Queen Elizabeth

Under any other Tudor, or under the Stuarts, all the peers arrested would undoubtedly have lost their heads. Norfolk alone was brought to trial (January 1572). There was much in the proceedings which, according to modern notions, was unfair to the accused. But the peers who tried him felt sure that he was guilty, and they were right. Subsequent investigations have established beyond a doubt that he had conspired to bring a foreign army into the country – the worst form that treason can take. He had done this with contemptible hypocrisy, for a purely selfish object, and after the most lenient and generous construction had been placed on his first steps in crime. And yet historians have been found to make light of the offence, and to pity the malefactor as the victim of a romantic attachment to a woman whom he had never seen, and whom he believed to be an adulteress and a murderess.

During the spring of 1572 Elizabeth hesitated to let justice take its course. She had reigned fourteen years without taking the life of a single noble. The scaffold on Tower Hill from such long disuse was falling to pieces, and Norfolk’s sentence had made it necessary to erect a new one. Elizabeth was loath to break the spell.

Not knowing with any certainty how many of her nobles might have given more or less approval to the Ridolfi plot, but confident that she could cow them by letting the voice of the untitled aristocracy and middle class be heard, she called a new Parliament (May 1572). The response went beyond her expectation. Of Mary’s well-wishers, once so numerous, all except a few fanatics had now given her up. Two alternative courses of action with respect to her were submitted for consideration, with the intimation that the Queen would accept whichever of them Parliament should approve. The first was attainder. The second was that she should be disabled from succession to the crown; that if she attempted treason again she should “suffer pains of death without further trouble of Parliament;” and that it should be treason if she assented to any enterprise to deliver her out of prison. Both houses at once voted to proceed with the attainder. Elizabeth, we may be sure, was not sorry for this unmistakable exhibition of feeling. It would open the eyes of her enemies both at home and abroad. But she had no intention of proceeding to such extremities this time. Mary should have fair warning. Accordingly Parliament was desired to “defer” the bill of attainder, and to proceed with the second measure. But the Commons were in grim earnest. They immediately resolved that the second bill would be useless and even mischievous, as it would imply that at present Mary had a right of succession, whereas she was already disabled by law; and that they therefore preferred to proceed with the attainder. With this resolution the Lords concurred.

Here they were on dangerous ground. To rake up the law empowering Henry VIII. to determine the succession was to disable all the Stuarts, James included, and so to throw away the opportunity of uniting the crowns. Elizabeth had always, for excellent reasons, refused to allow this question to be raised. Accordingly she again directed the House to defer the attainder; she would not have the Scottish Queen “either enabled or disabled to or from any manner of title to the crown,” nor “any other title to the same whatsoever touched at all;” to make sure of which she would have the second bill drawn by her own law officers. To the repeated demands of the Commons for the execution of Norfolk, she at length gave way, and a few days later he was beheaded (June 2, 1572). The second bill, as drawn by the law officers, passed both Houses. Its exact terms are not known, for it never received the royal assent.

Burghley who was of opinion (as some one afterwards said about Strafford) that “stone dead hath no fellow,” bemoaned himself privately to Walsingham on the disappointment of their hopes; and modern historians, with whom his authority is final, are loud in their condemnation of Elizabeth’s vacillation and blindness. Vacillation there was really none. She had determined from the first not to allow Mary to be punished. She had gained all she wanted when the temper of Parliament had been ascertained and displayed to the world. There have always been plenty of people to accuse her of treachery and cruelty because she put Mary to death fifteen years later, for complicity in an assassination plot. How would her name have gone down to posterity if the Scottish Queen had been executed in 1572 merely for inviting a foreign army to rescue her from captivity?

CHAPTER VI

FOREIGN AFFAIRS: 1572-1583

THE year 1572 witnessed two events of capital importance in European history: the rising in the Netherlands, which resulted in the establishment of the Dutch Republic (April); and the massacre of St. Bartholomew, which marked the decisive rejection of Protestantism by France (August).

