History of the English People, Volume IV

by John Richard Green

She saw indeed the new strength which was given her by her husband's death. Her cause was no longer hampered, either in Scotland or in England, by a national jealousy of French interference. It was with a resolve to break the league between Elizabeth and the Scotch Protestants, to unite her own realm around her, and thus to give a firm base for her intrigues among the English Catholics, that Mary Stuart landed at Leith. The effect of her presence was marvellous. Her personal fascination revived the national loyalty, and swept all Scotland to her feet. Knox, the greatest and sternest of the Calvinistic preachers, alone withstood her spell. The rough Scotch nobles owned that there was in Mary "some enchantment whereby men are bewitched." It was clear indeed from the first that, loyal as Scotland might be, its loyalty would be of little service to the Queen if she attacked the new religion. At her entry into Edinburgh the children of the pageant presented her with a Bible and "made some speech concerning the putting away of the Mass, and thereafter sang a psalm." It was only with difficulty that Murray won for her the right of celebrating Mass at her court. But for the religious difficulty Mary was prepared. While steadily abstaining from any legal confirmation of the new faith, and claiming for her French followers freedom of Catholic worship, she denounced any attempt to meddle with the form of religion she found existing in the realm. Such a toleration was little likely to satisfy the more fanatical among the ministers; but even Knox was content with her promise "to hear the preaching," and brought his brethren to a conclusion, as "she might be won," "to suffer her for a time." If the preachers indeed maintained that the Queen's liberty of worship "should be their thraldom," the bulk of the nation was content with Mary's acceptance of the religious state of the realm. Nor was it distasteful to the secular leaders of the reforming party. The Protestant Lords preferred their imperfect work to the more complete reformation which Knox and his fellows called for. They had no mind to adopt the whole Calvinistic system. They had adopted the Genevan Confession of Faith; but they rejected a book of discipline which would have organized the Church on the Huguenot model. All demands for restitution of the church property which they were pillaging they set aside as a "fond imagination." The new ministers remained poor and dependent, while noble after noble was hanging an abbot to seize his estates in forfeiture, or roasting a commendator to wring from him a grant of abbey-lands in fee.

Mary and Elizabeth.

The attitude of the Lords favoured the Queen's designs. She was in effect bartering her toleration of their religion in exchange for her reception in Scotland and for their support of her claim to be named Elizabeth's successor. With Mary's landing at Leith the position of the English Queen had suddenly changed. Her work seemed utterly undone. The national unity for which she was struggling was broken. The presence of Mary woke the party of the old faith to fresh hopes and a fresh activity, while it roused a fresh fear and fanaticism in the party of the new. Scotland, where Elizabeth's influence had seemed supreme, was struck from her hands. Not only was it no longer a support; it was again a danger; for loyalty, national pride, a just and statesmanlike longing for union with England, united her northern subjects round the Scottish Queen in her claim to be recognized as Elizabeth's successor, and even Murray counted on Elizabeth's consent to this claim to bring Mary into full harmony with his policy, and to preserve the alliance between England and Scotland. But the question of the succession, like the question of her marriage, was with Elizabeth a question of life and death. Her wedding with a Catholic or a Protestant suitor would have been equally the end of her system of balance and national union, a signal for the revolt of the party which she disappointed and for the triumphant dictation of the party which she satisfied. "If a Catholic prince come here," wrote a Spanish ambassador while pressing her marriage with an Austrian archduke, "the first Mass he attends will be the signal for a revolt." It was so with the question of the succession. To name a Protestant successor from the House of Suffolk would have driven every Catholic to insurrection. To name Mary was to stir Protestantism to a rising of despair, and to leave Elizabeth at the mercy of every fanatical assassin who wished to clear the way for a Catholic ruler. Yet to leave both unrecognized was to secure the hostility of both, as well as the discontent of the people at large, who looked on the settlement of the succession as the primary need of their national life. From the moment of Mary's landing therefore Elizabeth found herself thrown again on an attitude of self-defence. Every course of direct action was closed to her. She could satisfy neither Protestant nor Catholic, neither Scotland nor England. Her work could only be a work of patience; the one possible policy was to wait, to meet dangers as they rose, to watch for possible errors in her rival's course, above all by diplomacy, by finesse, by equivocation, by delay, to gain time till the dark sky cleared.

Mary's succession.

