Chapter IV: England and Mary Stuart (2)

Terrible as the blow had been, it roused the more terrible energies which lay hid beneath the graceful bearing of the Queen. The darker features of her character were now to develope themselves. With an inflexible will she turned to build up again the policy which seemed shattered in Rizzio's murder. Her passionate resentment bent to the demands of her ambition. "No more tears," she said when they brought her news of Rizzio's murder; "I will think upon revenge." But even revenge was not suffered to interfere with her political schemes. Keen as was Mary's thirst for vengeance on him, Darnley was needful to the triumph of her aims, and her first effort was to win him back. He was already grudging at the supremacy of the nobles and his virtual exclusion from power, when Mary masking her hatred beneath a show of affection succeeded in severing the wretched boy from his fellow-conspirators, and in gaining his help in an escape to Dunbar. Once free, a force of eight thousand men under the Earl of Bothwell quickly gathered round her, and with these troops she marched in triumph on Edinburgh. An offer of pardon to all save those concerned in Rizzio's murder broke up the force of the Lords; Glencairn and Argyle joined the Queen, while Morton, Ruthven, and Lindesay fled in terror over the border. But Mary had learned by a terrible lesson the need of dissimulation. She made no show of renewing her Catholic policy. On the contrary, she affected to resume the system which she had pursued from the opening of her reign, and suffered Murray to remain at the court. Rizzio's death, had in fact strengthened her position. With him passed away the dread of a Catholic reaction. Mary's toleration, her pledges of extending an equal indulgence to Protestantism in England, should she mount its throne, her marriage to one who was looked upon as an English noble, above all the hope of realizing through her succession the dream of a union of the realms, again told on the wavering body of more Conservative statesmen, like Norfolk, and even drew to her side some of the steadier Protestants who despaired of a Protestant succession. Even Elizabeth at last seemed wavering towards a recognition of her as her successor. But Mary aimed at more than the succession. Her intrigues with the English Catholics were never interrupted. Her seeming reconciliation with the young king preserved that union of the whole Catholic body which her marriage had brought about and which the strife over Rizzio threatened with ruin. Her court was full of refugees from the northern counties. "Your actions," Elizabeth wrote in a sudden break of fierce candour, "are as full of venom as your words are of honey." Fierce words however did nothing to break the clouds that gathered thicker and thicker round England: and in June the birth of a boy, the future James the Sixth of Scotland and First of England, doubled Mary's strength. Elizabeth felt bitterly the blow. "The Queen of Scots," she cried, "has a fair son, and I am but a barren stock." The birth of James in fact seemed to settle the long struggle in Mary's favour. The moderate Conservatives joined the ranks of her adherents. The Catholics were wild with hope. "Your friends are so increased," her ambassador, Melville, wrote to her from England, "that many whole shires are ready to rebel, and their captains named by election of the nobility." On the other hand, the Protestants were filled with despair. It seemed as if no effort could avert the rule of England by a Catholic Queen.

[Sidenote: The developement of England.]

