At no time since her accession had Elizabeth and her government been in so much danger as immediately after the suppression of the rebellion of the north. Cecil had known that the Catholic English and Scottish nobles and Mary were in constant communication with Spain and the Pope, but even he was not aware how widespread was the conspiracy. Orange in the Netherlands, and Coligny in France, had for a time been crushed; Condé had been killed in battle; and everywhere the Catholic cause was triumphant. This was the eventuality which alone England had to fear; and although Spanish aid to the English Catholics was neither so active nor so abundant as has usually been assumed, unquestionably the hopes and promises held out both by Philip and the Pope had raised the spirits of the Catholics in England and Scotland higher than they had been for many years. Spanish money and support under papal auspices kept Ireland in a state of discord, as we have seen; Mary appealed to King Philip as a vassal to her suzerain; the Guisan agents were busy plotting with the Hamiltons and Murray’s enemies on the Border, and the whole north of England was riddled with religious discontent. Cecil wrote at the beginning of 1570 to Norris: “We have discovered some tokens, and we hear of some words uttered by the Earl of Northumberland, that maketh us think this rebellion had more branches, both of our own and strangers, than did appear, and I trust the same will be found out, though perchance when all are known in secret manner, all may not be notified.”
The truth of Cecil’s forebodings came soon afterwards. On the 22nd February 1570, Murray was shot by a Hamilton in the streets of Linlithgow, and in the anarchy which followed, the friends of Mary Stuart on the Scottish Border invaded England. Maitland of Lethington and others who had hitherto stood firmly by Murray, now turned to the side of the Hamiltons and the French party; whilst a special French Guisan envoy boldly demanded of Elizabeth, in the name of the King of France, Mary Stuart’s release, permission for himself to pass into Scotland, and a pledge from the English Queen that in future she would refrain from supporting the Huguenots. Papal emissaries whispered at first that the Pope had excommunicated “the flagitious pretended Queen of England”; and then one Catholic, bolder than the rest (Felton), dared publicly to post the bull on the Bishop of London’s door. The Bishop of Ross was tireless in spreading the view of Mary’s innocence and unmerited sufferings, and many Englishmen who were opposed to her in everything were scandalised at her continued captivity. So strong a Protestant as Sir Henry Norris, the English Ambassador in Paris—for ever the butt of French remonstrance against Mary’s imprisonment—advised Cecil to have her released. But Sir William knew better the risk of such a step now, and replied, “Surely few here amongst us conceive it feasible with surety,” and he was right. Stories, too, came from Flanders of plans to assassinate Elizabeth; but she was never so strong or wise as when the circumstances were difficult and dangerous. “I know not,” writes Cecil, “by what means, but her Majesty is not much troubled with the opinion of danger; nevertheless I and others cannot be but greatly fearful for her, and do, and will do, all that in us may lie to understand by God’s assistance the attempts.”
It was not long before Cecil had once more triumphed over his enemies on the Council and in England: the danger that then threatened was from without. Again, the policy of disabling the foreign Catholics by aiding the Protestants was resorted to. Killigrew was kept busy in Germany arranging with Hans Casimir and other mercenary leaders, to raise large forces for the purpose of entering France and enabling the Huguenots to avenge their disasters. Cardinal Chatillon was still a welcome guest at the English court. The privateers in the Channel were stronger and bolder than ever, and had practically swept Spanish shipping from the narrow seas. The Flemings were encouraged with promises of help and support when Orange had once more organised a force to cope with Alba. Sussex and Hunsdon in the meanwhile did not let the grass grow under their feet, but harried both sides of the Border, stamping out the last embers of rebellion, and striking terror into the Catholic fugitives, whilst Morton and the Protestant party were consolidating their position, momentarily shaken by the murder of Murray. De Spes was ceaselessly clamouring to the King and Alba for armed intervention in England before it was too late. Mary might be captured by a coup de main, as she herself suggested, and carried to Spain; a few troops sent to Scotland now, said the Bishop of Ross, might overturn the new Regency; a small force in Ireland would easily expel the heretics; “and the whole nation will rise as soon as they see your Majesty’s standard floating over ships on their coast.”
But Alba distrusted both French and English, Protestants and Catholics alike. He knew that the conflagration in the Netherlands was still all aglow beneath the surface, and he dared not plunge into war with England. His slow master pondered and plotted, beset with cares and poverty, and unable to wreak his vengeance upon England until he had the certainty of Mary Stuart’s exclusive devotion to his interests. But the extent and complexity of Philip’s difficulties were only known to himself, and the danger appeared to Cecil even greater than it was.
The plague had raged in London for the whole of the summer of 1569, and a recrudescence of it in the following June gave Cecil a good opportunity for advocating Norfolk’s partial enlargement. The Duke made a most solemn renunciation of his proposed marriage with Mary, and craved Elizabeth’s forgiveness; and at length in August was allowed to retire to his own house. That he owed his liberation to Cecil is clear from his letters. At the beginning of July, apparently, some person—probably Leicester—had told the Duke that Cecil was against him, and the Secretary showed him how false this was, and proposed to take action against his slanderers. The Duke in reply thanked him for his friendly dealing and his frank explanation, “which have sufficiently purged him (Cecil) and laid the fault on those who deserved it.” But he begged him to refrain from further action, as it might cause mischief. When Norfolk at length was “rid of yonder pestylent infectyous hows” (the Tower), he unhesitatingly attributed his release to Cecil. How busy the slanderers of the Secretary were, and how deeply he felt the wounds they dealt him, may be seen in another statement in his own hand of the same period (July 1570), which contains an indignant denial of the reports that had been spread with regard to his alleged dishonest dealing with the property of his ward the Earl of Oxford.
During the whole of Norfolk’s stay in the Tower and afterwards, the love-letters between him and Mary continued, the Queen signing her letters “your own faithful to death,” and using many similar terms of endearment; and Cecil could hardly have been entirely ignorant of the Duke’s bad faith. But for political reasons it was considered necessary, not only to conciliate him, but Mary and the Spaniards as well. Concurrently, therefore, with the negotiations for Norfolk’s release, a show of willingness was made to come to terms with Mary. Her presence in England was an embarrassment and a danger, and now that Murray was dead, the principal personal obstacle to her return had disappeared. If she could be so tied down as to be used as a means for pacifying Scotland, whilst depending for the future entirely upon England, her return to her country would relieve Elizabeth of a difficulty. The first basis of negotiation was the surrender of the English rebel Lords in exchange for her, and the delivery to England of four or six of the principal Scottish nobles and the young Prince as hostages. But these terms were by no means acceptable to Mary’s agents or to herself. She feared that the Scots would kill her, and the English her son, and so secure the joint kingdoms to a nominee of Elizabeth or Cecil.
The main reason for Elizabeth’s change of attitude must be sought in the panic which seized upon England in the early summer of 1570. A powerful Spanish fleet was in the Channel, ostensibly to convey Philip’s fourth wife, Anne of Austria, from Flanders to Spain; but rumours came that the dreaded Duke of Alba was ready now for the invasion of England. The Guises in Normandy, too, were said to have an army of harquebussiers waiting to embark for Scotland; the Irish rebels were being helped both by Philip and the Guises. The Pope’s bull absolving Englishmen from their oaths of allegiance was the talk everywhere, and English merchants in despair cried that at last they and their country were to pay for the depredations of the pirates. The French were demanding haughtily that the English troops should evacuate the Border Scottish fortresses held by them, and the Protestants in France and Flanders were not yet prepared to furnish the diversion upon which the English usually depended for their own safety.
The position was very grave in appearance, though not so great in reality, and it alarmed Elizabeth out of her equanimity. De Guaras says that she shut herself up for three days, and railed against Cecil for bringing her to such a pass; and the same observer reports that when Cecil one day in the middle of July left the Queen and retired to his own apartment, he cried to his wife in deep distress, “O wife! if God do not help us we shall be lost and undone. Get together all the jewels and money you can, that you may follow me when the time comes; for surely trouble is in store for us.” This may or may not be true in detail, and also Guaras’ assertion that Cecil had sent large private funds to Germany, whither he would retire in case of trouble; but it is certain that panic reigned supreme for a few weeks in the summer, accentuated, doubtless, by the plague which was devastating the country. But fright did not paralyse the minister for long, if at all. Twenty-five ships were hastily armed, two fresh armies were raised of five thousand men each, ostensibly for Scotland. Mary was prompted to send Livingston to Scotland to negotiate an arrangement with the Regent Lennox, and Cecil himself, with Sir Walter Mildmay, was induced to go and confer with Mary at Chatsworth; but, says De Spes, “all these things are simply tricks of Cecil’s, who thinks thereby to cheat every one, in which to a certain extent he succeeds.” The Secretary had by this time discovered that in any case neither Philip nor Alba would raise a finger to avenge a slight upon De Spes, for he had imprisoned him and distressed him in a thousand ways already without retaliation. At the same time, a blow at such a notorious conspirator as he was could not fail to produce a great effect upon the English Catholics who plotted with him and looked to Spain alone for support. Cecil therefore sent Fitzwilliams to Flanders about the seizures, and instructed him to complain to Alba of De Spes’ communications with the rebels. “His object,” wrote the Ambassador, “is to expel me, now that they think I understand the affairs of this country; and Cecil thinks that I, with others, might make such representations to the Queen as would diminish his great authority.… Cecil is a crafty fox, a mortal enemy of the Catholics and to our King, and it is necessary to watch his designs very closely, because he proceeds with the greatest caution and dissimulation. There is nothing in his power he does not attempt to injure us. The Queen’s own opinion is of little importance, and that of Leicester less; so that Cecil unrestrainedly and arrogantly governs all.… Your worship may be certain that if Cecil is allowed to have his way he will disturb the Netherlands.” De Spes’ information was correct on the latter point, as well it might be, for in addition to Cecil’s own secretary, Allington, he had in his pay Sir James Crofts, a member of the Council, and the Secretary of the Council, Bernard Hampton, who between them brought him news of everything that passed in the Council or in Cecil House.
The Secretary’s efforts to get rid of so troublesome a guest as De Spes, and to offer an object-lesson to the English Catholics at the same time, were persistent, and in the end successful. De Spes was refused the treatment of an ambassador, threatened with the Tower, flouted, slighted, and insulted at every turn; but he could only futilely storm and fret, for neither his King nor Alba was pleased with the difficult position which his violence had created for them in England. It was all the fault of Cecil personally, insisted De Spes. He wished to afflict the Catholic cause without witnesses, and would stick at nothing, even poison, to get rid of the Spaniard.
Cecil would have liked to avoid his mission to Mary Stuart, for he was almost crippled with constant gout, and he was fully aware of the hollowness of the negotiations in hand. The interviews with Mary could hardly have been agreeable, although they were carried out with great formality and politeness on both sides. Cecil charged her with a knowledge of the northern rebellion, which she only partly denied, saying, however, that she did not encourage it. Mary seems to have been alternately passionate and tearful; but her bad adviser, the Bishop of Ross, was by her side, and though she argued her case shrewdly, she could not refrain from unwisely and unnecessarily wounding Elizabeth at the outset. In the second article of the proposed treaty, where Elizabeth’s issue were to be preferred in the succession, Mary altered the words to “lawful issue,” to which Elizabeth, although acceding to it, replied that Mary “measured other folk’s disposition by her own actions.” After some acrimony on the subject of other alterations on behalf of Mary, an arrangement was arrived at, which, however, was afterwards vetoed by the Scottish Government, at the instance of Morton, who was the Commissioner in London.
Whilst the negotiations with Mary had been progressing, peace had been signed between the Huguenots and Charles IX. at St. Germains (August 1570), and the fears of Elizabeth and Cecil were consequently aggravated at the plans which were known to be promoted by Cardinal Lorraine for the marriage of the Duke of Anjou, next brother to the French King, with the Queen of Scots. Now that the Montmorencis and the “politicians” had reconciled parties in France, the danger of such a match became serious both to England and the sincere Huguenots. Anjou posed as the figurehead of the extreme Catholic party, but was known to be vaguely ambitious and unstable. Cardinal Chatillon therefore thought it would be a good move to disarm him by yoking him under Huguenot auspices to Elizabeth. The first approach was made by the Vidame de Chartres to Cecil, who privately discussed it with the Queen. They must have regarded it with favour, for it was exactly the instrument they needed for splitting the league, and arousing jealousy between France and Spain. The Emperor had just given a severe rebuff to attempts to revive the Archduke’s match with Elizabeth, but the negotiation for making a French Catholic prince King-consort of England under Huguenot control was a master-stroke which sufficed to overturn all international combinations, set France and Spain by the ears, turned the Guises, as relatives of Mary Stuart, against their principal supporter in France, and reduced the Queen of Scots herself to quite a secondary element in the problem. The idea was just as welcome to Catharine de Medici, who hated Mary Stuart as much as she dreaded the Guises. Both she and the young King would have been glad to be quit of the ambitious Anjou, who always threw in his weight on the Catholic side, and made it more difficult for the Queen-mother to hold the balance. So, very soon Guido Cavalcanti was speeding backwards and forwards between England and France, secretly preparing the way for the more formal negotiations between the official Ambassadors.
So far as the Queen of England was concerned, the negotiation was purely political and insincere, for the reasons just stated, but the comedy was well played by all parties. Leicester of course was favourable, for it meant bribes to him, and there was no danger. La Mothe Fénélon, the Ambassador, gently broached the matter to the Queen at Hampton Court in January 1571. As usual she was coy and coquettish. She was too old for Anjou, she objected, but still she said the princes of the House of France had the reputation of being good husbands. Cardinal Chatillon shortly afterwards was blunter than the Ambassador. Would the Queen marry Anjou if he proposed? he asked, to which Elizabeth replied, that on certain conditions she would; and the next day she submitted the subject to her Council, who, as in duty bound, threw the whole of the responsibility on to the Queen.
Walsingham had just replaced Norris as Ambassador to France. He was a friend of Leicester, a strict Protestant, who had been indoctrinated in the political methods of Cecil, with whom and with Leicester he kept up a close confidential correspondence. One of his first letters to Leicester gives a personal description of the young Prince, in which a desire to tell the truth struggles with his duty not to say anything which may hamper the negotiation. The Guises and the Spanish party in Paris exhorted Anjou to avoid being drawn into the net, and the Duke himself at one time openly used insulting expressions towards Elizabeth; but such was the position in England that it was absolutely necessary that an appearance of reality should be given to the affair. Prudent Cecil, as usual, avoided pledging himself personally more than necessary, and wrote from Greenwich to Walsingham on the 3rd March, that he had wished the Queen herself to write her instructions, but as she had declined to do so, he merely repeated her words in a postscript—namely, that if he (Walsingham) were approached on the matter of the marriage, he might say that before he left England he had heard “that the Queen, upon consideration of the benefit of her realm, and to content her subjects, had resolved to marry if she should find a fit husband, who must be of princely rank.” To this Cecil himself adds as his private opinion, to be told to no one, “I am not able to discern what is best, but surely I see no continuance of her quietness without a marriage.” Matters were indeed critical at this juncture, and Cecil, Leicester, and even Walsingham, repeatedly, and apparently with sincerity, stated their opinion that Elizabeth would be forced to wed Anjou, or he would marry Mary Stuart, as it was necessary for Catharine de Medici and the Huguenots to get rid of this fanatical figurehead of the extreme Catholic party.
In his letter to Walsingham of 1st March, Cecil signs his name thus, “By your assured (as I was wont) William Cecil;” and then underneath, “And as I am now ordered to write, William Burleigh.” That the title was not of his own seeking is almost certain. The Spanish Ambassador, De Spes, says that the Queen ennobled him in order that he might be more useful in Parliament and in the matter of the Queen of Scots; and the new Lord himself, in a letter to Nicholas White, speaks thus slightingly of his new honour: “My style is Lord of Burghley if you mean to know it for your writing, and if you list to write truly, the poorest Lord in England. Yours, not changed in friendship, though in name, William Burghley.” To Walsingham again he wrote on the 25th March, “My style of my poor degree is Lord of Burghley;” and on the 14th April in a letter to the same correspondent he signs, “William Cecill—I forgot my new word, William Burleigh.”
At the time of his elevation the new Lord was suffering from one of his constantly recurring fits of gout, and his letters are mostly written, with pain and difficulty, which he frequently mentions, “from my bed in my house at Westminster.” And yet, withal, the amount of work he got through at the time was nothing short of marvellous. Every matter, great and small, seemed to be dealt with by him. He was a Member of Parliament for the two counties of Lincoln and Northampton; as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge he was deeply interested in the interminable disputes there with regard to ritual, vestments, and scholastic questions; as President of the Court of Wards he attended personally to an immense number of estates and private interests; and acquaintances, high and low, from Greys, Howards, Clintons, and Dudleys, down to poor students or alien refugees, still by common accord addressed their petitions for aid and advice to him. To judge by their grateful acknowledgments, they seem rarely to have appealed to him in vain, and it is evident by the hundreds of such letters at Hatfield, that even when petitions could not be granted, they were assured of impartial and just consideration from Lord Burghley. His own great establishments, too, at Burghley, Theobalds, and London, must have claimed much of his attention, for all accounts passed under his own eyes, and in such small matters as the rotation of crops, the sale of produce, the breeding of stock, and the replenishment of gardens, nothing was done without consultation with the master. His hospitality was very great; for we are told by his domestic biographer that “he kept open house everywhere, and his steward kept a standing table for gentlemen, besides two other long tables, often twice set out, one for the clerk of the kitchen, and the other for yeomen.” He personally can have had but little enjoyment from his splendid houses and stately living. He must have been almost constantly at court, or hard at work at his house in Cannon Row, Westminster, handy for Whitehall, rather than at his new palace in the Strand, where his wife and family lodged. He seems to have had no hobby but books and gardens, and to have taken no exercise except on his rare visits to Theobalds or Burghley, when he would jog round his garden paths on an ambling mule.
This was the man, vigilant, prudent, moderate, cautious and untiring in his industry, who in the spring and summer of 1571 by his consummate statecraft once more brought England out of the coil of perils which surrounded her on all sides. His counter-move to Spanish support to the rebels in England and Ireland, and to Guisan plots in Scotland, was to supply arms, munitions, and money to the Protestants of Rochelle and the Dutch privateers, and to fit out a strong English fleet. The pacification of France and the crushing of reform in Flanders were answered by remittances of money to Germany to raise mercenaries for Orange, and the welcoming of Louis of Nassau and Cardinal Chatillon in England; whilst the marriage of Charles IX. to an Austrian Princess, and the closer relations between France and the Catholic league, were counteracted by the marriage negotiations between Elizabeth and Anjou, and the treaty with Mary Stuart for her restoration.
But as the effect of Cecil’s diplomacy gradually became apparent, the more reckless of his opponents resorted to desperate devices to frustrate him. Already, by February 1571, Mary Stuart had convinced herself that the treaty for her liberation was fallacious, and she wrote an important letter to the Bishop of Ross, from which great events sprang. She refers to plans for her escape, and announces her decision to go to Spain, throwing herself in future entirely upon Philip as her protector; and she urges that Ridolfi should be sent to Spain and Rome to explain her situation and resolve, and to beg for help. Norfolk was to be asked to pledge himself finally to become a Catholic; doubt as to his religion, she says, having been the principal reason for Philip’s lukewarmness. The Bishop sent a copy of the letter to Norfolk, who was still nominally under arrest. The Duke gave his consent, and Ridolfi started from England at the end of March. It has been frequently denied that Norfolk connived at this proposal for the invasion of England by a foreign power; but, in addition to the depositions of Ross and Barker, the following letter from De Spes introducing Ridolfi to Philip appears to settle the question against the Duke: “The Queen of Scots, and the Duke of Norfolk on behalf of many other lords and gentlemen who are attached to your Majesty’s interests, and the promotion of the Catholic religion, are sending Rodolfo Ridolfi, a Florentine gentleman, to offer their services to your Majesty, and to represent to you that the time is now ripe to take a step of great benefit to Christianity, as in detail Ridolfi will set forth to your Majesty. The letter of credence from the Duke of Norfolk is written in the cipher that I have sent to Zayas, for fear it should be taken. London, 25th March, 1571.” The exact proposal to be made verbally by Ridolfi is not stated, but De Spes refers to it in his next letter as “the real remedy” for Lord Burghley’s activity. It is probable that not only the support of Mary and Norfolk was intended, but also the assassination of Elizabeth and her minister. Cecil had been put upon the alert by the kidnapping in Flanders and bringing to England of the notorious Dr. Storey, who, under torture in the Tower, had divulged the dealings of the northern Lords with Alba through Ridolfi and the Bishop of Ross. This caused Cecil to keep a watch upon the doings of both the agents; and Lord Cobham, in Dover, was instructed to intercept any cipher letters which might be brought by a Flemish secretary of the Bishop of Ross, one Charles Bailly, who was with Ridolfi in Flanders. The man was stopped and his papers captured, with some copies of the Bishop of Ross’s book in favour of Mary’s claims. The Cobhams were never to be trusted; and Thomas Cobham surreptitiously obtained the cipher keys, and had them conveyed to De Spes, substituting for them a dummy packet, which was sent to Cecil. But Bailly himself, who had written the papers at Ridolfi’s dictation, was promptly put on the rack in the Tower, and confessed that the letters were written to two persons, designated by numbers, under cover to the Bishop, and conveyed the Duke of Alba’s approval of the plan for invading England, and his readiness, if authorised by his King, to co-operate with the persons indicated.
