attempts to escape, and numbers of the inferior actors were put to death.

In May, 1574, Charles IX. of France died a miserable death, full of remorse and horror, worn out with consumption, in the twenty-sixth year of his age. By the management of Catherine, the throne was secured by her next son, Anjou, notwithstanding his being absent in Poland. Anjou as ended the French throne under the title of Henry III., detested by all the Protestants for his share in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. In the following year a new plot was formed between the Protestant council at Millaud in Rovergne and the Romanists under Damville, to place Alençon on the throne--a scheme cordially supported by Elizabeth, in favour of her present lover, Alençon. Alençon effected his escape from Court in September, 1575; and Elizabeth, notwithstanding her recent renewal of the treaty of Blois, advanced him money to raise him an army of German Protestants. In February, 1575, the King of Navarre also escaped, and the two princes called on Elizabeth to declare war in their favour; but the demand was overruled in the Council, and Elizabeth offered herself as mediatrix between the king and his brother, Alençon, who was grown jealous of the ascendency of Navarre.

On the 21st of April a treaty was concluded by which the exercise of the Protestant religion was permitted to a certain extent; the king promised to call an assembly of the States to regulate the affairs of the kingdom, and Alençon succeeded to the appanage of his elder brother, and hence-forward was styled Anjou.

This settlement of the differences of creeds was of very short duration. The Protestant league of Millaud stimulated the Roman Catholics to counter-leagues, which entered into obligation under oath to maintain the ascendency of the ancient faith, and to resist all the encroachments of the Protestants. Henry III., who beheld his own authority usurped by these leagues, determined to place himself at the head of a great combined league of the Catholics, which he did in February, 1577, the deputies of the assemblies of the States, for the most part, following his example, and annulling the bulk of the privileges lately conceded to the Protestants. The consequence was another religious war, followed by as short-lived a peace, by which the privileges revoked were again restored.

But our narrative of the French contests between the two parties has passed ahead of the disturbances in the Netherlands. A furious war had been raging there between the Protestant and Papist interests, which also represented the interests of the native Netherlanders and Spain. The Duke of Alva had waded through oceans of blood to maintain the bigoted and cruel power of his master, Philip; but the natives had found a resolute and skilful champion in the Protestant Prince of Orange. He succeeded in establishing the independence of Holland and Zealand; and Philip, angry with Alva for his want of success, recalled him, and treated him with a stern neglect, which, however ungrateful in the king, was perhaps the best reward for the commission of such crimes as Alva had given himself up to work for him. In the place of Alva, Philip despatched Requescens, who adopted a more conciliatory policy towards the people, and thus weakened the influence of the Prince of Orange.

In these circumstances William applied to Elizabeth for help; but, since he had assumed the government of Holland and Zealand, Elizabeth had begun to regard him with jealousy. She felt sure that, from his connection with the Protestants of France, he would seek for their assistance, and this once gained would afford a pretext for Henry III. invading Holland; and the extension of the sway of France into the Netherlands by no means offered a pleasing prospect to the commerce and tranquillity of England. Instead of granting aid to the struggling Protestants of Flanders, she withdrew her forces from Flushing, and entered into negotiations with the Spaniards. Requescens, rejoiced at this change, conceded what he could, agreed to expel the English refugees from the Netherlands, and obtained, in return, an order to arrest all the vessels of the insurgents in her ports, and for their exclusion from England.

This change of policy greatly mortified the Prince of Orange and the Protestant interests in the Netherlands, but Elizabeth represented it as her object to mediate between them and France. The Prince of Orange, however, would listen to no such mediation, till the civil war breaking out again in France put an end to all hope of assistance thence. To effectually secure the aid of Elizabeth, the prince sent over deputies to make her an offer of the sovereignty of Holland and Zealand, as the representative of the ancient princes of those countries by descent from Philippa of Hainault. This proposal flattered her; but, after much discussion and diversity of opinion in her Council, it was deemed best to decline it, but she intimated that she would do all in her power to reconcile them to their sovereign, Philip.

About a month after this decision, Requescens died, and was succeeded towards the end of the year by Don John of Austria, the bastard brother of Philip, attended by all the reputation of his victory over the Turks at the great battle of Lepanto. He was compelled to ratify an accommodation which had just taken place between Holland and Zealand and the Popish states of the Netherlands, which was styled the Pacification of Ghent, and provided that no foreign soldiers should be permitted in the States, and that they should help each other against all opponents. This treaty was known as the "perpetual edict," but it appeared very likely to be broken immediately. Don John, without a foreign army, found himself impotent to contend with the independent Belgians. He therefore sent for the Spanish army from Italy, and the Prince of Orange also appealed to Elizabeth for men and money to resist this direct violation of the edict. Elizabeth recommended both parties to abide by that contract, but the Prince of Orange, hopeless of any justice or toleration with a Spanish army in the country, threatened to transfer the sovereignty of his estates to Alençon, Elizabeth's suitor, now Anjou. He moreover despatched an envoy to communicate a grand design of Don John of Austria against England. He represented that Don John was of a restless and ambitious character, that he had been disappointed of becoming King of Tunis by the commands of Philip, and that he now found that he had conceived a plan for making himself monarch of England and Scotland. This plan had already received the sanction of the Pope, who had engaged to aid him with 6,000 mercenaries on pretence of assisting the knights of Malta. The prince assured her that the recall of the Spanish army was for the invasion of her realm; that the Pope's reinforcement was to meet them at sea, and together they were to land in England and, aided by the friends of the Queen of Scotland, liberate that princess, who was to marry Don John, and they were to reign as John and Mary, King and Queen of England and Scotland.

