Chapter VIII (2)

To Mary Mendoza sent the message of the Scottish Catholics in a somewhat softened form, in order not to arouse her maternal solicitude for James; but to his own Sovereign, Philip, he wrote almost vehemently, praying him to seize the opportunity for striking a fatal blow at Elizabeth. “With the two thousand soldiers they ask for, he says, the Scots might defy this Queen ... and the whole North of England would be disturbed, the Catholics there being in a majority, and the opportunity would be taken by the Catholics in other parts of the country to rise when they knew that they had on their side the forces of a more powerful Prince than the King of Scotland.”[238] There was no more concealment of Mendoza’s opinion beneath a veil of assumed humility: he not only urged Philip to ensure the victory of Scottish orthodoxy by force, but to aid a rising of English Catholics over the Scottish Border. The opportunity looked a tempting one, for it provided for the removal of the doubtful James, and the plan might be carried out (if the Scottish lords were to be depended upon) without giving to Elizabeth the legal right to interfere.

The experienced Cardinal de Granvelle, who was governing Spain in Philips absence in Portugal, was almost as enthusiastic in its advocacy as Mendoza himself. “The affair is so important,” he wrote to Philip, “both for the sake of religion and to restrain England, that no other can equal it. By keeping the Queen of England busy we shall be ensured against her helping Alençon (in Flanders) or daring to obstruct us elsewhere.”[239] Mary Stuart was just as eager, but had wider views than Granvelle, seeing clearly with her great penetration, if she was to be Queen of Britain, the absolute need for organising the English Catholics, whilst keeping the French out of the affair and not arousing unduly the suspicions of Elizabeth. “In the event,” she wrote, “of the Scots having the support requested, and the Queen of England attempting to interfere, which might give an occasion for the English Catholics to rise, it would be necessary to have this latter part of the business arranged beforehand, but in such a way that they should not understand what is intended, or have any idea until everything was ready to burst forth.”

Holt went back to Scotland with a promise from Mendoza, which he certainly was not authorised by Philip to give, that the two thousand men asked for should be sent to their aid, and the English Catholics, or such of them as were still at liberty, were conciliated by means of Lord Henry Howard, who was very heavily bribed by Philip, and thenceforward became the principal Spanish agent at Elizabeth’s Court. The plot looked, indeed, a promising one under the sole guidance of Mendoza; and all were in high hopes that Mary Stuart’s fortune was at last to take a turn, when Father Creighton arrived in Paris directed to Tassis, the Spanish ambassador, with a letter from the Duke of Lennox. “Understanding,” he says, “from the missioners that the Pope and the King of Spain desire to make use of him for the design they have in hand to restore the Catholic faith in Scotland and release the Queen ... he is prepared to employ his life and estate in carrying out the same, on condition that he is supplied with all things set forth in the statement taken by Father Creighton.” This letter was dated early in March, 1582, and reached Tassis in May, having been brought to him by Creighton and Parsons.[240] The plan was a perfectly new one to Tassis, as Mendoza in London had been the sole intermediary purposely chosen by Mary and the originators of the plot, in order to exclude any probability of French participation; and Philip, to his surprise, was now informed of the affair by his ambassador in Paris, as if for the first time. Why Lennox should have chosen to send his adhesion to Paris instead of to Mendoza is not quite clear; but, being naturally attached to Guisan interests, it is probable that he wished to ensure that his French patrons should not be excluded.

In any case, it does not need much knowledge of Philip’s character to foresee that such inept management as this would upset the whole business as far as he was concerned. The demands of Lennox, as stated by Creighton, were ridiculous. The Scottish Lords had promised Mendoza through Holt that if two thousand foreign troops landed they would be able to effect the revolution, and this was a number that Philip could have provided; but here was Lennox demanding twenty thousand men paid for eighteen months and a large quantity of munitions of war of all sorts. He must have, he says, twenty thousand crowns in money sent to Scotland immediately for fortifications, &c., and a further subsidy to raise Scottish troops; he asks that the troops should be of various nationalities and placed under his command, and if the attempt failed and he lost his Scottish estate in consequence, he wanted a guarantee from the Pope and Philip that an estate of equal value should be given to him elsewhere. He proposes himself to leave Scotland at the most critical juncture, and to go to Paris to make final arrangements, as soon as he hears that the Pope and the King of Spain are pledged to the enterprise.

