And now broad spreading like an agèd tree,
Lets none shoot up that nigh him planted be.”
That Lord Burghley in his failing age should desire to continue his policy through his son was perfectly natural, especially as in his case the son was in every way worthy to succeed him; and it is not fair to blame him for mean filial jealousy to the detriment of Ralegh, as Spenser does, for Ralegh, although nominally his adherent, was in the matter of the Puritans and aggressive action against Spain, acting rather on the side of Essex. It is to this fact that Ralegh owed his lifelong disappointment at being excluded from the Privy Council.
That Essex and his party were sleepless in their attempts to undermine the influence of the Cecils there is abundant evidence to prove. Amongst many others, an interesting letter from Ralph Lane to Lord Burghley (March 1592) may be quoted.[596] Sir Thomas Cecil and his more brilliant younger brother had quarrelled whilst their father was staying in retirement at Theobalds, sick and sorry. “The world speaks of your Lordship’s grief,” writes Lane, “and thinks it proceeds from the differences between your two sons. The matter is not great, but the humours short. That which grieves your well-wishers, who are the true well-wishers of her Majesty and the State, is that it has been misrepresented to her Majesty so as to injure you for credit and wisdom, and that these hard constructions made against you to her are the principal cause of your own grief. Good men moan that her Majesty is sought to be deprived in this dangerous time of so wise and approved a Councillor. I hope that no envy will make her Majesty disconceit a personage the choice of whom in the beginning of her reign prognosticated her future greatness.”
But Elizabeth, though she might listen to the youngsters who sought to contemn her aged Councillor, knew his worth better than they, and much as he desired rest, when it came to the pinch, she always refused to let him go. Only a few days after the above letter was written, indeed, Lord Burghley received a life-grant of Rockingham Forest, part of the lands of the deceased Lord Chancellor Bromley, as if in answer to the detractions of his enemies. Another instance of the dependence of the Queen upon him and of his devotion to his duty happened in June. He had gone to Bath to seek alleviation from the gout which had afflicted him all the spring, and writes from there to the Queen, who was on her progress, enclosing her an important letter from her Ambassador in France. “I would,” he says, “have attended your Majesty myself with it, but I am in the midst of my cure and may not break off without special harm and frustrating my recovery, which is promised in a few days. But still I will risk all, and come if your Majesty desires it.”[597]
The persistent attacks upon Burghley and his policy were not confined to Essex and the Puritans. The Spanish Jesuit party in Flanders, which in former years had often looked upon him with sympathy and sometimes with hope, now cast upon him the responsibility of everything that happened in England, even when the policy was dictated by Burghley’s opponents. In all the plots of Holt, Yorke, Archer, Cahill, and the rest of the desperadoes in Flanders, Burghley was one of the principal objects of attack. “He was but a blood-sucker,” said Yorke; and the latter swore he would lay a poisoned glowing coal in his way and kill him.[598] Burghley, he said, had poisoned the young Earl of Derby in order to marry his grand-daughter to the Earl’s brother. “England was governed by the Machivellian policy of those who would be kings, and whom it is time were cut off;”[599] and much more of the same sort. These grosser calumnies and accusations of corruption[600] were in most cases obviously false, and could hardly have caused Lord Burghley very deep concern; but the most artful of his enemies, Father Persons, well knew the weak point in his armour, and wounded him to the quick in his books, in which he pretended to show that the Lord Treasurer was of base origin, his father a tavern-keeper, and he himself a bell-ringer.[601] We have seen in a former similar case that attacks upon his ancestry almost alone aroused Lord Burghley’s anger; and an anti-Spanish Catholic writing at the time (January 1593) records how deeply he was pained by the books of Persons and Verstegen just published, “which,” he says, “will do the Catholics no good.”
The division, indeed, between the two parties of Catholics was now well defined. Those who adhered to Spain and the Jesuits were of course bitterly inimical to moderate statesmen like the Cecils, whose efforts would naturally tend to bring about a compromise with James or Arabella Stuart for the Queen’s successor, peace with Spain, and toleration for Catholics. The Vatican, the French, the Venetians, and many of the English and Scottish Catholics abroad were in favour of this solution;[602] and the English Catholic secular clergy were enlisted almost entirely on the same side. The extreme parties, however, were naturally violently opposed to compromise of any sort; so that the Cecils, as leaders of the peaceful and moderate party, were the target for envenomed attacks at the same time both of Spanish Jesuits, who wished for a purely Catholic England under Spanish auspices, and the militant Protestant party led by Essex, who aimed at a purely Protestant England and an aggressive war with Spain.
The bitterness of party feeling was promptly demonstrated at the meeting of Parliament in February. Intelligence of continued armaments in Spain, and the recent revelations of informers as to the anti-English plots hatched in Flanders, had rendered necessary the employment of large sums for the national defence. A statement of the apprehensions entertained was made in the House of Lords by the Lord Keeper Puckering, and in the Commons by Sir Robert Cecil, the substance of both speeches having been previously drafted by Lord Burghley. The patriotism of the members was appealed to in fervent terms to provide funds for maintaining the national independence. The Puritan party, aided by Ralegh, fanned the flame and sought to pledge the Houses to an offensive war; and with but little dissent a treble subsidy was voted, payable in four years. Francis Bacon[603] struck a discordant note by asking that the payments should extend over six years. The people were poor, he said, and hard pressed; do not arouse their discontent “and set an evil precedent against ourselves and our posterity.” Sir Robert Cecil somewhat indignantly answered his cousin’s speech, and the Queen and Lord Treasurer soon made their displeasure felt, and Francis Bacon could only protest his loyalty and sorrow for his offence. If only he could wound the Cecils and bring himself into the good graces of Essex, he seemed to care but little.
The House of Commons, as usual, had a strongly Puritan leaven, and the indefatigable Peter Wentworth once more incurred the Queen’s anger by bringing forward the succession question. Whilst the Puritan leaders in the Commons were being sent to the Tower and the Fleet,[604] the bishops were preparing a blow which should demolish for good all attempts at attacks against the Establishment. A new extreme sect called Independents or Brownists had gained considerable popularity. Other Nonconformists resisted the orders of the Church, and opposed the authority of prelates, but the Brownists were for disestablishment altogether. Their leaders, Barrow and Greenwood, and several others, were in prison; but their followers were many, and growing in number, and the prelates were determined to stamp out this new danger to the Church, come what might. Several Brownists were arraigned for sedition, on the ground that attacks upon the Establishment were attacks upon the Queen. Barrow and Greenwood were found guilty, and condemned to death. During the prosecution the prelates in the Lords had passed a severe bill against recusancy, designed to press more hardly against Brownists than even against Catholics. On the 31st March the condemned men were dragged to Tyburn, with all the hideous formalities usual in executions for felony; and when the ropes were already around their necks, a reprieve suddenly arrived. Lord Burghley himself, though seriously ill, had insisted upon a suspension of the sentence. “No Papist,” he said, “had suffered for religion, and Protestants’ blood should not be the first shed, at least before an attempt was made to convince them.” We are told also that he spoke sharply to the Archbishop (Whitgift). The recusants bill went to the lower House on the 4th April, and Ralegh amongst others made a vigorous speech against it. The opposition in the Commons, we are told,[605] hardened the prelates’ hearts, and both Barrow and Greenwood suffered the last penalty two days afterwards, to be followed in their martyrdom for Protestant Nonconformity by many others all over the country.