With the Spanish court the queen was on the worst possible terms short of open hostilities. Her ambassador at Madrid had been banished from the city to a little village in the neighbourhood; the Spanish ambassador at London had been placed under guard for dispersing libels against her person and government; and in consequence of her adroit seizure of a sum of money belonging to some Genoese merchants designed as a loan to the duke of Alva, to enable him to carry on the war against the protestants in Flanders, the king of Spain had ordered all commerce to be broken off between those provinces and England.
In the midst of these menaces of foreign war, cabals were forming against Elizabeth in her own kingdom and court which threatened her with nearer dangers. Of all these plots, the Scottish queen was, directly or indirectly, the cause or the pretext; and in order to place them in a clear light, it will now be necessary to return to the conferences at York.
CHAPTER XVI.
1568 TO 1570.
Proceedings of the commissioners at York in the cause of Mary.—Intrigues of the duke of Norfolk with the regent Murray.—The conferences transferred to Westminster.—Mary's guilt disclosed.—Fresh intrigues of Norfolk.—Conspiracy for procuring his marriage with Mary.—Conduct of Throgmorton.—Attempt to ruin Cecil baffled by the queen.—Endeavour of Sussex to reconcile Norfolk and Cecil.—Norfolk betrayed by Leicester—his plot revealed—committed to the Tower.—Mary given in charge to the earl of Huntingdon.—Remarks on this subject.—Notice of Leonard Dacre—of the earls of Westmorland and Northumberland.—Their rebellion.—Particulars of the Norton family.—Severities exercised against the rebels.—Conduct of the earl of Sussex.—Rising under Leonard Dacre.—His after-fortunes and those of his family.—Expedition of the earl of Sussex into Scotland.—Murder of regent Murray.—Influence of this event on the affairs of Elizabeth.—Campaign in Scotland.—Papal bull against the queen.—Trifling effect produced by it.—Attachment of the people to her government.
The three commissioners named by Elizabeth to sit as judges in the great cause between Mary and her subjects, of which she had been named the umpire, were the duke of Norfolk, the earl of Sussex, and sir Ralph Sadler, a very able negotiator and man of business. On the part of the Scottish nation, the regent Murray, fearing to trust the cause in other hands, appeared in person, attended by several men of talent and consequence. The situation of Mary herself was not more critical or more unprecedented, and scarcely more humiliating, than that in which Murray was placed by her appeal to Elizabeth. Acting on behalf of the infant king his nephew, he saw himself called upon to submit to the tribunal of a foreign sovereign such proofs of the atrocious guilt of the queen his sister; as should justify in the eyes of this sovereign, and in those of Europe, the degradation of Mary from the exalted station which she was born to fill, her imprisonment, her violent expulsion from the kingdom, and her future banishment or captivity for life:—an attempt in which, though successful, there was both disgrace to himself and detriment to the honor and independence of his country; and from which, if unsuccessful, he could contemplate nothing but certain ruin. Struck with all the evils of this dilemma; with the danger of provoking beyond forgiveness his own queen, whose restoration he still regarded as no improbable event, and with the imprudence of relying implicitly on the dubious protection of Elizabeth, Murray long hesitated to bring forward the only charge dreaded by the illustrious prisoner,—that of having conspired with Bothwell the murder of her husband.
In the mean time Maitland, a Scottish commissioner secretly attached to Mary, found means to open a private communication with the duke of Norfolk, and to suggest to this nobleman, now a widower for the third time, the project of obtaining for himself the hand of Mary, and of replacing her by force on the throne of her ancestors. The vanity of Norfolk, artfully worked upon by the bishop of Ross, Mary's prime agent, caused him to listen with complacency to this rash proposal; and having once consented to entertain it, he naturally became earnest to prevent Murray from preferring that heinous accusation which he had at length apprized the English commissioners that he was provided with ample means of substantiating. After some deliberation on the means of effecting this object, he accordingly resolved upon the step of discovering his views to the regent himself, and endeavouring to obtain his concurrence. Murray, who seems to have felt little confidence in the stability of the government of which he was the present head, and who judged perhaps that the return of the queen as the wife of an English protestant nobleman would afford the best prospect of safety to himself and his party, readily acceded to the proposal, and consented still to withhold the "damning proofs" of Mary's guilt which he held in his hand.
But neither the Scottish associates of Murray nor the English cabinet were disposed to rest satisfied with this feeble and temporizing conduct. Mary's commissioners too, emboldened by his apparent timidity, of which the motives were probably not known to them all, began to push their advantage in a manner which threatened final defeat to his party: the queen of England artfuly incited him to proceed; and in spite of his secret engagements with the duke and his own reluctance, he at length saw himself compelled to let fall the long suspended stroke on the head of Mary. He applied to the English court for encouragement and protection in his perilous enterprise; and Elizabeth, being at length suspicious of the intrigue which had hitherto baffled all her expectations from the conferences at York, suddenly gave orders for the removal of the queen of Scots from Bolton-castle and the superintendence of lord Scrope, the duke's brother-in-law, to the more secure situation of Tutbury-castle in Staffordshire and the vigilant custody of the earl of Shrewsbury. At the same time she found pretexts for transferring the conferences from York to Westminster, and added to the number of her commissioners sir Nicholas Bacon, lord-keeper, the earls of Arundel and Leicester, lord Clinton, and Cecil.
Anxious to preserve an air of impartiality, Elizabeth declined giving to the regent all the assurances for his future security which he required; but on his arrival in London she extended to him a reception equally kind and respectful, and by alternate caresses and hints of intimidation she gradually led him on to the production of the fatal casket containing the letters of Mary to Bothwell, by which her participation in the murder of her husband was clearly proved.