To Philip it was painfully certain that if he invaded and conquered England the English Catholics would insist that he must make Mary Stuart queen. He did not like Mary Stuart. He disapproved of her character. He distrusted her promises. Spite of Jesuits and seminary priests, he believed that she was still a Frenchwoman at heart, and a bad woman besides. Yet something he must do for the outraged honour of Castile. He concluded, in his slow way, that he would collect a fleet, the largest and best-appointed that had ever floated on the sea. He would send or lead it in person to the English Channel. He would command the situation with an overwhelming force; and then would choose some course which would be more convenient to himself than to his Holiness at Rome. On the whole he was inclined to let Elizabeth continue queen, and forget and forgive if she would put away her Walsinghams and her Drakes, and would promise to be good for the future. If she remained obstinate his great fleet would cover the passage of the Prince of Parma's army, and he would then dictate his own terms in London.
LECTURE VII
ATTACK ON CADIZ
I recollect being told when a boy, on sending in a bad translation of Horace, that I ought to remember that Horace was a man of intelligence and did not write nonsense. The same caution should be borne in mind by students of history. They see certain things done by kings and statesmen which they believe they can interpret by assuming such persons to have been knaves or idiots. Once an explanation given from the baser side of human nature, they assume that it is necessarily the right one, and they make their Horace into a fool without a misgiving that the folly may lie elsewhere. Remarkable men and women have usually had some rational motive for their conduct, which may be discovered, if we look for it with our eyes open.
Nobody has suffered more from bad translators than Elizabeth. The circumstances of Queen Elizabeth's birth, the traditions of her father, the interests of England, and the sentiments of the party who had sustained her claim to the succession, obliged her on coming to the throne to renew the separation from the Papacy. The Church of England was re-established on an Anglo-Catholic basis, which the rival factions might interpret each in their own way. To allow more than one form of public worship would have led in the heated temper of men's minds to quarrels and civil wars. But conscience might be left free under outward conformity, and those whom the Liturgy did not suit might use their own ritual in their private houses. Elizabeth and her wise advisers believed that if her subjects could be kept from fighting and killing one another, and were not exasperated by outward displays of difference, they would learn that righteousness of life was more important than orthodoxy, and to estimate at their real value the rival dogmas of theology. Had time permitted the experiment to have a fair trial, it would perhaps have succeeded, but, unhappily for the Queen and for England, the fire of controversy was still too hot under the ashes. Protestants and Catholics had been taught to look on one another as enemies of God, and were still reluctant to take each other's hands at the bidding of an Act of Parliament. The more moderate of the Catholic laity saw no difference so great between the English service and the Mass as to force them to desert the churches where their fathers had worshipped for centuries. They petitioned the Council of Trent for permission to use the English Prayer Book; and had the Council consented, religious dissension would have dissolved at last into an innocent difference of opinion. But the Council and the Pope had determined that there should be no compromise with heresy, and the request was refused, though it was backed by Philip's ambassador in London. The action of the Papacy obliged the Queen to leave the Administration in the hands of Protestants, on whose loyalty she could rely. As the struggle with the Reformation spread and deepened she was compelled to assist indirectly the Protestant party in France and Scotland. But she still adhered to her own principle; she refused to put herself at the head of a Protestant League. She took no step without keeping open a line of retreat on a contrary policy. She had Catholics in her Privy Council who were pensioners of Spain. She filled her household with Catholics, and many a time drove Burghley distracted by listening to them at critical moments. Her constant effort was to disarm the antagonism of the adherents of the old belief, by admitting them to her confidence, and showing them that one part of her subjects was as dear to her as another.
