The Primate, when appealed to, stated broadly this fact, and declared that Philip had as much right to send forces to aid the English Roman Catholics as Elizabeth had to support the Belgian Protestants. When, therefore, in June of 1585 the deputies of the revolted provinces of the Netherlands besought Elizabeth to annex them to her own dominions, she declined; but in September she signed a treaty with them, engaging to send them 6,000 men, and received in pledge of their payment the towns of Brielle and Flushing, and the strong fortress of Rammekens. This was making war on Philip without any declaration of it; but she still persisted that she was not assisting the Flemings to throw off their allegiance to their lawful prince, but was only helping them to recover undoubted privileges of which they had been deprived.
THE EARL OF LEICESTER.
(From the Portrait in the Possession of the Marquis of Salisbury.)
But the fact was, that Elizabeth had long been warring on Spain, and it was the fault of Spain that it had not declared open war in return. In 1570 she had sent out the celebrated Admiral Drake, to scour the coasts of the West Indies and South America, on the plea that Spain had no right to shut up the ports of those countries, and to exclude all other flags from those seas. Under her commission, Drake and other captains had ravaged the settlements of Spain in the New World, had plundered Carthagena, St. Iago, and St. Domingo, and almost every town on the coasts of Chili and Peru. They had intercepted the Spanish galleons, or treasure vessels, and carried off immense booty of silver and other precious articles. But as Drake had received special marks of royal favour—the queen had dined on board his vessel, the Golden Hind, when it lay at Deptford, and had knighted him (1581) for his services,—and as there was no declaration of war, all these were clear cases of piracy; but Philip was too much engaged at home to defend these trans-Atlantic possessions from the daring sea captains of Elizabeth, and if he did declare war he at once sanctioned her interference both in the Spanish seas and in the Netherlands.
To conduct her campaign in the Netherlands, Elizabeth had appointed the Earl of Leicester. The way in which he conducted himself there was not calculated to increase his reputation for honesty or military talent. No sooner did he arrive, than, without consulting the queen, he induced the States to nominate him governor-general of the United Provinces, with the title of Excellency, and with supreme power over the army, the State, and the executive. In fact, his ambition rested with nothing short of being a king: with nothing but possessing all the title and authority enjoyed by the Duke of Anjou. When this news reached Elizabeth she flew into a terrible rage, charged him with presumption and vanity, with contempt of her authority, and "swore great oaths that she would have no more Courts under her abeyance than one;" desired him to remember the dust from which she had raised him, and let him know if he were not obedient to her every word, she would beat him to the ground as quickly as she had raised him.
The unfortunate States, who thought they were gratifying the Queen of England when they were honouring her favourite, were confounded at this discovery; but Leicester, as if he really thought that he could render himself independent of his royal patroness, remained lofty, insolent, and silent. Trusting to the position into which he had thus stepped, he left it to the ministers at home to pacify the queen. He had so long ruled her that he appeared to think he could still do as he pleased. The great Burleigh and the cunning Walsingham were at their wits' end to satisfy Elizabeth: the only letter which they got from Leicester being one to Hatton, so insolent and arrogant that they dared not present it till they had remodelled it. Meanwhile, Elizabeth continued to write to the new captain-general the most bitter reproaches and menaces, and to heap upon his friends fierce epithets which could not reach him and produced no effect on him. With all the airs of a great monarch, Leicester progressed from one city to another, receiving solemn deputations, and giving grand entertainments in return.
In the field his conduct was as contemptible as in the government. He had an accomplished general, Alexander Farnese, the Prince of Parma, to contend with, and never did an English general present so pitiable a spectacle in a campaign as did Leicester. His great object appeared to be to avoid a battle, and the only conflict which he engaged in, which has left a name, is the attack upon Zutphen, on September 22, 1586, because there fell the gallant and gifted Sir Philip Sidney, in the thirty-second year of his age.
As autumn approached Leicester marched back his forces to the Hague, and was greatly disgusted and astonished to be called to account by what he pleased to name an assembly of shopkeepers and artisans. Not the less loudly, however, did the merchants and shopkeepers of the Netherlands upbraid him with the utter failure of the campaign, with the waste of their money, the violation of their privileges, the ruin of their trade, and the extorting of the people's money in a manner equally arbitrary and irritating. In a fit of ineffable disgust he broke up the assembly: the assembly continued to sit. He next resorted to entreaties and promises; it regarded these as little. He announced his intention of returning to England, and in his absence nominated one of his staff to exercise the supreme government. The assembly insisted on his resigning that charge to them; he complied, yet, by a private deed, reserved it to himself; and thus did this proud, empty, inefficient upstart dishonour the queen who had raised him, the country which had tolerated him, and which had long impatiently witnessed his arrogance, and his abuse of the queen's favour. At length, on the approach of winter, he obeyed the call of his sovereign and returned home. Scarcely had he quitted the Netherlands when the officers whom he had left in command surrendered the places of strength to the Prince of Parma, and went over to the Spaniards. The campaign was, from first to last, a scandal and a disgrace to the English name and government.
Mary had now been removed, in the early part of this year, to Chartley Castle, in Staffordshire, under the care of Sir Amyas Paulet; and the gentlemen in England whom the foreign adherents of the Queen of Scots had pitched upon to carry out their plan, were a young enthusiastic Papist—Anthony Babington, of Dethick, near Matlock, in Derbyshire—and his friends and companions, all men of fortune, family, and education. Babington had long been an ardent admirer of the Queen of Scots, had corresponded with her whilst she was at Sheffield Park, and was ready to devote himself to the death in her cause. At the same time he had such an idea of the peril of meddling with the government of Elizabeth, that he despaired of accomplishing Mary's enfranchisement during Elizabeth's life. Ballard, a Jesuit, assured him that Elizabeth would be taken off, by command of the Pope; that Savage, an officer who had served in Flanders, and was exasperated at the death of Throgmorton, had determined to do it; and that the Prince of Parma would land simultaneously with that event, and set Mary at liberty. The plan was made known to Mary, and received her sanction. "When all is ready," she wrote, "the six gentlemen must be set to work."