The abortive conspiracy of the Hamiltons in the spring of 1562, and Arran’s madness, finally proved the hopelessness of his suit for Mary’s hand, and Lord James and Maitland had now abandoned him. Both of those statesmen, in union with Cecil, still strove to hold the balance evenly, and to avoid religious strife in the country, in the hope that if the Scottish Queen married a nominee of England, Elizabeth would eventually recognise her as the heiress to the English throne. But the agitation of the English Catholics, and the attempts of Darnley’s mother to force matters, had rendered the position extremely difficult, and Cecil was busy unravelling plots real and imaginary. The visit of a Swedish Ambassador to Scotland on a matrimonial mission had caused a sudden scare in London; but Mary’s prompt dismissal of him, and her continued amiable letters to Elizabeth, had somewhat disarmed suspicion against her personally. Her uncle the Marquis d’Elbœuf was splendidly entertained in the English court on his way home to France, and negotiations were set on foot for a visit of Mary to the north of England in the summer, for the purpose of an interview with the English Queen. But withal Cecil was ill at ease, for the Guises and the Catholics of France were now in arms,[163] and it was impossible to see how the great struggle of the faith would end. If the Guises finally captured the government of France, then England must accept Philip’s terms for a Spanish alliance, or be inevitably ruined. But for the present it was the policy of Elizabeth and Cecil to keep a tight rein on the Catholics in England,[164] and encourage Condé and Coligny in France.[165]
The Bishop of Aquila had been growing more and more discontented in his palace in the Strand (Durham Place). He had no counsels to give to his master now but those of violence, for he had been outwitted too often to believe in the interested professions of any party in Elizabeth’s court. But the emissaries of the discontented Catholics, the servants of turbulent Lady Margaret Lennox, Shan O’Neil, and his train of wild gallowglasses—all those who hated Elizabeth and Protestantism—found in the old Bishop an eager listener to their whispered treason. Cecil knew all this, for his spies were everywhere. That the Bishop was up to mischief was clear; but yet Cecil did not know whether he was hatching any plot in connection with Mary Stuart’s marriage; and that was the main point of danger for the present. The Queen of Scots, it is true, had more than once expressed to Randolph, the English Ambassador, her disapproval of the attitude of her uncles in France. If she wished to keep friendly with her own ministers and the English Queen, indeed, it was necessary for her to do so; but her powers of dissimulation were known; the religious struggle had drawn the Guises nearer to Philip; and the Queen-mother, herself alarmed at the rising power and warlike attitude of princes of the blood, like Navarre and Condé, was once more turning to her Spanish son-in-law and the Catholics. A Catholic plot combining the Guises, Philip, Mary Stuart, and Catharine de Medici, would be threatening indeed, and it behoved Cecil to be watchful.[166]
As Durham House had only been lent to the Spanish Ambassador by the Queen, Cecil had appointed the English gatekeeper at the gate in the Strand, and from him learnt of those who went in and out, even by the river stairs. But this was not enough. At the end of April he contrived to buy over an Italian secretary of the Bishop, a man named Borghese Venturini, from whom he obtained particulars of the Ambassador’s letters.[167] They abounded with treasonable suggestions, dark hints at conspiracy, and vituperation of the Queen and Cecil, but they disclosed no deep-laid plot of Spain. Cecil nevertheless was not satisfied, and kept on the watch.
The Prince of Condé and the Protestants were now in array against the Guises, and Catharine de Medici was in the power of the latter. Both sides had striven to obtain the help of the German Protestant princes, but, in a great measure due to Cecil’s foresight, their sympathies were on the side of Condé. Cecil laboured incessantly, but against many difficulties, for the Queen was anxious to avoid the cost and risk of pledging herself too deeply. In an important letter to Throgmorton, 16th July 1562, he thus lays bare his plans and his obstacles: “Our thynges here depend so upon those matters ther (i.e. in France) that yow shall well ynough judg thereof without advertisement. This hardness here will indanger all, I feare. Sir Thomas Wroth, I trust, shall into Germany with spede: my device is to sollicite them, and to offer a contribution for an army to enter France.… Good Mr. Throgmorton, omitt not now to advertise us from time to time, for this Bishop of Aquila letteth not weekly to forge new devices.… Continue your wryting to putt the Quene’s Majesty in remembrance of her peril if the Guisans prosper. And so, being overweryed with care, I end.”[168]
There is another document of the same period in Cecil’s hand, which also shows how earnestly he tried to combat the peril, and make the Queen and Council understand it. It is a memorial setting forth “the perills growing uppon the overthrow of the Prince of Condé’s cause,”[169] and points out that if Condé be allowed to fall, the Guises would be supreme in France, “and to maynteane their faction they will pleasure the King of Spayne all that they maye. Hereupon shall follow a complott betwixt them twoo … the King of Spayne to unhable the house of Navarre for ever clayming the Kingdom of Navarre; and the house of Guise to promote their niece the Queen of Scotts to the crown of England. For doing thereof twoo thyngs principally will be attempted: the marriage of the sayd Queen with the Prince of Spayne, and the realme of Ireland to be given in a paye to the King of Spayne.” All English Catholics, he continues, will be told to make ready, and at a given moment rise; the Council of Trent will condemn all Protestants; the Guises, Spain, and the Pope will unite England and Scotland under Mary, and Protestantism will be undone. It will be, he says, too late then to withstand it, “for it shall be lyke a great rock of stone that is fallyng downe from the topp of a mountayn, which when it is comming no force can stey.”
