[398] A violent attack against the hierarchy, and even against the Queen, was made in Parliament (February 1576) by Paul Wentworth, member for Tregony, a strong Puritan, who declared against the powers given to the bishops to regulate ritual without the intervention of Parliament, and complained of the rejection by the Queen of the bills against the Queen of Scots in the previous session of 1572. Wentworth was imprisoned in the Tower for a few days for his boldness. (D’Ewes’ Journal.)
[399] As Sussex for once was on the side of Leicester and the Puritans, Burghley seems to have depended as an ally at this time principally upon Hatton. A letter from the latter to the Treasurer (26th August 1576, Lansdowne MSS., 22) shows that Burghley was urging him to return to court from the country, where he was lying ill, and apparently unhappy. His recent unjust extortion of the lease of Ely Place, Holborn, from the Bishop of Ely (Cox), had rendered him very unpopular.
[400] A similar but more flattering offer was made in 1573 by the unfortunate Earl of Essex, who proposed that his eldest son, then only about six years old, should be betrothed to Burghley’s daughter (Lansdowne MSS., 17). A few hours before he died (21st September 1576) the Earl wrote a most pathetic letter to Lord Burghley, praying him to take the same son into his household, and beseeching him to be good to him for the sake of his father, “who lived and died your true and unfeigned friend” (Hatfield Papers). It is sad to consider that the son grew up to be the enemy of his father’s friend; to succeed, in his enmity of Burghley, the vile Leicester, who dishonoured his mother and deliberately ruined his father.
[401] Hatfield Papers.
[402] Ibid.
[403] Philip’s reception of Smith was cold, more so even than had been his treatment of Sir Henry Cobham. Smith writes to Burghley (5th February 1577) saying that he “has had special care to make known the Queen’s noble nature and the great love and obedience of her subjects; in which he has not detracted any title of honour that your Lordship is worthy of. Yea, even the Duke of Alba himself gives you the honour to be one of the most sufficient men in Christendom in all politic government.” Smith’s reports of the extremity of Philip’s financial exhaustion caused great surprise amongst the friends of Spain in Elizabeth’s court, many of whom disbelieved them. When Smith returned and begged the Queen for a reward for his services, she refused to accord him anything except to take his bills payable in twelve months for £2000 instead of a mortgage she had on his lands. (See letter 21st September 1578, Hatton to Burghley: State Papers, Domestic.)
[404] A sum of no less than 400,000 crowns was openly provided by Elizabeth for the States at the request of the Catholic Flemish nobles.
[405] Hatfield Papers.
[406] See the extraordinary Italian letter of this period from Baptista de Trento to the Queen, in which nearly the whole of her nobility (including Leicester and Sussex) are accused (Hatfield Papers), and also a letter written by Burghley to Lord Shrewsbury, after his return from Buxton, warning him to keep his eyes on Mary, who was, he said, suspected of suborning some of Shrewsbury’s servants. The persecuting Bishop of London (Aylmer) also wrote at the same time to Burghley urging him to “use more severity than hath hitherto been used; or else we shall smart for it. For as sure as God liveth they look for an invasion, or else they (the Catholics) would not fall away as they do” (Strype’s Aylmer).
[407] According to his own statement the case against him was divulged to Burghley by some of the Catholic Flemish nobles who were aware of his former practices; but there are many indications in his letters up to the time of his arrest, that he was a party to plots then in progress, especially one with Colonel Chester and others.