Tassis, not unnaturally, remarked to the priests that Lennox was asking for a good deal, and he learned from them that the Duke of Guise had been consulted, and thought that fewer men would do. Parsons then took up the story, and was quite sure that the Catholics of England would rise immediately the Scottish affair began; and it was soon evident, even to Tassis, who had been previously quite in the dark about it, that not only Guise but many other people, clerical and lay, had been drawn into the business, since one of the Jesuits was to go to Madrid, others to Rouen and to Rome; and the Nuncio, Archbishop Beton, and Dr. Allen were also parties to the proposals. The idea that Lennox should be in supreme command, and that French troops were to be included, alone would have sufficed to render the plan abortive, apart from the other quite extravagant conditions he imposed. Lennox wrote a somewhat similarly foolish letter to Mary Stuart, saying that the Jesuit Creighton had promised him fifteen thousand men; and that he, Lennox, was to go to France to raise a large force of Frenchmen. Mary was furious at such impracticable nonsense, and wrote to Mendoza begging him to restrain the bungling priests, as she was trying to do, and once more to get the matter into his own hands. “I am advising Lennox,” she writes, “to stay in Scotland, and I disapprove entirely of his plan to raise men in France. You may inform these Jesuits, too, that I will not on any account allow anything concerning this matter to be done in my name ... and I do not approve of sending any one on my behalf to negotiate direct with the Pope and King Philip.”

Mendoza also was full of scorn for such muddling, and the whole scheme was thrown into confusion. Guise, as soon as he was informed by Lennox’s letter brought by Creighton, travelled from Eu to Paris and met Tassis secretly at Beton’s house. He, too, was full of far-reaching, ill-digested plans, his main object evidently being to prevent Spanish troops from being sent to Scotland, in order to avoid, as he says, French jealousy, but really because he feared Philip’s power. His plan was to raise a large mixed force to be sent by the Pope to Scotland, whilst he, Guise, was to make a descent upon the coast of Sussex with a French force. Philip met the new situation in his characteristic way. So far as he was concerned, the plan became impossible the moment that Guise and the French interest were included in it, and he wrote to Tassis, with vague sanctimonious sympathy, deprecating overzeal and ordering that nothing more should be done in the matter until further orders.[241]

Father Parsons, by far the cleverest of the Jesuits, went to Madrid and submitted Lennox’s foolish conditions to Cardinal de Granvelle and Sir Francis Englefield, Philip’s English secretary. They both agreed that the bases laid down by Mendoza and Mary were the only practical ones, and Granvelle incidentally in his report on the matter throws rather a curious light upon the diversity of views that we see now existed, although he probably did not know it, between Philip’s views with regard to England and his own. We shall see presently what was in Philip’s mind; but that of Granvelle is sufficiently revealed when, speaking of the fear of the Scots that the landing of foreign troops might endanger their liberties, he says: “This is not what his Majesty wants, nor do I approve of it; but that we should loyally help the King of Scots and his mother to maintain their rights, and, by promoting armed disturbance, keep the Queen of England and the French busy at small cost to ourselves in comparison with what she will have to spend, and so enable us to settle our own affairs better. If it had no other result this should suffice, but much more when we consider that it may lead to the re-establishment of the Catholic religion in those parts. When we strike there the Irish will pluck up courage; and it is advantageous that the matter should be taken in hand by the Duke of Guise, as it will ensure us from French obstruction. Since we cannot hope to hold the island for ourselves, Guise will not hand it over to the King of France to the detriment of his own kinswoman.” He also hints at the possibility of Elizabeth’s coming to terms with Spain and renewing the old alliance.

This was certainly not Philip’s view at this time (1582). He had now lost hope of conciliating England whilst Elizabeth was on the throne, and he was gradually being convinced that nothing but a great national conquest with purely Spanish arms would serve his turn. The policy of “loyally helping the King of Scots,” and, above all, with the co-operation of the French, would have been useless to him except as a means of gaining for him uncontrolled command of English foreign policy, which, with James an unknown factor and Guise as a confederate, was uncertain. The idea of attacking England through Scotland, which some of his advisers favoured, was one that never appealed very strongly to him after this first fiasco of Lennox, and it introduced an element in the situation which subsequently influenced him greatly, finally, indeed, deciding his policy. This was the jealousy felt by Englishmen of Scots, and a determination that nothing like a domination of England by a people whom they considered inferior should be allowed. Scotland and France, it must be recollected, had for centuries been looked upon by Englishmen as their joint enemies, whilst Spain and Flanders had been their friends, and it soon became a common saying amongst the English Catholics, of whom Parsons was the mouthpiece, that England would welcome a thousand times more a Spanish sovereign than a Scottish one. The first note of the feeling is struck in Granvelle’s memorandum quoted above, where he says that Englefield is very distrustful of the Archbishop of Glasgow, with whom he has ceased to correspond, and he wishes that he (Beton) should not be made cognisant with this business, “which he would immediately divulge to the French.”