In the beginning of that year – a few weeks before the proceedings in Parliament just narrated – Elizabeth had at last concluded the defensive alliance with France for which she had been so long negotiating (April 19). It cannot be too often repeated that this was the corner-stone of her foreign policy. For the sake of its superior importance she had abstained from the interference in Scotland which her Ministers were always urging. The more she interfered there the more she would have to interfere, till it would end in her having a rebellious province on her hands in addition to the hostility of both France and Spain; whereas an alliance with France would give her security on all sides, Scotland included. In the treaty it was agreed that if either country were invaded “under any pretence or cause, none excepted,” the other should send 6000 troops to its assistance. This was accompanied with an explanation, in the King’s handwriting, that “any cause” included religion. The article relating to Scotland is not less significant. The two sovereigns “shall make no innovations in Scotland, but defend it against foreigners, not suffering strangers to enter, or foment the factions in Scotland; but it shall be lawful for the Queen of England to chastise by arms the Scots who shall countenance the English rebels now in Scotland.” Mary was not mentioned. France therefore tacitly renounced her cause. Immediately after the conclusion of the treaty Charles IX. formally proposed a marriage between Elizabeth and his youngest brother, Alençon. This proposal she managed to encourage and elude for eleven years.

It was just at this moment that the seizure of Brill by some Dutch rovers, who had taken refuge on the sea from the cruelty of Alva, caused most of the towns of Holland and Zealand to blaze into rebellion (April 1). Thus began the great war of liberation, which was to last thirty-seven years. The Protestant party in England hailed the revolt with enthusiasm. Large subscriptions were made to assist it, and volunteers poured across to take part in the struggle. Charles IX. and his mother, full of schemes of conquest in the Netherlands, urged Elizabeth to join them in a war against Philip. But, with a sagacity and self-restraint which do her infinite honour, she refused to be drawn beyond the lines laid down in the recent defensive alliance. Security, economy, fructification of the tax-payers’ money in the tax-payers’ pocket – such were the guiding principles of her policy. She was not to be dragged into dangerous enterprises either ambitious or Quixotic. Schemes for the partition of the Netherlands were laid before her. Zealand, it was said, would indemnify her for Calais. What Englishman with any common sense does not now see that she was right to reject the bribe?

To Elizabeth no rebellion against a legitimate sovereign could be welcome in itself. Since Philip was so possessed by religious bigotry as to be dangerous to all Protestant States, she was not sorry that he should wear out his crusading ardour in the Netherlands; and she was ready to give just as much assistance to the Dutch, in an underhand way, as would keep him fully occupied without bringing a declaration of war upon herself. But she would have vastly preferred that he should repress Catholic and Protestant fanatics alike, and get along quietly with the mass of his subjects as his father had done before him. Charles IX. was eager to strike in if she would join him. Those who blame her so severely for her refusal seem to forget that a French conquest of the Netherlands would have been far more dangerous to this country than their possession by Spain. To keep them out of French hands has indeed been the traditional policy of England during the whole of modern history.

But, it is said, such a war would have clinched the alliance recently patched up between the French court and the Huguenots; there would have been no Bartholomew Massacre; “on Elizabeth depended at that moment whether the French Government would take its place once for all on the side of the Reformation.”

Whether it would have been for the advantage of European progress in the long-run that France should settle down into Calvinism, I will forbear to inquire. Fortunately for the immediate interests of England, Elizabeth understood the situation in France better than some of her critics do, even with the results before their eyes. The Huguenots were but a small fraction of the nation. Whatever importance they possessed they derived from their rank, their turbulence, and the ambition of their leaders. In a few towns of the south and south-west they formed a majority of the population. But everywhere else they were mostly noblemen, full of the arrogance and reckless valour of their class, anything but puritans in their morals, and ready to destroy the unity of the kingdom for political no less than for religious objects. They had been losing ground for several years. The mass of the people abhorred their doctrines, and protested against any concession to their pretensions. Charles and his mother were absolutely careless about religion. Their feud with the Guises and their designs on the Netherlands had led them to invite the Huguenot chiefs to court, and so to give them a momentary influence in shaping the policy of France. It was with nothing more solid to lean on than this ricketty and short-lived combination that Burghley and Walsingham were eager to launch England into a war with the most powerful monarchy in Europe.