For ten years she went on struggling. For ten years she was proudly able to say that during all that time no Catholic had suffered for his belief either in purse or person. The advanced section of the Catholic clergy was in despair. They saw the consciences of their flocks benumbed and their faith growing lukewarm. They stirred up the rebellion of the North. They persuaded Pius V. to force them to a sense of their duties by declaring Elizabeth excommunicated. They sent their missionaries through the English counties to recover sheep that were straying, and teach the sin of submission to a sovereign whom the Pope had deposed. Then had followed the Ridolfi plot, deliberately encouraged by the Pope and Spain, which had compelled the Government to tighten the reins. One conspiracy had followed another. Any means were held legitimate to rid the world of an enemy of God. The Queen's character was murdered by the foulest slanders, and a hundred daggers were sharpened to murder her person. The King of Spain had not advised the excommunication, because he knew that he would be expected to execute it, and he had other things to do. When called on to act, he and Alva said that if the English Catholics wanted Spanish help they must do something for themselves. To do the priests justice, they were brave enough. What they did, and how far they had succeeded in making the country disaffected, Father Parsons has told you in the paper which I read to you in a former lecture. Elizabeth refused to take care of herself. She would show no distrust. She would not dismiss the Catholic ladies and gentlemen from the household. She would allow no penal laws to be enforced against Catholics as such. Repeated conspiracies to assassinate her were detected and exposed, but she would take no warning. She would have no bodyguard. The utmost that she would do was to allow the Jesuits and seminary priests, who, by Parsons's own acknowledgment, were sowing rebellion, to be banished the realm, and if they persisted in remaining afterwards, to be treated as traitors. When executions are treated as martyrdoms, candidates will never be wanting for the crown of glory, and the flame only burnt the hotter. Tyburn and the quartering knife was a horrid business, and Elizabeth sickened over it. She hated the severity which she was compelled to exercise. Her name was defiled with the grossest calumnies. She knew that she might be murdered any day. For herself she was proudly indifferent; but her death would and must be followed by a furious civil war. She told the Privy Council one day after some stormy scene, that she would come back afterwards and amuse herself with seeing the Queen of Scots making their heads fly.
Philip was weary of it too. He had enough to do in ruling his own dominions without quarrelling for ever with his sister-in-law. He had seen that she had subjects, few or many, who, if he struck, would strike back again. English money and English volunteers were keeping alive the war in the Netherlands. English privateers had plundered his gold ships, destroyed his commerce, and burnt his West Indian cities—all this in the interests of the Pope, who gave him fine words in plenty, but who, when called on for money to help in the English conquest, only flung about his dinner-plates. The Duke of Alva, while he was alive, and the Prince of Parma, who commanded in the Netherlands in Alva's place, advised peace if peace could be had on reasonable terms. If Elizabeth would consent to withdraw her help from the Netherlands, and would allow the English Catholics the tacit toleration with which her reign had begun, they were of opinion, and Philip was of opinion too, that it would be better to forgive Drake and St. Domingo, abandon Mary Stuart and the seminary priests, and meddle no more with English internal politics.
Tired with a condition which was neither war nor peace, tired with hanging traitors and the endless problem of her sister of Scotland, Elizabeth saw no reason for refusing offers which would leave her in peace for the rest of her own life. Philip, it was said, would restore the Mass in the churches in Holland. She might stipulate for such liberty of conscience to the Holland Protestants as she was herself willing to allow the English Catholics. She saw no reason why she should insist on a liberty of public worship which she had herself forbidden at home. She did not see why the Hollanders should be so precise about hearing Mass. She said she would rather hear a thousand Masses herself than have on her conscience the crimes committed for the Mass or against it. She would not have her realm in perpetual torment for Mr. Cecil's brothers in Christ.
This was Elizabeth's personal feeling. It could not be openly avowed. The States might then surrender to Philip in despair, and obtain better securities for their political liberties than she was ready to ask for them. They might then join the Spaniards and become her mortal enemies. But she had a high opinion of her own statecraft. Her Catholic friends assured her that, once at peace with Philip, she would be safe from all the world. At this moment accident revealed suddenly another chasm which was opening unsuspected at her feet.