Whilst these events were passing in France, the causes for irritation between Elizabeth and Philip were becoming daily more grave. The Queen, almost at her wits’ end, had managed to get rid of her importunate suitor Alençon, in February, 1582, by means of a solemn promise to marry which she never intended for a moment to keep. She had insisted upon Leicester accompanying him to Antwerp, where the Prince was to join Orange as the obedient servant of Elizabeth. To the Queen’s dismay, a few days afterwards she learnt that Leicester had sanctioned by his presence the investiture of the French Prince with Philip’s Crown of Duke of Brabant, and it seemed now, even to her, that the cup was full and that nothing could save her from the vengeance of the outraged Spaniard, especially as she found that the King of France ostentatiously disavowed her and his brother’s action. Elizabeth railed at Walsingham and Leicester like a very fury, summoned Burghley from a sick bed to counsel her, and ended by leaving her French lover in the lurch.

Far from seeking immediate vengeance, however, Philip’s own perplexity was such, in the face of this new dilemma, that he contemplated a step which up to that time he had always repudiated with scorn. Writing to Mendoza in May, 1582, he orders him to endeavour to exacerbate Elizabeth’s jealousy of the French in Flanders for the purpose of enlisting her aid as a mediator between his rebellious subjects and himself. Orange had just been dangerously wounded by a Spanish agent,[242] and it may have appeared to Philip that the moment was a favourable one to bring about some settlement which, at all events, might save his sovereignty. “It will be well,” he writes, “for you to discover whether it is possible for the Queen herself to intervene for the purpose of reconciling me with my subjects.” He is not very sanguine, he says, of such an intermediary; “and she is much more likely to continue her usual arts to incense my subjects against me, but it is worth trying”; and to show how urgent was Philip’s need of a peaceful settlement, he sent the large sum of 40,000 crowns to Mendoza to bribe Elizabeth’s ministers to propose her mediation.[243]

The presence of Alençon in Flanders as sovereign, even under her own auspices, made Elizabeth anxious to learn at first hand what the Spaniards thought of this new provocation, and a hint was sent to Mendoza that she would receive him again with Philip’s Portuguese envoy, who had come to announce his accession to the Crown. She was, during the interview, very emphatic as to her perfect neutrality with regard to Portugal, “just,” says Mendoza, “as if it were true, instead of an evident lie.” Mendoza interposed by saying that no doubt that was her intention, but there were, at that moment, perhaps unknown to her, several ships being fitted and armed in the Thames for Don Antonio. What did he mean? Elizabeth asked, and the ambassador gave her full particulars. Up to this point Elizabeth had been polite, but when she found that no complaint was made about Alençon, she plucked up courage, and Hatton, a special enemy of Mendoza’s, who was behind him, seems to have made some sign to the Queen, for her tone suddenly changed. “This is no time to deal with that matter,” she cried angrily, and Mendoza retired more wrathful than ever, and more determined to work his revenge.

He had been praying for his recall for some time, for he was nearly blind with cataract, and his soul rebelled against the humiliations he had to suffer; but Philip had pressed him to stay on, for nobody could manage the great conspiracy against Elizabeth so wisely and stealthily as he. He would not abandon his post, moreover, until Mary Stuart had consented to deal with a fresh ambassador, and he urged Philip to send a special envoy, on the pretext of claiming the restoration of Drake’s plunder, but really to succeed him if Mary would show confidence in the new man. “If it be profitable that I should remain here I will willingly sacrifice myself for a matter so closely touching the service of God and the increase of His Church, as well as serving your Majesty, since two hundred priests are risking their lives in the same cause, in face of great hardships, hunger and poverty.” His stay in England, indeed, was a true martyrdom, only endured because of his hope that in union with Mary of Scotland he might be instrumental in overthrowing Elizabeth and her Protestant ministers. They, for their part, repaid his hatred with enmity as bitter. Leicester, Hatton, and Walsingham left no stone unturned to make his post in England untenable. There was no English ambassador in Spain, they said, and should be no Spanish ambassador in England: the man was only a spy and a conspirator. It was he, said his detractors, who had planned the assassination of the Prince of Orange, and was the abettor and provider of the flock of black Jesuit crows who were infesting England with their presence. Even the street boys in London pelted and hooted him as he passed,[244] and he was practically excluded from Elizabeth’s Court. But for every fresh slight offered to him he became more ardent in his determination to make Mary Stuart Queen of Catholic Britain. The correspondence between them was close, for Mary refused to trust any other intermediary, and until the raid of Ruthven and the flight and death of Lennox finally upset the Catholic _régime_ in Scotland, the hope of bringing back again into workable shape the plot that the priests and Lennox had embroiled was never abandoned by them.[245]