Letters sent by the Bishop to Bailly after his arrest, urging him to firmness, threatening the traitor who had betrayed him, and in a hundred ways proving his own complicity, were all intercepted and read. The tortured wretch swore to the Bishop that he would tell nothing, even if they tore him into a hundred pieces; begged that his trunk containing drafts of letters from Mary to Cardinal Lorraine and Hamilton might be rescued from his lodging. But Burghley forestalled them all. The whole of the letters were taken, and every day, in the Tower, fresh rackings, and threats to cut off his ears or his head, were used by Burghley to the frightened lad, to force him to give a key of the cipher. One morning at five o’clock he was carried by the Lieutenant of the Tower to Lord Burghley, and was told that, unless he immediately confessed all, he would be racked till the truth was torn from him. The lad, half distraught, day by day unfolded as much as he knew, notwithstanding the Bishop’s frantic assurances that Burghley would not dare to harm him much, as he was a foreigner and a servant of the Queen of Scots. And so, piece by piece, the whole conspiracy was unravelled so far as regarded the main object, and the complicity of Alba, the Spaniards and the Bishop of Ross proved beyond doubt; but still the persons indicated by the cipher numbers “30” and “40” could only be surmised, for Bailly himself did not know them. Gradually the names of Mary Stuart and Norfolk crept into the depositions of those examined, but without sufficient definiteness yet for open proceedings against them to be commenced.
Whilst Lord Burghley, with inexhaustible patience, was tracking the plot to its source, the most elaborate pretence of agreement with the French on the subject of the Anjou match was kept up both in Paris and London; though more sincere on the part of the former than the latter, for Catharine and Charles IX. were in mortal fear of the Guises, the League, and the heir-presumptive to the crown. Cavalcanti and officers of the King’s household ran backwards and forwards to England with loving messages; and the Huguenots worked their best to bring the matter to a successful issue, or, in default of it, for a close alliance. Henry Cobham was sent to Madrid ostensibly to treat on the matter of the seizures, but really to learn, if possible, how far Philip was pledged to the plans against England; but the Spaniards were forewarned and ready for him, and he learned nothing.
Lord Burghley had, however, a better plan than this. Fitzwilliam, a relative of the English Duchess of Feria, had been sent to Spain by him for the purpose of negotiating for the release of the men and hostages who had been captured from Hawkins at San Juan de Ulloa. He professed in Spain to be strongly Catholic and in favour of Mary Stuart, and came back to England in 1571, with presents, pledges, and promises to the captive Queen and her friends. Hawkins lay with a strong auxiliary fleet at the mouth of the Channel, and it was agreed with Lord Burghley that Fitzwilliam and Hawkins should hoodwink the Spaniards, obtain a good haul for themselves, and at the same time trace the ramifications of the great international plot against England. De Spes jumped at the bait, with but a mere qualm of misgiving, when Fitzwilliam went and offered, on behalf of Hawkins, to desert with all his fleet to Spain, and take part, if necessary, in an attack upon England. When he wrote to the King he said, “My only fear is lest Burghley himself may have set the matter afoot to discover your Majesty’s feelings, though I have seen nothing to make me think this.”
But it was exactly the case, nevertheless, and the ruse succeeded beyond expectation. By the end of August all Hawkins’ men had been released in Spain and sent back to England, with ten dollars each in their pockets, and Hawkins himself was the better off by ￡40,000 of Spanish money. But more than this: Burghley had obtained through Fitzwilliam full knowledge of the aims of the Ridolfi conspiracy. It was clear now to demonstration that the Pope, Philip, and the Catholic party in France were pledged to a vast crusade against England, for crushing Protestantism, destroying Elizabeth, and raising Mary Stuart to the thrones of Great Britain. Burghley and the Queen had practically known it for months, as we have seen, and already the diplomatic measures they had taken to counteract it were producing their effects. But now that the evidence was sufficient, the blow against the conspirators could be struck openly. All unsuspecting still, De Spes was comforting himself with the reflection that the capture of Bailly was an unimportant incident; he urged Alba and the King to immediate action, fumed at the instructions he received to hold back Philip’s letters to Mary and Norfolk until he had orders to deliver them, and sneered at the timid delay. “As all of Lord Burghley’s jests have turned out well for him hitherto, he is ready to undertake anything, and has no fear of danger. They and the French together make great fun of our meekness.” “It is a pity to lose time, for Lord Burghley is continuing to oppress the Catholics. If the opportunity is lost this year, I fear the false religion will prevail in this island in a way which will make it a harsh neighbour for the Netherlands.”
The opportunity, though he did not know it, had been lost already, for all the threads were now in Burghley’s hands, and he was master of the situation. In August was intercepted the bag of money (￡600) with a cipher letter being sent secretly to Herries and Kirkaldy of Grange, Mary’s friends in Scotland, by the Duke of Norfolk’s secretary, and in a day or two the net swept into the Tower the Duke and all the underlings who had served as intermediaries. Burghley lost no time now. Almost every day, threats or the rack wrung some fresh admission from the instruments—secretaries, messengers, and the like. Norfolk at first, with extreme effrontery, denied everything; but he was a weak man, and soon broke down. Even then De Spes did not see that all was lost. “The Catholics,” he said, “are many, though their leaders be few, and Lord Burghley, with his terrible fury, has greatly harassed and dismayed them, for they are afraid even of speaking to each other. The whole affair depends upon getting weapons into their hands, and giving them some one to direct them.” It was too late. Mary Stuart’s prison was made closer; her correspondence was intercepted and read; there was no more concealment necessary or possible. One Catholic noble after the other was isolated and imprisoned; Dr. Storey’s dreadful fate was held up as a warning to traitors, and London and the country was flooded with broadsheets calculated to arouse English and Protestant sentiment to fever heat at the dastardly conspiracy which was laid bare.
On the 14th December a message reached De Spes summoning him to the Council at Whitehall. When he arrived there he found them awaiting him, with Lord Burghley as spokesman. There was no mincing matters. The Ambassador was told that he had plotted with traitors against the Queen’s life and the peace of the country, and he would be expelled, as Dr. Man had been from Spain with far less reason. De Spes tried to brazen it out, but ineffectually. Burghley was on firm ground: no delay, he said, could be allowed, excepting the time absolutely necessary for the preparations for the voyage, which time was to be passed out of London. Speechless, almost, with indignation, in pretended fear that Burghley would have him killed, De Spes was hustled out of the country he had sought to ruin, and a week afterwards (16th January 1572) the Duke of Norfolk was tried by his peers and found guilty of the capital crime of high treason.
De Spes left England with bitter resentment at the triumph of Burghley’s diplomacy. “They will now,” he says, “make themselves masters of the Channel, and with one blow, with their practices in Flanders, will plunge that country into a dreadful war. It is of no use now to speak of our lost opportunities. They have gone; but … steps may still be taken to make these people weep in their own country.” When he arrived in Flanders he made a long report of his embassy, containing the following interesting appreciation of Burghley as he appeared to his greatest enemy: “The principal person in the Council is William Cecil, now Lord Burghley, a Knight of the Garter. He is a man of mean sort, but very astute, false, lying, and full of artifice. He is a great heretic, and such a clownish Englishman as to believe that all the Christian princes joined together are not able to injure the sovereign of his country, and he therefore treats their ministers with great arrogance. This man manages the bulk of the business, and by means of his vigilance and craftiness, together with his utter unscrupulousness of word and deed, thinks to outwit the ministers of other princes, which to some extent he has hitherto succeeded in doing.”
Before De Spes was expelled, the efforts of Burghley, Walsingham, and De Foix had been successful in arranging the terms of a close political alliance between France and England. Elizabeth swore to Cavalcanti that she would never trust Spaniards again, and he might see how little she cared for the King of Spain by the way she had treated his Ambassador. She could, indeed, afford now to slight the most powerful monarch in the world; for one of the counter-strokes to the Spanish-Papal plot had been the concentration in the Channel of a great fleet of Flemish and Huguenot privateers under the Count de la Mark, and during the winter a plan had been perfected for the seizure by the “beggars” of Brille, the key to Zeeland. The imposition in Flanders of the tax which ruined Spain had been the last straw, and the whole country was ripe for revolt. For some time an arrangement had been in progress with Louis of Nassau, by which the Huguenots should invade Flanders over the French frontier, in the interest of the Flemish Protestants. However friendly Elizabeth might be with France, this was a proceeding which was sure to be looked upon by English statesmen with profound distrust; and Walsingham, writing to Cecil on the last day of 1571, says that he has been asked whether, in the event of the French entering Flanders, the Queen of England will take Zeeland, as the Flemings fear that the French may not be contented with Flanders. Some time before this, in September, Walsingham had urged Cecil to promote this invasion of Flanders by the French, as a means of keeping the Huguenots in power, as well as embarrassing Spain. “If not,” he says, “the Guises will bear sway, who will be so forward in preferring the conquest of Ireland, and the advancement of their niece to the crown of England, as the other side (i.e. the Huguenots) is contrariwise bent to prefer the conquest of Flanders.” When the immediate danger from the Guises was over, however, the idea of a French invasion of Flanders could not be calmly endured without some corresponding move in English interests, and joint action in the Netherlands was suggested. It is assumed by Motley and most other historians that the capture of Brille by the “beggars” under La Mark early in April was quite unpremeditated, but De Spes warned Alba that the affair was being planned in England at least six months before; and the sending away from Dover of La Mark’s fleet did not, as Motley surmises, arise alone from Elizabeth’s fear of offending Spain—for that she had already done—but from the complaints of the Easterling merchants that their trade with England had become impossible whilst these freebooters of the seas lay off the coast. In any case, the surprise and seizure of Brille by the “beggars” once more gave Alba plenty to think about on his own side of the Straits; and England might, for the present, breathe freely again.
It had been as necessary for Catharine de Medici as for Elizabeth to provide against the complete domination of England and Scotland by a Spanish-Papal conspiracy in favour of Mary Stuart, and she had seconded Walsingham strenuously in endeavouring to overcome Anjou’s religious scruples against marrying Elizabeth. Anjou shifted like the wind, as he fell under the influence of the Guises and his mother alternately. Sometimes the match looked certain, and Catharine was effusive in her thanks to Burghley; the next week it appeared hopeless. But the intrigue served its purpose, and kept the French Government friendly with Elizabeth during the critical time of the Spanish-Guisan conspiracy against her—a conspiracy which also threatened Catharine’s influence in France. Burghley himself seems to have been at a loss to understand Elizabeth’s real intentions at the time; but it would appear that both he and Walsingham were in earnest in wishing for the Anjou match, of course with the safeguards laid down in Cecil’s several minutes on the matter; but “the conferences,” wrote the Secretary, “have as many variations as there are days.”
When at length it was seen that Anjou would no longer act as a party to the game, but was looking to the possibility of a marriage with Mary Stuart or with a Polish princess, the idea of the marriage of Elizabeth with his youngest brother, the Duke of Alen?on, was again very cautiously brought up by Sir Thomas Smith and Killigrew, who were acting as English Ambassadors in France during Walsingham’s illness. Alen?on was only a lad as yet, and could be used without loss of dignity as a stalking-horse until the treaty of close alliance was finally agreed upon between the two countries. The inevitable Guido Cavalcanti broached the matter to Burghley in January, as he was coming away from an interview with Elizabeth, and after some conference Burghley himself discussed the matter with the Queen. She was thirty-nine, and the suggested bridegroom was barely seventeen; but she was full of curiosity as to the looks of the suitor, and distrustful about their respective ages. She asked Burghley how tall Alen?on was. “About as tall as I am,” replied the Secretary. “About as tall as your grandson, you mean,” snapped her Majesty, and so the colloquy ended for a time. On the 19th April 1572 the draft treaty between England and France was signed at Blois. It provided that aid was to be given unofficially by both nations to the revolted Hollanders; the fleet of Protestant privateers was to be sheltered and encouraged, and Huguenot Henry of Navarre was to marry the King’s sister Margaret. The Protestants and politicians of France had thus for the moment triumphed all along the line; the connection between England and France was closer than it had been for many years, and Elizabeth and Burghley could look back upon a great peril to their nation and their faith manfully met and astutely overcome.
The Catholic party in England was now utterly prostrate. The Duke of Norfolk, condemned to death for treason, was respited again and again by the Queen, whilst he abjectly prevaricated, and threw the blame upon others. The Bishop of Ross and Barker, he said, had forsworn him: he never meant to bring a foreign force to England to depose the Queen, and so forth. From the first, Burghley, who had always been Norfolk’s friend, urged the Queen to let the law take its course. He has been bitterly blamed for doing so; but seeing the danger to which Norfolk’s treason had reduced the realm, he would have failed in his duty as a First Minister if he had allowed any weakness or personal consideration to stand in the way of the just punishment for a great crime. Norfolk, though he was the most popular man and greatest noble in the realm, and still has many apologists, had plotted with the enemies of England to bring the country again under foreign tutelage for his own ambition, and it was right that he should suffer.
That Burghley did not flinch in the case of a man with so many friends, is a proof of his rectitude and his courage. Though Norfolk himself must have known what his attitude was, his esteem for him was evidently not lessened. In the first letter he wrote to the Queen after his condemnation, 21st January 1572, he prays for “her Majesty’s forgiveness for his manifold offences, that he may leave this vale of misery with a lighter heart and quieter conscience. He desires that Lord Burghley should act as guardian to his poor orphans,” and he signs his letter, “Written by the woeful hand of a dead man, your Majesty’s unworthy subject, Thomas Howard”; and when this prayer was granted, he again wrote to the Queen expressing “his comfort at hearing of her Majesty’s intended goodness to his unfortunate brats, and that she had christened them with such an adopted father as Lord Burghley.” At length, when Parliament had added its pressure to that of her minister’s, the Queen’s real or pretended reluctance to execute her near kinsman was overcome, and the Duke’s head fell on Tower Hill, 2nd June, before the lamentations of a great populace, who loved him above any subject of the Queen.
Less than a week afterwards Marshal Montmorenci, Paul de Foix, and a splendid embassy arrived in England for the purpose of formally ratifying the treaty of alliance between England and France, a corresponding embassy from England under Lord Lincoln being in France for a similar purpose. The courts vied with each other in their splendid entertainments. The Frenchmen with forty followers were lodged in Somerset House. At Whitehall, at Windsor (where Montmorenci received the Garter), at Leicester House, and at Cecil House, sumptuous banquets were given, followed by masques, balls, and tourneys. There was much talk about the Duke of Alen?on, but no decided answer given by Elizabeth to the hints of marriage, which, indeed, was not now so pressing a matter for her as it had been. When the Frenchmen had taken leave, Burghley sent to Walsingham an interesting letter giving some account of the embassy, by which it is clear that the Queen still desired to keep up the talk of the marriage, in view of a possible need to draw still closer to the French. “I am willed,” he writes, “to require you to use all good means to understand what you can of the Duke of Alen?on, his age in certainty, of his stature, his conditions, his inclination in religion, his devotion this way, his followers and servitors: hereof her Majesty seeketh speedily to be advertised, that she may resolve before the month.” He says, that for his part, he can see no great dislike of the idea, except in the matter of age, and hints at getting Calais as the young Prince’s dower. “If somewhat be not advised to recompense the opinion that her Majesty conceiveth, as that she should be misliked to make choice of so young a prince, I doubt the end.” When, however, Lincoln came back from France loaded with plate and jewels, and full of praise of the gallantry of Alen?on, the Queen became somewhat warmer, and Walsingham for weeks to come was bombarded with minute questions as to the personal qualities, and particularly as to the pock-marked visage, of the suitor.
There was but one more of the great conspirators against England to deal with. Norfolk had deservedly died the death of a traitor, and those who had supported him were either dead or lingering sufferers in prison, the disloyal Catholics were despairing, Spain had received its answer by the expulsion of De Spes and the renewal of the war in the Netherlands, whilst Coligny and the Huguenots rode rough-shod over the Guises and their friends. But the very spring-head of the conspiracy remained untouched. A commission was appointed in June to formulate charges against Mary Stuart herself, and in Parliament it was resolved that she was unworthy to succeed to the English crown. But Elizabeth again allowed her personal feeling to stand in the way of her patriotic duty, or, as some would prefer to say, desired to fix upon others the responsibility of a grave act against her own order and kin. Burghley, in his letter already quoted, written at the end of June to Walsingham, says: “Now for Parliament: I cannot write patiently: all that we laboured for, and with full consent brought to fashion, I mean a law to make the Scottish Queen unable and unworthy of succession of the crown, was by her Majesty neither assented to nor rejected, but deferred until the feast of All Saints; but what all other good and wise men think thereof, you may guess. Some here have, as it seemeth, abused their favour about her Majesty, to make herself her most enemy. God amend them.”
A fortnight after this letter was written Burghley was made Lord Treasurer of England in place of the Marquis of Winchester, who had recently died. The work and strain of the Secretaryship had gravely affected Burghley’s health, and early in the previous April he had been so ill that his life was despaired of. De Guaras, the merchant who acted informally as Spanish agent, says that the Queen and most of the Councillors visited him, in the belief that his state was desperate. For some time he had been begging for permission to rest, but until the great matters in hand were settled, this was impossible. The sky over England had once more become cleared, and the great minister could hand over to his old friend Sir Thomas Smith the Secretaryship, in which he had done such signal service to the State.
The day after the elevation of Burghley to the Treasurership, the Queen started on one of the stately progresses which caused so much delight and enthusiasm to all her subjects but those who had to entertain her, except perhaps Burghley and his rival Leicester, who were both honoured during this summer with a visit from the sovereign. Burghley’s entry of the great event comes curtly enough in his diary after the memorandum of his new appointment, thus:—
“1572. July 15. Lord Burghley made Lord Treasurer of England.”
“July 22. The Queen’s Majesty at Theobalds.”
Elizabeth had visited Theobalds in 1564 and 1571. On this occasion her stay extended over three days, and the domestic biographer of Burghley thus refers to this amongst other visits: “His Lordship’s extraordinary chardg in enterteynment of the Quene was greater to him than to anie of her subjects, for he enterteyned her at his house twelve several tymes, which cost him two or three thousand pounds each tyme.… But his love for his Sovereign, and joy to enterteyn her and her traine, was so greate, as he thought no troble, care, nor cost too much, and all too little.”
Whilst Elizabeth slowly made her way from one great house to another, by Gorhambury, Dunstable, Woburn, and so to Kenilworth, the correspondence on the negotiations for the Alen?on match became warmer and warmer. Agents and messengers speeded backwards and forwards with portraits and amiable trifles, particularly from the side of England.
There was a good reason for this. Before even the treaty of alliance was signed, Burghley had deplored that Charles IX. and his mother were cooling in the agreement for France and England jointly to aid the Flemish rebels. The Pope and the Emperor were trying their hardest to withdraw Charles and his mother from the compromise into which he had entered with Elizabeth; and already the young King and Catharine de Medici were discovering that Coligny and the Huguenots, when they had the upper hand, could be as domineering and tyrannical as the Guises themselves. Paris was in seething discontent that the beloved Guises were in disgrace, and Charles found his throne tottering. To add to his fears from the Catholics, the Huguenot force that had entered Flanders under Genlis had been routed and destroyed by the Spaniards (19th July), and it was clear to Catharine and her son, that if they did not promptly cut themselves free from Elizabeth’s attack on Spanish interests, they would be dragged down when the Huguenots fell. The very day that the news of Genlis’ defeat arrived in Paris, a young noble named La Mole was sent flying to England, ostensibly to confer with the Queen on the Alen?on match. There was no particular reason for roughly breaking off that, and so offending Elizabeth; but the sending of a mere schoolboy like La Mole with only vague instructions about the proposed joint action in Flanders would show that Charles IX. did not intend to take any further responsibility in that direction.
La Mole arrived in London on 27th July, and had a long midnight interview with Burghley at the French Embassy. He ostensibly only came from Alen?on—not from the King—and when, a few days afterwards, he saw the Queen privately at Kenilworth, though he was full of fine lovelorn compliments from Alen?on, he could only say from the King that the latter could not openly declare himself in the matter of Flanders. He suggested prudence, and fears of a league of Catholic powers against him. He talked about the strength of Portugal and Savoy, and generally cried off from his bargain. This was ill news for Elizabeth, for there were hundreds of Englishmen in arms in Holland, and brave Sir Humphrey Gilbert and his band were besieging Ter Goes. But the English Queen made the best of it, and sought to redress matters by pushing the Alen?on match more warmly than ever, and petting and caressing La Mole, who accompanied her on her progress towards Windsor. Burghley and the experienced Smith seem to have been as firmly convinced as young La Mole himself, that the Queen was in earnest, and would really, at last, make up her mind to marry Alen?on. In her conversations with La Mole and Fénélon she smoothed away all difficulties. Walsingham had made a great mistake, she said, in declaring that Alen?on’s youth was an insuperable difficulty; and much more to the same effect. But it is curious that all this artless prattle, all this coy coquetry of the Queen, so spontaneous in appearance, had in substance been carefully previously drafted by Burghley, and the drafts are still at Hatfield. Whilst Charles IX. was hesitating and looking askance at the dominant Huguenots, the latter were assuring Burghley and Walsingham that all would be well directly. Henry of Navarre was to be married to the Princess Margaret, and this would give them a pretext for gathering so strong a force of their party that they could make the King do as they pleased.
But Elizabeth and the Huguenots had no monopoly of cunning, and whilst the billing and cooing with La Mole went on, the massacre of St. Bartholomew was being secretly planned, and every effort was being made by the French King to draw England into a position of overt hostility to Spain, whilst he remained unpledged. The Ambassador, Fénélon, and young La Mole, left the Queen, and returned to London on the 27th August. On the same day there arrived at Rye two couriers from Paris, one from Walsingham to the Queen and Burghley, the other to the French Ambassador. The French courier was detained, and his papers sent forward with Walsingham’s despatches to the Queen. The news of the great crime of St. Bartholomew fell upon Elizabeth and her court like a death-knell; for it seemed that at last the threatened crusade against Protestantism had begun, and that England was struck at as well as the Huguenots. All rejoicings were stopped, mourning garb was assumed, and the gay devices of masques and mummeries gave way to anxious conferences and plans for defence. Affrighted Protestants by the thousand came flying across the Channel in any craft that would sail; from mouth to mouth in England ran the dreadful story of unprovoked and wanton slaughter, and on every side the old English feeling of hatred and distrust of the false Frenchmen came uppermost again. On the 7th September, La Mothe Fénélon was received by the Queen at Woodstock in dead silence, and surrounded by all the signs of mourning. He made the best of a bad matter: talked of a plot of Coligny and the Huguenots to seize the Louvre, urged that the massacre was unpremeditated, and hoped that the friendship between France and England would continue uninterrupted. But Elizabeth knew that such a friendship could only be a snare for her whilst the Guises were paramount, and she dismissed the Ambassador with a plain indication of her opinion.
