England under the Tudors

by Arthur D. Innes

[Sidenote: Elizabeth's methods]

The whole episode deserves to be dwelt on at length, because it very forcibly illustrates the strength and the weakness of Elizabeth's methods and the character of her entourage. She saw the sound policy; she maintained her confidence in the men who also saw it. Yet she perpetually wavered and hesitated till the eleventh hour to authorise the steps necessary to carrying it out. At the eleventh hour, she did authorise them; and that, repeatedly, because at the last moment an injudicious threat stirred her to defiance. For herself, she could have secured inglorious ease by simply accepting Philip's patronage, but she elected to play the daring game, and won. Her methods were tortuous. She lied unblushingly, but she was an adept at avoiding acts which palpably would prove beyond a doubt that she was lying. The Spanish ambassador lived under a perpetual conviction that she was rushing on her own ruin—that she would drive his master to choose between the deplorable alternatives of fighting on her behalf or allowing the Queen of France and Scotland to become Queen of England also—that the Catholics would rise to dethrone her. But her calculations were sound, and Norfolk himself commanded her armies and served her loyally in a policy which, in his opinion, ought never to have been initiated. She never allowed herself to be bullied or cajoled; but she perpetually kept alive the impression that a little more bullying or a little more cajolery might turn the scale. And she drove the French out of Scotland.

[Sidenote: The Dudley Imbroglio]

All the intriguing at this time about suitors for the hand of Elizabeth is mixed up with the scandals associated with the name of Lord Robert Dudley (afterwards made Earl of Leicester), a son of the traitor Duke of Northumberland. Lord Robert, although a married man, was allowed an intimacy with the Queen which not only points conclusively to an utter absence of delicacy in the daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, but filled the entire Court circle with the gravest apprehensions. It was the current belief that if Dudley could get free of his wife, Elizabeth would marry him, and that this desire was at the back of her vacillation. The affair was brought to an acute stage by the sudden death of Amy Robsart, Dudley's wife, in September; when already for some time past, his innumerable enemies had been hinting that he meant to make away with her. The facts are obscure; but the impression given by the evidence is that she was murdered, though not with the direct connivance of her husband. Still, the suspicion of his guilt was so strong that if the Queen had married him she would have strained the loyalty of her most loyal subjects probably to breaking point. Yet so keen was her delight in playing with fire that it was many months before English statesmen began to feel that the danger was past; while overtures were certainly made on Dudley's behalf to the Spanish Ambassador, De Quadra, to obtain Philip's sanction and support, in return for a promise that the Old Religion should be restored. Sussex alone expressed a conviction that Elizabeth would find her own salvation in marrying for Love. Every one else was convinced that, whatever might be her infatuation for Dudley, marriage with him would spell total ruin for her: and there was a general belief that Norfolk and others would interfere in arms if necessary; while the secret marriage of Lady Katharine Grey (who stood next in succession under Henry's will) to Lord Hertford, son of the Protector Somerset, was suspected of being a move to which even Cecil was privy, for placing her on the throne should the worst befall. At last, when the limit of endurance was almost reached, Elizabeth finally declared that she was not going to marry the favourite. Judging her conduct by her whole career, it would seem that she never really contemplated the commission of so fatal a blunder, but could not resist the temptation of tormenting her best friends, and torturing politicians of every kind with uncertainty—perhaps even of half believing herself that she actually would set all adverse opinion at defiance if she chose.

[Sidenote: The Huguenots]

From one suitor at any rate Elizabeth felt herself freed by the death of the young French King in December. The main interest of France in the Scottish Crown was thereby ended; more than that, the Huguenot Bourbons, who stood in France next in succession to the sons of Katharine de Medici, recovered for the time much of their power. The political arguments in favour of the Arran marriage lost enough of their force to enable the English Queen to brave the wrath of the Congregation and finally decline the Hamilton alliance. It is of interest to find Paget, once again called in to her Counsels, declaring in favour of a Huguenot alliance, in despite of Spain.

[Sidenote: The Pope]

The position of the Huguenots in France, and the proposed resuscitation of the Council of Trent under the auspices of Pope Pius IV., who had succeeded Paul in 1559, had revived ideas of Protestant representation therein; and Elizabeth, after her fashion, played with the hopes of the Catholic party, at home and abroad, that she might be drawn into participation. It was only when it had become perfectly clear that the admission of the Papal Supremacy was a condition precedent, that these hopes were dashed, and the proposal that a papal Nuncio should be received in England, with which the Queen had been coquetting, was definitely declined; while Philip was obliged to intimate to the Pope that he must not launch against the recalcitrant England ecclesiastical thunderbolts which would involve him in war, whether against or on behalf of Elizabeth.

[Sidenote: 1561 Mary sails for Scotland]

In the meantime however, both the Catholic party in Scotland and the Congregation were hoping to bring Mary back from France, and to control her policy when she should arrive. For the Protestants felt now that without foreign interference they could hold their own. Elizabeth had rejected their scheme for bringing the union of the crowns in reach by the Arran marriage: they were now bent on the alternative course of inducing Elizabeth to acknowledge their own Queen as her heir presumptive. Mary herself was more than ready for the adventure. Elizabeth refused her a passage through England which might easily have been utilised, especially in the North, for the organisation of a Stewart party within the realm; while on the other hand it would obviously be an easy thing for an "accident" to happen while the Scots Queen was running the gauntlet of her ships on the seas. But Mary was nothing if not daring. In August, accompanied by her Guise uncle, D'Elboeuf, she set sail from the "pleasant land of France," and four days later, without disaster, the Queen of Scots landed at Leith.