The fact of their correspondence was, of course, well known to Elizabeth’s Government, and this made the ambassador’s treatment the harder. Once, in May, 1582, he was driven, by orders from the anxious King, to demand audience of the Queen, who replied that she would receive him as a private person if he liked, but would see him no more as ambassador until he brought an apology from Philip for aiding the Irish rebels. To this he replied haughtily in a letter, threatening to leave England at once and let muskets speak for him. When Elizabeth read the letter she was perturbed, and softened somewhat. “God forbid,” she said, “that she should ever break with the King of Spain, to whom she bore nothing but goodwill, ... She hoped that Don Bernardino would not leave; he could communicate with her in writing until the King’s explanation of the Irish affair came.” Writing to Philip in November, 1582, Mendoza says: “I have tried every means, overt and covert, to get into relations with the Queen’s ministers, but they fly from me as if I were a rebel subject of hers, and things have reached such a point that no one will speak to me or even to my servants.” Even his heavily paid Court spies, Lord Henry Howard and Sir James Crofts, avoided communication with him, except when they needed money.

The efforts of Guise and Beton to keep the Scottish Catholic intrigue in their own hands also tended to isolate Mendoza. Both he and Philip, when the news of the raid of Ruthven and the flight of Lennox reached them, recognised that the enterprise through Scotland was hopeless for a time, and endeavoured to confine Guise’s energies in future to France. He was told how dangerous it would be for him to leave France with his enemies the Huguenots in possession, and was flattered and encouraged by Philip with the suggestion that the Crown of France might be his by Spanish aid, if Henry and his brother Alençon died childless, as seemed probable: “for it would be a public infamy if the most Christian Crown should fall, as may be feared, into the hands of a man who was not a Catholic [_i.e._, Henry of Navarre], besides the danger of this, it will be a standing disgrace to a true Catholic like Guise himself.” Guise was proud and delighted that so much deference was being paid him, but he could hardly be expected to look at Scottish affairs entirely from Philip’s point of view; and, whilst not losing sight of his vast ambitions in France, he still endeavoured through Beton, Tassis, and Parsons, to keep his hand on the realm of his cousin.

When Lennox passed through London in January, 1583, on his way to exile in France he sent his secretary to Mendoza—not daring to come himself—to give him an explanatory account of Lennox’s ignominious collapse, and to inform him of his plans to return to Scotland, with James’s full connivance, and for an invasion by foreign troops in the Catholic interest. In such plans both Mendoza and his master had now lost hope, and though Lennox soon afterwards died, Guise himself, undeterred by Philip’s flattering attempts at diversion, became the central pivot of the intrigue, abetted by Beton, Tassis, and the Jesuits, who were still curiously blind to the real trend of affairs. A new French ambassador, La Mothe, was sent to remonstrate with Ruthven and the Scottish Protestants for keeping their King in durance, and to warn Elizabeth not to interfere in Scotland; and with him went young de Maineville on a separate mission from Guise to the Scottish Catholics, for the purpose of reviving the plot for landing a foreign force in Scotland. Beton and Tassis were, of course, parties to the arrangement, much to the annoyance of Mary and Mendoza, who thus saw all their carefully planned schemes thrown into confusion. James in Scotland, as usual, lied to everybody, and the Scottish Catholic party was disunited, so that Guise’s agent, de Maineville, promptly saw that any present attempt to invade Scotland in Mary’s interest would end in failure, and Guise changed all his plans.

FROM AN ENGRAVING]

On the 4th May, 1583, Tassis wrote to Philip that Guise, in view of the changed position in Scotland, had decided to negotiate with the English Catholics for a rising in England. “He has already carried the matter so far that he expects to have it put into execution very shortly, and intends to be present in person.” He asked for 100,000 crowns from the Pope and Philip, to be ready in Paris when he wanted it, though Tassis says that he does not expect that his Holiness will send much. He needed this large sum, it appears, principally “for one object which I dare not venture to mention here, but which, if it be effected, will make a noise in the world.” This object was no other than the murder of Elizabeth, which was to be the prelude of the revolution to place Mary on the throne. Two days before this letter to Philip was written by Tassis the Nuncio in Paris wrote to the Papal Secretary of State, the Cardinal of Como, much more plainly. Guise and his brother Mayenne, he says, had arranged for the murder of the Queen by one of her courtiers, secretly a Catholic, who owed her a grudge for executing certain of his relations. This man had made the proposal to Mary, and she had refused to entertain it, but the Duke of Guise was less scrupulous and had promised the assassin 100,000 francs for the work. He did not ask the Pope’s aid for this, but for the invasion of the South of England, which he, Guise, intended to effect immediately after the Queen had been killed. Neither the Nuncio nor the Cardinal, nor even his Holiness, had anything but praise for this saintly plan, and readily promised one-quarter of the sum needed if Philip would find the other three-quarters.