It was at this moment of peril that the English Parliament was again called together. Its action showed more than the natural anxiety of the time; it showed the growth of those national forces which far more than the schemes of Mary or the counter-schemes of Elizabeth were to determine the future of England. While the two Queens were heaping intrigue on intrigue, while abroad and at home every statesman held firmly that national welfare or national misery hung on the fortune of the one or the success of the other, the English people itself was steadily moving forward to a new spiritual enlightenment and a new political liberty. The intellectual and religious impulses of the age were already combining with the influence of its growing wealth to revive a spirit of independence in the nation at large. It was impossible for Elizabeth to understand this spirit, but her wonderful tact enabled her from the first to feel the strength of it. Long before any open conflict arose between the people and the Crown we see her instinctive perception of the changes which were going on around her in the modifications, conscious or unconscious, which she introduced into the system of the monarchy. Of its usurpations upon English liberty she abandoned none. But she curtailed and softened down almost all. She tampered, as her predecessors had tampered, with personal freedom; there was the same straining of statutes and coercion of juries in political trials as before, and an arbitrary power of imprisonment was still exercised by the Council. The duties she imposed on cloth and sweet wines were an assertion of her right of arbitrary taxation. Proclamations in Council constantly assumed the force of law. But, boldly as it was asserted, the royal power was practically wielded with a caution and moderation that showed the sense of a growing difficulty in the full exercise of it. The ordinary course of justice was left undisturbed. The jurisdiction of the Council was asserted almost exclusively over the Catholics; and defended in their case as a precaution against pressing dangers. The proclamations issued were temporary in character and of small importance. The two duties imposed were so slight as to pass almost unnoticed in the general satisfaction at Elizabeth's abstinence from internal taxation. She abandoned the benevolences and forced loans which had brought home the sense of tyranny to the subjects of her predecessors. She treated the Privy Seals, which on emergencies she issued for advances to her Exchequer, simply as anticipations of her revenue (like our own Exchequer Bills), and punctually repaid them. The monopolies with which she fettered trade proved a more serious grievance; but during her earlier reign they were looked on as a part of the system of Merchant Associations, which were at that time regarded as necessary for the regulation and protection of the growing commerce.

[Sidenote: The advance of the Parliament.]

The political developement of the nation is seen still more in the advance of the Parliament during Elizabeth's reign. The Queen's thrift enabled her in ordinary times of peace to defray the current expenses of the Crown from its ordinary revenues. But her thrift was dictated not so much by economy as by a desire to avoid summoning fresh Parliaments. We have seen how boldly the genius of Thomas Cromwell set aside on this point the tradition of the New Monarchy. His confidence in the power of the Crown revived the Parliament as an easy and manageable instrument of tyranny. The old forms of constitutional freedom were turned to the profit of the royal despotism, and a revolution which for the moment left England absolutely at Henry's feet was wrought out by a series of parliamentary statutes. Throughout Henry's reign Cromwell's confidence was justified by the spirit of slavish submission which pervaded the Houses. But the effect of the religious change for which his measures made room began to be felt during the minority of Edward the Sixth; and the debates and divisions on the religious reaction which Mary pressed on the Parliament were many and violent. A great step forward was marked by the effort of the Crown to neutralize by "management" an opposition which it could no longer overawe. Not only was the Parliament packed with nominees of the Crown but new constituencies were created whose members would follow implicitly its will. For this purpose twenty-two new boroughs were created under Edward, fourteen under Mary; some, indeed, places entitled to representation by their wealth and population, but the bulk of them small towns or hamlets which lay wholly at the disposal of the Royal Council.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth and the Houses.]

Elizabeth adopted the system of her two predecessors both in the creation of boroughs and the recommendation of candidates; but her keen political instinct soon perceived the inutility of both expedients. She saw that the "management" of the Houses, so easy under Cromwell, was becoming harder every day. The very number of the members she called up into the Commons from nomination boroughs, sixty-two in all, showed the increasing difficulty which the government found in securing a working majority. The rise of a new nobility enriched by the spoils of the Church and trained to political life by the stress of events around them was giving fresh vigour to the House of Lords. The increased wealth of the country gentry as well as the growing desire to obtain a seat among the Commons brought about the cessation at this time of the old payment of members by their constituencies. A change too in the borough representation, which had long been in progress but was now for the first time legally recognized, tended greatly to increase the vigour and independence of the Lower House. By the terms of the older writs borough members were required to be chosen from the body of the burgesses; and an act of Henry the Fifth gave this custom the force of law. But the passing of such an act shows that the custom was already widely infringed, and by Elizabeth's day act and custom alike had ceased to have force. Most seats were now filled by representatives who were strange to the borough itself, and who were often nominees of the great landowners round. But they were commonly men of wealth and blood whose aim in entering Parliament was a purely political one, and whose attitude towards the Crown was far bolder and more independent than that of the quiet tradesmen who preceded them. Elizabeth saw that "management" was of little avail with a house of members such as these; and she fell back as far as she could on Wolsey's policy of practical abolition. She summoned Parliaments at longer and longer intervals. By rigid economy, by a policy of balance and peace, she strove, and for a long time successfully strove, to avoid the necessity of assembling them at all. But Mary of Scotland and Philip of Spain proved friends to English liberty in its sorest need. The struggle with Catholicism forced Elizabeth to have more frequent recourse to her Parliaments, and as she was driven to appeal for increasing supplies the tone of the Houses rose higher and higher.

