The Year after the Armada, and Other Historical Studies

by Martin A. S. Hume

We have already glanced at the structure of the house itself; it may be now interesting to give some account of the household of the Bishop, which may probably be considered a typical one. First there was a chaplain at three crowns a month and his board, a chief secretary at twelve crowns a month, a chamberlain, two or three gentlemen-in-waiting, a groom-of-the-chambers, and six pages—all without any fixed wage, but who lived on promises, perquisites, and what they could pick up, eating, however, at the Bishop's expense, and mostly clothed by him. Then there were two couriers at three shillings a month, which they rarely got; a cook, a buyer, a butler, and a pantryman, at a crown a month each; two cantineers, two "lacqueys," two Irish grooms, and two washerwomen at nominal wages of from three to five shillings a month when they could get them, which was very uncertain. Small as the wages seem to us, the expense of the establishment was very great, as these people and a host of friends and hangers-on were fed roughly but abundantly at the Bishop's cost, the humbler sort eating in the great hall and the gentlemen of the household in the upper chambers.

The Bishop had hardly been in possession of the house for a year when Challoner, the English Ambassador in Spain, warned Cecil that the "crafty old fox" was getting to know too much about what went on at Court, and that some decent excuse should be sought for turning him out from so advantageous a coign of vantage as Durham Place, with its water-gate and its close proximity to the palace, whence spies and courtiers might come and go secretly, as we now know they did, at all hours for the information of the King of Spain's Ambassador. We may be sure that the hint was not lost on Cecil, but the Bishop was cunning, and to turn him out without good ostensible cause would have been too risky at a time when Philip's future action was still uncertain. So the Queen's porter in charge of the house was told to take careful note of those who went in and out by the Strand gate, and particularly those who attended Mass in the Ambassador's chapel. But still the weak point in the position was the water-gate, the key of which always remained in the possession of the Bishop or his major-domo. Various stratagems were resorted to by the English porter to obtain possession of it, but in vain, and more decided measures had at last to be taken. The Bishop's confidential secretary, an Italian named Borghese, was bribed by Cecil to tell all he knew of his master's practices, and great promises of high position and a rich marriage in England were held out to him as a further reward for his treachery. This made him arrogant and boastful, and led to a slashing match with the Bishop's Italian gentleman-in-waiting, whom Borghese nearly killed. He boasted that he had friends at Court, snapped his fingers at the officers of the law and at the Bishop's cajolery and threats, made a clean breast of it to Cecil, and things began to look bad for his late master. Dr. Wotton, a member of the Privy Council, went to Durham Place, and gravely formulated a series of complaints founded on the secretary's information. Most of these complaints were trivial, being to the effect that the Bishop had said and written various depreciatory things against the Queen: but one accusation was serious, namely, than Shan O'Neil had taken the Sacrament at Durham Place, which was true, although the ecclesiastical diplomatist solemnly denied it.

The Bishop was nearly beside himself with rage and chagrin, and begged plaintively to be relieved from his irksome post among heretics such as these. But all in vain. It did not suit the Queen and Cecil for the moment to perpetrate the last indignity of turning him out of the house, but after this they kept a closer watch upon him than ever and bode their time. They had not to wait long. There were four French hostages in London, held in pledge for the due fulfilment of the Treaty of Château Cambresis, and very troublesome guests they were.

The most turbulent of them was a certain Nantouillet, Provost of Paris, a fanatical Catholic and partisan of the Guises. He had for some reason or another conceived a grudge against a mercenary captain called Masino, who was in the pay of the Vidame de Chartres, a Huguenot nobleman. So, in the manner of the times, he sought to have him killed, and, seeking for an instrument, he came across a young lad of bad character called Andrea, who was a servant of a lute player at Court, Alfonso the Bolognese. To this lad the Provost gave a dagger and a coat of mail, and promised a reward of a hundred crowns if he killed Masino. Andrea left his musical master and hung about the Strand door of Durham Place for several days at the beginning of January, 1563. At meal times he went into the great hall as others did and ate his fill, and then lounged outside on the benches again.

