The Catholics, and especially the Spanish party, were in dismay. Changes met them at every turn. The Councillors who had fattened on Philip’s bribes, turned against him openly, although some few, like Lord William Howard (the Lord Chamberlain), Clinton, and Paget, secretly offered their services for a renewed consideration. But it soon became evident that the two men who would have the predominant influence were Cecil and Parry, and they had never yet been bought by Spanish money. Only a week after the Queen’s accession, Feria wrote to Philip:[87] “The kingdom is entirely in the hands of young folks, heretics and traitors, and the Queen does not favour a single man … who served her sister.… The old people and the Catholics are dissatisfied, but dare not open their lips. She seems to me incomparably more feared than her sister, and gives her orders, and has her way, as absolutely as her father did. Her present Controller, Parry, and Secretary Cecil, govern the kingdom, and they tell me the Earl of Bedford has a good deal to say.”
Before entering London from Hatfield, the Queen stayed for a day or two at the Charterhouse, then in the occupation of Lord North. All London turned out to do her honour, and she immediately made it clear to onlookers that she meant to bid for popularity and to depend upon the good-will of her subjects. On the 26th or 27th November the Spanish Ambassador went to the Charterhouse to salute her. He had been under Mary practically the master of the Council; but the new Queen promptly made him understand that everything was changed. Instead of, as before, having right of access to the sovereign when he pleased, he found that in future he and his affairs would be relegated to two members of the Council, and when he asked which two, the Queen replied, Parry and Cecil. Feria did his best to conciliate her—gave her some jewels he had belonging to the late Queen, and so forth; but when he mentioned that a suspension of hostilities had been arranged between the French and Spanish, she thought it was a trap to isolate her, and she dismissed the Ambassador coldly. When she had retired, Feria called Cecil and asked him to go in at once and explain matters to her, “as he is the man who does everything.” The effects of Cecil’s diplomacy were soon evident. The Queen smiled and chatted with Feria, took with avidity all the jewels he could give her, coyly looked down when marriage was mentioned, but would pledge herself to nothing. “She was full of fine words, however, and told me that when people said she was ‘French,’ I was not to believe it;”[88] but when the Ambassador treated such a notion as absurd, and endeavoured to lead her on to say that her sympathies were with Spain and against France, she cleverly changed the subject. Her sister, she said, had been at war with France, but she was not.
As has already been said, when the deputation of the Council arrived at Hatfield, Cecil was there before them, and had conveyed the news of her accession to the Queen. Naunton[89] says that when she heard it she fell on her knees and uttered the words, “A Domino factum est illud, et est mirabile in oculis nostris.” But whether this be true or not, it is certain that the intelligence did not come upon her as a surprise; for Cecil had already drawn up for her guidance a document which still exists,[90] providing for the minutest details of her accession. Some of these provisions were rendered unnecessary by the universal and peaceful acceptance of the new sovereign; but they exhibit the care and foresight which we always associate with the writer. The note runs as follows: 1. To consider the proclamation and to proclaim it, and to send the same to all manner of places and sheriffs with speed, and to print it. 2. To prepare the Tower and to appoint the custody thereof to trusty persons, and to write to all the keepers of forts and castles in the Queen’s name. 3. To consider for the removing to the Tower, and the Queen there to settle her officers and Council. 4. To make a stay of passages to all the ports until a certain day, and to consider the situation of all places dangerous towards France and Scotland, especially in this change. 5. To send special messengers to the Pope, Emperor, Kings of Spain and Denmark, and the State of Venice. 6. To send new commissioners (commissions?) to the Earl of Arundel and Bishop of Ely (the peace envoys), and to send one into Ireland with a new commission; the letters under the Queen’s hand to all ambassadors with foreign princes to authorise them therein. 7. To appoint commissioners for the interment of the late Queen. 8. To appoint commissioners for the coronation and the day. 9. To make continuance of the term with patents to the Chief-Justice, Justices of each Bench, Barons, and Masters of the Rolls, with inhibition. Quod non conferant aliquod officium. 10. To appoint new sheriffs under the Great Seal. 11. To inhibit by proclamation the making over of any money by exchange without knowledge of the Queen’s Majesty, and to charge all manner of persons that have made, or been privy to any exchange made, by the space of one month before the 17th of this month. 12. To consider the preacher of St. Paul’s Cross, that no occasion be given by him to stir any dispute touching the governance of the realm.
