In order, apparently, to forward Dudley’s chances of success as a suitor for the hand of Mary Stuart, for which at this time Elizabeth pretended to be anxious, she created him Earl of Leicester and Baron Denbeigh, on Michaelmas day 1564. De Foix, the French Ambassador, intimated two days previously his intention of being present at the splendid festivities which accompanied the ceremony. This was a good opportunity for Cecil to arouse suspicion of the new Earl, and distrust of the French. On the 28th September, accordingly, the Secretary called upon Guzman, and telling him that the French Ambassador would be present at the feast, hinted that Dudley was very friendly with the French; to which the Spaniard replied, that he had always understood that such was the case, and that Dudley’s father was known to be much attached to them. Then “Cecil told me that the Queen had commanded him to visit the Emperor with Throgmorton, and although he had done all in his power to excuse himself from the journey, he had not succeeded. I understand that the artfulness of his rivals has procured this commission for him, in order, in the meantime, to put some one else in his place, which certainly would be a good thing. His wife has petitioned the Queen to let her husband stay at home, as he is weak and delicate. They tell me that this has made the business doubtful, and I do not know for certain what will be done; nor indeed is anything sure here from one hour to another, except the hatching of falsehoods, which always goes on.” Needless to say, Cecil had his way and did not go.
Before many days had passed Leicester sent to Guzman disclaiming any particular friendship with the French, “and said, after his own Queen, there was no prince in the world whom he was so greatly obliged to serve as your Majesty, whose servant he had been, and to whom he owed his life and all he had.” De Foix, he said, had only been present at his feast, because he brought him the Order of St. Michael from the King of France, which he (Leicester) did not wish to accept. Guzman was rather tart about the business, and reminded Leicester’s friend (Spinola) that on the same day that the Queen had invited him (Guzman) to supper, De Foix had dined with her; and when Spinola hinted that Philip might send Leicester the Golden Fleece, Guzman was quite scandalised at the idea of conferring the order on any one not a “publicly professed Catholic.” Altogether it is clear that the Queen’s and Cecil’s clever management was already setting the French and Spanish by the ears; and when they could do that and make them rivals for England’s favour, she was safe.
The next day Guzman was entertained at dinner by Leicester, the Earl of Warwick, Cecil, and others being present; and the Secretary in the course of conversation assured the Spaniard that he was taking vigorous measures to suppress the depredations on shipping, and to restore as much as possible of the merchandise stolen. Already, indeed, Cecil’s diplomacy was righting matters. An active correspondence was going on about the Archduke’s match; the Queen assured Guzman that she had to conceal her real feelings about religion, but that God knew her heart; and even Cecil tried to soften the asperity of the Catholics towards him. “Cecil,” writes Guzman to his King, “tells these heretical bishops to look after their clergy, as the Queen is determined to reform them in their customs, and even in their dress, as the diversity that exists in everything cannot be tolerated.[203] He directs that they should be careful how they treat those of the old faith: to avoid calumniating them or persecuting or harrying them.” The result of this action was that in October 1564, Guzman could write: “I have advised previously that Cecil’s favour had been wavering, but he knows how to please, and avoids saying things the Queen does not wish to hear; and, above all, as I am told, can flatter her, so he has kept his place, and things are now in the same condition as formerly. Robert makes the best of it. The outward demonstrations are fair, but the inner feelings the same as before. I do not know how long they will last. They dissemble; but Cecil has more wit than all of them. Their envy of him is very great.”[204]
Sir James Melvil, a Scotsman brought up in France, was directed to go to London in the autumn of 1564, to watch his mistress’s interests. To him Elizabeth again suggested a marriage between Dudley and “her good sister”; and in reply to his remark that Mary thought that a conference between English and Scottish statesmen should discuss the question first, at which conference the Earl of Bedford and Lord Robert could represent England, Elizabeth told Melvil that he seemed to make a small account of Lord Robert. He should, she said, see him made a far greater Earl than Bedford before he left court. When Dudley was on his knees, shortly afterwards, receiving the investiture of his Earldom, the Queen tickled his neck, and asked Melvil what he thought of him. Melvil gave a courtly answer, whereupon the Queen retorted that he liked that “long lad” (Darnley) better. Melvil scoffed at such an idea, but his main object in coming to England was to intrigue for the “long lad’s” permission to go to Scotland. A few days after this, Leicester took Melvil in his barge from Hampton Court to London, and on the way asked him what Mary thought of the marriage with him, which Randolph had proposed to her. Melvil answered coldly, as his mistress had instructed him to do. “Then he began to purge himself of so proud a pretence as to marry so great a Queen, declaring he did not esteem himself worthy to wipe her shoes; declaring that the invention of that proposition of marriage proceeded from Mr. Cecil, his secret enemy. For if I, says he, should have appeared desirous of that marriage, I should have offended both the Queens and lost their favour.”[205]
Melvil went back to Scotland with all manner of kind messages for his mistress; and Cecil especially was gracious to him, placing a fine gold chain around his neck as he bade him farewell. But when Mary asked her envoy if he thought Elizabeth “meant truly towards her inwardly in her heart, as she appeared to do outwardly in her speech,” he replied that in his judgment “there was neither plain dealing nor upright meaning; but great dissimulation, emulation, envy, and fear lest her princely qualities should chase her from the kingdom, as having already hindered her marriage with the Archduke. It appeared likewise to me, by her offering unto her, with great apparent earnestness, my Lord of Leicester.” Melvil says that Leicester’s humble and artful letters to Mary, and the consequent kindness of the latter, aroused Elizabeth’s fear that after all Mary might marry her favourite, and caused her to consent to Darnley’s visit to Scotland.[206] “Which licence,” he says, “was procured by means of Secretary Cecil, not that he was minded that any of the marriages should take effect, but with such shifts to hold the Queen (Mary) unmarried as long as he could, persuading himself that Lord Darnley durst not proceed in the marriage without consent of the Queen of England first obtained.”[207] Cecil’s task was again an extremely difficult one. He had to keep up an appearance of leaning to the Catholics and the House of Austria, and encourage the idea of Elizabeth’s marriage with the Archduke, in order to prevent the alliance of Mary Stuart with so powerful an interest; he was obliged to keep his own restive Protestant friends in hand; to counteract at every step the intrigues of Leicester against him, and to be ready at any moment to cause a diversion if Leicester’s suit to the Queen looked too serious to be safe.