Two days afterwards Burghley penned a long letter from the Council to Walsingham, dictating the steps to be taken for the protection of English interests; and he accompanied it by a private note, in which the Lord Treasurer’s own view is frankly set forth. “I see,” he says, “the devil is suffered by Almighty God for our sins to be strong in following the persecution of Christ’s members, and therefore we are not only vigilant of our own defence against such trayterous attempts as lately have been put in use there in France, but also to call ourselves to repentance.… The King assures her Majesty that the navy prepared by Strozzi shall not in any way endamage her Majestie; but we have great cause in these times to doubt all fair speeches, and therefore we do presently put all the sea-coasts in defence, and mean to send her Majesty’s navy to sea with speed, and so to continue until we see further whereunto to trust.”
Not many days after the massacre, Catharine de Medici saw the mistake she had made in allowing the Guises a free hand, and she and the King did their best by protestations to Walsingham, and through Fénélon and Castelnau de la Mauvissière, to draw closer to Elizabeth again. Alen?on did much more. He went to Walsingham, swore vengeance upon the murderers, and expressed his intention of escaping from court and secretly flying to England. By an emissary of his own he sent an extravagant love-letter to the Queen, and ostentatiously took the Huguenot side, whilst Anjou was on the side of the League. Elizabeth did not wish to break with France, for her safety once more depended upon avoiding isolation; but she was still deeply distrustful. Smith, in sending the Queen’s answer to Walsingham, quaintly defines her attitude towards the French: “You may perceive by her Majesty’s answer, that she will not refuse the interview nor marriage, but yet she cometh near to them tam timido et suspenso pede, that they may have good cause to doubt. The answer to De la Mothe is addulced so much as may, for she would have it so. You have a busie piece of work to decypher that which in words is designed to the extremitie, in deeds is more than manifest; neither you shall open the one, nor shall they cloak the other. The best is, thank God, we stand upon our guard, nor I trust shall be taken and killed asleep, as Coligny was. The greatest matter for her Majestie, and our safety and defence, is earnestly of us attempted, nor yet achieved, nor utterly in despair, but rather in hope.”
For the next few months this firm attitude of watchfulness was maintained, whilst the outward demonstrations of friendship between Catharine and Elizabeth became gradually more cordial, thanks largely to the influence in the English court of the special envoy Castelnau de la Mauvissière. Elizabeth consented to act as sponsor for the French King’s infant daughter; Alen?on’s envoy, Maisonfleur, with the knowledge of Burghley, sent to his master a plan for his escape to England with Navarre and Condé, and assured him that the Queen would marry him if he came. But all this diplomatic finesse did not for a moment stay the grim determination of the Queen and her Council to provide against treachery, from whatever quarter it might come. All along the coast the country stood on guard. Portsmouth, Plymouth, the Thames, and Harwich were swarming with shipping, armed to the teeth for the succour of stern Protestant Rochelle against the Catholics, and to aid the Netherlanders in their struggle. The Huguenots of Guienne, Languedoc, and Gascony had recovered somewhat from the shock of St. Bartholomew, and were arming for their defence; and to them also went English money, arms, and encouragement. At Elizabeth’s court the Vidame de Chartres and the Count de Montgomerie were honoured guests and busy agents, whilst in France the young Princes of Navarre and Condé were daily being pledged deeper to the cause of Protestantism and England. The German princes, too, as profoundly shocked at the treacherous massacre as Elizabeth herself, drew nearer to the Queen, who was now regarded throughout Europe as the head of the Protestant confederacy.
It was soon seen that, though St. Bartholomew had given more power to the Guises, it had also strengthened and consolidated the reformers rather than destroyed them. Month after month Anjou, at the head of the Catholic royal army, cast his men fruitlessly against the impregnable walls of Rochelle, well supplied as the town was with stores by Montgomerie’s fleet from England, until at last in the spring of 1573 it was seen by Catharine and her sons that they had failed to crush the reformers of France, and they were glad to make terms with the heroic Rochellais, where the besiegers, plague-stricken, starving, and disheartened, were in far worse case than the beleaguered. Anjou, to his brothers’ and mother’s delight, was elected to the vacant throne of Poland, and a full amnesty was signed for the Huguenots (June 1573); complete religious liberty being accorded in the towns of Rochelle, Montauban, and Nismes, whilst private Protestant worship was allowed throughout France.
One of the first effects of the massacre of St. Bartholomew was an approach on the part of Burghley to the Spanish agent in England. The object probably was to keep in touch and to learn what was going on, whilst arousing the jealousy of the French, and, above all, to reopen English trade with Flanders and Spain. In any case, the cordiality of so great a personage as the Lord Treasurer quite turned the head of simple-minded, vain Antonio de Guaras, who suddenly found himself treated as an important diplomatist, and for the rest of his life tried, but disastrously, to live up to the character. Soon after the expulsion of De Spes, one of Burghley’s agents had opened up communications with De Guaras, which resulted in an interview between the latter and the Lord Treasurer. The minister was graciousness itself, and quite dazzled the merchant. There was nothing, he assured him, that he desired more than an agreement with Spain on all points; and though it all came to nothing at the time, and shortly afterwards the Flemish Commissioners were curtly dismissed, a letter was handed to Guaras late in August 1572 to be sent to Alba, making professions of willingness to negotiate for a reopening of trade, and to withdraw the English troops from Flanders. Before the reply came in October the massacre of St. Bartholomew had taken place, and when De Guaras went to Burghley at Hampton Court with a letter from Alba he found him all smiles. “The Queen was only remarking yesterday,” said he, “that she wondered Antonio de Guaras did not come to court with a reply to the message offering to withdraw the Englishmen who were helping the rebels.” They were only sent there, said Burghley, to prevent Frenchmen from gaining a footing. He was overjoyed to receive Alba’s kind letter, and took it to the Queen at once, though she had already sickened with the smallpox, which a day or two afterwards declared itself. He hoped, he said, that God would pardon those who had caused the dissension between the two countries; and the Queen was most willing to come to terms. He expressed delight at the reported successes of Alba. He compared Spaniards with Frenchmen, greatly to the disadvantage of the latter, and “he said more against the French than I did, speaking with great reverence of our King, and of so courageous a Prince, which were the words he applied to your Excellency” (Alba).
The delighted merchant was pressed to stay to supper to meet such great personages as the Earl of Sussex, the Lord Chamberlain, and others; and the next day he was in conference with Burghley for hours, with the result that the latter consented to draw up a new draft treaty for the reopening of trade, one of the clauses of which was to touch upon the tender subject of the treatment extended by the Inquisition to English merchants and mariners in Spain. Burghley hinted to De Guaras that some of the Council were against an accord, but he persuaded him that his own feelings were all in favour of a renewal of the close understanding with the House of Burgundy. De Guaras was backwards and forwards to court for weeks, more charmed than ever with the Lord Treasurer’s amiability. “It is,” he says, “undoubted that a great amount of dissension exists in the Council, some being friendly to our side, and others to the French; but the best Councillor of all of them is Lord Burghley, as he follows the tendency of the Queen, which is towards concord. As he is supreme in the country and in the Queen’s estimation, in all the important Councils which were held during the days that I was at court, he, with his great eloquence, having right on his side, was able to persuade those who were opposed to him. He assured me privately that he had gained over the great majority of his opponents, and especially the Earl of Leicester, who has always been on the side of the French.” Burghley could be very persuasive and talkative when it suited him, as it very rarely did. The French, he said, were most anxious for a close alliance, but the Queen and himself set but small store on “these noisy French and Italians.”
A Spanish spy in London, unknown to De Guaras, scornfully wrote to Alba that Lord Burghley was playing with De Guaras; and before many weeks had passed, the latter himself had begun to doubt. Burghley passed him in his ante-room three times without so much as noticing him. “Some great plot against the Spaniards in Flanders” was hatching, he was sure; “and in one moment they decided that their false news was of more importance than our friendship.” “Whilst this Government exists, no good arrangement will be made, as the Queen only desires it from fear, and the rest will oppose it on religious grounds.” When De Guaras saw the Lord Treasurer later in November (1572), grave doubts were expressed about the bona fides of Philip, much to the Spaniard’s indignation. Burghley said he was still strongly in favour of an arrangement, because the French, who wished the English wool trade to go to France instead of Flanders, were so shifty, and could not be trusted. The Queen would be glad, too, to mediate between Spain and the Prince of Orange. Thus Burghley played on the hopes and fears of Spain; but through the whole negotiation it was clear that the objects were—first, if possible, to reopen the ports for English trade on profitable terms; and, secondly, to keep Spain in hand, pending the development of events in France, and the strengthening of Orange for his forthcoming campaign.
In the meanwhile Sir Humphrey Gilbert and his 800 Englishmen were recalled from Flanders, and the elaborate pretence made that he was in disgrace for having gone thither at all against the Queen’s wish; and other demonstrations were made, especially by Burghley, of a desire to agree on friendly conditions with Spain. As weeks passed without any reply coming from Alba to the draft treaty, Burghley grew distrustful, and, as De Guaras complains, coldly passed him without recognising him. At last, late in December, he sent for the Spaniard and made a speech, which, De Guaras says, sounded as if it had been studied. “He hoped,” he said, “that the good-will of himself and his friends would be recognised. Some of the Councillors thought that De Guaras had been playing them false, and his (Burghley’s) party was much annoyed that no answer had come, especially about the simultaneous opening of the ports.” All the while the vigorous support of Orange’s preparations went on; money, men, and arms flowed over in abundance (early in 1573); and the Dutch agents were in England urging Elizabeth openly to take Holland and Zeeland under her protection, and to lend national countenance to the struggle against Spain. She was not prepared for this yet, for France was under the influence of the Guises, and their intrigues in Scotland left her no rest. But Alba was afraid of the bare possibility of a great Protestant league of English, Germans, and Huguenots, in favour of Orange; and his pride was humbled more by this than by professions of friendship. The result of Burghley’s negotiations through De Guaras, and the aiding of Orange, was that in the summer of 1573 the Flemish and Spanish ports were once more opened to English trade, on terms immensely favourable to England, since she obtained a free market for her cloth, whilst she kept the great bulk of the enormous amount of Spanish property which Elizabeth had seized five years previously. This was a greater exemplification of the impotence of Philip, even than the expulsion of De Spes. All the world could see now that, much as his Inquisition might harry individual Englishmen, the King could neither defend nor avenge the injuries done to himself; and was obliged to overlook the presence of armed English regiments on the side of his rebellious subjects, for the sake of retaining the profit brought to his dominions by English commerce. Burghley had at all events established one fact, namely, that, for the present, Philip alone could do no harm.
The struggles between the Protestants and Catholics in Scotland had continued almost without interruption since the death of Murray. Mary’s friends were still numerous and strong amongst the aristocratic and landed classes, and were supported, as we have seen, by Spanish and papal money, as well as by Guisan intrigue. The Regent Lennox had been murdered by the Hamiltons (September 1571), and his successor (Mar) had died of poison or a broken heart (November 1572); but with the advent of Morton, a man of stronger fibre, the Protestant cause became more aggressive, and the English influence over Scotland more decided. Shortly before this happened, when the effects of St. Bartholomew were still weighing on the English court, and it was known that Catharine de Medici and her son were as busy with the Archbishop of Glasgow in supporting the Hamiltons and Gordons as was Cardinal Lorraine himself, secret instructions were given to Killigrew, the English Ambassador in Scotland, to take a step which under any other circumstances would have been inexcusable. The secret instructions are drafted in Burghley’s hand, and more obloquy has been piled upon his memory in consequence of them than for any other action in his career; even his thick-and-thin apologist, Dr. Nares, confessing that he could only look upon Killigrew’s orders “with feelings of disgust and horror.” Killigrew’s open mission was to reconcile the King’s party with those who championed the cause of his mother, and especially with Kirkaldy of Grange and Lethington, who still held Edinburgh Castle; but his secret instructions were to a different effect. He was to warn the Protestants that a second St. Bartholomew might be intended in Scotland—not by any means an improbable suggestion, considering who were the promoters of the original massacre. “But you are also chosen to deal in a third matter of far greater moment.” The continuance of the Queen of Scots in England, he is told, is considered dangerous, and it is deemed desirable that she should be sent to Scotland and delivered to the Regent (Mar), “if it might be wrought that they themselves should secretly require it, with good assurance to deal with her by way of justice, that she should receive that which she hath deserved, whereby no further peril should ensue from her escaping, or by setting her up again. Otherwise the Council of England will never assent to deliver her out of the realm; and for assurance, none can suffice but hostages of good value—that is, some children of the Regent and the Earl of Morton.” The suggestion was not a chivalrous or a generous one. It meant nothing less than handing over the unfortunate Mary to her enemies to be executed, and so to rid Elizabeth of her troublesome guest without responsibility. Killigrew was Burghley’s brother-in-law, and the two, with Leicester and the Queen, were the only persons acquainted with the intention.
On his arrival in Edinburgh the new envoy found the Protestants profoundly moved by the news of the massacre in Paris; Knox, paralysed and on the brink of the grave, used his last remaining spark of life to denounce the Guises and the Papists who had forged the murder plot against the people of God. Killigrew found Morton ready and eager to help in the sacrifice of Mary, but Mar held back; and Burghley and Leicester wrote, urging speed in the matter. When the terms of the Scots at last were sent to Burghley, it was seen that, though they were willing to have Mary killed, they would not relieve Elizabeth of the responsibility. The death of Mar put an end for a time to the negotiation, which was never seriously undertaken again, as it was clear that the Scots would drive too hard a bargain to suit Elizabeth.
It is my province to explain facts rather than to apologise for them, and the explanation of the plan to cause Mary to be judicially murdered in Scotland must be sought in the panic which seized upon the Protestants after St. Bartholomew. The massacre was generally believed to be only a part of a plan for the universal extirpation of the reformers, in which it was known that Mary Stuart’s friends and relatives were the prime movers, and one of the main objects was represented to be the raising of Mary to the throne of a Catholic Great Britain. So long as this belief existed, no step was inexcusable that aimed at frustrating so diabolical and widespread a conspiracy. That Burghley himself was not sensible of any turpitude in the matter may be seen from a letter written by him to Walsingham on the 14th January 1573, begging him to discover the author of a book printed in Paris, in which he and Bacon are scurrilously accused of plans against Norfolk and Mary. “God amend his spirit,” he says, referring to the author, “and confound his malice. As for my part, if I have any such malicious or malignant spirit, God presently so confound my body to ashes and my soul to perpetual torment in hell.”
How soon Catharine de Medici and her son regretted the false step of St. Bartholomew is seen by their attitude towards England early in the following year (1573). The Archbishop of Glasgow was plainly told that no more help could be given to his mistress, Cardinal Lorraine failed ignominiously to draw France into renewed activity on behalf of the League, and Charles IX. considered it necessary to apologise to Elizabeth for the presence in his court of the special papal envoy already referred to. It was seen also that the blood and iron policy of Alba had ended in failure: the revolt in the Netherlands was stronger than ever, Holland was entirely in the hands of Orange, and most of the Catholic provinces of Flanders even had broken from their Spanish allegiance. Under these circumstances it seemed possible that the secular dream of Frenchmen might eventually come to pass, and the fine harbours and busy towns of Belgium might fall to the share of France. But this could only be if she had a close understanding and made common cause with England. So once more the Alen?on marriage was vigorously pushed to the front by Catharine. In February the French Ambassador saw Elizabeth, and formally prayed her to give an answer whether she would marry the Prince or not. If she would only let them know her pleasure now, the King and Queen-mother would trouble her no more. It was a good opportunity, and Elizabeth made the most of it. Fair terms must be given to the Huguenots in Rochelle, she said, and on condition that this was done, she would give an answer about Alen?on through Lord Burghley. On the 18th February the Lord Treasurer made his formal speech. The Queen would never marry a man she had never seen. If the Prince liked to come over, even secretly, he would be welcome; but in any case an interview had better precede the discussion of religion, because if the lovers did not fancy each other, the question of conscience would be a convenient pretext for breaking off the negotiation; but still no public exercise of Catholic worship must be expected. When Burghley sent to Walsingham a copy of his speech, he added for his private information: “I see the imminent perils to this State, and … the success (i.e. the succession) of the crown manifestly uncertain, or rather so manifestly prejudicial to the state of religion, that I cannot but still persist in seeking marriage for her Majesty, and finding no way that is liking to her but this of the Duke, I do force myself to pursue it with desire, and do fancy myself with imaginations that if he do come hither her Majesty would not refuse him.… If I am deceived, yet for the time it easeth me to imagine that such a sequel may follow.” This was uncertain enough; but Walsingham was even less encouraging. He was sick of the whole hollow business; profoundly distrustful of the French; and, moreover, was a friend of Leicester, who constantly plied him with letters deprecating the match. This, then, is how he managed cleverly to stand in with Burghley whilst serving Leicester. “Touching my private opinion of the marriage, the great impediment that I find in the same is the contentment of the eye. The gentleman, sure, is void of any good favour, besides the blemish of the small pocks. Now, when I weigh the same with the delicateness of her Majesty’s eye, and considering also that there are some about her in credit, who in respect of their particular interests, have neither regard for her Majesty, nor to the preservation of our country from ruine, and will rather increase the misliking by defacing him than by dutifully laying before her the necessity of marriage … I hardly think there will ever grow any liking.… Whether this marriage be sincerely meant here or not is a hard point to judge … in my opinion I think rather no than yea.” This was almost the last letter written by Walsingham as Ambassador. He was recalled, to be shortly afterwards appointed joint-Secretary of State with Sir Thomas Smith, with the intention of still further relieving Burghley from routine labour; and Dr. Dale, as Ambassador in Paris, kept alive the ridiculous, and frequently insincere, discussion of the marriage of Elizabeth and Alen?on.
Burghley’s labours and anxieties were not confined to foreign affairs. His interest in the uniformity and discipline of the Anglican Church was unceasing, and especially in connection with his Chancellorship of Cambridge University, gave him endless anxiety. The vestments controversy had now widened and deepened. The famous tract called “An Admonition to Parliament” had been presented to the Parliament of 1572 by Cartwright; and its violence in a Puritan direction had provoked a controversy, which, at the period now under consideration (1573), had developed on one side into a bitter antagonism to prelacy, and even sacerdotalism in all its forms. Both parties appealed to Burghley. He made a speech in the Star Chamber which left no doubt as to his attitude, if any such ever existed, on the point. The Queen, he said, was determined to have the laws obeyed. No innovation of ritual or practice would be permitted. If any of the “novelists” were under the impression that departures from the rules laid down would remain unpunished, he disabused their minds. A Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, named Chark, violently attacked the hierarchy from the University pulpits, and was admonished. He persisted, and was ejected from his Fellowship. Another Cambridge man, Edward Dering, Lecturer at St. Paul’s Cathedral, acted similarly, and was summoned before the Privy Council, and was suspended from his preferment. At the instance of Bishop Sandys he was restored, but again brought before the Star Chamber when he addressed a long letter to Burghley advocating his views. Whilst Leicester always favoured the Puritans, the Lord Treasurer was thus on the side of the law and the prelates; and though he was constantly chosen as arbiter, even by those with whom he disagreed, he never wavered in his insistence on the maintenance of uniformity, and obedience to the prescriptions laid down by Parliament and the rulers of the Church.
Notwithstanding the appointment of two Secretaries of State, which somewhat relieved him from writing despatches, almost every matter, great and small, was still referred to Burghley. We have given instances of his activity in foreign and ecclesiastical affairs; but, as Ellis truly says, “from a question of peace or war, down to a regulation for the lining of slop hose; from quarrels at court to the bickering between a schoolmaster and his scholar; from the arrest of a peer to the punishment of a cutpurse—all was reported to him, and by all parties in turn his favour was craved.”
It must have been difficult for him to keep clear of court factions and scandal; but though it was notorious that Leicester always opposed him, they still remained outwardly friendly, and their letters to each other are full of civil expressions. Sussex and Hatton were for ever at feud with Leicester. Alen?on’s amorous agents scandalised all beholders by their open flirting with the Queen, to which Leicester retorted by making violent love to two sisters, Lady Sheffield and Frances Howard; and the light-hearted and light-heeled young Earl of Oxford, Burghley’s son-in-law at this time (1573), had danced himself into the good graces of the erotic Queen, which he soon lost by his folly. Stern Lady Burghley openly and imprudently condemned this philandering, and the Queen fell into a rage with her; yet “my Lord Treasurer, even after his old manner, dealeth with matters of the State only, and beareth himself very uprightly.… At all these love matters my Lord Treasurer winketh, and will not meddle any way.”
Burghley’s private correspondence with his steward, Kemp, at Burghley, at this period, shows that his care for detail in his household management was as unwearied as ever. One letter written in June 1573 by Kemp is very curious. Burghley’s mother was still alive, but, of course, very aged. She appears to have become unduly penurious as to her garb, and her son had ordered a dress for the old lady. The steward writes: “Mr. Thomas Cecil came home well, and my mistress, your mother, came to Burghley two hours before him. The gown that you would make, it must be for every day, and yet because it comes from you (except you write to her to the contrary) she will make it her holiday gown; whereof she hath great store already, both of silk and cloth. But I think, sir, if you make her one of cloth, with some velvet on it, with your letter to desire her for your sake to wear it daily, she would accustom herself to it; so as she would forget to go any longer in such base apparel as she hath used to have a delight in, which is too mean for one of a lower estate than she is.” The old lady also desired a chaplain for service twice a day; and by Burghley’s endorsement on the letter, it is evident that the gown and the chaplain were sent to her.
