The militant Protestants were now paramount in Elizabeth’s Council, and soon made their influence felt, not only in foreign relations, but in home affairs as well. They were in favour of an aggressive policy in aid of Protestantism abroad, and doubtless thought that the best way to strengthen their hands would be to strike at Prelacy at home, and to discredit the last vestiges of the old faith, against the foreign champions of which they were ready to do national battle.
The appointment of Whitgift to the Archbishopric of Canterbury had been avowedly made by the Queen (September 1583) for the purpose of repairing the effects of Grindal’s leniency, and bringing the Nonconformists to obedience; “to hold a strait rein, to press the discipline of his Church, and recover his province to uniformity.” He had set about his work with a thoroughness which brought upon him a storm of reproach from ministers, and greatly embittered the controversies within the Church.[492] Burghley felt strongly on the question of uniformity, as involving obedience to the law; but Whitgift’s methods were too severe even for him, and produced from him more than one rebuke. He was the referee of all parties—Puritans, Churchmen, and Catholics appealed to him as their friend—and he strove to hold the balance fairly, whilst deprecating extreme views on each side. Leicester and Knollys were ceaseless in the attacks upon the prelates, and Whitgift’s violence made it difficult for Burghley to defend him. In one of his letters to the Archbishop he says, “I am sorry to trouble your Grace, but I am more troubled myself, not only with many private petitions of ministers recommended by persons of credit as being peaceable persons in their ministry, but yet more with complaints to your Grace and colleagues, greatly troubled; but also I am now daily charged by Councillors and public persons to neglect my duty in not staying your Grace’s proceedings, so vehement and general against ministers and preachers, as the Papists are thereby encouraged, and ill-disposed subjects animated, and her Majesty’s safety endangered.”
Now that the Puritan party had the upper hand, Burghley’s proverbial middle course was not strong enough for his colleagues, and they determined to deal with Prelacy and Papacy at the same time. The first thing was to pack the new Parliament, and in this Leicester laboured unblushingly. Sir Simon D’Ewes’ Journal sets forth the great number of blank proxies sent to the Earl; and if his letter to the electors of Andover is typical, this is not to be wondered at. He boldly asks them to send him “your election in blank, and I will put in the names.” Another letter from the Privy Council to Lord Cobham[493] directs him to obtain the nomination of all the members for the Cinque Ports. Parliament met at the end of November, and a formal complaint of the Puritan and Nonconformist ministers was presented to the House of Commons, which, after reducing the number of its articles from thirty-four to sixteen, it adopted and laid before the House of Lords. Whitgift and his colleagues fought hard, cautiously aided by Burghley and the Queen, who, when she afterwards dismissed Parliament, roundly scolded the members for interfering with her religious prerogative; and the only effect of the complaints was to enable Burghley to exert pressure upon the prelates to allay their zeal.
The attack of the militant Protestants against the Catholics, however, was more effectual, although even that was somewhat palliated by Lord Burghley’s moderation. It was evident now that the Catholic League abroad and its instruments would stick at nothing. Father Creighton, the priest who had played so prominent a part in the abortive plans of D’Aubigny, Mendoza, and the Jesuits, had been captured with some of his brother seminarists, and the rack had torn from them confirmation of the desperate plans of which the Throgmorton conspiracy had given an inkling. Leicester and his party had aroused Protestant horror of such projects to fever heat. At his instance an association had been formed, pledged by oath to defend the Queen’s life or to avenge it, and to exclude for ever from the throne any person who might benefit by the Queen’s removal. Mary Stuart somewhat naturally regarded the last clause as directed against herself, and endeavoured to take the sting from it by offering her own qualified adhesion to the association, which, however, was declined.
When the association was legalised by a bill in Parliament, the Queen (Elizabeth), under Burghley’s influence, sent a message to the House, abating some of the objectionable features, and reconciling it with the rules of English equity. No penalties were to accrue before the persons accused had been found guilty by a regular commission, and Mary and her heirs were excused from forfeiture, unless Elizabeth were assassinated.
The new bill against Catholics was easily passed, under feelings such as those prevailing in the House and the country, and the enactment was regarded as a natural retort to the promulgation of the Papal bulls in favour of revolution in England. All native Jesuits and seminarists found in England after forty days were to be treated as traitors, and it was felony to shelter or harbour them. English students or priests abroad were to be forced to return within six months and take the oath of supremacy, or incur the penalty for high treason; and many similar provisions were made, by which the world could see that the militant Protestants of England had picked up the gage thrown down by Philip and the Pope. Henceforward it was to be war to the knife until one side or the other was vanquished, and Lord Burghley’s astute policy of balance and compromise was cast into the background after a quarter of a century of almost unbroken success.[494]
Almost the only dissenting voice in the House of Commons against the penal bill was that of Dr. William Parry, member for Queenborough. In a violent and abusive speech, he said that the House was so evidently biassed that it was useless to give it the special reasons he had for opposing the bill, but would state them to the Queen alone. This was considered insulting to the House, and he was committed to the charge of the sergeant-at-arms, but was released by the Queen and Council the following day. The events which followed form one of the unsolved riddles of history. Parry was a man of bad character, who for years had been one of Burghley’s many spies upon the English refugees on the Continent. He appears, however, to have been esteemed more highly by the Treasurer than such instruments usually are.
