The fleet of thirty-two sail, with 8000 infantry and 2000 cavalry, sailed up the Forth exactly a month after this letter was written, to the dismay of the French and the Queen Regent, who shortly afterwards learnt that Elbœuf and his army had been storm-beaten back to France. The French and Catholic Scots were now cooped up in Leith, with no possibility of receiving aid from France; whilst the English on the Border, and the Lords of the Congregation, were organising a strong land force to invade Scotland.
There was nothing more to be dreaded by Philip—as Cecil well knew—than a war between England and France for the cause of the Scottish Protestants. The Spanish alliance with France had aroused the distrust of the powerful reform party in the latter country; and on the accession of Francis II. and the Guises to power, the Queen-mother, Catharine de Medici, whose chance had at last come after years of insult and neglect, at once threw her influence into the scale of their opponents, the Montmorencis and the reformers. Throgmorton had been sent to France to form a union between the Protestant and anti-Guisan elements in France and Elizabeth, and in this he had been entirely successful, to the unfeigned dismay of Philip and his agents.[121] This combination of Protestants in England, Scotland, and France, and probably also in Germany, was a most threatening one for Philip’s objects, especially in view of the condition of his own Netherlands; and yet his hands were tied. He dared not raise a hand to make French Mary Stuart Queen of Great Britain, although the triumph of reform in Scotland and this combination of Protestants struck at the very root of his objects and his policy. To the cautious planning of Cecil almost exclusively was owing the fact that in one year Philip had been disarmed, and rendered impotent to injure a Protestant England. The Spanish Bishop’s only remedy for it all was to plot with the extreme English Catholics to kill Elizabeth, Dudley, and Cecil, and place Catharine Grey or Darnley on the throne under Spanish tutelage; and he conspired ceaselessly with that object. But his master knew better than he. The French, he was aware, would fight to prevent such a result, as well as the English, and neither he nor his coffers were in a mood for fighting them then; so he had to stoop to peaceful diplomacy, and tried to beat Cecil at his own game. The Secretary had continued to answer firmly all the Bishop’s remonstrances and veiled threats, for he knew Philip could not move; and when it was decided to send a special Flemish envoy to England to dissuade the Queen from aiding the Scottish Protestants, the Bishop almost scornfully told Feria that, if talking had been of any good, he would have done it already. “They would do more harm than good if they were only coming to talk, for the English Catholics expect much more than that.” “Cecil,” he says, “is the heart of the business, and is determined to carry it through, until they are ruined, as they will be.”[122] In the meanwhile (April 1560) the siege of Leith went on, notwithstanding the attempts of the French to settle terms of peace in London. Elizabeth would have nothing to do with any peace that left a French man-at-arms in Scotland.
Philip’s Flemish envoy, De Glajon, arrived in London on the 5th April 1560, and was very coolly received by Elizabeth.[123] In Philip’s name he exhorted her to abstain from helping the Scottish rebels, and then threatened that if she did not come to terms with the French, Spanish troops would be sent to reinforce the latter. She was dignified, but alarmed at this, and sent Cecil on the following day to discuss the question with De Glajon.[124] After a conference, lasting five hours, in which Cecil recited all the English complaints against France, and pointed out the danger to Philip that would ensue upon the French becoming masters of Scotland, he positively assured the envoy that the English troops would not be withdrawn from Scotland until their objects were attained. The French Ambassador tried hard to draw Philip’s envoy into a joint hostile protest[125] to Elizabeth; but the Spaniards knew that their master really did not mean to fight, and declined to compromise him. They, indeed, assured Cecil privately, that if Philip helped the French, it would only be in the interests of Elizabeth herself.
Through all the negotiation Cecil’s management was most masterly. He had taken Philip’s measure now, and knew the powerless position in which English diplomacy, aided by circumstances, had placed him. The Guises had taken his measure too. As week followed week, and hope of help from him disappeared, they saw that they must make such terms as they might with Elizabeth. The French in Leith were heroically holding out, though starving and hopeless; no reinforcements could be sent from France, for England held the sea, and the Queen-mother and the reform party would give no help to purely Guisan objects. So at last, in May, Monluc, the Bishop of Valence, came humbly to London and sued Elizabeth for peace, and Cecil and Wotton, with Sir Henry Percy, Sir Ralph Sadler, and Peter Carew, travelled to Scotland to meet the French commissioners and settle the terms. Cecil started on the 30th May, and at the different stages of his journey he wrote letters to Sir William Petre.[126] On the 31st he writes from Royston: “in no apparent doubt of health, yet by foulness of weather afraid to ride to Huntingdon till to-morrow.” On the 2nd June his letter comes from his own house at Burghley, “rubbing on between health and sickness, yet my heart serveth me to get the mastery.”
His energy, his command of detail, and his foresight are remarkably shown in these letters. He spurs Petre to do as evidently he himself would have done—to expedite everything necessary for the prosecution of the war, though peace was in prospect; “to quicken the Lord Treasurer for money,” and so forth. From Stamford he went to Doncaster, Boroughbridge, Northallerton, Newcastle, and so to Scotland, always vigilant, observant, suggestive; but in nearly every letter expressing deep distrust of the French, whom he suspected of treachery at every point. When they met in Edinburgh his complaints are constant of their “cavilations” and hairsplitting. “They may contend, however, about a word,” he says, “but I mean to have the victory.” Before the negotiations commenced, the Queen Regent, Mary of Lorraine, died (11th June), and this, by perplexing the French, somewhat facilitated an arrangement. The most difficult point was the use of the English arms by Mary Stuart, and, on the 1st July, Cecil wrote to the Queen that the negotiations had been broken off on that point alone. After this was written, but before it was despatched, Cecil proposed a “device,”[127] by the insertion of a “few fair words”; and an arrangement was the result, which stands a triumphant vindication of Cecil’s policy.
The French troops were all to be withdrawn, Leith and Dunbar to be razed, Mary abandoned her claim to the English crown, and acknowledged Elizabeth; and, above all, Mary granted a constitution to her subjects, which well-nigh annihilated the prerogative of her throne. A Parliament was to be forthwith summoned, which should have the power to declare or veto war or peace; during the sovereign’s absence the country was to be governed by a council of twelve persons to be chosen out of twenty-four elected by Parliament, seven of the twelve being chosen by the Queen, and five by Parliament; no foreigner was to hold any place of trust, nor was an ecclesiastic to control the revenues; a complete indemnity was given for all past acts, civil and ecclesiastical, and the question of religious toleration was to be finally decided by Parliament.
Thus the Scottish-French question, which had been a standing menace to England for centuries, was settled by the statesmanship of Cecil; and perhaps through the whole of his great career no achievement shows more clearly than this the consummate tact, patience, firmness, moderation, and foresight that characterised his policy. Less than two years before England under the patronage of Philip was forced to accept a humiliating peace from France, and Spanish and French agents had intrigued against each other as to which of their two sovereigns should use prostrate, exhausted England for his own objects. In two short years of dexterous statesmanship England had turned the tables. Not only had she with comparative ease effected a vast domestic revolution, but she was conscious of the fact that both of the great Continental rivals were impotent to injure her, out of jealousy of each other, whilst her own power for offence and defence had enormously increased, and the knitting together of the reformers throughout Europe had placed her at the head of a confederacy which she could use as a balance against her enemies.