It will be seen that every necessary measure for carrying on peaceably the government and business of the country is here provided for. Within a week of the Queen’s accession the religious persecutions all over the country had ceased, and a few days later all persons who were in prison in London as offenders against religion had been released on their own recognisances. The Queen had already foreshadowed her dislike to the harrying of Protestants by refusing her countenance to Bonner, the Bishop of London, when, with the other bishops, he met her on her approach to London. The English refugees were flocking back home from Germany and Switzerland; and though, for the most part, the religious services were continued without marked change,[91] the Catholics saw that the day of their tribulation was coming, and were filled with indignation and fear. The measures suggested by Cecil as to the appointment of the preacher at Paul’s Cross were doubtless adopted,[92] for there was no violent ecclesiastical pronouncement against the tendency of the new Government until the funeral of the late Queen, on the 13th December. White, Bishop of Winchester, preached the sermon, in which he attacked the Protestants in the most inflammatory language, quoting the words of Trajan: “If my commands are just, use this sword for me; if unjust, use it against me.” It was not Elizabeth’s or prudent Cecil’s line, however, to adopt extreme measures at first, and the prelate was only kept secluded for a month in his own house. This is a fair specimen of the cautious policy adopted by Elizabeth. All of Mary’s Council had been Catholics, many of them bigoted Catholics, and yet eleven of them were admitted to the Council of the new Queen; the principal change being the addition to them of seven known Protestants, who had, like Cecil, conformed in the previous reign—namely, Parr (Marquis of Northampton), Cecil’s friend the Earl of Bedford, Sir Thomas Parry, Edward Rogers, Sir Ambrose Cave, Francis Knollys (the Queen’s cousin), and Sir William Cecil; Sir Nicholas Bacon, Cecil’s brother-in-law, another Protestant conformer, being shortly afterwards also appointed a Councillor and Lord Keeper, but not yet Chancellor, in the place of Heath, Archbishop of York.
CHAPTER IV
1559-1560
We are told by his household biographer that two of Cecil’s favourite aphorisms were: “That war is the curse, and peace the blessing of God upon a nation,” and “That a realm gaineth more by one year’s peace than by ten years’ war.” He and his mistress plainly saw that the first task for them to perform was to put an end to the disastrous and inglorious war into which for his own ends Philip had dragged England. Here, on the very threshold of Elizabeth’s reign, Cecil’s influence upon her policy was apparent and eminently successful. Cecil came from the Charterhouse to see Feria at Durham Place on the 24th November, saying that the Queen was sending Lord Cobham to inform Philip in Flanders officially of Queen Mary’s death; but two days afterwards, one of Feria’s spies at court, probably Lord William Howard, sent him word that this was not Cobham’s only mission. He was to turn aside to Cercamp, on the French frontier, where the peace commissioners were assembled, except Arundel, who had hurried back as soon as he learnt of the Queen’s death, in order to take fresh commissions from Elizabeth to Dr. Thirlby, Arundel, and Wotton. Feria, on this news, sent post-haste to Philip’s Secretary of State, telling him to advise the Spanish “commissioners to keep their eyes on these Englishmen, in case this should be some trick to our detriment, as I was told nothing about his going to Cercamp till he (Cobham) had gone.”[93]
But no trick was meant which should divide England from the House of Burgundy. The instructions carried by Cobham[94] were drafted by Cecil, and made the restitution of Calais the main point of the English demand; and Wotton was instructed to accompany Cobham to Philip, to persuade the latter to support the English in their demand. The commissioners, moreover, were instructed to insert in the treaty an article reserving all former treaties between England and the House of Burgundy. Before these instructions reached the hands of the commissioners, the suspension of hostilities for two months, which had so much disquieted the Queen when Feria told her of it, had been arranged. There is no doubt that the willingness of the French to agree to this suspension had been occasioned by their desire to enter into separate negotiations with the new Queen and her ministers, with the object of causing distrust between Spain and England; and here it was that Cecil had his first opportunity of proving his ability. Lord Grey had been captured by the French at Guînes, and early in January 1559 was allowed to return to England on parole, for the purpose, ostensibly, of arranging an exchange. He brought with him a message from the Dukes of Guise and Montpessart, proposing a secret arrangement between England and France. This was not the first intimation of such a desire; for some weeks before, a similar but less authoritative message was brought by the Protestant Florentine, Guido Cavalcanti, from the Vidame de Chartres; and Cavalcanti had gone back to France with kind but vague expressions of good-will from Elizabeth. When Lord Grey’s message arrived, Cecil considered it in all its bearings, and drew up one of his judicial reports[95] in which Grey’s answer to Guise is dictated. With much circumlocution the Queen’s willingness to make peace is expressed, “if all things done in her sister’s time be revoked”; or, in other words, that Calais should be restored. But what Grey was not told was Cecil’s recommendation to the Queen: “It seemeth necessary to allow this overture of peace, so as neither so to lyke of it, nor so to follow it, as thereby any jelusy shall arise in the hart of the King of Spain, but that principally that that amyty be preserved and this not refused.”