Guise’s ideas, as usual, were vague and scattered. Simultaneously with this plan for murdering Elizabeth and invading Sussex, with the connivance of the English Catholics, an utterly impracticable scheme, he tried to keep the Scottish Catholics in hand by heavy bribes and to convert James. All this sinister activity could not be quite hidden from Elizabeth, who made a counter move by proposing terms for Mary’s release, which in future would render her harmless. Mary at once asked the advice of Mendoza, who was quite shocked at the idea, and wrote to her, as he says, “with all possible artifice,” by all means to refuse her liberty; but he tells Philip his real reason: “Nothing could be more injurious to your Majesty’s interest and hopes of converting this island than that the French should get their fingers into the matter through the Queen of Scotland and turn it to their own ends.”[246] Philip agreed that it would be best to keep Mary where they could lay hands upon her at any moment; but, perhaps influenced by the opinion of Granvelle, quoted in an earlier page, he asks for Mendoza’s further opinion on the association of Guise in the contemplated revolution. Since he was a near relation of Mary’s, and had the confidence of the Scottish Catholics and the Pope, would his co-operation, in the opinion of Mendoza, be open to the same objections as that of Frenchmen generally? To this Mendoza gave a cautious, sagacious reply. There was no objection to Guise pulling the chestnuts out of the fire, if he depended entirely upon Spain, but above all Mary Stuart must be kept in England.

Philip professed himself willing to provide a part of the money required for Guise’s murderous attempt, but bargained for a larger contribution from the Pope.[247] Before anything could be decided, however, the ill-knit plan fell to pieces. Father Allen and most of the English Catholic exiles were in deadly earnest, and thought that “all this talk and intricacy was mere fencing.” The feeling, also, of national jealousy of the Scots began to manifest itself strongly amongst them. “They suspected a tendency on the part of the Scots to claim a controlling influence in the new Empire, and, as the Scots are naturally inclined to the French, they would rather see the affair carried through with but a few Spaniards, whilst the English hate this idea, as their country is the principal one, and they say that it should not lose its predominance.”[248] This tendency of the English exiles gradually worked upon Philip and his ministers, until French co-operation in the plans to subjugate Britain, even under the auspices of the Guises, was eliminated from the schemes, so far as Spain and the English exiles could influence them.

Not many weeks elapsed before this vague plot of Guise to murder Elizabeth simultaneously with an invasion of Sussex had fallen through. On the 30th May, 1583, the Nuncio in Paris wrote to the Cardinal of Como, “I believe that the design upon the person of the Queen of England will come to nothing”; and three weeks later Tassis wrote to Philip that the murder plot “is, I see, for the present, quite at an end, and nothing more is being said about it, so the funds referred to will therefore not be required.”[249] The English Catholic exiles, led by Dr. Allen and Father Parsons, soon tired of such an unbusinesslike conspirator as Guise, and they came to Tassis, in Paris, with a scheme of their own. They were already jealous of French and Scottish intervention in English affairs. “They have received so much favour from your Majesty, that they would rather have the help of Spaniards.” Dr. Allen and his followers therefore stood aloof somewhat now from the Guise proposals, and “convinced that they must look for a remedy only to the feeling of England, they have made up their minds that they are simply wasting time in depending upon what is arranged here in France, and they have decided to lay the real condition of England before your Majesty, and beg you to extend your pity to the poor, afflicted, distressed Catholics there.”