When young Anthony Bacon was sent on his travels to France, his uncle, Burghley, specially instructed him to cultivate the acquaintance of Dr. Parry. Leicester complained to the Queen of this, and the Lord Treasurer undertook that his nephew should not be shaken either in loyalty or religion by his acquaintanceship with Parry.[495] After the latter returned to England in 1583 he was elected member of the Parliament of the following year, after having persistently but unsuccessfully begged a sinecure office from Burghley. From his first arrival he had been full of real or pretended plots for the assassination of the Queen, which he professed to have discovered on the Continent. He was, like all men of his profession, an unprincipled scamp, and made these secret disclosures the ground for ceaseless demands for reward. He was disappointed and discontented, as well as vain and boastful, and overshot the mark. In one of his interviews with the Queen he produced a somewhat doubtfully worded letter of approval from the Papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Como,[496] which, he said, referred to a pretended project undertaken by him (Parry) for the murder of the Queen. He talked loosely to Charles Neville and other Catholics of this plot as a real one, and six weeks after his escapade in Parliament was arrested and lodged in jail. At first he would admit nothing, but the fear of the rack, or some other motive, produced from him a full and complete confession of a regular plan—once, he said, nearly executed—for killing Elizabeth; but before sentence he vehemently retracted, and appealed to the knowledge of the Queen, Burghley, and Walsingham that he was innocent. But if they possessed this knowledge they never revealed it, and Parry died the revolting death of a traitor, clamouring to the last that Elizabeth herself was responsible for his sacrifice.
It cannot be doubted that Parry was an agent provocateur, and great question arises as to the reality of the crime for which he was punished. I have found no trace in the Spanish correspondence of his having been a tool of Mendoza or Philip, such as exists in the cases of Throgmorton, Babington, and others; and I consider that the evidence generally favours the idea that he was deliberately caught in his own lure, and sacrificed in order to aggravate the anti-Catholic fervour in the country, and secure the passage of the penal enactments. In one particular I dissent from nearly every historian who has written on the subject. All fingers point at Lord Burghley as the author of the plan. I look upon it as being the work of Leicester, Knollys, and Walsingham. It was they, and not Burghley, who were anxious to strengthen the fervent Protestant party. It was they, and not Burghley, who were forcing the penal enactments through the Parliament they had packed. The Treasurer could hardly have been blind to what was going on, but he could not afford to champion Parry. The latter, a venal scoundrel known to be in Burghley’s pay, but discontented with his patron, was doubtless bought by Leicester to play his part in Parliament, and afterwards to confess the Catholic plot on the assurance of pardon, with the object of blackening the Catholics, and perhaps, by implication, Burghley as well.
That Leicester’s friends were at the time seeking to represent the Lord Treasurer as against the Protestant cause is clear from several indignant letters written by Burghley himself. “If they cannot,” he says, “prove all their lies, let them make use of any one proof wherewith to prove me guilty of falsehood, injustice, bribery or dissimulation or double-dealing in Council, either with her Majesty or with her Councillors. Let them charge me on any point that I have not dealt as earnestly with the Queen to aid the afflicted in the Low Countries to withstand the increasing power of the King of Spain, the assurance of the King of Scots to be tied to her Majesty with reward, yea, with the greatest pension that any other hath. If in any of these I am proved to be behind or slower than any in a discreet manner, I will yield myself worthy of perpetual reproach as though I were guilty of all they use to bluster against me. They that say in rash and malicious mockery that England is become Regnum Cecilianum may use their own cankered humour.” In July of the same year he writes in similar strain to Sir Thomas Edmunds:[497] “If you knew how earnest a course I hold with her Majesty, both privately and openly, for her to retain the King of Scots with friendship and liberality, yea, and to retain the Master of Gray and Justice-Clerk, with rewards to continue their offices, which indeed are well known to me to be very good, you would think there could be no more shameful lies made by Satan himself than these be; and finding myself thus maliciously bitten with the tongues and pens of courtiers here, if God did not comfort me, I had cause to fear murdering hands or poisoning points; but God is my keeper.”