The massacre of St. Bartholomew (August 24) was a rude awakening from these dreams. That thunder-clap did not show that, in signing the treaty with England and in proposing an attack on Philip, the French Government had been playing a treacherous game all along, in order to lure the Huguenots to the shambles. But it did show that when the Catholic sentiment in France was thoroughly roused, the dynasty itself must bend before it or be swept away. England might help the Huguenots to keep up a desultory and harassing civil war; she could no more enable them to control the policy of the French nation and wield its force, than she could at the present day restore the Bourbons or Bonapartes.

The first idea of Elizabeth and her ministers, on receiving the news of the massacre, naturally was that the French Government had been playing them false from the first, that the Catholic League for the extirpation of heresy in Europe, which had been so much talked of since the Bayonne interview in 1565, was after all a reality, and that England might expect an attack from the combined forces of Spain and France. Thanks to the prudent policy of Elizabeth, England was in a far better position to meet all dangers than she had been in 1565. The fleet was brought round to the Downs. The coast was guarded by militia. An expedition was organised to co-operate with the Dutch insurgents. Money was sent to the Prince of Orange. Huguenot refugees were allowed to fit out a flotilla to assist their co-religionists in Rochelle. The Scotch Regent Mar was informed, with great secrecy, that if he would demand the extradition of Mary, and undertake to punish her capitally for her husband’s murder, she should be given up to him.

A few weeks sufficed to show that there was no reason for panic. Confidence, indeed, between the French and English Governments had been severely shaken. Each stood suspiciously on its guard. But the alliance was too well grounded in the interests of both parties to be lightly cast aside. The French ambassador was instructed to excuse and deplore the massacre as best he could, and to press on the Alençon marriage. Elizabeth, dressed in deep mourning, gave him a stiff reception, but let him see her desire to maintain the alliance. The massacre did not restore the ascendancy of the Guises. To the Huguenots, as religious reformers, it gave a blow from which they did not recover. But as a political faction they were not crushed. Nay, their very weakness became their salvation, since it compelled them to fall into the second rank behind the Politiques, the true party of progress, who were before long to find a victorious leader in Henry of Navarre.

Philip, for his part, was equally far from any thought of a crusade against England. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, commanding several companies of English volunteers, with the hardly concealed sanction of his government, was fighting against the Spaniards in Walcheren and hanging all his prisoners. Sir John Hawkins, with twenty ships, had sailed to intercept the Mexican treasure fleet. Yet Alva, though gnashing his teeth, was obliged to advise his master to swallow it all, and to be thankful if he could get Elizabeth to re-open commercial intercourse, which had been prohibited on both sides since the quarrel about the Genoese treasure. A treaty for this purpose was in fact concluded early in 1573. Thus the chief result of the Bartholomew Massacre, as far as Elizabeth was concerned, was to show how strong her position was, and that she had no need either to truckle to Catholics or let her hand be forced by Protestants. A balance of power on the Continent was what suited her, as it has generally suited this country. Let her critics say what they will, it was no business of hers to organise a Protestant league, and so drive the Catholic sovereigns to sink their mutual jealousies and combine against the common enemy.

The Scotch Regent was quite ready to undertake the punishment of Mary, but only on condition that Elizabeth would send the Earl of Bedford or the Earl of Huntingdon with an army to be present at the execution and to take Edinburgh Castle. It need hardly be said that there was also a demand for money. Mar died during the negotiations, but they were continued by his successor Morton. Elizabeth was determined to give no open consent to Mary’s execution. She meant, no doubt, as soon as it should be over, to protest, as she did fifteen years afterwards, that there had been an unfortunate mistake, and to lay the blame of it on the Scotch Government and her own agents. This part of the negotiation therefore came to nothing. But money was sent to Morton, which enabled him to establish a blockade of Edinburgh Castle, and by the mediation of Elizabeth’s ambassador, the Hamiltons, Gordons, and all the other Marians except those in the Castle, accepted the very favourable terms offered them, and recognised James.

