History of the English People, Volume IV

by John Richard Green

England and Rome.

What raised the warfare of Pius into grandeur was the scale upon which he warred. His hand was everywhere throughout Christendom. Under him Rome became the political as well as the religious centre of Western Europe. The history of the Papacy widened again, as in the Middle Ages, into the history of the world. Every scheme of the Catholic resistance was devised or emboldened at Rome. While her Jesuit emissaries won a new hold in Bavaria and Southern Germany, rolled back the tide of Protestantism in the Rhineland, and by school and pulpit laboured to re-Catholicize the Empire, Rome spurred Mary Stuart to the Darnley marriage, urged Philip to march Alva on the Netherlands, broke up the religious truce which Catharine had won for France, and celebrated with solemn pomp the massacre of the Huguenots. England above all was the object of Papal attack. The realm of Elizabeth was too important for the general Papal scheme of reconquering Christendom to be lightly let go. England alone could furnish a centre to the reformed communions of Western Europe. The Lutheran states of North Germany were too small. The Scandinavian kingdoms were too remote. Scotland hardly ranked as yet as a European power. Even if France joined the new movement her influence would long be neutralized by the strife of the religious parties within her pale. But England was to outer seeming a united realm. Her government held the country firmly in hand. Whether as an island or from her neighbourhood to the chief centres of the religious strife, she was so placed as to give an effective support to the new opinions. Protestant refugees found a safe shelter within her bounds. Her trading ships diffused heresy in every port they touched at. She could at little risk feed the Calvinistic revolution in France or the Netherlands. In the great battle of the old faith and the new England was thus the key of the reformed position. With England Protestant the fight against Protestantism could only be a slow and doubtful one. On the other hand a Catholic England would render religious revolution in the west all but hopeless. Hand in hand with Philip religiously, as she already was politically, the great island might turn the tide of the mighty conflict which had so long gone against the Papacy.

Philip and the Netherlands.

It was from this sense of the importance of England in the world-wide struggle which it was preparing that Rome had watched with such a feverish interest the effort of Mary Stuart. Her victory would have given to Catholicism the two westernmost realms of the Reformation, England and Scotland; it would have aided it in the reconquest of the Netherlands and of France. No formal bond indeed, such as the Calvinists believed to exist, bound Mary and Pius and Philip and Catharine of Medicis together in a vast league for the restoration of the Faith; their difference of political aim held France and Spain obstinately apart both from each other and from Mary Stuart, and it was only at the Vatican that the great movement was conceived as a whole. But practically the policy of Mary and Philip worked forward to the same end. While the Scottish Queen prepared her counter-reformation in England and Scotland, Philip was gathering a formidable host which was to suppress Calvinism as well as liberty in the Netherlands. Of the seventeen provinces which Philip had inherited from his father, Charles, in this part of his dominions, each had its own constitution, its own charter and privileges, its own right of taxation. All clung to their local independence; and resistance to any projects of centralization was common to the great nobles and the burghers of the towns. Philip on the other hand was resolute to bring them by gradual steps to the same level of absolute subjection and incorporation in the body of the monarchy as the provinces of Castille. The Netherlands were the wealthiest part of his dominions. Flanders alone contributed more to his exchequer than all his kingdoms in Spain. With a treasury drained by a thousand schemes Philip longed to have this wealth at his unfettered disposal, while his absolutism recoiled from the independence of the States, and his bigotry drove him to tread their heresy under foot. Policy backed the impulses of greed and fanaticism. In the strangely-mingled mass of the Spanish monarchy, the one bond which held together its various parts, divided as they were by blood, by tradition, by tongue, was their common faith. Philip was in more than name the "Catholic King." Catholicism alone united the burgher of the Netherlands to the nobles of Castille, or Milanese and Neapolitan to the Aztec of Mexico and Peru. With such an empire heresy meant to Philip political chaos, and the heresy of Calvin, with its ready organization and its doctrine of resistance, promised not only chaos but active revolt. In spite therefore of the growing discontent in the Netherlands, in spite of the alienation of the nobles and the resistance of the Estates, he clung to a system of government which ignored the liberties of every province, and to a persecution which drove thousands of skilled workmen to the shores of England.

Alva.

At last the general discontent took shape in open resistance. The success of the French Huguenots in wresting the free exercise of their faith from the monarchy told on the Calvinists of the Low Countries. The nobles gathered in leagues. Riots broke out in the towns. The churches were sacked, and heretic preachers preached in the open fields to multitudes who carried weapons to protect them. If Philip's system was to continue it must be by force of arms, and the king seized the disturbances as a pretext for dealing a blow he had long meditated at the growing heresy of this portion of his dominions. Pius the Fifth pressed him to deal with heresy by the sword, and in 1567 an army of ten thousand men gathered in Italy under the Duke of Alva for a march on the Low Countries. Had Alva reached the Netherlands while Mary was still in the flush of her success, it is hard to see how England could have been saved. But again Fortune proved Elizabeth's friend. The passion of Mary shattered the hopes of Catholicism, and at the moment when Alva led his troops over the Alps Mary passed a prisoner within the walls of Lochleven. Alone however the Duke was a mighty danger: nor could any event have been more embarrassing to Elizabeth than his arrival in the Netherlands in the autumn of 1567. The terror he inspired hushed all thought of resistance. The towns were occupied. The heretics were burned. The greatest nobles were sent to the block or driven, like William of Orange, from the country. The Netherlands lay at Philip's feet; and Alva's army lowered like a thundercloud over the Protestant West.