[Sidenote: The struggle with the Parliament.]

What made this revival of Parliamentary independence more important was the range which Cromwell's policy had given to Parliamentary action. In theory the Tudor statesman regarded three cardinal subjects, matters of trade, matters of religion, and matters of State, as lying exclusively within the competence of the Crown. But in actual fact such subjects had been treated by Parliament after Parliament. The whole religious fabric of the realm rested on Parliamentary enactments. The very title of Elizabeth rested in a Parliamentary statute. When the Houses petitioned at the outset of her reign for the declaration of a successor and for the Queen's marriage it was impossible for her to deny their right to intermeddle with these "matters of State," though she rebuked the demand and evaded an answer. But the question of the succession was a question too vital for English freedom and English religion to remain prisoned within Elizabeth's council-chamber. It came again to the front in the Parliament which the pressure from Mary Stuart forced Elizabeth to assemble after six prorogations and an interval of four years in September 1566. The Lower House at once resolved that the business of supply should go hand in hand with that of the succession. Such a step put a stress on the monarchy which it had never known since the War of the Roses. The Commons no longer confined themselves to limiting or resisting the policy of the Crown; they dared to dictate it. Elizabeth's wrath showed her sense of the importance of their action. "They had acted like rebels!" she said, "they had dealt with her as they dared not have dealt with her father." "I cannot tell," she broke out angrily to the Spanish ambassador, "what these devils want!" "They want liberty, madam," replied the Spaniard, "and if princes do not look to themselves and work together to put such people down they will find before long what all this is coming to!" But Elizabeth had to front more than her Puritan Commons. The Lords joined with the Lower House in demanding the Queen's marriage and a settlement of the succession, and after a furious burst of anger Elizabeth gave a promise of marriage, which she was no doubt resolved to evade as she had evaded it before. But the subject of the succession was one which could not be evaded. Yet any decision on it meant civil war. It was notorious that if the Commons were resolute to name the Lady Catharine Grey, the heiress of the House of Suffolk, successor to the throne, the Lords were as resolute to assert the right of Mary Stuart. To settle such a matter was at once to draw the sword. The Queen therefore peremptorily forbade the subject to be approached. But the royal message was no sooner delivered than Wentworth, a member of the House of Commons, rose to ask whether such a prohibition was not "against the liberties of Parliament." The question was followed by a hot debate, and a fresh message from the Queen commanding "that there should be no further argument" was met by a request for freedom of deliberation while the subsidy bill lay significantly unnoticed on the table. A new strife broke out when another member of the Commons, Mr. Dalton, denounced the claims put forward by the Scottish Queen. Elizabeth at once ordered him into arrest. But the Commons prayed for leave "to confer upon their liberties," and the Queen's prudence taught her that it was necessary to give way. She released Dalton; she protested to the Commons that "she did not mean to prejudice any part of the liberties heretofore granted them"; she softened the order of silence into a request. Won by the graceful concession, the Lower House granted the subsidy and assented loyally to her wish. But the victory was none the less a real one. No such struggle had taken place between the Crown and the Commons since the beginning of the New Monarchy; and the struggle had ended in the virtual defeat of the Crown.

[Sidenote: Shane O'Neill.]

