History of the English People, Volume IV

by John Richard Green

Mary in England.

The presence of Alva in Flanders was a far less peril than the presence of Mary in Carlisle. To restore her, as she demanded, by force of arms was impossible. If Elizabeth was zealous for the cause of monarchy, she had no mind to crush the nobles who had given her security against her rival simply to seat that rival triumphantly on the throne. On the other hand to retain her in England was to furnish a centre for revolt. Mary herself indeed threatened that "if they kept her prisoner they should have enough to do with her." If the Queen would not aid in her restoration to the throne, she demanded a free passage to France. But compliance with such a request would have given the Guises a terrible weapon against Elizabeth and have ensured French intervention in Scotland. For a while Elizabeth hoped to bring Murray to receive Mary back peaceably as Queen. But the regent refused to sacrifice himself and the realm to Elizabeth's policy. When the Duke of Norfolk with other commissioners appeared at York to hold a formal enquiry into Mary's conduct with a view to her restoration, Murray openly charged the Queen with a share in the murder of her husband, and he produced letters from her to Bothwell, which if genuine substantiated the charge. Till Mary was cleared of guilt, Murray would hear nothing of her return, and Mary refused to submit to such a trial as would clear her. So eager however was Elizabeth to get rid of the pressing peril of her presence in England that Mary's refusal to submit to any trial only drove her to fresh devices for her restoration. She urged upon Murray the suppression of the graver charges, and upon Mary the leaving Murray in actual possession of the royal power as the price of her return. Neither however would listen to terms which sacrificed both to Elizabeth's self-interest. The Regent persisted in charging the Queen with murder and adultery. Mary refused either to answer or to abdicate in favour of her infant son.

Elizabeth's difficulties.

The triumph indeed of her bold policy was best advanced, as the Queen of Scots had no doubt foreseen, by simple inaction. Her misfortunes, her resolute denials, were gradually wiping away the stain of her guilt and winning back the Catholics of England to her cause. Already there were plans for her marriage with Norfolk, the head of the English nobles, as for her marriage with the heir of the Hamiltons. The first match might give her the English crown, the second could hardly fail to restore her to the crown of Scotland. In any case her presence, rousing as it did fresh hopes of a Catholic reaction, put pressure on her sister Queen. Elizabeth "had the wolf by the ears," while the fierce contest which Alva's presence roused in France and in the Netherlands was firing the temper of the two great parties in England. In the Court, as in the country, the forces of progress and of resistance stood at last in sharp and declared opposition to each other. Cecil at the head of the Protestants demanded a general alliance with the Protestant churches throughout Europe, a war in the Low Countries against Alva, and the unconditional surrender of Mary to her Scotch subjects for the punishment she deserved. The Catholics on the other hand, backed by the mass of the Conservative party with the Duke of Norfolk at its head, and supported by the wealthier merchants who dreaded the ruin of the Flemish trade, were as earnest in demanding the dismissal of Cecil and the Protestants from the council-board, a steady peace with Spain, and, though less openly, a recognition of Mary's succession. Elizabeth was driven to temporize as before. She refused Cecil's counsels; but she sent money and arms to Condé, and hampered Alva by seizing treasure on its way to him, and by pushing the quarrel even to a temporary embargo on shipping either side the sea. She refused the counsels of Norfolk; but she would hear nothing of a declaration of war, or give any judgement on the charges against the Scottish Queen, or recognize the accession of James in her stead.

Norfolk.

But to the pressure of Alva and Mary was now added the pressure of Rome. With the triumph of Philip in the Netherlands and of the Guises in France Pius the Fifth held that the time had come for a decisive attack on Elizabeth. If Philip held back from playing the champion of Catholicism, if even the insults to Alva failed to stir him to active hostility, Rome could still turn to its adherents within the realm. Pius had already sent two envoys in 1567 with powers to absolve the English Catholics who had attended church from their schism, but to withdraw all hope of future absolution for those who continued to conform. The result of their mission however had been so small that it was necessary to go further. The triumph of Alva in the Netherlands, the failure of the Prince of Orange in an attempt to rescue them from the Spanish army, the terror-struck rising of the French Huguenots, the growing embarrassments of Elizabeth both at home and abroad, seemed to offer Rome its opportunity of delivering a final blow. In February 1569 the Queen was declared a heretic by a Bull which asserted in their strongest form the Papal claims to a temporal supremacy over princes. As a heretic and excommunicate, she was "deprived of her pretended right to the said kingdom," her subjects were absolved from allegiance to her, commanded "not to dare to obey her," and anathematized if they did obey. The Bull was not as yet promulgated, but Dr. Morton was sent into England to denounce the Queen as fallen from her usurped authority, and to promise the speedy issue of the sentence of deposition. The religious pressure was backed by political intrigue. Ridolfi, an Italian merchant settled in London, who had received full powers and money from Rome, knit the threads of a Catholic revolt in the north, and drew the Duke of Norfolk into correspondence with Mary Stuart. The Duke was the son of Lord Surrey and grandson of the Norfolk who had headed the Conservative party through the reign of Henry the Eighth. Like the rest of the English peers, he had acquiesced in the religious compromise of the Queen. It was as a Protestant that the more Conservative among his fellow-nobles now supported a project for his union with the Scottish Queen. With an English and Protestant husband it was thought that Murray and the lords might safely take back Mary to the Scottish throne, and England again accept her as the successor to her crown. But Norfolk was not contented with a single game. From the Pope and Philip he sought aid in his marriage-plot as a Catholic at heart, whose success would bring about a restoration of Catholicism throughout the realm. With the Catholic lords he plotted the overthrow of Cecil and the renewal of friendship with Spain. To carry out schemes such as these however required a temper of subtler and bolder stamp than the Duke's: Cecil found it easy by playing on his greed to part him from his fellow-nobles; his marriage with Mary as a Protestant was set aside by Murray's refusal to accept her as Queen; and Norfolk promised to enter into no correspondence with Mary Stuart but with Elizabeth's sanction.

