According to Mr. Froude, “the Prince of Orange intimated that Alençon was accepted by the States only as a pledge that England would support them; if England failed them, they would not trust their fortunes to so vain an idiot.” This statement appears to be drawn from the second-hand tattle of Mendoza, and is probably, like much else from that source, unworthy of credit. But whether Orange sent such an “intimation” or not, it cannot be allowed to weigh against the ample evidence that Alençon was accepted by him and by the States mainly for the sake of the French forces he could raise on his own account, and the assistance which he undertook to procure from his brother. Neither Orange nor any one else regarded him as an idiot. Orange had not been led to expect that he would bring any help from England except money supplied underhand; and money Elizabeth did furnish in very considerable quantities. But the Netherlanders now expected everything to be done for them, and were backward with their contributions both in men and money. Clearly there is something to be said for the let-alone policy to which Elizabeth usually leant.
The States intended Alençon’s sovereignty to be of the strictly constitutional kind, such as it had been before the encroachments of Philip and his father. This did not suit the young Frenchman, and at the beginning of 1583 he attempted a coup-d’état, not without encouragement from some of the Belgian Catholics. At Antwerp his French troops were defeated with great bloodshed by the citizens, and the general voice of the country was for sending him about his business. But both Elizabeth and Orange, though disconcerted and disgusted by his treachery, still saw nothing better to be done than to patch up the breach and retain his services. Both of them urged this course on the States—Orange with his usual dignified frankness; Elizabeth in the crooked, blustering fashion which has brought upon her policy, in so many instances, reproach which it does not really deserve. Norris, the commander of the English volunteers, had discountenanced the coup-d’état and taken his orders from the States. Openly Elizabeth reprimanded him, and ordered him to bring his men back to England. Secretly she told him he had done well, and bade him remain where he was. Norris was in fact there to protect the interests of England quite as much against the French as against Spain. There is not the least ground for the assertion that in promoting reconciliation with Alençon, Orange acted under pressure from Elizabeth. Everything goes to show that he, the wisest and noblest statesman of his time, thought it the only course open to the States, unless they were prepared to submit to Philip. Both Elizabeth and Orange felt that the first necessity was to keep the quarrel alive between the Frenchman and the Spaniard. The English Queen therefore continued to feed Alençon with hopes of marriage, and the States patched up a reconciliation with him (March 1583). But his heart failed him. He saw Parma taking town after town. He knew that he had made himself odious to the Netherlanders. He was covered with shame. He was fatally stricken with consumption. In June 1583 he left Belgium never to return. Within a twelvemonth he was dead.
CHAPTER VII
THE PAPAL ATTACK: 1570-1583
SOVEREIGNS and statesmen in the sixteenth century are to be honoured or condemned according to the degree in which they aimed on the one hand at preserving political order, and on the other at allowing freedom of opinion. It was not always easy to reconcile these two aims. The first was a temporary necessity, and yet was the more urgent—as indeed is always the case with the tasks of the statesman. He is responsible for the present; it is not for him to attempt to provide for a remote future. Political order and the material well-being of nations may be disastrously impaired by the imprudence or weakness of a ruler. Thought, after all, may be trusted to take care of itself in the long-run.
To the modern Liberal, with his doctrine of absolute religious equality, toleration seems an insult, and anything short of toleration is regarded as persecution. In the sixteenth century the most advanced statesmen did not see their way to proclaim freedom of public worship and of religious discussion. It was much if they tolerated freedom of opinion, and connived at a quiet, private propagation of other religions than those established by law. It would be wrong to condemn and despise them as actuated by superstition and narrow-minded prejudice. Their motives were mainly political, and it is reasonable to suppose that they knew better than we do whether a larger toleration was compatible with public order.
We have seen that under the Act of Supremacy, in the first year of Elizabeth, the oath was only tendered to persons holding office, spiritual or temporal, under the crown, and that the penalty for refusing it was only deprivation. But in her fifth year (1563), it was enacted that the oath might be tendered to members of the House of Commons, schoolmasters, and attorneys, who, if they refused it, might be punished by forfeiture of property and perpetual imprisonment. To those who had held any ecclesiastical office, or who should openly disapprove of the established worship, or celebrate or hear mass, the oath might be tendered a second time, with the penalties of high treason for refusal.
That this law authorised an atrocious persecution cannot be disputed, and there is no doubt that many zealous Protestants wished it to be enforced. But the practical question is, Was it enforced? The government wished to be armed with the power of using it, and for the purpose of expelling Catholics from offices it was extensively used. But no one was at this time visited with the severer penalties, the bishops having been privately forbidden to tender the oath a second time to any one without special instructions.
The Act of Uniformity, passed in the first year of Elizabeth, prohibited the use of any but the established liturgy, whether in public or private, under pain of perpetual imprisonment for the third offence, and imposed a fine of one shilling on recusants—that is, upon persons who absented themselves from church on Sundays and holidays. To what extent Catholics were interfered with under this Act has been a matter of much dispute. Most of them, during the first eleven years of Elizabeth, either from ignorance or worldliness, treated the Anglican service as equivalent to the Catholic, and made no difficulty about attending church, even after this compliance with the law had been forbidden by Pius IV. in the sixth year of Elizabeth. Only the more scrupulous absented themselves, and called in the ministrations of the “old priests,” who with more or less secrecy said mass in private houses. Some of these offenders were certainly punished before Elizabeth had been two years on the throne. The enforcement of laws was by no means so uniform in those days as it is now. Much depended on the leanings of the noblemen and justices of the peace in different localities. Both from disposition and policy Elizabeth desired, as a general rule, to connive at Catholic nonconformity when it did not take an aggressive and fanatical form. But she had no scruple about applying the penalties of these Acts to individuals who for any reason, religious or political, were specially obnoxious to her.
So things went on till the northern insurrection: the laws authorising a searching and sanguinary persecution; the Government, much to the disgust of zealous Protestants, declining to put those laws in execution. Judged by modern ideas, the position of the Catholics was intolerable; but if measured by the principles of government then universally accepted, or if compared with the treatment of persons ever so slightly suspected of heresy in countries cursed with the Inquisition, it was not a position of which they had any great reason to complain; nor did the large majority of them complain.
Pope Pius IV. (1559-1566) was comparatively cautious and circumspect in his attitude towards Elizabeth. But his successor Pius V. (1566-1572), having made up his mind that her destruction was the one thing necessary for the defeat of heresy in Europe, strove to stir up against her rebellion at home and invasion from abroad. A bull deposing her, and absolving her subjects from their allegiance, was drawn up. But while Pius, conscious of the offence which it would give to all the sovereigns of Europe, delayed to issue it, the northern rebellion flared up and was trampled out. The absence of such a bull was by many Catholics made an excuse for holding aloof from the rebel earls. When it was too late the bull was issued (Feb. 1570). Philip and Charles IX.—sovereigns first and Catholics afterwards—refused to let it be published in their dominions.