Tassis was much impressed by Dr. Allen’s earnestness. Scotland was in no condition, he said, to co-operate at present, even if it were advisable for her to do so, which the English thought it was not. The King was a mere boy, notably unstable and in the hands of heretics, though he pretended to be secretly favourable to Guise’s plans; and the Catholics of the North of England were ready to rise on their own account if Philip would aid them with money and a few troops to be landed in Yorkshire or Lancashire. “They are so confident of success, with the blessing of God, in whose service the attempt will be made, that it is impossible for any one to hear them without being convinced.” In this scheme the exiled Earl of Westmorland and Lord Dacre were to join, and Dr. Allen was to accompany the expedition as Bishop of Durham. The time fixed by Allen and his friends for the attempt was in September or October of that year, 1583, in the hope that Philip’s fleet would by that time have defeated Don Antonio’s expedition off the Azores, and be free to co-operate with an English Catholic rising. Even an extreme Catholic party in Scotland were desirous of working independently of France and the Guises, and sent Lord Seton’s brother to Spain to appeal to Philip, avoiding all communication with Guise and Beton.

The Duke of Guise, determined not to lose hold of the business if he could help it, tried to graft a plan of his own upon that of the English Catholics, who were in such dead earnest and had no object in view but the conversion of England. He was willing to abate his demands considerably, and Tassis thought that if he were flattered enough he would agree to whatever Philip ordered. Guise eventually managed to upset the businesslike plans of Dr. Allen and his friends by forcing upon them his undesired and impractical co-operation. Father Parsons, who had recently returned from Spain, was to go to Madrid (July, 1583) to represent to Philip the English view of the case and to crave Spanish support; but before he left Paris in August, Guise managed to enlist him as an advocate of his new combined plan, which he was to submit, not to Philip, but to the Pope. Parsons travelled under the name of Melino—one of his many aliases—and was instructed by Guise to say that if Philip would send 4,000 good soldiers and contribute money to raise and pay 10,000 more, with arms for 5,000 Englishmen, the affair could be carried through successfully. Parsons was to go to Rome first and earnestly beg the Pope in Guise’s name to provide money liberally, and to leave the whole management of the affair to the King of Spain. Ports, he was to assure the Pope, had already been secured, especially that of Fouldrey, on the Lancashire coast, and troops could be sent from Flanders to join Guise’s force of 6,000 men to land in the South of England. The whole of the North of England and Catholic Scotland was ready to rise, the nobles prepared, and even James of Scotland had now freed himself from the custody of the Ruthvens and smiled upon the enterprise. The Pope was to be asked to issue a Bull approving of the expedition, giving indulgences to all who aided it, and to appoint Dr. Allen Nuncio and Bishop of Durham.

This was the message that Parsons, under the name of Melino, took to Rome; and to any one who knows Philip’s methods it spells failure on the face of it. When the King heard that Parsons had in Guise’s name settled with the Pope what Rome’s contribution was to be, without reference to him, he expressed his annoyance with unwonted energy, for he had no intention of allowing his hands to be forced by priestly meddling or French interference. He had, indeed, by this time, as we shall see presently, gradually allowed himself to entertain the vast project for the conquest and domination of England on his own account, towards which he intended the Pope to contribute, not the comparative trifle demanded by Guise, but the lion’s share of the expense.

At the same time as Parsons went on his way to Rome, Guise despatched to England Charles Paget, who, with Thomas Morgan, had been sent by Mary Stuart to serve as assistants or secretaries to Beton, his mission being to ascertain from the English Catholics what force they could join to Guise’s invading army. Paget, although an Englishman, was ostensibly a devout Guisan, but in strong opposition to the interference of Parsons and the Jesuits in political affairs.[250] From the first he had been a spy in Walsingham’s pay, and to him was owing the perfect knowledge possessed by Elizabeth’s Government of the whole of the present intrigue. The instructions given to him by Guise display more clearly than any other document the utter incompatibility of the views respectively of Philip and Guise with regard to England, and of themselves are sufficient to account for the subsequent exclusion of Guise from all the Spanish plans relating to it. Paget is instructed to discover which port will be most convenient for Guise’s landing, and what strength will join him there. Guise would come with 4,000 or 6,000 men, and desired a port within fifty leagues of Dover. He wished to know what provisions and arms would be ready for him, and much other information was sought. To all of this Philip scattered on the margin when he read the dispatch satirical exclamations at the unreadiness and uncertainty that these inquiries demonstrated; but what finally convinced Philip that Guise was no fit confederate for him was the concluding portion of Paget’s instructions. “Assure the English Catholics, on the faith and honour of Hercules [_i.e._, Guise], that the enterprise is being undertaken with no other object or intention than to re-establish the Catholic religion in England, and to place the Queen of Scotland peacefully on the English throne, which of right belongs to her. When this is effected the foreigners will immediately retire from the country, and if anyone attempts to frustrate this intention, Hercules [Guise] promises that he and his forces will join the people of the country to compel the foreigners to withdraw.”[251] No wonder that Philip underscored these lines, and that he thenceforward found the whole plan insufficiently matured. Once more he primly deprecated undue haste, and gently put the plan aside with vague professions of sympathy.