During the Queen’s great progress through Kent and Sussex in the autumn, Burghley attended her; and whilst the court was at Eridge, the Treasurer, not without difficulty, persuaded the Queen to accede to Mary Stuart’s request, through the Earl of Shrewsbury, that she should be allowed to visit the baths of Buxton, whither shortly afterwards Burghley himself went for his own malady, and saw the unhappy Queen, whom on this occasion, at all events, he impressed not unfavourably. During the Queen’s progress, which was on a more lavish scale even than usual, a determined attempt was made—and, according to one of Mary Stuart’s letters from Buxton, not quite unsuccessfully—to arouse Elizabeth’s distrust of Burghley. Simultaneously there were sent to the Queen, to Burghley, to Bacon, and the principal courtiers and ecclesiastics, another violent book printed in France against Burghley and the Lord Keeper. A copy was sent to the Queen by Lord Windsor, a refugee on the Continent, with great professions of attachment, and hints evidently directed against Burghley, “although for my part, in mine opinion, I suppose he is too wise to be overtaken in many of those things which he is touched withal.” Burghley received his copy from an unknown hand in Canterbury Cathedral precincts, where he was lodged, and it appears quite to have upset his equanimity. He wrote (11th September 1573) to the Archbishop (Parker) bitterly resenting the attack at such a time “by some domestic hidden scorpion.” “If God and our consciences were not our defence and consolation against these pestilential darts, we might well be weary of our lives.” Parker returned “the mad book, so outrageously penned that malice hath made him blind. I judge it not worth an answer.” Bacon was less disturbed with the matter than his brother-in-law, and summarises the contents of the book as follows: “It consisteth of three points. Chiefly it is to change the religion that now is; 2nd, to establish the Scottish Queen’s party; and, 3rd, is an invective against us two. I like the conjunction of the matter, though I mislike the impudent lies of the author to maintain it.”
The accession of Morton to the Regency of Scotland had been followed by the complete collapse of Mary’s cause there. Killigrew was ready with English bribes, and the Hamiltons and the Gordons were induced to abandon a hopeless struggle and lay down their arms. Only Kirkaldy of Grange held out, hoping against hope that the promised Guisan help would reach him in Edinburgh Castle. Once a large sum of French money for him was withheld by the treachery of Sir James Balfour, corrupt almost to the point of grotesqueness; and thenceforward Kirkaldy, Lord Hume, and the rest of the party simply held out in the castle to save their lives. But when Drury with English troops crossed the Border and reinforced Morton, Kirkaldy surrendered to the English general, on promise of fair treatment. Morton insisted upon the prisoners being delivered to him, for whilst they lived, he said, there would be no safety for him or the State; and though Drury held out, Elizabeth at last gave way to Morton’s importunity, and brave Kirkaldy and the rest of Mary’s staunch friends lost their heads. Thenceforward Mary Stuart’s cause was dead, so far as the Scottish people themselves were concerned. Morton nearly obtained the Bishop of Ross, too, from Elizabeth, but he was after all a sovereign’s Ambassador, and her Council dissuaded her from surrendering him. On his abject submission and solemn promise never again to take part in public affairs, he was allowed to go to France, to break his pledge at once, and become thenceforward an untiring agent for the furtherance of Spanish aims in England. Thus Scotland for a time, under so firm an English ally as Morton, ceased to cause active anxiety to Elizabeth and her minister.
Alba, sick of his sanguinary failure, was replaced in Flanders by a more diplomatic Governor (Requesens) late in 1573. Though De Guaras in London continued humbly to imitate De Spes, and immersed himself in intrigues, such as that of the English captains who proposed to betray Flushing, the plans of those who offered to kill the Prince of Orange, to kidnap the young King of Scotland, and the like, many of these plans were merely traps set by Burghley to learn how far the Spaniards were willing to go; and they came to nothing, for of all things Philip needed peace the most. Alba and the war party in Spain were in disgrace, the commerce of the country was almost destroyed by the privateers, and friendly relations with England were once more the great object of Philip’s policy. Burghley also renewed his efforts to draw the countries closer together, for reasons which will presently be stated. A great delivery of Catholics from prison was made mainly at his instance, and drew upon him remonstrances and attacks, both on the part of some of the Bishops themselves, in a guarded fashion, and more violently from the Puritans, now openly patronised by Leicester. Arising out of this, a great conspiracy was said to have been discovered against the lives of Archbishop Parker and Lord Burghley, on the part of one Undertree. The depositions of the accused, which are in the Hatfield Papers, are, as usual in such cases, full to the extent of diffuseness; but though Parker was much alarmed, and the affair gave Burghley an infinity of trouble, there does not appear to have been much importance really attached to it.
The key to Burghley’s milder attitude towards the Catholics—apart from the disappearance of Mary Stuart’s party in Scotland—was the position of affairs in France. The talk of Elizabeth’s marriage with Alen?on had continued uninterruptedly, drawn out with a thousand banalities as to the possibility of secret meetings between the lovers, the depth and number of pock holes on the suitor’s face, his personal qualities, his religious elasticity, and the like. His brother, Charles IX., was only twenty-four, but it was known that he could not live long; the heir, Anjou, now King of Poland, was a furious and fanatical Catholic. With the knowledge of Elizabeth and her minister, all France was enveloped in a vast conspiracy, in which the Montmorencis and the “politicians” were making common cause with the Huguenots, of which combination Alen?on was the figurehead. But Catharine de Medici was fully aware of the fact, and was determined to frustrate it. With Anjou for King she might still be supreme in France; whereas the rise of Alen?on, under the tutelage of the Huguenots and the Queen of England, would have meant extinction for her. Several times before Charles died, Alen?on and the Princes of Navarre and Condé had tried to escape to England, but Catharine held them tight, and never left them. Montgomerie was waiting for the signal, with a strong fleet in the Channel, to swoop down upon Normandy, and all the Protestants and anti-Guisans in France were under arms. The mine was to burst in April, the Princes were to be rescued forcibly from Catharine, and St. Bartholomew was to be avenged. But the Queen-mother was on the alert. Just before the day fixed she hurried away from St. Germains to Catholic Paris, clapped Alen?on and Navarre, Montmorenci, De Cossé, and all the chiefs into prison, and then crushed the Protestant armies piecemeal, for they were leaderless and far apart. When, therefore, Charles IX. died (30th May 1574), Catharine was mistress of the situation, and held France in her hand until the new King, Henry III., arrived, to take possession of the throne. With such a sovereign as this in France, led by Catharine, who had her grudge to satisfy against Elizabeth for the encouragement she had given to the Princes, it was natural that Burghley should again smile somewhat upon the Catholics, and say civil words to Spain; especially as panic-stricken rumours came—though they were untrue—that Philip was fitting out a great navy to send with a powerful force to Flanders. Catholic Flanders, moreover, had mostly been brought back to Spanish allegiance by the mildness of Requesens; and Elizabeth was growing less willing to continue to provide large sums of money to uphold Orange in what now appeared to be a well-nigh desperate cause, if it had to be supported entirely from England. So when Requesens’ envoys came to see her about the regulation of trade, and the exclusion of the privateers from her ports, she was all smiles; and although upon being appealed to, to allow English mercenaries to serve the Spaniards in Flanders as they served Orange, she refused, though not very firmly, she expressed her desire to bring Orange to submit to the King of Spain. Once more, therefore, an unrestrained Catholic regime in France inevitably drew England and Spain closer together. It was only when the Huguenots were paramount, who would not join Philip against England, or help the Catholics of Scotland, that Elizabeth and Burghley could afford to disregard the friendship of the King of Spain.
The behaviour of the young sovereign of France—no longer a king, but a besotted monk, sunk into the deepest abyss of debauchery and superstition—kept alive the discontent of the Huguenots and “politicians,” who had regarded his accession with horror. Alen?on and the King held rival courts in Paris, the one surrounded by reformers, the other by all that was retrograde and vicious. Cardinal Lorraine was dead, and the King’s advisers were no longer statesmen, but mendicant friars and the Italian time-servers of the Queen-mother: Henry of Guise was just entering into the arena, and was already a popular idol; and all seemed to portend a renewal of French activity in favour of Mary Stuart. Elizabeth therefore went out of her way to dazzle poor foolish De Guaras again. Seeing him walking in Richmond Park, she called him to her, and exerted all her witchery upon him (March 1575). “You understand,” she said, “full well, old wine, old bread, and old friends should be prized the most, and if only for the sake of showing these Frenchmen who are wrangling as to whether our friendship is firm or not, there is good reason to prove outwardly the kind feeling which inwardly exists.” She accused the poor man, quite coquettishly, of having received a token from the Queen of Scots—which he had not—but ended by quite winning him over by her prattle. Almost simultaneously with this, strict orders were given to the Warden of the Cinque Ports “to prevent the landing of the Prince of Orange, or any of his aiders or abettors in the conspiracy against the King of Spain, and also to prevent their receiving any aid, succour, or relief, in men, armour, or victuals.”
Considering that the revolt in Holland had been mainly kept up from England, this was indeed a complete change of policy; but more was behind it even than appeared. Many of the Catholic refugees on the Continent were spies in the service of Lord Burghley, to whom nearly all of them appealed as their only hope and protector, and one of them particularly, named Woodshaw, who was deep in the confidence of La Motte, the Spanish Governor of Gravelines. The latter suggested that, as war between France and England was in the air, it would be a good plan for the English to seize Calais or Boulogne, with the aid of the Spaniards, and come to terms with Philip to prevent any aid or food reaching the French from Flanders or Artois. This was conveyed to Burghley, and soon Sir William Drury, Colonel Chester, and several of the officers who had come from Holland, were in close conference daily with him and the other Councillors remaining in London when the Queen went upon her summer progress. De Guaras, whilst reporting their movements, was in the dark as to their object. “During the last three days,” he says, “at night or at unsuspected hours, they have taken from the Tower sixty waggons and gun carriages, which have been shipped to Dover.” Guns, battery-trains, culverins, fieldpieces, and ammunition were being shipped on four of the Queen’s ships at Rochester. Mariners were being pressed, commanders were leaving secretly for the coast, Burghley’s son-in-law the Earl of Oxford, with Ralph Hopton and young Montmorenci, hurried off to Germany, and the Huguenot agents were closeted with Burghley almost day and night. We know now what it all meant, by a letter from the Earl of Sussex to Lord Burghley, in which he deplores the projected war with Catholic France, which, he says, is only brought about by those who wish to prevent the Queen’s marriage with Alen?on. “It will bring her into war with all Europe, and she and the realm will smart for the pleasing of these men’s humours.” The cost of the war, he says, was to be defrayed equally by the King of Navarre (Henry), the German princes, and the Queen; “but he fears her Majesty in the end must pay for all, or let all fall when she hath put her foot in.”
Wilkes, the Clerk of the Council, was sent with a large sum of money to young Montmorenci (Meru) in Strasbourg, and then over the Rhine to the Duke Hans Casimir, the great mercenary; and Meru was able to write to Burghley in October, “Thanks to the Queen’s favour by your means, we are now on the point of succeeding. One of the finest armies that for twenty years hath issued from Germany, ready to march, is coming just in time to succour the King’s brother.” All through the summer De Guaras was at fault as to the meaning of the preparations, which he thought might be a joint expedition against the Spaniards in Flanders. As we have seen, the very opposite really was the case. Some of the principal English officers, indeed, who had been with Orange were full of plots with De Guaras for poisoning the Prince, for betraying Flushing into Spanish hands, and so forth. For the moment there were certainly no smiles from Elizabeth for the Netherlanders; for Orange had taken a masterly step, such as she herself might have conceived. When he saw that English help was slackening, he boldly made approaches to France for help. So long as it was Huguenot help under her control, Elizabeth did not mind; but when it was a question of marrying Orange’s daughter to Alen?on or some other French prince, and obtaining French national patronage, it was quite another matter—that Elizabeth would never allow. So England and Spain grew closer and closer. Sir Henry Cobham was sent as an envoy to Philip, ostensibly on the question of the English prisoners of the Inquisition, but really to propose a friendship between the two countries, and inform the King of the Prince of Orange’s intrigues with the French. A Spanish flotilla on its way to the Netherlands, under Don Pedro de Valdés, was, moreover, welcomed in the English ports, and an envoy from Requesens took part, as the Queen’s guest, in the memorable festivities at Kenilworth.
A renewed appeal was made to the Council by Orange in August, through Colonel Chester. He offered the island of Zeeland to Elizabeth, if she would hold it, and begged permission to raise two thousand fresh men in England. The reply given by Burghley was to the effect that “if the Queen allowed such a thing, the King of Spain would have a good cause for introducing schism and fire into her country through Ireland. If Orange carried out his threat to hand over the territory to the French, the Queen would oppose it.” Every day some fresh proof of friendship with Spain was given. Frobisher proposed to place his fleet at the disposal of the King of Spain, proclamations were issued forbidding all British subjects from taking service with Orange, and offers of mediation were frequent. In September 1575, Alen?on managed to escape the vigilance of his brother and his mother, fled to Dreux, adopted the Huguenot cause, and headed the revolt with Henry of Navarre. This was the eventuality in which the English preparations were to have been employed. But, again, Catharine de Medici was too clever to be caught. She suddenly released Montmorenci and the rest of the “politicians” from the Bastile, attached them to the King’s cause, and through them patched up a six months’ truce between the two brothers (November). The terms were hard for Henry. Alen?on was bribed with 100,000 livres, and the three rich duchies of Anjou, Berri, and Touraine; Hans Casimir got 300,000 crowns, and a pension of 40,000 livres; the German mercenaries were handsomely paid to go home; Condé was promised the governorship of Picardy; the Montmorencis, De Cossé, the Chatillons, and the rest of the malcontents were bought; the crown jewels of France were pawned, and the country plunged deeply in debt to pay for the famous truce.
Then Elizabeth and her advisers found themselves confronted with increased difficulties, as they usually did when the Catholics in France had a free hand. Catharine and the King saw that France was not big enough to hold at the same time the sovereign and the heir presumptive, and cast about for means to get rid of him profitably. The best suggestion for them came from the Walloon nobles in favour of Spain. Why should not Alen?on marry a daughter of the Spanish King and be made Viceroy of Spanish Flanders? The mere whisper of such an arrangement drove Elizabeth into a new course. She might hint, as she did pretty broadly many times, at the marriage of the young Prince with herself, but Alen?on thought he saw more advantage elsewhere. For the next three years he was held tightly in the leading-strings of his mother and brother—no longer a Huguenot, but an ostentatiously devout Catholic, hating the King and his surroundings bitterly; jealous, vengeful, and turbulent, but looking for his future to the Catholics and the League rather than to the Queen of England, with whom he kept up just a sufficient pretence of love-making to prevent her from opposing him in Flanders. It was doubly necessary now for Elizabeth to be friendly with Spain; but she could not afford to see Orange utterly crushed, for with the Huguenots and Protestant Holland both subdued, there was no barrier between her and Catholic vengeance. The position was a perplexing one for her. Orange sent over prayers almost daily for help, or he must abandon the struggle. At one time, in December, when the Queen learned that a great deputation of Dutch Protestant nobles were on the way to offer her Holland and Zeeland in exchange for English support, “she entered her chamber alone, slamming the door after her, and crying out that they were ruining her over this business. She declared loudly that she would have no forces sent openly to Holland. She was in such grief that her ladies threatened to burst her door open if she would not admit them, as they could not bear her to be alone in such trouble.” But loudly as she might protest, especially in the hearing of the friends of Spain, and roughly as she might use St. Aldegonde, Paul Buiz, and the rest of the Netherlanders who prayed for aid, she took care, with Burghley’s help, to look fixedly in another direction when men and arms, munitions and money, were sent over to Orange in violation of her own orders.
What Lord Burghley’s action in the matter was is seen by his letters. Beale, one of the clerks of the Council, was sent over to Zeeland to report on Orange’s position, and to insist upon the suppression of piracy. Burghley thus writes to Walsingham (16th April 1576): “I have perused all the letters and memorandum of Mr. Beale’s concerning his voyage into Zeeland, and so well allow of the whole course therein taken by the Lords, that both with heart and hand I sign them.” The Flushing pirates appear to have offered some insult to the Earl of Oxford, Burghley’s son-in-law, on his way to England, at which the Treasurer was extremely angry, an unusual thing with him. In the same letter he writes: “I find it hard to make a good distinction between anger and judgment for Lord Oxford’s misusage, and especially when I look into the universal barbarism of the Prince’s (Orange) force of Flushingers, who are only a rabble of common pirates, or worse, who make no difference whom they outrage, I mistrust any good issue of the cause, though of itself it should be favoured.” He almost violently urges that Beale should ask the Prince of Orange to avenge such an insult “by hanging some of the principals.” “Such an outrage cannot be condoned without five or six of such thieves being hanged. If the Prince were rid of a hundred of them it would be better for the cause. You see my anger leadeth my judgment. But I am not truly more moved hereto for particular causes than for the public.” The same day a very strong remonstrance from the English Council was written to Orange, saying that the piracy of the Flushing men was rendering his cause odious to all Christendom, and would ruin his enterprise.
The Netherlanders, especially Paul Buiz, who lodged with Burghley’s servant, Herll, in Redcross Street, did their best to excuse the Flushingers, and begged that “these rough men be not roughly dealt with.” It is evident that they looked upon Leicester and the Puritans as their champions rather than moderate Burghley, whose approaches to Spain at the time were, of course, well known. Herll writes (14th March 1576): “It is given out by those of good sort who profess the religion, that your Lordship has been the only obstacle to this Holland service, by dissuading her Majesty from the enterprise, when the Earl of Leicester and several earnest friends were furtherers thereof. They complain that these poor men who were sent to the Queen have been, contrary to promise, kept by indirect dealing so long here, to their utter undoing at home and abroad. They say that Sir F. Walsingham dealt honestly with them from the first. He said they would get nothing, and lose their time. They say these unworthy proceedings with foreign nations make the English the most hated men in the world, and to be contemned for mere abusers, as those who put on religion and piety and justice for a cloak to serve humours withal. Your Lordship’s enemies, however, are compelled to say that you are more subject to evil judgment for your good service than for evil itself.” When Herll spoke to Paul Buiz about Burghley’s anger at the outrage on Lord Oxford, the Netherlander “struck his breast, and said your Lordship was the only man who had dealt sincerely with them, and truly favoured their cause, and yet was forced to give them hard words, according to the alterations of the time, parties, and occasion, which kind of free proceeding he preferred of all others.”
A few months later (August) Herll was made the means of conveying to Colonel Chester, then with Orange, Lord Burghley’s view of the situation. “Her Majesty,” he says, “is so moved by those insolent delinges of the Prynce and his Zeelanders, as none dare move her to ani consideratyon towards theme, butt all is sett uppon revenge of their lewd acts and worse speche, and to extermynate them owt of the world, rather than endure it ani longer. And where the Prynce pretends aid owt of France, he dawnceth in a nett. If he se not that, her Majesty knows the contrary, and that herein he is greatly abused, or seeketh to abuse others, with small credit to hymselfe and less assurans to his estate when this maske is taken away.” The great indignation about the pirates may or may not have been sincere; but it is unquestionable that it was the fear expressed of an arrangement between Orange and the French that really caused the disquietude. The remedy to be proposed to Orange by Chester was simply that he, Orange, should prevent any repetition of the piratical outrages of the Flushing men, and apologise for them, and his friends in England will move the Queen “to help him underhand; but to say that her Majesty will be forced to do anything, maugre her will, is a great absurdity.” But if Orange will open his eyes and see things as they are, “somewhat (yea, some round portion) will be voluntarily given to the assistance of the cause, and to aid both Zeeland and Holland, especially the latter, to which country the Queen and her Council are greatly inclined.” Orange was a diplomatist as keen as Burghley himself, and he well knew that, as a last resource, he could always force the hands of the English Government by negotiating for aid from France. Elizabeth might swear at his envoys, make friends with his enemies the Spaniards, threaten to expend the last man and the last shilling she had to turn the French out of Flanders, if ever they entered; but she always ended in sending aid “underhand” to Orange to prevent his union with the French; unless, as happened later, the French were Huguenots disowned by their own King, and going as her humble servants.
Leicester was for ever clamouring for open help to be sent to Orange; the Puritans, who took their cue from him, were more aggressive than ever in the country; but ready as the Queen might be to dally Leicester, she took care to make no serious move in the knotty question of the Netherlands without the advice of her “spirit,” as she nicknamed the great Lord Treasurer. In spite of his almost continual illness, she summoned him to her, wherever she might be; and at about the period when the letters just quoted were written, the Earl of Sussex writes saying that the Queen has just received intelligence from beyond the seas which she must discuss with him at once. When Burghley had seen the Queen, either on that occasion or soon after, and returned home, Sussex writes thus: “Her Majesty spoke honourably of your Lordship’s deserts, and of her affection for you, and of your sound, deep judgment and counsel; using these words, ‘that no prince in Europe had such a councillor as she had of him.’ If your Lordship had heard her speeches, they must needs have been to your great contentment. The end of her Majesty’s speeches was that she prayed your Lordship to come to Nonsuch, as soon as you conveniently might.”