The strife with the Parliament hit Elizabeth hard. It was "secret foes at home," she told the House as the quarrel passed away in a warm reconciliation, "who thought to work me that mischief which never foreign enemies could bring to pass, which is the hatred of my Commons. Do you think that either I am so unmindful of your surety by succession, wherein is all my care, or that I went about to break your liberties? No! it never was my meaning; but to stay you before you fell into the ditch." But it was impossible for her to explain the real reasons for her course, and the dissolution of the Parliament in January 1567 left her face to face with a national discontent added to the ever-deepening peril from without. To the danger from the north and from the east was added a danger from the west. The north of Ireland was in full revolt. From the moment of her accession Elizabeth had realized the risks of the policy of confiscation and colonization which had been pursued in the island by her predecessor: and the prudence of Cecil fell back on the safer though more tedious policy of Henry the Eighth. But the alarm at English aggression had already spread among the natives; and its result was seen in a revolt of the north, and in the rise of a leader more vigorous and able than any with whom the Government had had as yet to contend. An acceptance of the Earldom of Tyrone by the chief of the O'Neills brought about the inevitable conflict between the system of succession recognized by English and that recognized by Irish law. On the death of the Earl of Tyrone England acknowledged his eldest son as the heir of his Earldom; while the sept of which he was the head maintained their older right of choosing a chief from among the members of the family, and preferred Shane O'Neill, a younger son of less doubtful legitimacy. The Lord Deputy, the Earl of Sussex, marched northward to settle the question by force of arms; but ere he could reach Ulster the activity of Shane had quelled the disaffection of his rivals, the O'Donnells of Donegal, and won over the Scots of Antrim. "Never before," wrote Sussex, "durst Scot or Irishman look Englishman in the face in plain or wood since I came here"; but Shane fired his men with a new courage, and charging the Deputy's army with a force hardly half its number drove it back in rout on Armagh. A promise of pardon induced the Irish chieftain to visit London, and make an illusory submission, but he was no sooner safe home again than its terms were set aside; and after a wearisome struggle, in which Shane foiled the efforts of the Lord Deputy to entrap or to poison him, he remained virtually master of the north. His success stirred larger dreams of ambition. He invaded Connaught, and pressed Clanrickard hard; while he replied to the remonstrances of the Council at Dublin with a bold defiance. "By the sword I have won these lands," he answered, "and by the sword will I keep them." But defiance broke idly against the skill and vigour of Sir Henry Sidney, who succeeded Sussex as Lord Deputy. The rival septs of the north were drawn into a rising against O'Neill, while the English army advanced from the Pale; and in 1567 Shane, defeated by the O'Donnells, took refuge in Antrim, and was hewn to pieces in a drunken squabble by his Scottish entertainers.

[Sidenote: Bothwell.]

The victory of Sidney marked the turn of the tide which had run so long against Elizabeth. The danger which England dreaded from Mary Stuart, the terror of a Catholic sovereign and a Catholic reaction, reached its height only to pass irretrievably away. At the moment when the Irish revolt was being trampled under foot a terrible event suddenly struck light through the gathering clouds in the north. Mary had used Darnley as a tool to bring about the ruin of his confederates and to further her policy; but from the moment that she discovered his actual complicity in the plot for Rizzio's murder she had loathed and avoided him. Ominous words dropped from her lips. "Unless she were free of him some way," Mary was heard to mutter, "she had no pleasure to live." The lords whom he had drawn into his plot only to desert and betray them hated him with as terrible a hatred, and in their longing for vengeance a new adventurer saw the road to power. Of all the border nobles James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell, was the boldest and the most unscrupulous. But, Protestant as he was, he had never swerved from the side of the Crown; he had supported the Regent, and crossed the seas to pledge as firm a support to Mary; and his loyalty and daring alike appealed to the young Queen's heart. Little as he was touched by Mary's passion, it stirred in the Earl dreams of a union with the Queen; and great as were the obstacles to such a union which presented themselves in Mary's marriage and his own, Bothwell was of too desperate a temper to recoil before obstacles such as these. Divorce would free him from his own wife. To free himself from Darnley he seized on the hatred which the lords whom Darnley had deserted and betrayed bore to the king. Bothwell joined Murray and the English ambassador in praying for the recall of Morton and the exiles. The pardon was granted; the nobles returned to court, and the bulk of them joined readily in a conspiracy to strike down one whom they still looked on as their bitterest foe.