Mendoza in England was less cautious than his master. His position, as we have seen, was a humiliating one, as Elizabeth persisted in her refusal to receive him as ambassador, and he was exposed to daily slights from those who took their tone from the Queen. When Charles Paget went to England on Guise’s errand in August-September, 1583, he was directed to Francis Throckmorton for the purpose of obtaining the information he sought; this man being probably the person referred to in the correspondence already quoted, as having been willing to kill Elizabeth a few months previously at Guise’s bidding. However that may be, Throckmorton was an intimate of Mendoza, who had been informed of all that had been discussed in Paris, and both he and Charles Paget, whilst he was in England, were closely watched. Through his numerous spies Walsingham was perfectly aware of all that had been so incautiously handled by Guise; the whole of the invasion project had been known to Elizabeth’s Government for months, and though Charles Paget, who was a spy, was allowed to get clear away to France, no sooner was he gone than the blow fell upon those in England with whom he had conferred.

Francis Throckmorton was arrested, as was the new Earl of Northumberland and his son, whilst the Earl of Arundel was summoned before the Privy Council, and Lord Paget and Charles Arundell (of Wardour) fled to France. Mendoza was deeply concerned at the arrest of his friend Throckmorton, and wrote to Philip an account of it, cautiously worded, but sufficiently inculpatory: “The Catholics are quite cowed.... Only one paper was found upon Throckmorton, containing a list of the principal ports in England, and particulars with regard to them, and the chief gentlemen and Catholics resident in them. For this they carried him at once to the Tower, and it is feared that his life is in danger, although he informed me by a cipher note, written on a playing-card and thrown out of the window, that he denies that the document is in his handwriting, the hand being a disguised one. He told them that some person had thrown it into his house for the purpose of injuring him, and he assures me that he will endure a thousand deaths rather than accuse any one, which message he begs me to convey to his Catholic friends.... I have written to the lady in prison [_i.e._, Mary Stuart], encouraging her, and begging her not to grieve over the matter to the detriment of her health, but the business, it may be feared, may imperil her life if the negotiations in France are entirely discovered.”[252]

Tassis in Paris was even more despondent, and he feared, what proved to be true, that the rack would soon draw from the prisoner all he knew. Time after time Throckmorton was tormented, as were his brother-in-law and two other relatives, and sufficient was torn from them, together with the known correspondence, to furnish a good pretext at last for expelling Mendoza from England with ignominy. On the 19th January, 1584, a formal summons for him to appear before the Council was handed to him. “If these gentlemen wish to see me in my private capacity,” he replied to Beal, the Secretary, “let them come to my house as I went to theirs when I wanted to see them. But if they are sitting in Council, I would wait upon them, as an ambassador should; but I warn them that if I open my ears to what they have to say, I shall not shut my mouth to answer them, as the service of my master may demand.” He says he gave this answer because he knew the intention was to expel him, and on the Councillors answering that they wished to see him officially, he went to the Lord Chancellor’s house to meet them.

Walsingham spoke Italian better than the rest, and formulated the Queen’s complaint. Mendoza, he said, had conspired with Guise to liberate the Queen of Scots; he was known to be in communication with Mary, with the French plotters, and with Throckmorton, and he must leave the country within fifteen days. “It is strange,” sneered Mendoza, “that the Queen should have summoned them and himself for such a trifle as this. What you tell me are mere dreams, hardly worthy of an answer. These general accusations are absurd, mainly extorted by the rack, and unsupported by details.” Very different were the charges he brought against the Queen of trying to injure his master, King Philip: and he launched out his usual string of complaints, from the seizure of the Spanish treasure fifteen years before to the present helping of Don Antonio against his rightful sovereign. As for his leaving England, that, as his hearers well knew, would delight him, and he would go the moment his master instructed him to do so in answer to a despatch sent by the Queen requesting his recall. The Councillors rose angrily at this and said that nothing of the sort would be done: he must leave England at once: “and they explained their past acts with impertinences that I dare not repeat to your Majesty, the least of them being that I ought to be very thankful that the Queen had not ordered me to be punished for what I had done.”

