“June 16. A discord inter Com. Sussex et Leicester at Greenwych, ther appeased by Her Majesty.
“August 3. The Queen’s Majesty was at Colly Weston, in Northamptonshire.
“August 5. The Queen’s Majesty at my house in Stamford.
“August 31. The Queen in progress went from Woodstock to Oxford.”
During the progress a disagreement between Cecil and Leicester took place, as well as that mentioned between the latter and Sussex. The communications between the Earl and the French were constant, and had caused much heart-burning. The existence of a strong and active party in the English court ostentatiously leaning to the French side, at a time when Cecil’s whole policy depended upon keeping the good-will of Spain, hampered him at every turn, and he wrote a letter to Sir Thomas Hoby, privately instructing him to give out in France that Leicester’s influence over the Queen had decreased, and that the French need not court him so much as they did. When the letter arrived, Hoby, the Ambassador, was dead, and it fell into other hands. Leicester heard of it, and taxed Cecil, who retorted angrily.
Even in Cecil’s own house the intrigues against his policy continued. He had sent Danett to the Emperor with the draft clauses of the proposed marriage treaty with the Archduke, and the news from Vienna seemed to confirm the best hopes of those who favoured the Austrian match. This, of course, did not suit Leicester. Vulcob, the nephew of the new French Ambassador, Bôchetel de la Forest, went to Stamford to carry his uncle’s excuses for not coming earlier to see the Queen. As he was entering the presence-chamber at Burghley, Leicester stopped him, and began talking about the marriage. He hardly knew what to think, he said, but he was sure that if the Queen ever did marry, she would choose no one but himself for a husband. The Frenchman, no doubt, understood him. The Archduke’s match was getting too promising, and must be checked by the usual French move. So Vulcob took care when he saw the Queen to dwell mainly upon the attractive physical qualities of the young King Charles IX. Elizabeth was never tired of such a subject, and very soon the French Ambassador was warmly intriguing to bring forward his master’s suit again, as a counterpoise to the Austrian hopes, but really in Leicester’s interests, whilst presents and loving messages came thick and fast from France to Leicester and Throgmorton. The Emperor’s reply by Danett was, after all, not so encouraging as Cecil and Sussex had been led to expect, and Leicester’s hopes rose higher than ever. During the Queen’s progress he arranged with his friends a scheme which seemed as if it would stop the Archduke’s chances for ever. Parliament was to meet in October, and the plan was to influence both Houses to press the Queen on the questions of the succession and her marriage, “so that by this means the Archduke’s business may be upset … and then he (Leicester) may treat of his own affair at his leisure.” It was clear that any attempt on the part of the Puritans and Leicester to force the Queen’s hands with regard to the marriage whilst the delicate religious question was under discussion with the Emperor, would put an end to the negotiations, and Cecil and his friends strove their utmost to avoid such a result. They urged Guzman again to persuade the Queen to the match; the Duke of Norfolk came purposely to court with the same object, and for once Cecil himself was willing, in appearance, to place the religious question in the background. “Cecil,” writes Guzman, “desires this business so greatly, that he does not speak about the religious point; but this may be deceit, as his wife is of a contrary opinion, and thinks that great trouble may be caused to the peace of the country through it. She has great influence with her husband, and no doubt discusses the matter with him; but she appears a much more furious heretic than he is.” Well might the Queen and Cecil be apparently more anxious to sink religious differences than Lady Cecil, for they probably knew how imminent the danger was better than she.
The Protestants in Flanders and Holland were in open revolt; and slow Philip was collecting in Spain and Italy an overwhelming force by land and sea, with which he himself was to come as the avenger of his injured kingship, and crush the rising spirit of religious reform. If such an army as his swept over and desolated his Netherlands, whither next might it turn? For six years Elizabeth had kept Spain from harming her, out of jealousy of France; but France was now more than half Guisan, and in favour of Mary Stuart, and the Huguenots themselves had deserted England when she was fighting their battle at Havre. No help, then, could be expected from France if Spain attacked Elizabeth for her “heresy”; and the Queen and her wise minister were fain to conciliate a foe they were not powerful enough to face in the open. Elizabeth went beyond the Spaniard himself in her violent denunciation of the insurgents in the Netherlands. Their only aim, she said, was liberty against God and princes. They had neither reason, virtue, nor religion. She excused herself for having helped the French Huguenots, which she only did, she said, to recover Calais. If the Netherlands rebels came to her for help, she would show them how dearly she held the interests of her good brother King Philip; “and she cursed subjects who did not recognise the mercy that God had shown them in sending them a prince so clement and humane as your Majesty.”[239] Cecil was not quite so extravagant as this, but he missed no opportunity at so critical a juncture of drawing nearer to Spain, and was even more compliant than ever before on the vexed subject of the English right to trade in the Spanish Indies. “Cecil is well disposed in this matter,” writes Guzman, “and I am not surprised that the others are not, as they are interested. Cecil assures me that he has always stood aloof from similar enterprises.”
In the meanwhile Leicester’s persistent efforts to hamper Cecil’s policy were bearing fruit. With great difficulty Cecil persuaded the House of Commons to vote the supplies before the question of the succession was dealt with, but a free fight on the floor of the House preceded the vote. The Queen was irritated beyond measure at the inopportune activity of the extreme party about the succession. Sussex, the Spanish Ambassador, and others of Catholic leanings, pointed out to her that if she married the Archduke there would be an end of the trouble, and she need not then think of any successor other than her own children. At length a joint meeting of the two Houses adopted an address to the Queen, urging her to appoint a successor if she did not intend to marry. When the address was presented, her rage passed all decency.[240] The Duke of Norfolk, her own kinsman, and the first subject of the realm, was insulted with vulgar abuse, which well-nigh reduced him to tears. Leicester, Pembroke, Northampton, and Howard were railed at and scolded in turn; only once did she soften somewhat towards Leicester. She had thought, she said, that if all the world had abandoned her, he would never do so. What do the devils want? she asked Guzman. Oh! your Majesty, replied the Ambassador, what they want is liberty, and if monarchs do not combine against it, it is easy to see how it will all end. She would send the ungrateful fellow Leicester away, she said, and the Archduke might now be without suspicion. Gradually, as she calmed, her diplomacy asserted itself, and cleverly, by alternations of threats and cajolery, she reduced Parliament to the required condition of invertebrate dependence upon her will.[241]
All this, we may be sure, did not decrease the ill-feeling in the court, which for the next six months became a hotbed of intrigue. On the one side were Norfolk, Sussex, the Conservatives, and the Catholics, aided by Guzman, and cautiously supported by Cecil and Bacon; whilst on the other, Leicester, Throgmorton, Pembroke, Knollys, and the Puritans, backed by the French Ambassador, ceaselessly endeavoured to check the Austrian-Spanish friendship, and if possible, above all, to ruin Sussex and prevent his embassy to the Emperor. That Leicester would stick at no inconsistency is seen by the curious fact that, whilst he was nominally heading the Puritan party, he, according to Melvil, was strenuously favouring the claims of the Queen of Scots to the succession. He assured Elizabeth that this would be her best safeguard, or “Cecil would undo all,” the reason for this being that Cecil was known to be in favour of Catharine Grey.