[Sidenote: Darnley's murder.]

Morton alone stood aloof. He demanded an assurance of the Queen's sanction to the deed; and no such assurance was given him. On the contrary Mary's mood seemed suddenly to change. Her hatred to Darnley passed all at once into demonstration of the old affection. He had fallen sick with vice and misery, and she visited him on his sick-bed, and persuaded him to follow her to Edinburgh. She visited him again in a ruinous and lonely house near the palace in which he was lodged by her order, on the ground that its purer air would further his recovery, kissed him as she bade him farewell, and rode gaily back to a wedding-dance at Holyrood. If Mary's passion had drawn her to share Bothwell's guilt, these acts were but awful preludes to her husband's doom. If on the other hand her reconciliation was a real one, it only drove Bothwell to hurry on his deed of blood without waiting for the aid of the nobles who had sworn the king's death. The terrible secret is still hid in a cloud of doubt and mystery which will probably never be wholly dispelled. But Mary had hardly returned to her palace when, two hours after midnight on the ninth of February 1567, an awful explosion shook the city. The burghers rushed out from the gates to find the house of Kirk o' Field destroyed and Darnley's body dead beside the ruins.

[Sidenote: Mary's fall.]

The murder was undoubtedly the deed of Bothwell. It was soon known that his servant had stored the powder beneath the king's bedchamber and that the Earl had watched without the walls till the deed was done. But, in spite of gathering suspicion and of a charge of murder made formally against Bothwell by Lord Lennox, no serious steps were taken to investigate the crime; and a rumour that Mary purposed to marry the murderer drove her friends to despair. Her agent in England wrote to her that "if she married that man she would lose the favour of God, her own reputation, and the hearts of all England, Ireland, and Scotland." But whatever may have been the ties of passion or guilt which united them, Mary was now powerless in Bothwell's hands. While Murray withdrew to France on pretext of travel, the young Earl used the plot against Darnley into which he had drawn the lords to force from them a declaration that he was guiltless of the murder and their consent to his marriage with the Queen. He boasted that he would marry Mary, whether she would or no. Every stronghold in the kingdom was placed in his hands, and this step was the prelude to a trial and acquittal which the overwhelming force of his followers in Edinburgh turned into a bitter mockery. The Protestants were bribed by the assembling of a Parliament in which Mary for the first time gave her sanction to the laws which established the reformation in Scotland. A shameless suit for his divorce removed the last obstacle to Bothwell's ambition; and a seizure of the Queen as she rode to Linlithgow, whether real or fictitious, was followed three weeks later by their union on the fifteenth of May. Mary may have yielded to force; she may have yielded to passion; it is possible that in Bothwell's vigour she saw the means of at last mastering the kingdom and wreaking her vengeance on the Lords. But whatever were her hopes or fears, in a month more all was over. The horror at the Queen's marriage with a man fresh from her husband's blood drove the whole nation to revolt. The Catholic party held aloof from a Queen who seemed to have forsaken them by a Protestant marriage and by her acknowledgement of the Protestant Church. The Protestant Lords seized on the general horror to free themselves from a master whose subtlety and bloodshed had placed them at his feet. Morton and Argyle rallied the forces of the Congregation at Stirling, and were soon joined by the bulk of the Scottish nobles of either religion. Their entrance into Edinburgh roused the capital into insurrection. On the fifteenth of June Mary and her husband advanced with a fair force to Seton to encounter the Lords; but their men refused to fight, and Bothwell galloped off into lifelong exile, while the Queen was brought back to Edinburgh in a frenzy of despair, tossing back wild words of defiance to the curses of the crowd.