The blood of the proud Mendozas, the noblest family in Spain, flared out at this: “To my King alone in the world belongs the right of correcting me, and to him alone under heaven am I responsible: so, say no more on that point, unless ye are prepared to fight.” As for the Queen of England punishing him, he laughed at the idea. He would be overjoyed to be gone as soon as a passport was sent to him. She was a lady, and, as such, the least grateful to those who served her best; but, as he had failed to satisfy her as a minister of peace she would in future force him to try whether he would succeed better as a minister of war. Thus Mendoza flung down the gage to England and the Reformation. He had been unpopular in London before, but now the rumour spread through England that he had plotted to kill the Queen, and his life was in the greatest danger from the popular indignation against him. He himself, seeing that the Government refused him the aid of English ships to get away, and the Dutch privateers still swarmed in the narrow seas, was convinced that mischief was meant to him. But he held his head high and boasted more than ever, as slight followed slight from Elizabeth’s ministers, of the overwhelming greatness and power of his master, King Philip, who would avenge with interest all the injuries inflicted upon him and Spain. “Don Bernardino de Mendoza was not born to disturb countries, but to conquer them,” he said in one of his messages to Elizabeth; whilst to Philip himself he passionately wrote with a back-handed reproach: “All their behaviour is on a par with this; and if God had not made you so clement and God-fearing a prince, surely no vassal of yours would consent to serve you in England, seeing the way in which the English treat us: for so powerful an empire as that which God has granted to your Majesty cannot endure such ill-treatment as this for any earthly reward.”[253]

To add to his trouble, he was almost without money, for Philip was the worst paymaster in the world, and he had to bring away with him from England, not only his own great household but the English spies and intermediaries who had served him. “The insolence of these people [_i.e._, Elizabeth’s Government] has brought me to a state, in which my only desire to live is for the purpose of revenging myself upon them; and I pray that God may let it be soon, and will give me grace to be His instrument of wrath, even though I have to walk barefoot across the world to beg for it. I am sure his Majesty will give such an answer as their insolence merits.”[254]

And so, cursing and reviled, the proud ambassador, with rage in his heart, was hustled out of England, and once more King Philip was face to face with the apparently unsolvable problem of how to gain control of English policy. Five ministers of his had begun hopefully with methods of suave diplomacy, and one after the other had become dangerous conspirators and promoters of treason. Elizabeth and her Government, timidly at first and with many gyrations, had through a long series of years injured with impunity the dearest interests of Spain. The seizure of the treasure had caused the failure of Alba; the constant aid of the Netherlands revolt had prevented the pacification of Flanders; the sheltering of the pirates and privateers in English ports had almost cut off communication between Spain and the Flemish dominions by sea; the depredations of Drake, afloat and ashore, had well-nigh ruined Spain and demonstrated her impotence to the world; whilst the assistance and asylum given to the Portuguese Pretender had rendered incomplete Philip’s hold over the new conquest upon which he based such great hopes.

For five-and-twenty years Philip, against the impatient advice of many of his ministers, had persisted in the belief that his own slow, cautious, diplomatic methods would succeed in conciliating Elizabeth or in substituting for her an instrument more amenable to his hand. The expulsion of Mendoza, in January, 1584, marks the conclusion of the era of peaceful effort. The ambassador left England breathing threats of war and vengeance, and when Philip received the reports of his doings he had no words but those of praise and approbation for them. “You have acted with the same good sense and courage in the manner of your departure as in all else that has happened during your stay in the country. I am entirely satisfied with you, and with your good services, and will take care that they are duly remembered.”

Philip at last had made up his mind: henceforward it must be war to the knife between himself and Elizabeth, and no keener instrument to work the destruction of his enemy could be found than Mendoza, with a bitter personal injury of his own to avenge. From his new post in Paris the ambassador worked incessantly to compass the ruin of the _régime_ in England that had wounded his pride; and for the rest of his active life, until, blind and heartbroken with failure, the brilliant soldier, diplomatist, and historian was shrouded in a monk’s gabardine, Elizabeth had no enemy so indefatigable and rancorous as Don Bernardino de Mendoza. Plans and plots for revolution in England, for the murder of Elizabeth, and for the overthrow by treachery of the Protestant power in favour of Mary Stuart, were the means upon which Mendoza mainly depended.

Philip was willing, in his cool, cautious way, to smile upon such attempts, when he could do so without committing himself prematurely or too far. They might turn out well by chance, and he might reap the harvest where others had sown the grain and nourished it with their blood. But through it all thenceforward there was slowly maturing in Philip’s mind, and preparing in his chancelleries, the great enterprise to which he had been forced by the logic of events—the conquest and domination of England by his own arms and for his own benefit. Such a scheme necessitated patient plotting in every capital in Europe before the material preparations could be even commenced. Of the secret preliminaries, the laborious concentration, and the final disaster of the great Armada in which Philip’s ambitions were wrecked the next chapter will tell.