20. The Rising in the North. 1569.—The old Church and the old nobility were strongest in the North, where the Pilgrimage of Grace had broken out in 1536 (see p. [397]). The northern lords, the Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, longed to free Mary, to proclaim her queen of England, and to depose Elizabeth. They were, however, prepared to content themselves with driving Cecil from power, with forcing Elizabeth to acknowledge Mary as her heir, and to withdraw her support from Protestantism. Mary, according to this latter plan, was to marry the Duke of Norfolk, the son of that Earl of Surrey who had been executed in the last days of Henry VIII. (see p. [411]). On October 18 Elizabeth, suspecting that Norfolk was entangling himself with the Queen of Scots, sent him to the Tower. Northumberland and Westmorland hesitated what course to pursue, but a message from the Queen requiring their presence at Court decided them, and they rose in insurrection. On November 14, with the northern gentry and yeomanry at their heels, they entered Durham Cathedral, tore in pieces the English Bible and Prayer Book, and knelt in fervour of devotion whilst mass was said for the last time in any one of the old cathedrals of England. Elizabeth sent an army against the earls. Both of them were timorous and unwarlike, and they fled to Scotland before the year was ended, leaving their followers to the vengeance of Elizabeth. Little mercy was shown to the insurgents, and cruel executions followed this unwise attempt to check the progress of the Reformation.

21. The Papal Excommunication. 1570.—Elizabeth, it seemed for all her triumph over the earls, had a hard struggle still before her. In January 1570 the regent Murray was assassinated by Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, and Mary's friends began again to raise their heads in Scotland. In April Pope Pius V. excommunicated Elizabeth and absolved her subjects from their allegiance. In May, a fanatic named Felton affixed the Pope's bull of excommunication to the door of the Bishop of London's house. Felton was eventually seized and executed, but his deed was a challenge which Elizabeth would be compelled to take up. Hitherto she had trusted to time to bring her subjects into one way of thinking, knowing that the younger generation was likely to be on her side. She had taken care to deal as lightly as possible with those who shrank from abandoning the religion of their childhood, and she had recently announced that they were free to believe what they would if only they would accept her supremacy. The Pope had now made it clear that he would not sanction this compromise. Englishmen must choose between him and their queen. On the side of the Pope it might be argued with truth that with Elizabeth on the throne it would be impossible to maintain the Roman Catholic faith and organisation. On the side of the queen it might be argued that if the Papal claims were admitted it would be impossible to maintain the authority of the national government. A deadly conflict was imminent, in which the liberty of individuals would suffer whichever side gained the upper hand. Nations, like persons, cannot attend to more than one important matter at a time, and the great question at issue in Elizabeth's reign was whether the nation was to be independent of all foreign powers in ecclesiastical as well as in civil affairs.

CHAPTER XXIX
ELIZABETH AND THE EUROPEAN CONFLICT. 1570-1587

LEADING DATES
Reign of Elizabeth, 1558-1603

1. The Continental Powers. 1566-1570.—If the Catholic powers of the Continent had been able to assist the English Catholics Elizabeth would hardly have suppressed the rising in the North. It happened, however, that neither in the Spanish Netherlands nor in France were the governments in a position to quarrel with her. In the Netherlands Philip, who burnt and slaughtered Protestants without mercy, was in 1566 opposed by the nobility, and in 1568 he sent the Duke of Alva, a relentless soldier, to Brussels with a Spanish army to establish the absolute authority of the king and the absolute authority of the Papacy. In 1569 Alva believed himself to have accomplished his task by wholesale executions, and by the destruction of the constitutional privileges of the Netherlanders. His rule was a grinding tyranny, rousing both Catholics and Protestants to cry out for the preservation of their customs and liberties from the intruding Spanish army. Alva had therefore no men to spare to send to aid the English Catholics. In France the civil war had broken out afresh in 1568, and in 1569 the Catholics headed by Henry, Duke of Guise, the son of the murdered Duke Francis (see p. [436]), and by Henry, Duke of Anjou, the brother of the young king, Charles IX., won victories at Jarnac and Moncontour. Charles and his mother took alarm lest the Catholics should become too powerful for the royal authority, and in 1570 a peace was signed once more, the French king refusing to be the instrument of persecution and being very much afraid of the establishment of a Catholic government in England which might give support to the Catholics of France. Accordingly in 1570, France would not interfere in England if she could, whilst Spain could not interfere if she would.