Mary's abdication.

The triumph of Catholicism and the presence of a Catholic army in a country so closely connected with England at once revived the dreams of a Catholic rising against Elizabeth's throne, while the news of Alva's massacres stirred in every one of her Protestant subjects a thirst for revenge which it was hard to hold in check. Yet to strike a blow at Alva was impossible. Antwerp was the great mart of English trade, and a stoppage of the trade with Flanders, such as war must bring about, would have broken half the merchants in London. Elizabeth could only look on while the Duke trod resistance and heresy under foot, and prepared in the Low Countries a securer starting-point for his attack on Protestantism in the West. With Elizabeth, indeed, or her cautious and moderate Lutheranism Philip had as yet little will to meddle, however hotly Rome might urge him to attack her. He knew that the Calvinism of the Netherlands looked for support to the Calvinism of France; and as soon as Alva's work was done in the Low Countries the Duke had orders to aid the Guises in assailing the Huguenots. But the terror of the Huguenots precipitated the strife, and while Alva was still busy with attacks from the patriots under the princes of the house of Orange a fresh rising in France woke the civil war at the close of 1567. Catharine lulled this strife for the moment by a new edict of toleration; but the presence of Alva was stirring hopes and fears in other lands than France. Between Mary Stuart and the lords who had imprisoned her in Lochleven reconciliation was impossible. Elizabeth, once lightened of her dread from Mary, would have been content with a restoration of Murray's actual supremacy. Already alarmed by Calvinistic revolt against monarchy in France, she was still more alarmed by the success of Calvinistic revolt against monarchy in Scotland; and the presence of Alva in the Netherlands made her anxious above all to settle the troubles in the north and to devise some terms of reconciliation between Mary and her subjects. But it was in vain that she demanded the release of the Queen. The Scotch Protestants, with Knox at their head, called loudly for Mary's death, as a murderess. If the lords shrank from such extremities, they had no mind to set her free and to risk their heads for Elizabeth's pleasure. As the price of her life they forced Mary to resign her crown in favour of her child, and to name Murray, who was now returning from France, as regent during his minority. In July 1567 the babe was solemnly crowned as James the Sixth.

Langside.

But Mary had only consented to abdicate because she felt sure of escape. With an infant king the regency of Murray promised to be a virtual sovereignty; and the old factions of Scotland woke again into life. The house of Hamilton, which stood next in succession to the throne, became the centre of a secret league which gathered to it the nobles and prelates who longed for the re-establishment of Catholicism, and who saw in Alva's triumph a pledge of their own. The regent's difficulties were doubled by the policy of Elizabeth. Her wrath at the revolt of subjects against their Queen, her anxiety that "by this example none of her own be encouraged," only grew with the disregard of her protests and threats. In spite of Cecil she refused to recognize Murray's government, renewed her demands for the Queen's release, and encouraged the Hamiltons in their designs of freeing her. She was in fact stirred by more fears than her dread of Calvinism and of Calvinistic liberty. Philip's triumph in the Netherlands and the presence of his army across the sea was filling the Catholics of the northern counties with new hopes, and scaring Elizabeth from any joint action with the Scotch Calvinists which might call the Spanish forces over sea. She even stooped to guard against any possible projects of Philip by fresh negotiations for a marriage with one of the Austrian archdukes. But the negotiations proved as fruitless as before, while Scotland moved boldly forward in its new career. A Parliament which assembled at the opening of 1568 confirmed the deposition of the Queen, and made Catholic worship punishable with the pain of death. The triumph of Calvinistic bigotry only hastened the outbreak which had long been preparing, and at the beginning of May an escape of Mary from her prison was a signal for civil war. Five days later six thousand men gathered round her at Hamilton, and Argyle joined the Catholic lords who rallied to her banner. The news found different welcomes at the English court. Elizabeth at once offered to arbitrate between Mary and her subjects. Cecil, on the other hand, pressed Murray to strike quick and hard. But the regent needed little pressing. Surprised as he was, Murray was quickly in arms; and cutting off Mary's force as it moved on Dumbarton, he brought it to battle at Langside on the Clyde on the thirteenth of May, and broke it in a panic-stricken rout. Mary herself, after a fruitless effort to reach Dumbarton, fled southwards to find a refuge in Galloway. A ride of ninety miles brought her to the Solway, but she found her friends wavering in her support and ready to purchase pardon from Murray by surrendering her into the regent's hands. From that moment she abandoned all hope from Scotland. She believed that Elizabeth would in the interests of monarchy restore her to the throne; and changing her designs with the rapidity of genius, she pushed in a light boat across the Solway, and was safe before the evening fell in the castle of Carlisle.