At last, in the dusk of the afternoon of the 3rd of January, 1563, Captain Masino came swaggering up the Strand on his way to Whitehall, and Andrea fired at him point blank, at a foot distance, with a harquebuss. But the captain's swagger saved his life, for the bullet passed between his left arm and his body, making a hole through his swinging cape and burning his doublet, and then glanced off into a shop on the other side of the way, "and came near killing an honest Englishman therein." Out came the swashbuckler's long rapier, and off ran the assassin into the outer courtyard of Durham Place, shrieking for mercy, followed by the captain and the English neighbours. The Bishop's household in the great courtyard seized their arms, and slammed the doors in the faces of the pursuers, whilst the terrified assassin fled through the great hall, through the inner courtyard and pell-mell up the stair leading to the Bishop's apartment.

Quite by chance, of course, the Provost of Paris happened to be playing at cards with the Bishop and the French Ambassador, whilst Luis de Paz and other friends looked on. The banging of the crowd at the closed door of the great hall, the terror-stricken cries of the criminal, and the tramping of the servants on the stair, brought out the Bishop and his friends to ask indignantly the cause of the uproar. Andrea on his knees at the door begged for protection and mercy. Captain Masino had beaten him, he said, some days ago, and he had fired a shot at him and missed him, so no harm was done, but still the captain wanted to kill him. Calming the clamour, the Bishop asked whether the shot had been fired inside or outside of Durham Place. "At the gate!" they said, and the boy had only entered when pursued, to save his life. "Then," said the Bishop to Bernabe Mata, his majordomo, "turn him out by the water-gate." By mere chance again a boat was in waiting, hired by the Provost of Paris, who slipped outside himself to see the assassin safely off, gave him ten crowns, and whilst the crowd still battered and stormed at the door of the great hall, Andrea was carried to Gravesend as fast as strong oars could propel him. But he was captured next day, and under torture told the whole story. The Provost himself was closely imprisoned in Alderman Chester's house, whence he carried on for weeks an interesting correspondence with his friends outside, written with onion juice on the inside lining of the breeches of a servant.

This attempted murder was the opportunity for which Cecil had long been waiting. Strong hints about treachery founded on the secretary's information, galling interference with attendance at Mass, flouts and insults, had been more or less patiently borne by the Bishop at his master's behest, but harbouring a criminal was an infraction of the ordinary law of the land, and if it could be brought home to the Ambassador the Queen would have a good excuse for taking her house away from a tenant who put it to so bad a use. The news was not long travelling from the Strand to Whitehall; Cobham and a posse of the Queen's guard came straight to Durham Place, and in the name of the law demanded the surrender of the criminal. They were told he was not there, but had left by the water-gate, and, this reply being unsatisfactory, they came back again directly with the Queen's command that the keys of the water-gate, as well as those of the Strand entrance, should be given up to the English custodian, in order that he might render an account of all those who went in and out. The Bishop writes to Philip:—

"This custodian is a very great heretic, who for three years past has been in this house with no other duty than to spy out those who come to see me, for the purpose of accusing me. I have put up with it for all this time, although at great inconvenience to myself, so as to avoid having disputes with them on a matter of this description. When the Marshal made this demand, however, I answered him that for twenty years the Ambassadors here had been allowed to reside in the royal houses, nearly all those sent by your Majesty and the Emperor having done so, and they had invariably been accustomed to hold the keys of the houses wherein they lived. I said that it was not right that an innovation should be made in my case after my four years' residence here, especially on so slight a pretext as this matter, in which I was not at all to blame, and considering that this is the first case of the sort that has happened since I have been here, it cannot be said that my house is an habitual refuge for criminals. I would, however, go and give the Queen an account of the matter, which I endeavoured to do."

But the Queen would not see him either that day or the next. She was too busy she said; and on the following day, which was Twelfth Day, just as people were coming to Mass, some locksmiths came in a boat to the water-gate and put a new lock on, notwithstanding the protest of the Bishop's household, and the keys of all the gates were now held by the Queen's officers. The Bishop was in a towering rage, and said, that as the Queen imprisoned him in his own house, and made a goal of it, he demanded the keys back, or else that she should find him another residence where he might be free. A long account of the solemn conference between the Bishop and the Council is given in the Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), the 7th of January, 1563, and the Bishop's version is now published in the Spanish State Papers of Elizabeth, vol. i. According to both accounts, the Bishop got decidedly the worst of it. Cecil was the spokesman, and, instead of taking up a defensive position about the keys, he turned the tables by piling up all the complaints which his spies had accumulated for the last two years, and the poor Bishop found himself the accused rather than the injured party. The escape of the criminal by the water-gate was made the most of—such a thing in law-abiding England had never been heard of before—but after all this was a bagatelle to the other charges.