Burghley, indeed, was the only one of her ministers whom she treated with anything approaching respect, for he always respected himself. Walsingham, especially, was the object of her vulgar abuse. “Scurvy knave” and “rogue” were the terms she frequently applied to him; and it was apparently not at all an uncommon thing for her, in moments of impatience with him, to pluck off her high-heeled shoe and fling it in his face. Leicester she alternately petted and insulted. After a squabble he used to sulk at Wanstead for a few days, till she softened and commanded him to return, and then the comedy recommenced. Hatton and Heneage were treated in similar fashion, but with even less consideration. Only towards the Lord Treasurer, except for occasional fits of distrust caused by his enemies, the Queen usually behaved with decorum. How careful he was to avoid all cause for doubt is seen by his answer to Lord Shrewsbury’s offer of his son as a husband for one of Burghley’s daughters. It will be recollected that Lord Shrewsbury had the custody of the Queen of Scots, and that Burghley had fallen into semi-disgrace shortly before, because he had visited Buxton at the same time as Mary and her keeper. The match proposed was a good one, and the Lord Treasurer—a new noble—was flattered and pleased at the offer, but declined it, mainly because his enemies had put into the Queen’s head that he had gone to Buxton at the instance of the Shrewsburys, to plot in favour of Mary; “and hereof at my return to her Majesty’s presence, I had very sharp reproofs … with plain charging of me for favouring the Queen of Scots, and that in so earnest sort, as I never looked for, knowing my integrity to her Majesty, but specially knowing how contrariously the Queen of Scots conceived of me for many things.” He continues his letter with an evidently sincere protest of his loyalty and disinterestedness, and the absence in him of any personal feeling against Mary, but declares his determination to do his best, at all costs, to frustrate any attempted injury against his mistress or her realm.
Notwithstanding this small cloud, Burghley went again to Buxton in 1577. A somewhat curious letter from Leicester, who went to Buxton before him in June, shows that the Lord Treasurer’s mode of life was not always prudent. Leicester says that he and his brother are benefiting greatly from the water. “We observe our physician’s orders diligently, and find great pleasure both in drinking and bathing in the water. I think it would be good for your Lordship, but not if you do as we hear your Lordship did last time: taking great journeys abroad ten or twelve miles a day, and using liberal diet with company dinners and suppers. We take another way, dining two or three together, having but one dish of meat at most, and taking the air afoot or on horseback moderately.” In July (1577) Burghley started from Theobalds for his Lincolnshire estates, and thence to Buxton. Leicester wrote to him there that the Queen was desirous of receiving a “tun of Buxton water in hogsheads;” but when in due time the water arrived, “her Majesty seemeth not to make any great account of it. And yet she more than twice or thrice commanded me earnestly to write to you for it, and … asked me sundry times whether I had remembered it or not: but it seems her Majesty doth mistrust it will not be of the goodness here it is there; besides, somebody told her there was some bruit of it about, as though her Majesty had had some sore leg. Such like devices made her half angry with me now for sending to you for it.” This hint of her sore leg was enough to make Elizabeth sacrifice a river of Buxton water if necessary. She, like her father before her, really had an issue in one of her legs, and there was no point upon which she was more sensitive.
We have seen that from the accession of Henry III. of France in the autumn of 1574 it suited English policy to draw closer to Spain. An event happened, however, late in 1576 which once more changed the entire position. Requesens, the Spanish Viceroy of Flanders, had died in March 1576, before his mission of pacification was complete. It is true that Catholic Flanders and Brabant had been won back again, but Holland and Zeeland still stood out. The fierce Spanish infantry cared for no distinction between Fleming and Hollander, Catholic or Protestant, and were openly discontented at the conciliatory policy which Philip’s penury rendered needful. They were unpaid, for there was no money in the treasury to pay them, and soon mutiny, pillage, and murder became the order of the day. Philip was in despair, and ordered his brother Don Juan to hurry to Flanders from Italy to pacify and withdraw the troops, and to conciliate the indignant Catholic Flemings at any cost. Don Juan scorned and hated the task—which he said a woman could do better than a soldier. He was full of a secret plan to dash over to England with the Spanish infantry from Flanders; and instead of obeying orders and going direct to his new government, he hurried to Spain for the purpose of persuading his brother to allow him to have his way.
The time thus wasted was fatal. Peace with England was absolutely necessary for Philip, and he refused to countenance Don Juan’s plans. But Orange had spies everywhere; Burghley’s secretary, Herll, was in Flanders, and long before Don Juan arrived on the Flemish frontier the hopes of the murderous rabble of soldiery that the young Prince would lead them to England were well known to the Lord Treasurer and his mistress. Early in November 1576 the Spanish fury burst upon Antwerp. The Council of Regency consisted mostly of Flemish Catholic nobles, and they fought as well as they might against the blood lust of the King’s soldiers. When all hope was gone, and the fairest cities of Flanders had been devastated and ruined, and their populations massacred, without distinction of age, sex, or creed, then Catholic Flanders turned against the wreckers of their homes, and shoulder to shoulder with Orange and his Protestants, stood at bay. When Don Juan arrived at Luxemburg he was informed that the States would only allow him to take up his governorship on terms to be dictated by them in union with Orange; the first condition of which was that the Spanish troops must leave the Netherlands forthwith, and by land, in order that they might not invade England. Don Juan was mad with fury and disappointment; but chafe as he might, he had to give way, and in the end was forced to enter Brussels only as Governor on sufferance of the States in the spring of 1577.
To England there came now to beg for aid and support, not rough Zeelanders alone, not beggars of the sea, not boorish burghers, but the very nobles who had often come before as Philip’s representatives—De Croys, Montmorencis, De Granvelles, Zweveghems, and the like; Catholics of bluest blood, but ready to claim any help against the Spanish oppressor. Dr. Wilson was sent as English envoy to the States, and Sir John Smith went to Madrid with a formal offer from Elizabeth to mediate. Philip’s only course was to accept any terms which left him even a nominal sovereignty of his Netherlands dominions, and this he did, rather than allow Elizabeth to pose as mediatrix between him and his subjects. But the altered position in Flanders completely changed the attitude of England towards Spain, especially when in the summer of 1577 Don Juan lost patience, broke faith with the Flemings, threw himself into the fortress of Namur, and defied the States. England’s traditional alliance had not been with the crown of Spain, but with the House of Burgundy as possessor of the Netherlands; and now that Flanders and Brabant were at one with Holland and Zeeland in upholding their rights against Spain, England was naturally on their side against the foreigner, quite independently of the question of creed. There was no longer any concealment about it. The Duke of Arschot’s brother was at the English court in September with the acquiescence of Orange, planning an arrangement which seemed to offer a means by which all parties might be satisfied. The young Austrian Archduke Mathias, Philip’s nephew, was suddenly spirited away from Vienna and installed by the Flemings as sovereign of Flanders, with Orange as his guide and mentor. An English army under Leicester or his brother was to be raised to support him against Don Juan, who was rallying a Catholic force, crying to the Duke of Guise for help, and making a last appeal to his brother to save his honour, if not his sovereignty. The outbreak of the Protestants in Ghent, encouraged by the proximity of Orange, the capture and imprisonment of Arschot and the Catholic nobles, and the desecration of Catholic shrines (end of October), forced Philip’s hands. The Archduke Mathias as a tributary sovereign, with the Catholic Flemings paramount over Orange, might have been tolerated; but if the Protestants and Orange were going to predominate, Spain must fight to the end. So with a heavy heart Philip bent to the inevitable, and sent Alexander Farnese and a Spanish army from Italy once more to reconquer the Netherlands.
The invariable excuse given by Elizabeth for her help to the States was, that it was to keep the French out of Flanders; Don Juan’s appeal to the Guises being especially distasteful to her. “The present support desired of her,” she declared, “is only in consideration of the extreme necessity of the States by reason of the great preparations in France and elsewhere to overrun them, and bring utter ruin upon them; and it not disagreeing with the ancient treaties between the crown of England and the House of Burgundy … the purpose of the States being no other than by these succours to keep themselves in due obedience to the King their sovereign, her Majesty is content to grant the aid desired.” The plausible reasons advanced, however, made no difference to Philip. It was only evident to him that the Queen of England was subsidising rebellion against him, and that her subjects held fortresses in his dominions as a pledge for the money she had advanced. He could not afford to declare war with England at the time, but he did what he could. The Irish malcontents were encouraged with the aid of Papal money; and Catholic plots, with Spanish and Guisan aid, for the rescue of Mary Stuart, the assassination of Elizabeth, and the like, kept the English court in alarm, and pointed the moral for ever on the lips of Philip’s many paid agents and friends in Elizabeth’s counsels.
During most of the period when the arrangements with the States were being concluded in 1577, Burghley was absent from court, and it may be fairly assumed that the less cautious attitude adopted towards Spain was owing to the unchecked influence of Leicester; but with Burghley’s return late in the autumn the astute balancing diplomacy of the master-hand becomes once more apparent, both in the declaration quoted above, and the letter drafted by the Treasurer taken by Wilkes, Clerk of the Council, to Madrid. In it Elizabeth prays Philip to have compassion upon his Flemish subjects and to grant their just demands, and again explains her support of them. Moderate and deferential, however, as the tone of the letter was, it did not alter prior facts, and Philip was indignant and wrathful at what he called an attempt of Elizabeth to lay down the law for him. “Send this man off,” he says, “before his fortnight is up, and before he commits some impertinence which will oblige us to burn him.” Philip might well be angry, for he was impotent: he had to reconquer his own Flemings, Catholics and Protestants too, thanks to the aid they had obtained from Elizabeth. To make matters more galling, Antonio de Guaras had suddenly been arrested at dead of night, all his papers captured, his property sequestrated, and the poor man himself accused of consorting and plotting with the Queen’s enemies. Lord Burghley, his former friend, was daily threatening him with the rack in the Tower; and for eighteen months he was treated with calculating contumely and harshness, only at last to be released, old, broken, and penniless, and sent to Spain scornfully to die.
In January 1578, Don Juan and Farnese defeated the States troops at Gemblours, and it seemed as if once more Flanders and Brabant would fall a prey to Spanish soldiery. Elizabeth’s aid had become less liberal with the return of Burghley, who had no objection at all to Spanish predominance in Catholic Flanders; his only interest there was to keep the French out. But the Flemings naturally regarded the position from another point of view. What they wanted was to preserve their autonomous rights against Spain. Mathias had turned out a broken reed: he had no money, no followers, no friends, and no ability; and the really dominant man in the Government was Protestant Orange. This did not please the Catholic nobles, and they cast about for another prince with a greater following than Mathias, who should at once be a Catholic and yet acceptable to Orange and the Protestants. Catharine had for some time past anticipated the position, and had been busy, but secretly, pushing the claims of her son Alen?on; but for her purpose it was necessary to manage warily, in order to avoid giving Philip open offence. Alen?on, however, was bound by no such considerations. Nothing would have suited him better than to draw France into war with Spain. He was under arrest and strictly guarded, but he contrived, on the 14th February 1578, to escape out of a second-floor window in the Louvre. All France was in a turmoil. Huguenots and malcontents flocked to the Flemish frontier, and Catharine raced half over France to beg her errant son to return. Henry III. assured Mendoza, the new Spanish Ambassador on his way to England, that his brother was obedient, and he was sure he would do nothing against Philip in Flanders. But all the world knew that he would if he could; and that whatever he might do with a French force there would be against English as well as Spanish interests. Once more, therefore, it was necessary for Elizabeth to change her policy somewhat, and Lord Burghley resumed his favourite character of a friend to the ancient Spanish alliance.
The new Spanish Ambassador saw Elizabeth on the 16th March 1578, and gave her all sorts of reassuring messages from Philip. He was the most clement of sovereigns. A successor to Don Juan should be appointed who should please everybody, and all would soon be settled. A few days afterwards Mendoza had a long conversation with Burghley, in the presence of other Councillors. As Philip had, said the Treasurer, practically accepted the various concessions to the Flemings recommended by the Queen; “if the terms offered were not accepted by the States, she herself would take up arms against them.” This was probably too strong for Leicester and Walsingham, Puritans both, and Mendoza says they seemed to be urging something upon Burghley very forcibly, which he thought was the question of the withdrawal of the Spanish troops from Flanders; but it ended in Burghley again pointedly offering the Queen’s mediation.
A few days later the Duke of Arschot’s brother, the Marquis d’Havrey, Leicester’s great friend, arrived in England to counteract Mendoza’s efforts, and to beg that the troops that had been promised should be sent to the States. He was made much of by the English nobles and the Queen, who was now greatly influenced by Leicester, and Burghley at the moment seems to have stood almost alone in his resistance of open aid being sent to the States. It did not take Mendoza many days to discover how things really lay. “I have found the Queen,” he writes, “much opposed to your Majesty’s interests, and most of her ministers are quite alienated from us, particularly those who are most important, as although there are seventeen Councillors … the bulk of the business really depends upon the Queen, Leicester, Walsingham, and Cecil, the latter of whom, although by virtue of his office he takes part in the resolutions, absents himself from the Council on many occasions, as he is opposed to the Queen’s helping the rebels so effectively, and thus weakening her own position. He does not wish, however, to break with Leicester and Walsingham on the matter, they being very much wedded to the States and extremely self-seeking. I am assured that they are keeping the interest of the money lent to the States, besides the presents they have received out of the principal. They urge the business under the cloak of religion, which Cecil cannot well oppose.”
This, indeed, was one of the periods when Burghley’s moderating influence was overborne by Leicester, Walsingham, and the Puritans. The Lord Treasurer still did his best—constantly ill though he was—to stem the violence of the tide, befriending the bishops who were being bitterly attacked, and counselling caution in aiding the Flemings against Spain; but, as we have seen, he was somewhat in the background, and absented himself from court as much as possible. It is curious, however, to see, even under these circumstances, how he was still appealed to by all parties. He was very ill in April at Theobalds, and the Queen happened to be suffering from toothache. Of course Hatton must write to the Lord Treasurer, begging him to come to court and give his advice as to what should be done. The reply is very characteristic. Notwithstanding his own pain he would come up at once, he wrote, if by so doing he could relieve the Queen; but as the physicians advised that the tooth should be extracted, though they dared not tell the Queen so, all he could do would be to urge her Majesty to have it done. Hatton did not care to incur the responsibility of saying so himself, and simply showed the Queen Burghley’s letter. Doubtless Elizabeth took the good advice tendered; for it was only a day or two afterwards that young Gilbert Talbot, Lord Shrewsbury’s son, was walking in the Tilt Yard, Whitehall, one morning, under the Queen’s windows, when her maiden Majesty herself came to the casement in her night-dress, in full view of Talbot, who wrote: “My eye fell towards her, and she showed to be greatly ashamed thereof, for that she was unready and in her night-stuff; so when she saw me after dinner as she went to walk, she gave me a great fillip on the forehead, and told the Lord Chamberlain how I had seen her that morning, and how ashamed she was.” Talbot, in writing this to his father (1st May 1578) ends his letter by saying that the Queen was that week to stay three or four days with Burghley at Theobalds. It is plain to see that the renewed severity against the Catholics in England, and the almost ostentatious aiding of the States against Spain, did not meet with the approval of Burghley. He was much more concerned for the moment at the large levies of French troops being collected on the Flemish frontier; and his ordinary policy would have been either to side with the Spaniards against them, or to have disarmed their figurehead Alen?on (or Anjou as he was now called) by holding out hopes of his marriage with the Queen, if the earnest attempts of the English to mediate between the States and Don Juan were fruitless. But he had to reckon with Leicester and Walsingham, and the Queen’s policy wavered almost daily between her two sets of counsellors.
To the Queen’s visit to Theobalds is doubtless due the entry in Burghley’s diary of 15th May, recording the despatch of Edward Stafford to inspect and report upon the French forces on the Flemish frontier. Alen?on himself used every effort to convince the Queen of his desire to look to her, rather than to his brother, as his guide and support. On the 19th May he sent her a letter by one of his friends, informing her of his intention of relieving the Netherlands; “of which intention,” he says, “she already knows so much that he will not tire her by explaining it further.” On the 7th July he crossed the frontier, and threw himself into Mons for the purpose, as he declared, “of helping this oppressed people, and humiliating the pride of Spain;” and at the same time he sent his chamberlain to offer marriage to Elizabeth, and assure her of his complete dependence upon her. It was unwelcome news for Elizabeth, for she could never trust the French. Alen?on, after all, was a Catholic, and she was uncertain whether Henry III. was not really behind his brother. Gondi, one of the leaders of Catharine’s counsels, had recently come to England with a request to be allowed to see Mary Stuart; Catholic intrigues in Scotland had succeeded in putting an end to Morton’s regency (March 1578); and on all sides there were indications that, if Elizabeth could only be dragged into open hostility to Spain, and so rendered powerless, an attempt would be made on the part of France to recover its lost influence over Scotland. Mendoza carefully fanned the flame of Elizabeth’s distrust against the French; and the effect of Walsingham’s absence in Flanders, whilst Leicester was away at Buxton, is noticeable at once. “The Queen,” writes Mendoza (19th July), “is now turning her eyes more to your Majesty; and her ministers have begun to get friendly with me. If your Majesty wishes to retain them, I see a way of doing it.”
Alen?on’s agents in the meanwhile were not idle. One after the other came to assure her of their master’s desire to marry her, and look to her alone for guidance. He had quarrelled with his brother, he said, and had no other mistress than the Queen of England. They quite convinced Sussex, apparently, for he entered warmly into their marriage plans, which gave him another chance of revenge upon Leicester. Elizabeth’s desire to be amiable to Alen?on’s envoys at Long Melford during her progress (August) led her to insult Sussex, as Lord Steward, about the amount of plate on the sideboard. This gave an opportunity for Lord North, a creature of Leicester, to give Sussex the lie, and led to a further feud which continued for months.
But though Elizabeth was somewhat tranquillised with regard to the French King’s connivance in Alen?on’s proceedings, she was cool about the marriage business. “If the Prince liked to come, she told De Bacqueville, he might do so; but he must not take offence if she did not like him when she saw him;” whereupon Burghley told the envoy that if he were in his place he would not bring his master over on such a message. All the charming of Alen?on’s attractive agents was unsuccessful in opening the Queen’s money bags, and the loan of 300,000 crowns they prayed for was refused. If he wanted her aid or affection, she said, he must first obey her and retire from Flanders, and she would then consider what she should do. Pressure was put upon Alen?on by his brother, by the Pope and the Catholics, on the other hand, to desist from his enterprise. Splendid Catholic alliances were proposed to him, and dire threats of punishment held out if he did not retire. When the Protestant Hollanders discovered that Alen?on could count neither upon England nor France to support him, they began to cry off. The only temptation they had in welcoming a Catholic prince was the hope of national aid. If he did not bring that, he was as useless to them as poor Mathias had been. And so all through the autumn of 1578 the fate of Flanders hung on Elizabeth’s caprice. Henry III. was anxious to get his brother married to Elizabeth, and a fresh national alliance concluded; but he wished to avoid pledging himself against Spain, so as to be able to hold the balance. Elizabeth’s aim was similar, and she would promise nothing; but she swore both to Flemings and Spaniards that for every Frenchman that set foot in Flanders there should be an Englishman. Fresh German mercenaries were raised at her expense to aid the States; renewed attempts, backed by threats, were made to persuade Don Juan to ratify the pacification of Ghent; but Alen?on, in the meanwhile, with a dwindling force and no money, was falling to the ground between the two stools of France and England, Huguenot or Catholic. At the end of the year ominous news came that the Huguenots had been won over by the Queen-mother; that the King of France had entered into a great Catholic league against Elizabeth, and was raising a force of mercenaries in Germany to help Alen?on to keep a footing in Flanders, in spite of England; whilst a Scottish nobleman, a Douglas, was at the French court carrying on some secret intrigue with Henry III.
Elizabeth was alarmed at this, and at once became warm in the Alen?on marriage, thanks partly also to the arrival of the Prince’s agent Simier, who very soon established a complete influence over the Queen, to the infinite scandal of all Europe. Against this influence Mendoza, able, bold, and crafty, battled ceaselessly: for ever pointing at the intrigues of the French in Scotland, their old jealousy of England, the approaching marriageable age of the King of Scots, which would give an opportunity for recovering French influence in his country, and much more to the same effect. After one conversation of this sort with the Queen, late in January 1579, Mendoza drove his points home one by one to Burghley and Sussex, showing them how much more profitable was an alliance with Spain than with France, and the danger of England herself being attacked if she took the Netherlands rebels under her protection. Amongst other things Burghley replied that “he had told M. Simier that one of the principal arguments in favour of the marriage, namely, that Alen?on might become King of France, had turned him (Cecil) against it, as he considered that it would be a disadvantage to England, whereupon Simier had complained of him to the Queen. For his own part his desire had always been to see the Queen married to a prince of the House of Austria, with which it was well to be in alliance; but since old friends cast them off, and your Majesty refused to confirm the treaties, or receive a minister at your court, they must seek new friends.”
The current of affairs and the Queen’s fickleness evidently displeased the Lord Treasurer. In September (1578) he had unsuccessfully begged leave of absence to visit Burghley, where the rebuilding of the mansion was still progressing, under the care of Sir Thomas Cecil. He was not allowed to go; but the plague raged in London all the autumn, and Burghley retreated to Theobalds, where he was within easy reach of the Council. He found, moreover, Leicester’s enmity towards him more active than ever, and Hatton, now his chief henchman, for Sussex was unstable, was of inferior rank, influence, and ability. But though his political influence for a time was under a cloud, there was no abatement of the appeals to his judgment and for his intercession with the Queen. Imprisoned Catholics, deprived Puritans, old friends, like the Duchess of Suffolk, Lord Lincoln, or the Earl of Bedford, claimed his advice in their affairs; suitors at law besought his good word; miners or explorers prayed for his patronage; bishops bespoke his aid to govern their clergy; the clergy appealed to him against the bishops. High and humble, friend and stranger, rich and poor alike, looked to Burghley for guidance, and found at least patient consideration for their causes.