Cecil’s own efforts were unwearied and ubiquitous. Randolph in Scotland, Throgmorton in France, Mundt with the German princes, and Sir Peter Mewtys, and afterwards Throgmorton with Condé, seconded him manfully. Spies, and secret agents paid by him, were in every court and every camp; the prisons were crammed with recusants; the Earl of Lennox, Darnley’s father, was in the Tower; his wife, Lady Margaret, was in durance at Shene; whilst her questionable words and treasonable practices were being slowly unravelled by informers,[170] the English Catholic nobles were closely watched, and for a month every line the Spanish Ambassador wrote was secretly conveyed to Cecil by Borghese. Once, early in May, the Bishop’s courier, with important letters for the Duchess of Parma, was stopped two miles beyond Gravesend by pretended highwaymen, who were really gentlemen (the brothers Cobham) in Cecil’s pay, and the man was detained whilst the letters were sent to the Secretary to be deciphered and copied. At last things came to a crisis, the old Ambassador discovered that Borghese was the traitor,[171] and the latter in fear of his life, having fought with a fellow-servant, fled to Cecil. The Bishop was in a towering rage, and complained bitterly to the Queen. She told him that if she suspected that anything was being written in her country to her detriment, she should stop posts and examine what she pleased; and when he pleaded privilege, she retorted, that he was not privileged to plot injury to her in her own realm. In vain the Bishop protested that he had not plotted, and railed against Cecil. He only had Dudley on his side, and Dudley did not count for much in a great emergency like this.[172] The next day (23rd May) Cecil wrote a dignified letter to the Ambassador. He honours him as the King’s Ambassador, he says, reverences him as a bishop, and esteems him as a nobleman; and he wishes to know in which capacity he complains of his acts. He, Cecil, is ready, as a son of no mean ancestry, to justify himself to the Bishop in either character; but if the Bishop has “any evil opinion of him, he will thank him to address him personally, and not complain to others.” The Bishop’s reply was equally stiff. He cannot approve of his, Cecil’s, advice on public matters, which has great weight with the Queen, but that does not diminish his respect for him in his private capacity.[173] In vain the Bishop prayed his master to recall him if he could not protect him against the insults to which he was exposed; in vain he tried to move Elizabeth, by alternate flattery and threats, to restore Borghese to him; in vain he endeavoured to bribe his servant back again, or to have him killed; Cecil was ready for him at every turn, and he could do no more than plot and pray for vengeance in his private rooms at Durham Place, whilst Cecil was examining informers against him and the Queen was threatening him with expulsion.
In the meanwhile Mary Stuart was still on her good behaviour, in the hope that the statesmen’s plan for an agreement with Elizabeth on the basis of the recognition by the latter of Mary’s claim to the English succession might eventually be adopted. Secretary Maitland of Lethington was in London in the summer in the interests of this plan, and for the purpose of arranging the much talked-of meeting between the Queens. Mary was eager for the interview, from which she expected much, and Elizabeth, supported by Dudley, was also in favour of it. But Cecil from the first looked coldly upon it, although, as usual, his opposition to it was indirect and covert. The whole of his policy at present turned upon supporting the French Huguenots in arms, and ruining the Guises; and it is obvious that too close a friendship between the Queens would have paralysed him in this direction. The matter of the interview was dragged out and talked about until the season became too late for it to be held that year, and, greatly to Mary’s disappointment, it was postponed nominally until the following summer. The intrigue to marry Mary to Darnley had unquestionably gone far. It was warmly supported by Catharine de Medici, who was, of course, against a Spanish marriage; by Lord James, as offering the best prospect of peace and the English succession to his sister; and by Dudley, because it might furnish a precedent for his own marriage with Elizabeth. The latter affected to approve of it for a time; but she dreaded the union of the two strongest claimants to her succession, and was never really in favour of it.