The replies and recommendations of the bishops to the Council’s circular, referred to in a previous note (page 160), had caused much apprehension amongst Catholics; and the Queen herself, as well as Cecil, assured Guzman that the bishops should do the Catholics no harm; whilst, on the other hand, Cecil’s Protestant friends were urging him to adopt strong measures to prevent the growth of the “Papists.” Cecil’s reply to one such recommendation shows that he was just as ready to wound Leicester underhand as Leicester was him. “He replied that he was doing what he could, but he did not know who was at the Queen’s ear to soften her so, and render her less zealous in this than she ought to be.”[208]
Cecil’s greatest difficulty, indeed, at this time, was from Leicester, who had now quite enlisted Sir Nicholas Throgmorton against his former friend. In order to enable Leicester with some decency to accept the Order of St. Michael, Throgmorton suggested that the Queen might ask for another Cross of the Order to be given to the Duke of Norfolk. When Cecil learned this, he was obliged to remonstrate with the Queen, and point out how undesirable it was in the present state of affairs to place two of her most powerful nobles under an obligation to France. At a time when Cecil was straining every nerve to keep on good terms with the House of Austria, and conciliating the Catholics, in order to checkmate Mary Stuart, Leicester had agents running backwards and forwards to France, in the hope of bringing forward in an official form the farcical offer of Charles IX.’s hand for the Queen, which offer he knew would come to nothing, whilst rendering abortive the Archduke’s suit, upon which Cecil depended to so great an extent.
The dexterity and cleverness of Cecil under these circumstances is shown very markedly in the manner in which he changed in a very few months the opinion of the Spanish Ambassador about him, as soon as his policy rendered it necessary to gain his good opinion. “When I first arrived here,” writes Guzman, January 2, 1565, “I imagined Secretary Cecil … to be very different from what I have found him in your Majesty’s affairs. He is well disposed towards them, truthful, lucid, modest, and just; and although he is zealous in serving his Queen, which is one of his best traits, yet he is amenable to reason. He knows the French, and, like an Englishman, is their enemy. He assured me on his oath … that the French have always made great efforts to attract to their country the Flanders trade (i.e. with England). With regard to his religion I say nothing, except that I wish he were a Catholic … but he is straightforward, and shows himself well affected towards your Majesty … for he alone it is who makes or mars business here.”[209]
Having thus gained the good-will of the Spaniard, Cecil was soon able to persuade him that the Queen would never really marry Leicester, and the relations between the latter and the Spaniards became cooler. The Queen herself could not do enough to show her kindness to Guzman, and at joust, tournament, and ball, chatted with him in preference to the French Ambassador. By January 1565, Leicester, seeing that Cecil’s diplomacy had gained the good-will of Spain, and that the Catholics were turning to the side of the Archduke, unblushingly veered round to the French interest.
Guzman was obliged then to write that he was not at all satisfied with him. He wished, he said, to please everybody; but was getting very friendly with the French, who were making much of him. But there was more even than this. The Queen and Cecil were trying their best to please the Catholics. The Queen openly and rudely rebuked Dean Nowell at his sermon on Ash Wednesday for attacking Catholic practices; whilst Cecil was pushing the Vestments Order to the very verge of safety. Some of the bishops invited him to a conference, and remonstrated with him on the severity of the new regulations, which they openly stigmatised as papistical. He told them sternly that the Queen’s order must be obeyed, or worse would befall them. The churchmen of the Geneva school railed and resisted, as far as they might,[210] what they called the Secretary’s backsliding; whilst Leicester, ever willing to change sides, if he could only checkmate Cecil, vigorously took the part of the Puritans, and did his best to hamper the execution of the Vestments Order, and to prevent the use of the cross on the altars.[211]