Elizabeth must have credited the reality of this design, for she agreed to guarantee a loan of £100,000 to the States, and to furnish 1,000 horse and 5,000 foot, on condition that they should not make peace without her approbation, nor allow her rebels to find an asylum amongst them. This was not a defence of her own country, but an invasion of her ally Philip's; and she was obliged to assure him that she had no hostile intention, but to compel the observance of the Pacification of Ghent, and to defend her own territory against the designs of his brother, Don John. Philip affected to hope that her mediation might be successful, but probably trusted to the talents of Don John and the army from Italy to subdue the insurgent people, in spite of the English aid. The Netherlanders, notwithstanding the money which they had raised on Elizabeth's guarantee, wanted yet more; and they put into her hands the jewels and plate which Matthias of Austria, the brother of the Emperor Rudolph and nominal governor of the States, had pledged to them. On this pledge Elizabeth advanced them £50,000. Animated by this supply, the Dutch proceeded to attack the army of Don John, but were defeated in the great battle of Gembloux, an overthrow which spread consternation throughout the Netherlands. Once more they appealed to Elizabeth, to the Protestant princes of Germany, and to the Duke of Anjou.

Casimir, brother of the Elector Palatine, marched across the Rhine with 12,000 men, paid with English gold, and Anjou also advanced at the head of 10,000. The Protestant followers of Casimir, however, seemed to act rather as invading an enemy's country than as come to succour friends and the people, wherever they came, declared that they had better remain under Philip than under such allies. The Prince of Orange, despairing of being able to resist such commanders as Don John and Farnese, Duke of Parma, formed a confederation of the Northern States alone, afterwards known as the United Provinces; and Don John dying (not, it has been said, without a suspicion of having been poisoned) on the 1st of October, 1578, the Duke of Parma won over the Walloon States to Philip by promising to observe the Perpetual Edict, and replacing the foreign army by native troops.

However, the contest in the Netherlands went on. On March 15th, 1580, Philip published a ban, offering 25,000 crowns for the head of the Prince of Orange; and Anjou, on the other hand, prosecuted his claim to the Netherlands. Elizabeth, who probably was now looking for a plausible excuse for dismissing Anjou, professed to doubt how far, if he succeeded in making himself master of those provinces, she could keep her engagement to marry him, as it would, probably, be dangerous to the trade and independence of England; and moreover, if she did marry Anjou, would not such a marriage be as hateful to her subjects as that of Mary with Philip? Yet, immediately afterwards, she consented to his acceptance of the government of the Netherlands, and made him a present of 100,000 crowns, by means of which he put his army in motion.

In April, 1581, in consequence of this return of regard for Anjou, a distinguished embassy was sent over from France, and was received by the nobles and the authorities of the city of London with great _éclat_. The ambassadors persuaded themselves that this time success would attend them; but they were much astonished to find that the queen had now discovered a new objection to the match: that it would involve her in a war with Philip, who had lately become additionally formidable by the acquisition of Portugal, and proposed to enter, instead of marriage, into a league, offensive and defensive, with France. By the perseverance of the ambassadors, however, these scruples were also overcome, and the marriage was definitively settled to take place in six weeks, provided that the league of perpetual amity were signed within that time. The six weeks having expired, and Elizabeth still continuing undetermined, Anjou, who had crossed the frontier with 16,000 men, and expelled the Prince of Parma from Cambray, hastened over to settle matters with his wavering mistress.

Elizabeth received him with every demonstration of affection, and probably would have married him had it not been for the public indignation. She let her vengeance fall on the author of a pamphlet called "The Gaping Gulf," showing the dangers of this marriage. The author was one John Stubbs, a student of Lincoln's Inn. Elizabeth laid hold on him, his printer and publisher, and had them condemned in the Court of Queen's Bench to have their right hands cut off. The printer was suffered to depart, but the sentence was executed on Stubbs and his publisher in the market-place of Westminster, by driving a cleaver through the wrist with a mallet. The foolish Stubbs, the moment his hand was off, waving his cap with the left, cried--"Long live the queen!" At the end of three months Anjou grew weary of this silly farce, and announced his determination to depart. Even then Elizabeth would not permit him to go without exacting a promise that he would soon return. She stormed, she raved, she called the States of the Netherlands, which summoned him to his duties there, _des coquins_, and accompanied the duke to Canterbury, where she parted from him weeping like a girl.

On his arrival in the Netherlands, Anjou found plenty of employment in contending with the genius and the forces of the Prince of Parma. He found, also, that the real authority in the country was centred in the Prince of Orange, and resolving to make himself the actual master of it, he laid a plan of seizing all the chief towns in the states on the same day. But this extraordinary scheme failed. The Dutch, resenting the attempt, attacked his troops on all sides, and soon compelled him to fly back to France, where he terminated his existence at Château-Thierry, on the 10th of June, 1584, not without suggestion of foul play. So great was Elizabeth's fondness for this prince, whom she might have married, and would not, that even at this period no one dare for some time inform her of his death, which she appeared to bewail with all the symptoms of deep grief.

Within one month of the death of Anjou there fell a far more noble and important man. William the Silent, Prince of Orange, the great champion and founder of the independence of Holland, perished by the hand of an assassin. The ban of Philip had not failed to operate, though at a distance of four years. Balthazar Gerard, impelled by fanaticism and the 25,000 crowns offered by the unscrupulous Spanish King, shot him on the 10th of July, 1584.