By the beginning of 1579, however, the aspect of European politics had become so threatening that the practised hand of the Lord Treasurer was needed at the helm, and thenceforward his influence was again in the ascendant. Simier was making violent vicarious love to the Queen, and letters of the most extravagant description were exchanged between the young Prince and Elizabeth, whilst really sincere and earnest efforts were being made in favour of the match by Henry III. and Catharine de Medici. Commissioners and ambassadors went backwards and forwards, and the conditions, not only of the Queen’s marriage, but of a national offensive and defensive alliance between France and England, were under discussion. Henry III. was ready, he said, to submit to any conditions desired by Elizabeth, and Alen?on was almost blasphemous in his praising of the charms of his elderly flame. There were two main reasons for this drawing together of England and France. Don Juan was dead, and the military genius and diplomacy of Alexander Farnese had once more separated Catholic Belgium from Protestant Holland (Treaty of Arras, January 1579). Orange himself still clung to the hope of consolidating a united Flemish nation, including north and south, and desired to use Alen?on, with the Queen of England’s support, for that purpose but there was no enthusiasm in Holland for the idea; and in the meanwhile Alen?on was isolated in Catholic Flanders, with his own brother raging at the compromising position in which he placed him, and ordering him to return to France. It was evident to Henry that the only way in which his turbulent brother could be established in Flanders, without causing both Spanish and English arms to be used against him, was to let him depend solely upon Elizabeth and Orange, whilst France stood aloof. This was one of the reasons for the closer relations desired by Catharine and her son. The other was more important still. The young King of Portugal had fallen in battle in Morocco, and the new King was an aged, childless Cardinal. Philip of Spain was already intriguing for the succession, which he claimed. The possession of the fine harbours and Atlantic seaboard of Portugal by Spain would enormously increase her maritime potency, to the detriment of England and France; and it was felt that these powers must unite to resist the common danger. That Lord Burghley was early alive to its importance is proved by a genealogical statement of his relating to the Portuguese succession immediately after the death of the King Don Sebastian (August 1578), and several memoranda of subsequent date on the subject.
Under these circumstances the Alen?on approaches again became to all appearance serious. The Prince, ceding to the pressure placed upon him, consented to retire from Flanders early in the year, and was reconciled to his brother; and then the arrangements for effective action in the Netherlands and a visit of Alen?on to England were actively proceeded with. How busy Lord Burghley was in the matter will be seen by the very voluminous minutes in his own hand of the discussions in Council on the subject (Hatfield Papers). In all probability the Queen was not even now sincere in the matter of the marriage, especially as Leicester and Hatton pretended to be warmly in favour of it, until they became personally jealous of Simier; but Burghley was evidently doubtful. In his balancing papers he gives much more space to the “perils” than to the advantages of the match, and his own final judgment is, that “except that her Majesty would of her own mind incline to marriage he would never advise thereto.” In the meanwhile, all England was in a veritable panic at the idea of the marriage of the Queen to a Papist. Puritan pulpits rang with denunciations; Stubbs’ famous book, “The Discovery of a Gaping Gulph,” which cost the author his right hand and deeply offended the Queen, was read widely; and the Queen herself was obliged to warn her eager suitor of the hatred of her people to the idea of his proposed visit. But the preparations went on, and the court was ordered to make itself as fine as money would make it, Leicester alone sending to Flanders for twelve hundred pounds’ worth of silks, velvets, and cloth of gold. Simier in the meanwhile was daily becoming more clamorous for a definite answer to his master’s proposal. Large bribes were paid by the French Ambassador and Mendoza respectively to the Councillors to forward or impede the match, and the probabilities shifted from day to day.
When the Queen seemed really bent upon the match, Burghley did not attempt to oppose her; he simply placed before her the arguments for and against it, and left the decision to her. This is exactly what Elizabeth did not wish. Simier and her own imprudence had drawn her into an extremely dangerous position, and she wished her Council to assume the responsibility of extricating her from it. Her first object in resuming the negotiations had been to get Alen?on and the French out of Flanders, whilst preventing the despair and collapse of Orange; her present aim was to secure the King of France to her side, and weaken Spain without herself being drawn into open hostility. The talk of marriage helped her in this; but if once she fell into the trap, and was married indeed, her power of balance would be gone. Driven into a corner, late in April she took Simier and the French Ambassador, with Burghley, Leicester, Sussex, and Walsingham, to Wanstead, where she desired the Councillors to give her in writing their individual opinions, in order that she might show them to the Frenchmen. They refused to do so, and once more laid before her the “perils and advantages” of each course, leaving her to decide. The Councillors mentioned sat in conference almost day and night during their three days’ stay at Wanstead, but, after all, returned as they came. Simier was furious, and threatened to go back to France; and a full Council sat at Whitehall on the 3rd May, from two o’clock in the day till two the next morning, finally to discuss the question. It was found that the only man really in favour of the marriage was Sussex, and Simier was called in and informed that his master’s conditions were unacceptable. The envoy roared out that he had been played with, and flung out of the room to make his complaint to the Queen. She was all sympathy. She wanted to get married—she must get married. It was all the fault of her Councillors, and so forth, until her ruffled “ape,” as she called him, was pacified. Alen?on was not lightly put off. He announced his intention of coming to see his goddess, no matter what the consequences might be. The Queen was for refusing him leave, but Lord Burghley pointed out to her the danger of this open affront to a French prince. She had gone too far to refuse, and she was obliged to give a passport. Simier rarely left the Queen’s side now, and she seems quite to have lost her head. Mendoza worked hard to spread the sinister murmurs of her behaviour through the country. Leicester grew violently jealous, and twice hired an assassin to kill Simier, which he nearly did once in the Queen’s own barge. The Queen was beside herself with rage, and Simier, to revenge himself upon Leicester, told the Queen, as no one else had dared to do, of the marriage of Leicester with Lady Essex. It was a master-stroke. The Queen’s fury was boundless, and she swore like a trooper at Leicester and the she-wolf he had married. For a time Leicester’s influence was gone, and Simier lived in the palace of Greenwich, to the open disgust of the English people. In August, Alen?on rushed over to England in disguise. His coming was an open secret, but the Queen kept him hid in the palace of Greenwich. She posed before him, showed off all her charms, dined and supped with him in private, fell desperately in love with him, or pretended to do so, and sent him off after a week’s stay as secretly as he came, with expressions of affection on both sides, even too fervid to be sincere, and long afterwards continued by correspondence.
Whatever might be the final result of the marriage negotiations—and Burghley himself was as much in the dark as any one on that point—a close alliance between France and England was of growing importance to both countries. The English Council under Burghley sat at Greenwich almost continuously from the 2nd to the 8th October discussing, weighing, and reporting upon the whole question of alliance and marriage. The final result was that the marriage would be undesirable, Burghley and Sussex being the only Councillors who were not strongly opposed to it. The message to the Queen was delivered by Burghley. It was ambiguous and moderate, begged the Queen to tell the Council her own mind, and so on; but there was no doubt of the meaning of it to the Queen. The Council was against the match, unless some guarantee could be found that the Protestant religion should not be imperilled. Burghley’s minute sets forth the Queen’s answer. “She shed many tears to find that her Councillors, by their long disputations, should make it doubtful whether it would be safe for her to marry and have a child.” She was a simpleton, she said, to have referred the question to them. She expected they would have unanimously begged her to marry, instead of raising doubts about it. When they saw her again later in the day she was more angry still. She railed at those who would think of “surety” before her happiness, “and that any should think so slenderly of her” as to doubt that she would take care that religion was properly safeguarded if she married. She managed, as usual, to reduce the Council to a state of confusion with her tears and reproaches; and a hasty meeting was called, at which a resolution was passed to the effect, that as the Queen seemed so much bent upon the marriage, the Councillors all offered their services to promote it. When this message was taken to her, Lord Burghley records that “her Majesty’s answers were very sharp in reprehending all such as she thought would make arguments against her marriage, and though she thought it not meet to declare to them whether she would marry with Monsieur or no, yet she looked from their hands that they should with one accord have made a special suit to her for the same.”
No wonder that with such a change on the part of the Queen from morning to afternoon, the Councillors were at their wits’ end to know what she really meant; but it is evident that she intended to have her own way, whatever it was, and lay the responsibility upon others. Burghley and Sussex had avoided open opposition, and were favourably regarded by the Queen in consequence; whilst Leicester, Walsingham, Knollys, and even her poor “sheep” Hatton, came in for a share of her vituperation and abuse; and the Puritans who were leading the outcry against the match received harder measure than ever.
Early in November she summoned the Council again, and told them that she had decided to marry. It was only for them now to consider the means. Let them, she said, individually put their opinions in writing. It was evident that this course would again bring forward the dissensions on the subject, and render it more difficult, which was perhaps her intention. Simier went and told her so, whereupon she asked him angrily how he knew what orders she had given to her Council. He replied that Lord Burghley had told him. “Surely,” she cried, “it is possible for my Councillors to keep a secret. I will see to this.” Then she sent orders to the Council to write a letter to Alen?on, asking him to come to England quickly, which they refused to do. He was, they said, coming to marry her, not them, and she ought to write herself. They openly quarrelled with Simier, who was finding England too hot for him, and who left late in November, taking with him a hastily patched draft agreement for the marriage, in which the Queen characteristically introduced at the last hour an additional loophole of escape, by stipulating that the articles should remain in suspense for two months, “during which time the Queen hopes to have brought her people to consent. If before that time she did not write consenting to receive ambassadors for the conclusion of the treaty, the whole of the conditions would be void.”
The year 1580 opened full of anxiety for Elizabeth. The ostentatious fitting out of the Spanish fleet, and the active support by Spain and the Pope of the Desmond rebellion, the success of Parma, and the desperate attempts of Orange to reunite Flanders with Holland under Alen?on in the national cause, were all so many dangers to England. If Elizabeth offended France or alienated Alen?on himself, Flemish affairs might be settled without her participation, and to her detriment, and she would have to face Spain alone. This was the more to be feared, as religious affairs in England were in a worse condition than before, and for the first time since her accession the Queen herself was unpopular. Her light conduct with Simier, and, above all, her seeming determination in favour of the Alen?on marriage, had aroused all the old hatred against the French, and had embittered the widespread Puritan distrust of the “Papists.” The country was being flooded with seminary priests, specially trained for the propaganda to which they devoted their lives, and the great Catholic party in England, having recovered somewhat from the blow of the Norfolk conspiracy, were once more holding up their heads. Elizabeth had allowed Leicester and her own passions to lead her too far, and she struggled to free herself from the toils. When she tried in January to withdraw gently from the Alen?on negotiations, and suggested to Henry III. that some fresh conditions were necessary, she found it difficult. The King was determined to throw the responsibility of breaking upon her, and it still suited him to keep up an appearance of friendship. She could, he replied, make her own stipulations; he would accept them. As for religion, that was his brother’s affair. Alen?on himself also said that he would come over at once to England and leave everything to her. He hoped she was not reviving the religious question for the purpose of deceiving him again, as some people said; but he would risk everything for his love. He went so far as to beg her to forgive Leicester for his sake, and blamed Simier for quarrelling with the Earl.
But Leicester, Hatton, and Walsingham were quite determined now to stop the marriage, which looked too serious to please them; and a cloud of questions about religion, rank of ambassadors, &c., soon threw the matter into obscurity again. How completely affairs had changed in this respect in a few weeks is seen in the long draft of a letter to the Queen at Hatfield, dated at end of January 1580, in the handwriting of Sir Thomas Cecil, although it can hardly have been really written by him to the Queen, but certainly represents the views of his father. Burghley had struggled during all his ministry, and often against great difficulties, to preserve peace with Spain, whilst holding high England’s honour and prosperity; but now that Leicester and the extreme Protestant party, together with Philip’s seizure of Portugal, had forced the Queen into a position which sooner or later must end in hostility to Spain, and perhaps with France also, Burghley urged the need for a close understanding with France, on the safest terms possible for his country.
The course now taken by the Queen seemed to render inevitable that which Burghley had all his life endeavoured to avoid, namely, the isolation of England with both of the great powers against her. The address above referred to lays down that, so long as the Queen was favourable to the Alen?on marriage, the writer was willing to sacrifice his life for it. He still maintains that it is the only safe course, and one which should enable the Queen to “rule the sternes of the shippes of Europe with more fame than ever came to any Quene of the Worelld.” But finding her Majesty utterly against it, he proposes such remedies as are necessary, at least for comparative safety. He points out that she cannot expect that France and Alen?on will sit down patiently under the slight, though they may dissemble for a time; and he suggests that Alen?on should be diverted from allying himself with Spain, by encouraging his enterprise in the Netherlands, dangerous though such a course was to England. All Papists should be dismissed from positions of trust; the army, navy, and fortifications should be placed on a war-footing; mercenary Germans should be bespoken; fresh vents for English commerce should be sought; the Irish should be conciliated, and their just grievances remedied, and “certain private disorders in Ireland winked at.” The Queen of Scots should be brought to a safer place farther south, and repressive precautions taken against her friends in England. Whoever may have given this remarkable state paper to Elizabeth, it is certain that the advice contained in it was followed. Orders were given to bring Mary Stuart to Ashby-de-la-Zouch, the mild and lenient Lord Shrewsbury being reinforced in his guard by Sir Ralph Sadler and two other known Protestants; a general muster of militia was summoned, 90,000 men in all; London was called upon for 4000 armed men; the Queen’s navy, seventeen ships, was mobilised; and negotiations were opened for Condé and a Huguenot force, with a number of mercenary German Protestants, to enter Flanders. It was considered rightly that if a large body of Huguenots depending entirely upon England were by Alen?on’s side, it would not only prevent his brother from supporting him, but would render his enterprise in Flanders less dangerous to England.
Concurrently with these precautions, the Queen renewed her extravagant love correspondence with Alen?on. There is no more remarkable instance than this of the consummate statesmanship of Burghley. The country had been driven out of the straight course in which he had held it so long, and was rapidly nearing the breakers. The document now under consideration laid before the Queen the only course which could avert destruction, and this course, as we see, she wisely took. If Burghley had openly opposed Leicester and Walsingham from the first, he would probably have fallen into disgrace, and have lost his influence entirely; but by holding aloof and tempering their policy only, he was able, when catastrophe impended, to lead the ship of state into a harbour of comparative safety. Under the influence of fear and Burghley, the Queen at the same time became most amiable to the Spaniards again. She assured Mendoza (20th February) that “she would never make war upon your Majesty, unless you began it first, which she could not believe by any means you would do.” She was, she said, a sister to Philip. “She had always done her best for the tranquillity of the Netherlands, and to prevent the French from getting a footing there.” Mendoza spoke some hard truths to her, but she was very humble.
A few days afterwards, when the French Ambassador had been driving her into a corner about Alen?on, and threatening that the Prince would publish her letters, she was closeted in her chamber at Whitehall with Burghley and Archbishop Sandys. “Here am I,” she cried, “between Scylla and Charybdis. Alen?on has agreed to all my conditions, and wants to know when he is to come and marry me. If I fail he will probably quarrel with me, and if I marry him I shall not be able to govern the country. What shall I do?” Sandys gave a courtier-like reply, and Burghley was silent. The Queen was impatient at this, and roughly told him he was purposely absenting himself from the Council. What was his advice? Thus pressed, the Lord Treasurer replied that if it was her pleasure to marry she should do so, as Alen?on had accepted the terms which rendered her safe. “That,” said the Queen, “is not the opinion of the rest of the Council, but that I should keep him in play.” Burghley was aware of this already, and dryly told the Queen that those who tried to trick princes generally ended by being caught themselves. But Elizabeth knew her profound powers of dissimulation better even than Burghley did, and went on her way. The Lord Treasurer stood almost alone among the councillors in his mild and cautious policy. Sussex, in deep dudgeon, was generally at his mansion at Newhall; and, as we have seen, Burghley himself avoided as much as possible incurring responsibility for the present action of the Queen, except so far as to advise her how to render her policy as little harmful as possible. But it is evident that Elizabeth, in moments of difficulty like this, always turned away from Leicester, and sought the sounder aid of the Lord Treasurer.
Leicester, in March, pretended to fall ill, and during his absence from court completely turned round. Now that Lord Burghley was urging for a close friendship with France, since Leicester’s policy had alienated Spain, the Earl, with characteristic instability, suddenly professed to Mendoza a desire to “serve the King of Spain.” His enemies, he said, were plotting this French alliance and marriage only to spite him, and he would bring the Queen to a close friendship to Spain. The Queen was, doubtless, aware of Leicester’s change; because when Castelnau, the French Ambassador, addressed Elizabeth with an important message from Catharine, proposing that a joint effort should be made to prevent the domination of Portugal by Philip (17th April 1580), he was referred to Burghley alone, and only after the decision had been adopted not to commence hostilities, as suggested, was Leicester let into the secret. Dangerous as it was to England that Philip should dominate Portugal, it was of more importance to France; and it was determined to cast upon the latter power, if possible, the responsibility of preventing it.
The prospect of a serious cause for dissension between France and Spain was, indeed, a welcome one for Elizabeth, and she made the most of it. The star of Morton in Scotland was waning fast, and D’Aubigny, Earl of Lennox, had already gained a complete command of the young King’s affection. Mary Stuart from her captivity was taking the grave step of laying herself, her country, and her child at the feet of the King of Spain, with the acquiescence this time of the Duke of Guise. The English Government, however, was not yet aware of this, and looked upon France as more likely than Spain to influence Scotland under D’Aubigny. Division in France was consequently promoted by Leicester and his party. Alen?on was warned not to be too pliant in agreeing with his brother; and when Condé and Navarre once again raised the Huguenot standard, the former rushed over to England to beseech for funds (June 1580), and was received several times in secret by the Queen and Leicester. He immediately sent a message to his adherents in France that all was well, and that assistance would be given to him.
After some days the Queen sent word to Castelnau, the French Ambassador, saying that she had heard that Condé was in England, but she would not receive him except in the Ambassador’s presence. Burghley, writing to Sussex, says that on arriving at Nonsuch from Theobalds, “I came hither about five o’clock, and repairing towards the Privy Chamber to see her Majesty, I found the door at the upper end shut, and understood that the French Ambassador and the Prince of Condé had been a long time there with her Majesty, with none others of the Council but my Lord of Leicester and Mr. Vice-Chamberlain Hatton.” After the audience Castelnau went to Burghley and complained of Condé for raising disturbances in France. “He augmenteth his suspicions upon the sight of the great favours shown to the Prince of Condé by certain Councillors here, whom he understandeth have been many times with him (Condé) at the banqueting-house where he is lodged.” The Queen told Burghley that Condé had asked for a contribution of one-third of the cost of a Huguenot rising, the King of Navarre and the German Protestants paying the other two-thirds; but the Lord Treasurer’s opinion of it is sufficiently expressed in the following words, which probably decided the question, for Condé did not get the aid he sought notwithstanding Leicester’s efforts: “I wish her Majesty may spend some portion to solicit them for peace … but to enter into war and therewith to break the marriage, and so to be left alone as subject to the burden of such a war, I think no good counsellor can allow.”
The fact that he had not been personally consulted earlier did not apparently ruffle Lord Burghley. In his quiet, prudent way he brought things round to his view, without caring for the personal aspect. Not so, irritable, hot-tempered Sussex. He replied in boiling indignation against Leicester—“I have never heard word from my Lord Leicester, Mr. Vice-Chamberlain, or Mr. Secretary Walsingham, of the coming of the Prince of Condé, or of his expectations, or to seek to know what I thought fit to do in his cause; whereby I see either they seek to keep the whole from me, or else care little for my opinion … perhaps at my coming some of them will mislike I am made such a stranger … I can give as good a sound opinion as the best of them … I am very loath to see my sovereign lady to be violently drawn into war.” In any case, Burghley’s unaided efforts were sufficient to prevent the Queen from giving money to Condé, and thus setting the King of France against her as well as the King of Spain. She was, indeed, in a month, so completely turned by Lord Burghley’s influence as to exert herself to bring about some sort of accord between Henry III. and the Huguenots.
During the rest of the year the haggling between Elizabeth and Alen?on went on. The deputies of the States, after much discussion, offered the sovereignty to the French Prince, whose letters to the Queen grew more preposterous than ever. It was evident that if he went too far in the Protestant direction to please Elizabeth he would be useless as a means for attracting the Catholic Flemings to cordial union with Orange; whereas an uncompromising Catholic attitude, or any appearance of depending upon his brother for armed aid, would have been fiercely resisted both by the English and the Hollanders. Many points therefore had to be reconciled, and the Queen kept the affair mainly in her own hands, playing upon the hopes, fears, and ambitions of Alen?on with the dexterity of a juggler.
Burghley’s main efforts in the meanwhile were directed to preventing her from drifting into war, either with France or Spain. When the envoys came from the Portuguese pretender, Don Antonio, they brought bribes and presents in plenty for Leicester, who entertained them splendidly, and urged their suit for assistance for their master; but again Lord Burghley pointed out to the Queen the expense she would incur and the risks she would run in a war with Spain, and one Ambassador after another went back discomfited, whilst Leicester pocketed their bribes, and alternately raged and sulked when his advice was not followed.
There were others besides Leicester whose recklessness or greed was dragging England to the brink of a war with Spain, in spite of Burghley’s efforts. Strong as was the great statesman’s interest in increasing the legitimate trade of the country, we have seen that from the beginning of Hawkins’ voyages to the West Coast of Africa, and thence to South America with slaves, Burghley had refused any participation in the syndicates that financed them. He had, it is true, on more than one occasion repudiated the claim of the Spaniards, and especially of the Portuguese, to exclusive dominion of the western world by virtue of the Pope’s bull, but he had always frowned upon the filibustering attempts of the syndicates, under the auspices of some of the aldermen of London, to establish posts in territory occupied by other Christian powers, or to force trade upon established settlements against the will of the authorities. He had honestly done his best to check robbery in the Channel by those who called themselves privateers, and almost alone of the Councillors, he had no share or interest in the piratical ventures under the English flag which had committed such destructive depredations upon shipping.