The Catholic Earls.

The hope of a crown, whether in Scotland or at home, proved too great however for his good faith, and Norfolk was soon wrapped anew in the net of papal intrigue. But it was not so much on Norfolk that Rome counted as on the nobles of the North. The three great houses of the northern border—the Cliffords of Cumberland, the Nevilles of Westmoreland, the Percies of Northumberland—had remained Catholics at heart; and from the moment of Mary's entrance into England they had been only waiting for a signal of revolt. They looked for foreign aid, and foreign aid now seemed assured. In spite of Elizabeth's help the civil war in France went steadily against the Huguenots. In March 1569 their army was routed at Jarnac, and their leader, Condé, left dead on the field. The joy with which the victory was greeted by the English Catholics sprang from a consciousness that the victors looked on it as a prelude to their attack on Protestantism across the sea. No sooner indeed was this triumph won than Mary's uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, as the head of the house of Guise, proposed to Philip to complete the victory of Catholicism by uniting the forces of France and Spain against Elizabeth. The moment was one of peril such as England had never known. Norfolk was still pressing forward to a marriage with Mary; he was backed by the second great Conservative peer, Lord Arundel, and supported by a large part of the nobles. The Northern Earls with Lords Montague and Lumley and the head of the great house of Dacres were ready to take up arms, and sure—as they believed—of the aid of the Earls of Derby and Shrewsbury. Both parties of plotters sought Philip's sanction and placed themselves at his disposal. A descent of French and Spanish troops would have called both to the field. But much as Philip longed for a triumph of religion he had no mind for a triumph of France. France now meant the Guises, and to set their niece Mary Stuart on the English throne was to ensure the close union of England and the France they ruled. Though he suffered Alva therefore to plan the despatch of a force from the Netherlands should a Catholic revolt prove successful, he refused to join in a French attack.

The revolt of the Earls.

But the Papal exhortations and the victories of the Guises did their work without Philip's aid. The conspirators of the north only waited for Norfolk's word to rise in arms. But the Duke dissembled and delayed, while Elizabeth, roused at last to her danger, struck quick and hard. Mary Stuart was given in charge to the Puritan Lord Huntingdon. The Earls of Arundel and Pembroke, with Lord Lumley, were secured. Norfolk himself, summoned peremptorily to court, dared not disobey; and found himself at the opening of October a prisoner in the Tower. The more dangerous plot was foiled, for whatever were Norfolk's own designs, most of his Conservative partizans were good Protestants, and their aim of securing the succession by a Protestant marriage for Mary was one with which the bulk of the nation would have sympathized. But the Catholic plot remained; and in October the hopes of its leaders were stirred afresh by a new defeat of the Huguenots at Montcontour; while a Papal envoy, Dr. Morton, goaded them to action by news that a Bull of Deposition was ready at Rome. At last a summons to court tested the loyalty of the Earls, and on the tenth of November 1569 Northumberland gave the signal for a rising. He was at once joined by the Earl of Westmoreland, and in a few days the Earls entered Durham and called the North to arms. They shrank from an open revolt against the Queen, and demanded only the dismissal of her ministers and the recognition of Mary's right of succession. But with these demands went a pledge to re-establish the Catholic religion. The Bible and Prayer-Book were torn to pieces, and Mass said once more at the altar of Durham Cathedral, before the Earls pushed on to Doncaster with an army which soon swelled to thousands of men. Their cry was "to reduce all causes of religion to the old custom and usage"; and the Earl of Sussex, her general in the North, wrote frankly to Elizabeth that "there were not ten gentlemen in Yorkshire that did allow [approve] her proceedings in the cause of religion." But he was as loyal as he was frank, and held York stoutly while the Queen ordered Mary's hasty removal to a new prison at Coventry. The storm however broke as rapidly as it had gathered. Leonard Dacres held aloof. Lord Derby proved loyal. The Catholic lords of the south refused to stir without help from Spain. The mass of the Catholics throughout the country made no sign; and the Earls no sooner halted irresolute in presence of this unexpected inaction than their army caught the panic and dispersed. Northumberland and Westmoreland fled in the middle of December, and were followed in their flight by Leonard Dacres of Naworth, while their miserable adherents paid for their disloyalty in bloodshed and ruin.