All that remained was to reduce the Castle. Its defenders numbered less than two hundred men. The city and the surrounding country were – as far as preaching and praying went – vehemently anti-Marian. The Regent had now no other military task on his hands. Elizabeth might well complain when she was told that unless she sent an army and paid the Scotch Protestants to co-operate with it, the Castle could not be taken. For some time she resisted this thoroughly Scotch demand. But at last she yielded to Morton’s importunity. Sir William Drury marched in from Berwick, did the job, and marched back again (May 1573). Among the captives were the brilliant Maitland of Lethington, once the most active of Anglophiles, and Kirkaldy of Grange, who had begun the Scottish Reformation by the murder of Cardinal Beaton, and had taken Mary prisoner at Carberry Hill. A politician who did not turn his coat at least once in his life was a rare bird in Scotland. Maitland died a few days after his capture, probably by his own hand. Kirkaldy was hanged by his old friend Morton.

By taking Edinburgh Castle Elizabeth did not earn any gratitude from the party who had called her in. What they wanted, and always would want, was money. Morton himself, treading in the steps of his old leader Moray, remained an unswerving Anglophile. But his coadjutors told the English ambassador plainly that, if they could not get money from England, they could and would earn it from France. Elizabeth’s councillors were always teasing her to comply with these impudent demands. If there had been a grown-up King on the throne, a man with a will of his own, and whose right to govern could not be contested, it might have been worth while to secure his good-will by a pension; and this was what Elizabeth did when James became real ruler of the country. But she did not believe in paying a clique of greedy lords to call themselves the English party. An English party there was sure to be, if only because there was a French party. Their services would be neither greater nor smaller whether they were paid or unpaid. The French poured money into Scotland, and were worse served than Elizabeth, who kept her money in her treasury. It was no fault of Elizabeth if the conditions of political life in Scotland during the King’s minority were such that a firmly established government was in the nature of things impossible.

As Mary was kept in strict seclusion during the panic that followed on the Bartholomew Massacre, she did not know how narrow was her escape from a shameful death on a Scottish scaffold. When the panic subsided she was allowed to resume her former manner of life as the honoured guest of Lord Shrewsbury, with full opportunities for communication with all her friends at home and abroad. Any alarm she had felt speedily disappeared. If Elizabeth had for a moment contemplated striking at her life or title by parliamentary procedure, that intention was evidently abandoned when the Parliament of 1572 was prorogued without any such measure becoming law. The public assumed, and rightly, that Elizabeth still regarded the Scottish Queen as her successor. Peter Wentworth in the next session (1576) asserted, and probably with truth, that many who had been loud in their demands for severity repented of their forwardness when they found that Mary might yet be their Queen, and tried to make their peace with her. Wentworth’s outburst (for which he was sent to the Tower) was the only demonstration against Mary in that session. She told the Archbishop of Glasgow that her prospects had never been better, and when opportunities for secret escape were offered her she declined to use them, thinking that it was for her interest to remain in England.

The desire of the English Queen to reinstate her rival arose principally from an uneasy consciousness that, by detaining her in custody, she was fatally impairing that religious respect for sovereigns which was the main, if not the only, basis of their power. The scaffold of Fotheringay was, in truth, the prelude to the scaffold of Whitehall. But as year succeeded year, and Elizabeth became habituated to the situation which had at first given her such qualms, she could not shut her eyes to the fact that, troublesome and even dangerous as Mary’s presence in England was, the trouble and the danger had been very much greater when she was seated on the Scottish throne. The seething caldron of Scotch politics had not, indeed, become a negligible quantity. It required watching. But experience had shown that, while the King was a child, the Scots were neither valuable as friends nor formidable as foes. This was a truth quite as well understood at Paris and Madrid as at London, though the French, no less keen in those days than they are now to maintain that shadowy thing called “legitimate French influence” in countries with which they had any historical connection, continued to intrigue and waste their money among the hungry Scotch nobles. It was a fixed principle with Elizabeth, as with all English statesmen, not to tolerate the presence of foreign troops in Scotland. But she believed – and her belief was justified by events – that a French expedition was not the easy matter it had been when Mary of Guise was Regent of Scotland and Mary Tudor Queen of England. And, more important still, in spite of much treachery and distrust, the French and English Governments were bound together by a treaty which was equally necessary to each of them. Scotland, therefore, was no longer such a cause of anxiety to Elizabeth as it had been during the first ten years of her reign. Her ministers had neither her coolness nor her insight. Yet modern historians, proud of having unearthed their croaking criticisms, ask us to judge Elizabeth’s policy by prognostications which turned out to be false rather than by the known results which so brilliantly justified it.