The attack upon Hawkins’ fleet at San Juan de Ulloa, 1568, had aroused fierce and not unnatural indignation amongst sailors and merchants in England; but the expedition was in defiance of the Spanish law, in a port belonging to and occupied by Spain, and it is more than doubtful whether Burghley advised the seizure of the specie belonging to Philip, in December 1568, in reprisal for the attack. There were ample reasons, and an excellent legal pretext, for the seizure of the money without that. In fact it was a master-stroke of policy which the foolish rashness of De Spes had put into Burghley’s power, and the latter and Elizabeth naturally welcomed the opportunity of crippling Alba. But when it became a question of revenging San Juan de Ulloa by the despatch of a strong armed expedition against Spanish colonies, Lord Burghley looked askance at what might well be made a casus belli by Spain, and could only enrich the mariners and shareholders who took part in it.
Drake’s raid upon Nombre-de-Dios, 1573, had been robbery pure and simple, carried out swiftly and secretly, so that the authorities at home had no opportunity, even if they had the will, to prevent it; and Drake kept out of the way for nearly three years afterwards, to escape punishment. But in 1577 he was introduced by Walsingham or Hatton to the Queen, who told him that she wished to be revenged upon the King of Spain, and that he, Drake, was the man to do it. When Drake explained his plan for a great piratical raid into the Pacific, the Queen swore by her crown that she would have any man’s head who informed the King of Spain of it; and, says Drake, “her Majesty gave me special commandment that of all men my Lord Treasurer should not know it.” But the preparations for the voyage could not be kept secret entirely from Burghley, who was well served by spies, and had many means of winning men. He could not prohibit the expedition, of course; but, as usual, he sought to render it as innocuous as possible. Thomas Doughty, presumably a barrister, certainly a man of questionable character, had become Hatton’s secretary, and was deep with Drake in the plans for the expedition. The whole business is somewhat obscure, but Lord Burghley appears to have bought this man to his interests, and, according to Doughty himself, to have offered him the post of his private secretary, which, however, is unlikely. In any case, he learned from him all that there was to know about Drake’s intentions, and when, in November 1577, Drake’s expedition sailed, Doughty accompanied it as Burghley’s secret agent, and, it may charitably be surmised, for the express purpose of moderating if not frustrating its action. First he tried to desert with his ship, and was duly chased and brought back by Drake. Then he was accused of attempting to sow discord, discouragement, and mutiny amongst the men, and Drake hanged him with his own hands on the coast of Patagonia. Winter, the other captain, drifted back to England again from Tierra del Fuego, whilst Drake in the little Pelican went on his great voyage of plunder round the world. All Europe rang with the news of his ravages in the South Seas, and the shareholders, says Mendoza, “are beside themselves with joy.” But the feelings of peaceful English merchants, and of Burghley himself, were far different. They saw that Spain had been attacked wantonly, her mariners hanged, her treasure stolen without legal excuse, her sacred edifices ransacked, and it was felt that a war of retaliation was inevitable, in which all England would suffer for the dishonest profit of a few.
One day towards the end of September 1580, after an absence of nearly three years, when most people had given up Drake for lost, the Pelican sailed quietly into Plymouth Sound, bringing in her hold plundered riches incalculable. Drake posted up to London, hoping doubtless that Elizabeth’s greed would overcome her fears of war. He was closeted for six hours with the Queen; but when he was summoned to the Council not one of his own backers was there, but only Burghley, Sussex, Crofts—a Spanish agent—and Secretary Wilson. They ordered all his treasure to be brought to the Tower, and a precise inventory made of it, preliminary to its restitution. When the order was taken to Leicester, Walsingham, and Hatton, they refused to sign, and exerted their influence with the Queen to get it suspended. Mendoza raged and threatened. The Queen was in mortal fear of war, and had promised that Drake should be punished if he came back. But she loved money, and was not blind to the injury that had been done to her probable foe by Drake’s boldness. So she temporised as usual, accepted Drake’s presents graciously, and gradually came round to making a hero of the great seaman, in spite of Mendoza’s talk of war and vengeance. She must have proofs against Drake before she punished him, she said. Besides, what were the Spanish troops doing in Ireland? When the last Spanish-Papal soldier was withdrawn, she would talk about the restitution of Drake’s plunder—not before. At present she was the aggrieved party. Gifts and bribes showered from Drake upon the Councillors; but when Burghley was offered 3000 crowns’ worth of fine gold, he refused it, saying he could not receive a present from a man who had stolen all he had, and Sussex also declined any portion of the booty. Once more it was Burghley’s task to avert or provide against the war with Spain, which the ineptitude and cupidity of others had brought within measurable distance.
Alen?on had nominally accepted the sovereignty of Flanders offered to him by the States of Ghent in the autumn of 1580; but whilst the Huguenots were in arms against his brother, he had no force of men to enable him to enter and assume the government of his new dominion. He had industriously striven to draw Elizabeth into a marriage, or into aiding him in Flanders as a price for her jilting him; but she had always been too clever for him, and kept on the right side of a positive compromise. When the fears of war with Spain engendered in England by Drake’s depredations became acute, and the Spanish aid to the Irish rebels could no longer be concealed, it was necessary once more for England to draw close to France. A request was accordingly sent for a special French embassy to come to England empowered to settle the details of the Alen?on marriage and a national alliance. Elizabeth’s letters to Alen?on became more affectionate than ever: she promised him 200,000 crowns of Drake’s plunder to pay German mercenaries to support him in Flanders, she sent the lovelorn Prince a wedding-ring, she petted and bribed his agent until her own courtiers were all jealous; and under the influence of Burghley and Sussex, once more the marriage negotiations assumed a serious aspect, whilst Leicester and Hatton chafed in the background.
The activity of the seminary priests and missionaries, in conjunction with the Papal invasion of Ireland, had been answered in England by fresh severity against the Catholics. The gaols were all full to overflowing with English recusants; fresh proclamations were issued against harbouring priests; and spies at home and abroad were following the ubiquitous movements of the zealous young members of the Society of Jesus, who yearned for the crown of martyrdom. There is no doubt that to some extent the new persecution of the Catholics was for the purpose of reconciling the Puritans to the Alen?on match, but it was still more owing to the genuine alarm of a war against Spain and the Pope.
Parliament opened on the 16th January 1581, after twenty-four prorogations, this only being its third session, although it was elected in 1572. We have already seen that the Puritan party was strong in the House of Commons, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Walter Mildmay, in his speech, voiced the general feeling of the country at the dangers that seemed impending. “Our enemies sleep not,” he said, “and it behoveth us not to be careless, as though all were past; but rather to think that there is but a piece of the storm over, and that the greater part of the tempest remaineth behind, and is like to fall upon us by the malice of the Pope, the most capital enemy of the Queen and this State.” He denounced the “absolutions, dispensations, reconciliations, and such other things of Rome. You see how lately he (the Pope) hath sent hither a sort of hypocrites, naming themselves Jesuits, a rabble of vagrant friars, newly sprung up, running through the world to trouble the Church of God.” The aim of the oration, of course, was to lead the House to vote liberal supplies for the defence of the country, and in this it was successful; though, when the Puritan majority endeavoured to appoint days of fasting and humiliation by Parliamentary vote, they were rapped over the knuckles by the Queen, as they had been in the previous session, for interfering with her prerogative.
The country, in fact, was now thoroughly alive to the danger into which it had drifted, and Lord Burghley’s hand once more took the tiller, to remedy, so far as he might, the evils which had resulted from the temporary abandonment of his cautious policy. His task was not an easy one to settle the preliminaries of the pompous embassy which was to come from France. There were a host of questions to be considered. The Queen would insist upon the Ambassadors being of the highest rank, and having full powers. Leicester and Hatton objected to their coming at all; Alen?on insisted that they should be only empowered to negotiate a marriage, and not an alliance; whilst Cobham, the English Ambassador, endeavoured ineffectually to draw Henry III. into a pledge to break with Spain about Portugal before the embassy left France. At last all was arranged, and in April the Ambassadors, with a suite of two hundred persons, arrived in London. Drake’s silver was drawn upon liberally for presents; a new gallery was built at Whitehall for the entertainment of the envoys; Philip Sidney wrote a masque, and played the fool for once for their delectation; and joust and tourney, ball and banquet, succeeded each other hourly, to the exclusion of more serious business.
Leicester had done his best to stop the embassy, but without effect, and wrote to Lord Shrewsbury that he “was greatly troubled at these great lords coming.” He tried to work upon the Queen’s weak side, by assuring her that the one object of the Frenchmen was to lead her into heavy expenditure, and so to enfeeble her, that she might the more easily be conquered. This, at all events, caused some restriction in the expenditure; for the Queen suddenly discovered that it would not be dignified for her to entertain the Ambassadors or pay for horses until they actually arrived in London. Burghley may be presumed to have been delighted at their coming, for he made no effort to limit the cost of his banquet to them at Cecil House, in the Strand, which was one of the most splendid entertainments offered to them. There is in the Lansdowne MSS. a full relation of this splendid feast of the 30th April, with the bills of fare, accounts of expenses, &c., which gives some notion of the splendour and extent of Burghley’s household. There were consumed two stags, 40s.; two bucks, 20s.; six kids, 24s.; six pigs, 10s.; six shins of beef, 24s.; four gammons of bacon, 16s.; one swan, 10s.; three cranes, 20s.; twenty-four curlews, 24s.; fifteen pheasants, 30s.; fifty-four herons, ￡8, 15s.; eight partridges, 8s., and vast quantities of meat of all sorts; and sturgeon, conger, salmon, trout, lampreys, lobsters, prawns, gurnards, oysters, and many sorts of fresh-water fish. Herbs and salads cost no less than 36s., and cream, 27s. There were consumed 3300 eggs, 360 lbs. of butter, 42 lbs. of spices, and three gallons of rose-water. ￡11, 7s. 3d. was paid for the hire of extra vessels and glass; flowers and rushes cost ￡5, 7s. 10d., and Turkey carpets, ￡11. This Gargantuan feast was served by forty-nine gentlemen and thirty-four servants, and was washed down with ￡75 worth of beer as well as Gascon, sack, hippocras, and other wine costing ￡21; the entire expenditure on the afternoon’s feeding being ￡649, 1s. 5d.
Though Burghley and Sussex had brought over the embassy in hopes of a marriage, or at least an alliance, the Queen changed from hour to hour. When Leicester complained to her, she silenced him by saying that she could avoid a marriage whenever she liked by bringing Alen?on over whilst the embassy was in England, and then setting the Frenchmen at loggerheads, and by subsidising the Prince’s attempts in Flanders. At the same time she certainly led Sussex, and probably Burghley, to believe that she might be in earnest at last.
After some weeks the elder Ambassadors got tired of trifling, and begged the Queen to appoint a committee of the Council to negotiate with them. The great banquet at Burghley House was the preliminary meeting, and a paper at Hatfield, endorsed by Burghley, lays down, in the usual precise manner of the time, every aspect of the matter. The propositions are three: 1st, if the Queen should remain unmarried; 2nd, if she should marry Alen?on; and 3rd, if she should enter into some strait league with the French. In the first eventuality the Queen must strengthen herself and weaken her opponents; Scotland must be reduced to the same friendship that existed before the advent of D’Aubigny; James’s marriage to a Catholic must be prevented; Mary Stuart must be held tightly; Ireland must be subdued; the entire domination of Spain over the Netherlands must be avoided, and an alliance concluded either with France or the German Protestants. In the second eventuality, that the Queen should marry Alen?on, the writer urges that the wedding should take place without delay, but always on condition that religion in England must be safeguarded, and Henry III. pledged to provide most of the means for Alen?on’s enterprise in Flanders. On the other hand, if the marriage is not to take place, care must be taken that no offence is given to the suitor. “Since the treaty with Simier many accidents have happened to make this marriage hateful to the people, as the invasion of Ireland by the Pope, the determination of the Pope to stir up rebellion in this realm by sending in a number of English Jesuits, who have by books, challenges, and secret instructions and seductions, procured a great defection of many people to relinquish their obedience to her Majesty. Likewise there is a manifest practice in Scotland, by D’Aubigny, to alienate the young King of Scotland, both from favouring the Protestant religion and from amity to her Majesty and her realm, notwithstanding that he hath only been conserved in his crown at her Majesty’s charges.”
Although this paper has usually been treated as emanating from Burghley, I consider it much more likely to have been the work of Walsingham. There is at Hatfield, of similar date (2nd May 1581), a note, all in the Lord Treasurer’s hand, for his speech to the Ambassadors, and this is preceded by a private remark that, before a definite answer can be given, “it is necessary to know her Majesty’s own mind, to what end she will have this treaty tend, either to a marriage or no marriage, amity or no amity.” As Burghley seems not to have possessed this information, it is not surprising that the draft of his speech simply tends to delay. The Queen has written to Alen?on, he says, and must have a reply before she can say anything definite about the marriage; but as there has been some talk on both sides of a close alliance, the Queen expects the Ambassadors to be empowered to deal with that also.
The Ambassadors themselves give an account of a speech of Burghley’s, either on this or another occasion, in which he declared that, although he was formerly against the marriage, he now personally thought it desirable. Brisson replied in a similar strain, and then the strong Protestantism of Walsingham asserted itself. He said that the hope of the marriage had caused the Pope to flood England with Jesuits and invade Ireland, the Catholics in England were already in high feather about it, and Alen?on had broken faith, and had entered into negotiations with the States General, since Simier took the draft treaty. Besides, he said, look at the danger of child-bearing to the Queen at her age. The marriage would probably drag England into war at least, and until the Queen received a reply to her letters the negotiations for the marriage must stand over.
It is quite evident that the Queen desired an alliance without a marriage, and to draw France into open hostility to Spain, whilst she remained unpledged. But Secretary Pinart was almost as clever as Burghley, and played his cards well, and no progress was made. Let them marry first, said Pinart, it would be easy to make an alliance afterwards. Affairs were thus at a deadlock. Alen?on was on the frontier with a body of men ready to enter Flanders to relieve Cambray, when his brother’s forces dispersed them. It was then clear to the Prince that he must depend upon the Queen of England alone; and ceding to the pressure of his agent in England, he suddenly rushed over to London (2nd June), to the confusion of the Ambassadors, who shut themselves up to avoid meeting him. The Queen was all smiles, for she was satisfied now that Alen?on was obliged to look to her only for aid, marriage or no marriage. Alen?on went back after a few days as secretly as he had come, but every one saw that the Queen had won the trick; and the pompous embassy went back loaded with presents, but only taking with it a draft marriage treaty, accompanied by a letter from Elizabeth, saying that she might alter her mind if she liked, in which case the treaty was to be considered as annulled.
In the meanwhile Mendoza was watching closely the attempts of Leicester to persuade the Queen to aid Don Antonio in Portugal, as well as to provide means for Alen?on in Flanders. Walsingham had laid a trap for Mendoza, who was induced to pay a large sum of money to some Hollanders who promised to betray Flushing to the Spaniards, but really did just the opposite. The Hollanders left with the Spanish Ambassador the child son of one of them as a hostage. By orders of Walsingham the embassy was violated and the boy taken away; and this amongst many other grievances was the source of endless squabbling with the Queen, who invariably retorted to all Mendoza’s complaints that Philip had connived at the invasion of Ireland. After one of his interviews with the Queen (24th June) he writes: “It is impossible for me to express the insincerity with which she and her ministers proceed.… She contradicts me every moment in my version of the negotiations.… I understood from her and Cecil, who is one of the few ministers who show any signs of straightforwardness, that they understood that your Majesty intended to write to the Queen assuring her that the succour had not been sent to Ireland on your behalf. I told them that the matter referred to the Pope alone, but Cecil said they wished to see a letter from your Majesty;” whereupon Mendoza angrily told him that the word of an Ambassador was sufficient.
On the same day that this conversation took place, Burghley’s task of keeping the peace was rendered still more difficult by the arrival in England of the fugitive Portuguese Pretender, Don Antonio, who was at once taken up by Leicester and Hatton. The Spanish Ambassador was told by Hatton that if he wanted his passports he could have them, and the Queen almost insultingly refused him audience. Mendoza then wrote her a letter, which he thought the Queen would be obliged to show to the whole Council, “where I was sure some of the members would point out to her the danger she was running in refusing to receive me and thus irritating your Majesty. Cecil, particularly, who is the person upon whom the Queen depends in matters of importance, had seen me a few days before, and said how sorry he was that these things should occur, and that he should be unable to remedy them, as he was sure I could not avoid being offended.”
A few weeks afterwards Mendoza made another attempt to see the Queen, who was then in the country. She said that as Philip had not written any excuse about the Spanish expedition to Ireland, she did not see her way to receive the Ambassador. If he had anything to say he might tell it to two Councillors. Burghley was known to be the most favourable of them, and had expressed to Mendoza his ignorance that the audience had been refused. “He did not think it wise to refuse me; and as he is the most important of the ministers I thought best to inform him of the reply I had received, and to say I should like to see him.” Burghley was ill of gout at Theobalds at the time, but shortly afterwards he came to town and asked Mendoza to see him at Leicester House, “his gout preventing him from coming further.” Mendoza found him with Leicester together, and in reply to the stereotyped complaints of the Ambassador about Drake’s plunder, the aid to the Portuguese, and the refusal of audience, the Treasurer firmly told him that the Queen thought he had been remiss in not obtaining a letter from the King disclaiming the Irish expedition. This Mendoza haughtily refused to do, and the conference ended unsatisfactorily.
It is evident that at this period (August 1581) Burghley was in despair of keeping on friendly relations with Spain. The Queen and Leicester had determined to subsidise Alen?on in Flanders, and to countenance Don Antonio’s attempts on Portugal. This coming after the retention of Drake’s plunder, and refusal of audience to the Ambassador, seemed to make the continuance of peace between the two countries impossible, and Burghley was once more obliged to turn to the necessary, but to him distasteful, alternative—a close union with France.
The great French embassy had gone back defeated, for they saw that Elizabeth was befooling Alen?on, and that the national alliance would only be made on terms advantageous to English interests in Flanders. But it was necessary for Henry III. and his mother to cling to England if they were effectually to oppose Philip in Portugal. The Guises were becoming more overbearing and powerful than ever under the popular Duke Henry; they were known to be turning towards Spain, and their ambitions were high both for themselves and for their cousin Mary Stuart. To avoid the complete subjugation of France to their ends, the King was therefore obliged to court Elizabeth, and suffer her to have her way with Alen?on and Flanders. Henry III. consequently asked Elizabeth, through Somers, to name a day for the marriage, simultaneously with which an offensive and defensive alliance would be concluded, and a secret agreement entered into with regard to the establishment of Alen?on in Flanders. This, of course, was understood to be merely fencing, and Walsingham himself was sent to France to conclude a treaty. He was instructed to say that the French were mistaken in supposing that the marriage was settled. The Queen could not consent to the marriage now, for, as Alen?on was already in arms against the King of Spain, it would “bring us and our realme into war, which in no respect our realme and subjects can accept.” But if the King will accept her secret aid to Alen?on’s plan in Flanders, and the opposition to Spain in Portugal, she will be willing to conclude an offensive and defensive alliance with him. In any case, the marriage was to be abandoned. Walsingham saw Alen?on in Picardy before going to Paris, and, as may be supposed, the young Prince was in despair at the Queen’s fickleness. He was certain his brother would not make an alliance without the marriage, as he feared the Queen would slip out of it, leaving France alone face to face with Spain. If, said Catharine, who was with her son, the Queen of England broke her word about the marriage for fear of her people, she might break an alliance for a similar reason. But Walsingham made it clear to both of them that Elizabeth would not allow herself to be dragged into war with Spain, though covert aid should be given to her late suitor. Poor Alen?on wept and stormed, but in vain. Anything short of marriage was useless to him, he said. His brother neither had helped nor would help him against Spain, unless the marriage took place. He himself would come to England for an answer from the Queen’s lips as soon as he had raised the siege of Cambray. Elizabeth complained of Walsingham’s management of the interview; he could rarely content her. He had, she said, been too abrupt in breaking off the marriage. Burghley pointed out to her that she could not have all her own way. She wanted, he said, to keep the marriage afoot, and yet not to marry; to aid Alen?on secretly, whilst France aided him openly; to conclude an alliance by which she gained everything, and France nothing.
Elizabeth, in a rage, swore that Leicester and the Puritans were dragging her into all sorts of expense and trouble, from which she could not extricate herself without war. Walsingham was soon disgusted with his task, for he could make but little progress in Paris, and the Queen found fault with him constantly. He answered boldly, almost rudely, to all her strictures. He told her that with all this hesitation about the marriage “you lose the benefit of time, which, if years be considered, is not the least thing to be weighed. If you mean it (the marriage) not, then assure yourself it is one of the worst remedies you can use.… When your Majesty doth see in what doubtful terms you stand with foreign princes, then you do wish with great affection that opportunities offered had not been overslipped; but when they are offered you, if they be accompanied by charges, they are altogether neglected. The respect of charges hath lost Scotland, and I would to God I had no cause to think it might not put your Highness into peril of losing England.”
Even Burghley, with all his influence, was in despair at getting the Queen to spend any money. Walsingham had told the Queen that if she lent Alen?on 100,000 ducats secretly he might be appeased. Burghley pointed out to her that her niggardliness was ruining the chance of effectually weakening Spain. “In no wise,” writes Burghley, “would she have the enterprise of the Low Countries lost, but she will not particularly warrant you to offer aid. She allegeth that now the King (of France) hath gone so far he will not abandon it.… Her Majesty is also very cold in the cause of Don Antonio, alleging that she liketh it only by opportunity [importunity?] of her Council; and now that all things are ready, ships, victuals, and men, the charges whereof come to ￡12,000, she hath been moved to find ￡2000 more needful for the full furniture of the voyage, wherewith she is greatly offended with Mr. Hawkins and Drake, as the charges are greater than was said to her … hereupon her Majesty is content not to give a penny more; and now after Drake and Hawkins have made shift for the ￡2000, she will not let them depart until she be assured by you that the French will aid Don Antonio, for she feareth to be left alone.… All these things do marvellously stay her Majesty … yet she loseth all the charges spent in vain, and the poor King (Antonio) is utterly lost.”