Nothing better proves Elizabeth's political ability than the patience, the tenacity, with which for the six years that followed she played this waiting game. She played it utterly alone. Even Cecil at moments of peril called for a policy of action. But his counsels never moved the Queen. Her restless ingenuity vibrated ceaselessly, like the needle of a compass, from one point to another, now stirring hopes in Catholic, now in Protestant, now quivering towards Mary's friendship, then as suddenly trembling off to incur her hate. But tremble and vibrate as it might, Elizabeth's purpose returned ever to the same unchanging point. It was in vain that Mary made a show of friendship, and negotiated for a meeting at York, where the question of the succession might be settled. It was in vain that to prove her lack of Catholic fanaticism she even backed Murray in crushing the Earl of Huntly, the foremost of her Catholic nobles, or that she held out hopes to the English envoy of her conformity to the faith of the Church of England. It was to no purpose that, to meet the Queen's dread of her marriage with a Catholic prince when her succession was once acknowledged, a marriage which would in such a case have shaken Elizabeth on her throne, Mary listened even to a proposal for a match with Lord Leicester, and that Murray supported such a step, if Elizabeth would recognize Mary as her heir. Elizabeth promised that she would do nothing to impair Mary's rights; but she would do nothing to own them. "I am not so foolish," she replied with bitter irony to Mary's entreaties, "I am not so foolish as to hang a winding-sheet before my eyes." That such a refusal was wise time was to show. But even then it is probable that Mary's intrigues were not wholly hidden from the English Queen. Elizabeth's lying paled indeed before the cool duplicity of this girl of nineteen. While she was befriending Protestantism in her realm, and holding out hopes of her mounting the English throne as a Protestant queen, Mary Stuart was pledging herself to the Pope to restore Catholicism on either side the border, and pressing Philip to aid her in this holy work by giving her the hand of his son Don Carlos. It was with this design that she was fooling the Scotch Lords and deceiving Murray: it was with this end that she strove in vain to fool Elizabeth and Knox.

France and the Reformation.

But pierce through the web of lying as she might, the pressure on the English Queen became greater every day. What had given Elizabeth security was the adhesion of the Scotch Protestants and the growing strength of the Huguenots in France. But the firm government of Murray and her own steady abstinence from any meddling with the national religion was giving Mary a hold upon Scotland which drew Protestant after Protestant to her side; while the tide of French Calvinism was suddenly rolled back by the rise of a Catholic party under the leadership of the Guises. Under Catharine of Medicis France had seemed to be slowly drifting to the side of Protestantism. While the queen-mother strove to preserve a religious truce the attitude of the Huguenots was that of men sure of success. Their head, the king of Navarre, boasted that before the year was out he would have the Gospel preached throughout the realm, and his confidence seemed justified by the rapid advance of the new opinions. They were popular among the merchant class. The noblesse was fast becoming Huguenot. At the court itself the nobles feasted ostentatiously on the fast days of the Church and flocked to the Protestant preachings. The clergy themselves seemed shaken. Bishops openly abjured the older faith. Coligni's brother, the Cardinal of Châtillon, celebrated the communion instead of mass in his own episcopal church at Beauvais, and married a wife. So irresistible was the movement that Catharine saw no way of preserving France to Catholicism but by the largest concessions; and in the summer of 1561 she called on the Pope to allow the removal of images, the administration of the sacrament in both kinds, and the abolition of private masses. Her demands were outstripped by those of an assembly of deputies from the states which met at Pontoise. These called for the confiscation of Church property, for freedom of conscience and of worship, and above all for a national Council in which every question should be decided by "the Word of God." France seemed on the verge of becoming Protestant; and at a moment when Protestantism had won England and Scotland, and appeared to be fast winning southern as well as northern Germany, the accession of France would have determined the triumph of the Reformation. The importance of its attitude was seen in its effect on the Papacy. It was the call of France for a national Council that drove Rome once more to summon the Council of Trent. It was seen too in the policy of Mary Stuart. With France tending to Calvinism it was no time for meddling with the Calvinism of Scotland; and Mary rivalled Catharine herself in her pledges of toleration. It was seen above all in the anxiety of Philip of Spain. To preserve the Netherlands was still the main aim of Philip's policy, and with France as well as England Protestant, a revolt of the Netherlands against the cruelties of the Inquisition became inevitable. By appeals therefore to religious passion, by direct pledges of aid, the Spanish king strove to rally the party of the Guises against the system of Catharine.

The Civil War.

But Philip's intrigues were hardly needed to rouse the French Catholics to arms. If the Guises had withdrawn from court it was only to organize resistance to the Huguenots. They were aided by the violence of their opponents. The Huguenot lords believed themselves irresistible; they boasted that the churches numbered more than three hundred thousand men fit to bear arms. But the mass of the nation was hardly touched by the new Gospel; and the Guises stirred busily the fanaticism of the poor. The failure of a conference between the advocates of either faith was the signal for a civil war in the south. Catharine strove in vain to allay the strife at the opening of 1562 by an edict of pacification; Guise struck his counter-blow by massacring a Protestant congregation at Vassy, by entering Paris with two thousand men, and by seizing the Regent and the King. Condé and Coligni at once took up arms; and the fanaticism of the Huguenots broke out in a terrible work of destruction which rivalled that of the Scots. All Western France, half Southern France, the provinces along the Loire and the Rhone, rose for the Gospel. Only Paris and the north of France held firmly to Catholicism. But the plans of the Guises had been ably laid. The Huguenots found themselves girt in by a ring of foes. Philip sent a body of Spaniards into Gascony, Italians and Piedmontese in the pay of the Pope and the Duke of Savoy marched upon the Rhone. Seven thousand German mercenaries appeared in the camp of the Guises. Panic ran through the Huguenot forces; they broke up as rapidly as they had gathered; and resistance was soon only to be found in Normandy and in the mountains of the Cévennes.

Elizabeth and the Huguenots.