How to deal with the Netherlands was a much more complicated and difficult problem. Here again Elizabeth’s ministers were for carrying matters with a high hand. In their view, England was in constant danger of a Spanish invasion, which could only be averted by openly and vigorously supporting the revolted provinces. They would have had Elizabeth place herself at the head of a Protestant league, and dare the worst that Philip could do. She, on the other hand, believed that every year war could be delayed was so much gained for England. There were many ways in which she could aid the Netherlands without openly challenging Philip. A curious theory of international relations prevailed in those days – an English Prime Minister, by the way, found it convenient not long ago to revive it – according to which, to carry on warlike operations against another country was a very different thing from going to war with that country. Of this theory Elizabeth largely availed herself. English generals were not only allowed, but encouraged, to raise regiments of volunteers to serve in the Low Countries. When there, they reported to the English Government, and received instructions from it with hardly a pretence of concealment. Money was openly furnished to the Prince of Orange. English fleets – also nominally of volunteers – were encouraged to prey on Spanish commerce, Elizabeth herself subscribing to their outfit and sharing in the booty.

We are not to suppose, because the revolt of the Netherlands crippled Philip for any attack on England, that Elizabeth welcomed it, or that she contemplated the prolongation of the struggle with cold-blooded satisfaction. Its immediate advantage to this country was obvious. But Elizabeth had a sincere abhorrence of war and disorder. She was equally provoked with Philip for persecuting the Dutch Protestants into rebellion, and with the Dutch for insisting on religious concessions which Philip could not be expected to grant, and which she herself was not granting to Catholics in England. At any time during the struggle, if Philip would have guaranteed liberty of conscience (as distinguished from liberty of public worship), the restoration of the old charters, and the removal of the Spanish troops, Elizabeth would not only have withheld all help from the Dutch, but would have put pressure on them to submit to Philip. The presence of Spanish veterans opposite the mouth of the Thames was a standing menace to England. “As they are there,” argued Burghley, “we must help the Dutch to keep them employed.” “If the Dutch were not such impracticable fanatics,” rejoined Elizabeth, “the Spanish veterans need not be there at all.”

The “Pacification of Ghent” (November 1576), by which the Belgian Netherlands, for a short time, made common cause with Holland and Zealand, relieved Elizabeth, for a time, from the necessity of taking any decisive step. Philip was still recognised as sovereign, but he was required to be content with such powers as the old constitution gave him. It seemed likely that Catholic bigots would have to give up persecuting, and Protestant bigots to acquiesce in the official establishment of the old religion. This was precisely the settlement Elizabeth had always desired. It would get rid of the Spanish troops. It would keep out the French. It would relieve her from the necessity of interfering. If it put some restriction on the open profession of Calvinism she would not be sorry.

If this arrangement could have been carried out, would it in the long-run have been for the benefit of Europe? Those who hold that the conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism was simply a conflict between truth and falsehood will, of course, have no difficulty in giving their answer. Others may hold that freedom of conscience was all that was needed at the time, and they may picture the many advantages which Europe would have reaped during the last three centuries from the existence of a united Netherlands, independent, as it must soon have become, of Spain, and able to make its independence respected by its neighbours.