Slowly, but surely, Cecil’s policy gained ground. To cripple the Catholic party in France and destroy the influence of the Guises, would render impossible that which of all things he dreaded most, namely, a French domination of Scotland in the interest of Catholicism. With the ostensible object of suppressing piracy in the Channel, a considerable fleet was fitted out in the mouth of the Humber, but with the real aim of carrying aid to the Huguenots when an opportune moment arrived. Protestant Germans and Switzers had flocked to Condé, Dandelot and Coligny. Montgomerie held Rouen against the Guises, and the Vidame de Chartres seized Havre de Grace. An emissary came from the Vidame in July, to offer this important port to the Queen of England as a base from which to help the reformers. The offer was a tempting one, for it might enable her to insist later upon the restoration of Calais; but Elizabeth was distrustful.[174]
Philip’s sister, the Governess of the Netherlands, sent a remonstrance, shocked at the very idea that a Queen should send aid to rebels against their sovereign; Catharine de Medici despatched Marshal Vielleville to threaten Elizabeth with a national war both with France and Spain if she sent assistance to Condé and those who were in arms against the Government. But Philip’s Netherlands were now in almost open revolt, and though he made a show of sending troops to help the French Catholics, it was evident that he could not do much, and for the present Elizabeth and Cecil could disregard him, knowing that if the worst came to the worst, he would never allow the French influence in England to become dominant. On the 20th September, Elizabeth signed the treaty by which she agreed to send a large sum of money and 6000 troops to France to aid Condé; 3000 of which were to hold Havre, and the rest to reinforce the Huguenots in Dieppe and Rouen. Elizabeth, in a proclamation drawn up by Cecil, swore that she took this step for the defence of the French King,[175] and sent all sorts of reassuring messages to Catharine and her son; but the pregnant fact still remained, that civil war in France was to be promoted by an English army, and that the Queen of England had for the first time openly assumed the position of leader of the Protestant faith throughout the world, in defiance of the Governments both of France and Spain.
How great was the Queen’s hesitation to the last at assuming this vast responsibility is seen in a letter from Cecil to his old friend, Sir Thomas Smith, who was sent to replace Throgmorton as Ambassador to France (Sir Nicholas remaining with Condé) only a week before the English force actually sailed (22nd September 1562). “When our men shall goo,” he writes, “or whether they shall goo or not, I cannot mak certain. I mean to send yow as soon as the fact is enterprised.… We begyn to hear of towardness to accord, and then we shall lose much labour.” The troops sailed under Sir Adrian Poynings on the 27th September, and were subsequently commanded by the Earl of Warwick, Dudley’s brother. Suddenly, a few days afterwards, the Queen fell ill of smallpox at Hampton Court, and for a time was like to die. The confusion of the court was great, for the succession was still undecided. Dudley and a considerable party of his friends were openly, almost violently, in favour of the Earl of Huntingdon; whilst others headed by Cecil were strongly desirous of following the will of Henry VIII., and adopting Catharine Grey. The Catholics were divided, and advised the examination of the question from a legal point of view; but whilst the dissensions were in progress, the Queen unexpectedly rallied and the danger passed. During her peril she had expressed the most extravagant affection for Dudley, and begged the Council to appoint him Protector; but with her recovery affairs assumed their normal course, the only outcome of the illness being the great strengthening of Dudley’s influence, and his appointment to the Council with the Duke of Norfolk. The effect of Dudley’s rise, which meant the temporary decline of Cecil, was soon seen. The fall of Rouen and Dieppe to the King caused the English contingent to be concentrated at Havre, where a reinforcement of 2000 more men was reported to be required to hold the place. The Queen began to look with alarm at her responsibility, and the Council was prompt in throwing the blame upon Cecil, who absented himself from the meetings on the pretext of illness. Secret attempts were made also to bring about a pacification between Condé, the Guises, the Queen-mother and England, greatly to the disgust of Throgmorton, who dreaded a close friendship with the French as much as Cecil himself.