But Burghley might reason and remonstrate, Walsingham might tell her, as he did, that the penuriousness would bring her to ruin, Elizabeth would not open her purse strings until it was almost too late. Alen?on had made a dash into Flanders soon after seeing Walsingham in August, and relieved Cambray, and then being absolutely penniless, his brother, in a fright at his boldness, refusing any aid, the Queen was obliged to send him ￡20,000 to prevent the abandonment of the whole business, and a union with the Guises which he threatened. He returned to France after a few weeks, and then again announced his intention of coming to England to exert his personal influence on the Queen. To stave off the visit several other sums of money were sent to him. Leicester, too, strove his hardest to stop it; but Alen?on’s agents and Alen?on’s lovelorn epistles were more flattering to the Queen even than Leicester, and the lover came early in November.
Although Walsingham had almost arranged a draft treaty of alliance without marriage when he was in Paris, it fell through on the eternal question of the Queen’s “charges” and responsibility, and when Alen?on arrived in England the whole matter was as far from settlement as ever. Of the extraordinary cajolery by which the Queen alternately raised Alen?on to the pinnacle of hope and plunged him to the depths of despair during his stay with her at Richmond and Whitehall, a full description will be found elsewhere. By her dexterity she bound him personally to her, and made it appear that the only obstacles to the match were those raised by the King of France. From the coming of Alen?on it is clear that Leicester alone understood the Queen’s game. The earl was radiant and joyous, which made Sussex distrust the result, notwithstanding appearances. So far as he could Lord Burghley held aloof, although when the Prince came to London he waited upon him with other Councillors formally every morning at nine. When the famous scene was enacted (22nd November) in the gallery at Whitehall, where the Queen boldly kissed her suitor on the lips and publicly pledged herself to marry him, Burghley was confined to his bed with an attack of gout. The Queen sent him an account of what had passed. Mendoza reports that he thereupon exclaimed, “Blessed be the Lord that this business has at last reached a point where the Queen, on her part, has done all she can; it is for the country now alone to carry it out.” The deduction which Mendoza drew from this exclamation was probably the correct one. To him it proved that the whole plan was insincere on the part of Elizabeth, and that the intention was to cause conditions to be imposed by Parliament which the King of France could not accept, and then to throw the responsibility of the breach upon the latter.
This was all very well, but it was a reverse for Burghley’s policy. Leicester and Walsingham had drawn the Queen into a position of almost open hostility to Spain; and yet a close union with France was rendered difficult by Elizabeth’s fickleness and dread of responsibility, and by Leicester’s jealousy. As usual in such circumstances, Burghley cautiously endeavoured to redress the balance. When the treaty with France seemed assured, Mendoza had been refused audience, and on remonstrating with Burghley he had found him far less willing to be friendly than before. Leicester quite openly talked about turning the Spanish Ambassador out of England, and even Burghley had replied, to an application for audience on behalf of Mendoza to deliver a letter from Philip to the Queen, who was at Nonsuch, that the Queen was alone and unattended by Councillors, “and as Don Bernardino is to bring letters to the Queen from so great an enemy to her as his master, it is meet that he should be received as the minister of such a one.” When the Spaniard did see the Queen (October), his threats and complaints about Don Antonio and Alen?on were met with anger and indignation by her. All the old complaints on both sides were repeated, and both then and later Mendoza was certain by the attitude of Leicester, Hatton, and Walsingham, that they were determined to have war with Spain, and that Burghley, for once, would not stand in their way.
But a change came in the attitude of the latter in December. It seemed then impossible for the Queen to withdraw her pledges to Alen?on without a breach with France, whilst she could hardly help him without a war with Spain. Scottish affairs, moreover, were a subject of deep anxiety. D’Aubigny was now master, and Morton, to Elizabeth’s indignation, had been executed. Catholic priests and Jesuits were known to be flitting backwards and forwards; and worst of all, Mary Stuart had, for the first time since her flight, opened up friendly negotiations with her son’s Government, and had formally joined James with herself in her sovereignty. She had moreover written confidently asking for many fresh concessions which Elizabeth was loath to grant her.
Any appearance of an approach of the French and Scots always drew England and Spain together, and with the added dangers already cited, this was quite sufficient to change Lord Burghley’s tone. Mendoza accordingly reports (25th December 1581) that, at a meeting of the Council held to consider the situation, Burghley suggested that an alliance should be made with Spain, and an agreement arrived at with regard to the Low Countries. This was approved of by the Lord Chancellor (Bromley), the Lord Admiral (Lincoln), and Crofts. Sussex held aloof, wavering between his enmity to France and Leicester, and his attachment to Protestantism; whilst Leicester, Walsingham, Hatton, and Knollys were strenuously opposed to any approach to Spain, as they were, even more violently, to Burghley’s proposal that Drake’s plunder, or what was left of it, should be restored. A few days afterwards Burghley had some business with a Spanish merchant established in London, and to him he expressed a desire that negotiations should be opened for an agreement between the two countries. When the merchant carried the message to Mendoza, the latter attributed the suggestion entirely to the fear which he had aroused by his firmness, and he made no response. Mendoza himself, indeed, one of the warlike Alba school, had now no hope or desire for peace. The rise of D’Aubigny in Scotland and the coming of the Jesuits had quite altered the position during the last year, and Mendoza had in his hands a plot that seemed to promise the triumph of the Catholics.
As early as April 1581, Mary Stuart had renewed her approaches to Spain through the Archbishop of Glasgow in Paris. “Things were now,” she said, “better disposed than ever in Scotland for a return to its former condition … and English affairs could be dealt with subsequently. The King, her son, was quite determined to return to the Catholic religion, and much inclined to an open rupture with the Queen of England.” She begged for armed aid from Philip, to be landed first in Ireland, and to enter Scotland at a given signal after the alliance between Scotland and Spain had been signed. Nothing came of this at the time; and after several other attempts on the part of Mary to get into touch with the Spaniards, she became distrustful of her Ambassador (Archbishop Beton) and other intermediaries, and contrived in November to communicate with Mendoza direct. She had heard that all the priests who flocked into Scotland and England looked to him for guidance, and that through them he had sent a message to the Scottish Catholics, saying that everything now depended upon Scotland’s reverting to the old faith. The English Catholic nobles then at liberty had, at Mendoza’s instance, formed a society with this object, and secretly sent two priests to sound James and D’Aubigny, and to promise that they would raise the north of England, release Mary, and secure the English succession to James. They brought back a favourable reply, which the ambassador at once conveyed to Allen and Persons on the continent. This was late in the autumn of 1581, and Mendoza looked coldly upon Burghley’s new advances, for he was now the centre of the plot to overthrow Elizabeth by means of the Scottish Catholics, a plot in which, against his will, he was obliged to make use of the Jesuit missionaries, who themselves at first had no idea of the Spanish political aims that underlay the conversion of Scotland to Catholicism.
Side by side with the Jesuits, Creighton, Persons, and Holt, who were employed in the political movement, were others who had been sent to England and were intended purely for spiritual work. They had been extremely successful in their propaganda, and had once more infused spirit into the English Catholic party. This could not be done without the printing and dissemination of books, as well as preaching, and the spies of the Council were directed to track to earth the priests who were at the bottom of the movement. Nearly every writer upon the subject has taken for granted that Lord Burghley was at the bottom of the persecution which followed. Such, however, does not appear to have been the case. As we have seen, the Lord Treasurer insisted upon some uniformity in the practice of the Anglican Church, but he must have known that many of his closest friends, and the colleagues upon whom he depended in the Council, were Catholics, and his lifelong tendency was to a political union with Spain, the champion of Catholic Christendom. He was determined, it is true, to crush treason to the Queen and the institutions of the country, no matter who suffered; and when Catholicism meant revolution he harried it fiercely; but he was no persecutor for the sake of religion itself, and the cruel torture and execution of Campion, Sherwin, and Briant, during Alen?on’s visit to England (1st December 1581), for denying the Queen’s supremacy, were almost certainly prompted in the main by Walsingham, Knollys, and the Puritans, who were in a fever of apprehension lest the marriage with Alen?on would lead to toleration of the Catholic faith. The men actually executed were not in fact employed in the political portion of the propaganda at all, but were honest religious missionaries; but they, and the scores of other Catholics who were swept into prison at the time, were useful object lessons for Walsingham and Leicester, whose aims, as we have seen, were in direct opposition to those of Burghley. The latter, indeed, was at the very time of the execution approaching Mendoza with suggestions for an alliance with Spain, which were coldly received for the reasons already explained.
During Alen?on’s stay in England, the Queen, who was playing her own game, which was to reduce the Prince to utter dependence upon her and to distrust of his brother, had been constantly thwarted by the jealousy of Leicester and Hatton. They were for granting enormous sums to the suitor to get rid of him at any cost, which was no part of the Queen’s plan. Lord Burghley alone of the Councillors never displeased her in the matter; whenever it was a question of large expenditure, he always had a convenient attack of gout, and thus never openly thwarted the Queen. The difficulty was to get Alen?on out of the country without ruinous expense or further pledges, and when it was found that all the Queen’s persuasions were unavailing she had to employ Burghley’s diplomacy. He began by inflaming the young Prince’s ambition, and enlarging upon the splendid destiny awaiting him in his new sovereignty, which was now clamouring for his presence. Promises were made never meant to be literally fulfilled, of the vast sums the Queen would contribute to his support, and at last, after infinite trouble, he was induced to promise to sail for Flanders. He wished to stay until the new year; but when Burghley pointed out to him the large amount of money he would have to spend in presents he seemed to give way, for money he had none. But when the time came he still stayed on. The Queen told Burghley after supper on Christmas night that she would not marry the lad to be empress of the world, and that he must get rid of him somehow. Catharine de Medici, the Prince of Orange, the German princes, and the French Ambassador all added their pressure to that of the Queen and Burghley to get Alen?on out of England. Leicester and Hatton fumed and threatened. Burghley at last frankly told the Queen that the only way to get rid of her suitor was to provide a sum of ready money for him, and promise that he should come back to England as soon as he was crowned. The Queen did not like the alternative, and said she must wait for the King of France’s answer to her last demands. This time Catharine de Medici beat her with her own weapons. The answer was a full acceptance of everything required by the English; and to make it more complete, Alen?on said he was willing to become a Protestant.
This was indeed alarming, and the Queen sent hurriedly to Burghley to get her out of the scrape. His suggestion this time was that she should demand Calais and Havre as security for the fulfilment of the King’s promises, which was a device after her own heart. But still Alen?on would not go, and the Queen became seriously alarmed. She promised him ￡60,000; but Burghley was opposed to any such sum as that being paid, or indeed more than was necessary for the Prince’s voyage. The Queen said that she did not mean to pay it, but only to promise it, which was quite another matter. It is evident that Burghley was now quite undeceived, and against both the pretence of marriage and any large support being given to Alen?on. He dreaded the revenge of France for the insult put upon it; and of Spain, for aiding the Frenchman’s usurpation of Philip’s sovereignty under English protection. His remedy, as usual, was a friendship with Spain. Walsingham, on the other hand, was all in favour of vigorous help to Orange and a war with Spain. The Queen usually leant to the side of Burghley, but was swayed hither and thither by her fears of France, by Pinart’s threats, Alen?on’s tears, Leicester’s jealousy, and her own greed and vanity.
At last after infinite trouble Alen?on sailed with fifteen ships, attended by Leicester (sorely against his will), Hunsdon, Sidney, Willoughby, Howard, and Norris, to take upon himself the sovereignty of Holland and Flanders. The Queen after all had to provide a large sum of money, but it was sent to the States, and not entrusted to Alen?on, except a personal present of ￡25,000 from the Queen. Leicester escaped from the new sovereign’s side on the very day he was crowned, and hurried back to his mistress’s side. He reported that Alen?on and the French were hated by the Protestant Dutchmen, who had only admitted him because the Queen of England was behind him. The English Ambassador in Paris at the same time sent word that Henry III. had repudiated his brother’s action, and had denounced as traitors all those who aided him.
This was exactly what Elizabeth feared. She had offended both the great powers, and was alone. She swore at Leicester for sanctioning, by his presence, the investiture of Alen?on; she railed at Walsingham as a knave for dragging her into such a business; and she insisted upon Burghley, who was ill with fever in London, getting up and coming to Windsor to tell her what to do. When he appeared, she asked him whether it would not be better for her at once to become friendly with Spain. Thus, though the sagacious Lord Treasurer had let her go her own way, she had at last been brought by circumstances to propose his policy again. “He replied that nothing would suit her better, especially if peace could be arranged in the Netherlands by the concession of liberty of conscience.” Sussex was of the same opinion, but distrusted both the Queen and Burghley, who, he said, had spoken coolly on the subject on the Council. There is, however, no reason to doubt that the Treasurer was sincere in his desire for such an arrangement, which indeed was the only one which seemed to promise peace to England.
In the meanwhile the Spanish and Jesuit plot in Scotland was progressing. Guise had drifted further and further away from Henry III. and his mother, from whom he saw he could get no aid for Mary Stuart or his own ambitious plans. When, therefore, the Queen of Scots had offered her submission and the sending of her son to Spain, he had separated himself from French interests, and tendered his own humble services to Philip. This made all the difference. If the Holy League and this undertaking made the Guises Catholics and Spaniards before they were Frenchmen, Philip need have no hesitation in helping their niece to the crowns of Scotland and England; and the Jesuits were set to work to secure James and D’Aubigny, whilst Mary Stuart’s spirits rose high. The Scottish Catholic nobles were ready to rise, and even, if necessary, to kill or deport the King if he would not be a Catholic. All they asked was a force of two thousand foreign troops. D’Aubigny entered eagerly into the affair, and by the spring of 1582 all was arranged, when the Jesuit emissaries and D’Aubigny between them mismanaged it. Guise was foolishly brought into the plan by D’Aubigny, and he wanted to invade the south of England with his troops at the same time. D’Aubigny made exaggerated claims for himself, and the Scottish Catholic nobles followed suit. Philip recognised that Guise was still playing for his own hand, though not for France. If Mary was to be Queen of Great Britain and his humble servant, she must owe her crown to him, and not to Guise. Philip therefore grew cool, and the raid of Ruthven and the banishment of D’Aubigny, by which young James fell into the hands of the Protestants (August 1582), effectually put an end to the projects of invasion for a time.
On the 18th March 1582, Alen?on in Antwerp was giving an entertainment on the occasion of his birthday, when the Prince of Orange was stabbed, it was thought mortally, by a young Spaniard hired by those greater than himself. The one cry, both in Holland and in England, was, that Alen?on and his false Frenchmen were at the bottom of the crime, and, but for the fortitude of Orange, every Frenchman in the Netherlands would have been massacred. Elizabeth was beside herself with fear. Her first impulse was to get Alen?on out of Flanders, even if she brought him to England; but Walsingham gravely warned her that if the Prince came again she would certainly have to marry him.
Whilst Orange lay between life and death, Leicester, Hatton, Knollys, and Walsingham were for ever urging the Queen boldly to take Flanders and Holland under her own protection, whilst Burghley, aided by Sussex and Crofts, again advocated an arrangement with Spain. But the latter were in a minority; the Protestant feeling of the country was thoroughly aroused at the attempted murder of Orange, and Burghley was obliged to be cautious. Mendoza was instructed by Philip, March 1582, to use his influence with the Council to prevent aid being given to Alen?on. “I have,” writes Mendoza, “tried every artifice to get on good terms with some of them, but they all turn their faces against me, particularly the Lord Treasurer, whom I formerly used to see, the rest of them being openly inimical. Only lately I sought an opportunity of approaching him again, and asked him to see me. He replied that his colleagues looked upon him as being very Spanish in his sympathies, and therefore he could not venture to see me alone, except by the Queen’s orders. I had, he said, better communicate my business through Secretary Walsingham, in the ordinary course.”
Walsingham, on the other hand, lost no opportunity of widening the breach, in order to force the Queen to more vigorous action in favour of the Dutch Protestants. In May he sent an insulting message to Mendoza, to the effect that the Queen would not receive him until some satisfaction was given about Ireland. The Ambassador at once complained to Burghley. War, he said, might well result from this treatment of him. Burghley endeavoured to minimise the slight. It was a mistake of the messenger, he said, and Mendoza had better write to the Queen. He did so, but with no result but to confirm Walsingham’s message, though Elizabeth softened it somewhat by saying, “God forbid that she should ever break with your Majesty, to whom she bore nothing but good-will.” When, in July, Alen?on demanded more money, Walsingham, Leicester, and Hatton were for sending him ￡50,000 at once—anything to prevent his coming to England again—but Cecil opposed it vigorously. There was but ￡80,000 in the Treasury, he said, and so only ￡30,000 was sent to Flanders.
By the death of Bacon, the fatal illness of Sussex, and the defection of Hatton, Lord Burghley was at this time almost alone in the Council; for Crofts, the Controller, a regular pensioner of Spain and a Catholic, was a man of no influence; and, according to Mendoza, the Lord Treasurer in November told the Queen plainly that she must appoint two more Councillors of his way of thinking, “to oppose Leicester and his gang.” It was probably in pursuance of this policy that Burghley cast about for some counterbalancing influence to be used against Leicester.
At the end of 1581 a young captain named Walter Ralegh, whose company in Ireland had been disbanded on the suppression of the Desmond rebellion, had been sent over to England with despatches. He was clever and brilliant, and full of schemes for governing Ireland more cheaply than the Viceroy, Lord Grey, had done. Grey rebuked him for his presumption, and sent him home in semi-disgrace. Leicester was a bitter enemy of Grey’s, and was glad to welcome the young captain who impeached his government, and that of Leicester’s rival Ormond. Ralegh was invited to the Council-table to explain his plans to Lord Burghley. His recommendations were approved, and submitted to the Queen, who gave him audience. Before many weeks passed (May 1582), favours began to shower upon him; and by the autumn, Leicester and Hatton had taken fright, and were bitterly jealous of him, whilst the Lord Treasurer had cleverly enlisted the new favourite under his banner. He was never a member of the Council, but he had the Queen’s ear, and kept it for years; for Leicester was elderly and scorbutic, and Hatton was an affected fribble, whilst Ralegh was young, handsome, and manly, and as wise as he was ambitious.
During the autumn of 1582 the plague raged in London, and Burghley took refuge at Theobalds, where, in November, his recently married young son-in-law, the eldest son of Lord Wentworth died. The letters written on this occasion from Walsingham and Hatton prove that the political opposition in the Council did not degenerate into personal enmity; indeed, nothing is more remarkable than the affectionate regard, and even reverence, which are constantly expressed by Lord Burghley’s correspondents towards him. An especially kind thought seems to have occurred to Walsingham. He suggests to Hatton that “it would be some comfort to his lady (i.e. Elizabeth Wentworth), if it might please you so to work with her Majesty, as his (Burghley’s) other son-in-law (Lord Oxford), who hath long dwelt in her Majesty’s displeasure, might be restored to her Highness’s good favour.”
The Earl of Oxford had constantly been a source of trouble to Lord Burghley. He was extravagant, eccentric, and quarrelsome, and only by the exercise of great forbearance on the part of his father-in-law had any semblance of friendship been kept up. If on this occasion, as is probable, Hatton acceded to Walsingham’s suggestion, and persuaded the Queen once more to receive Oxford at court, it was not long before the intractable Earl again misbehaved himself; for on May of the following year (1583) his long-suffering father-in-law appealed to the new favourite, Ralegh, to exert his influence with the Queen to forgive him again. Ralegh’s answer, giving a long account of his efforts to move the Queen, shows that Oxford had injured him also. “I am content,” he writes, “for your sake to lay the serpent before the fire, as much as in me lieth, that having recovered strength, myself may be most in danger of his poison and sting.”
As we have seen, Mary Stuart had never ceased, since the triumph of D’Aubigny, to negotiate through Mendoza for her release and restoration, and the subsequent invasion of England over the Scottish Border. The raid of Ruthven and the fall of D’Aubigny did not at first discourage her. She still believed that the expected arrival of foreign troops, and her son’s secret favour of the Catholics, would enable the plot to be carried through, and under this belief it was that she wrote her violent letter of denunciation and complaint to Elizabeth (8th November).
Almost simultaneously with the receipt of this letter in London there arrived the Guisan, La Mothe Fénélon, on his way to Scotland, for the purpose of inquiring into the treatment of D’Aubigny by the Protestant lords, uniting Mary and her son on the throne, and, if possible, to mediate with Elizabeth in favour of the captive Queen; whilst, at the same time, another envoy (De Maineville) was sent by sea with secret instructions to plan a fresh rising of the Catholic nobles in union with James. Castelnau, the regular Ambassador, might protest untruly to Elizabeth, as he did, that it was “une chose du tout contraire à la verité de dire que le Sieur De Maineville eut une seconde et particulière secrete instruction;” but the embassy was quite terrifying enough to Elizabeth, coming after the plots that she knew had been hatching between the Spaniards, the Jesuits, and D’Aubigny. Walsingham hurried from his country house to court the moment he heard of La Mothe Fénélon’s arrival, for all the official French plans for helping James and D’Aubigny had purposely been allowed to leak out. We know now that they were merely a trick of the Queen-mother’s to frighten Elizabeth into helping poor Alen?on in the Netherlands, the only really serious part of them being De Maineville’s secret mission, which depended entirely upon Guise. The Queen kept La Mothe dallying for weeks before she would give him a passport, whilst she tried to dazzle him anew with the talk of marrying Alen?on and supporting him in Flanders. Before he left for Scotland, D’Aubigny had passed through London on his way to France, where he died shortly afterwards; and when La Mothe proceeded on his mission it was already too late, if ever it was intended to be effectual.
It is one of the standing reproaches to Lord Burghley’s memory that he was the constant enemy of Mary. In former chapters I have shown that this was not the case. That he was inflexible in tracing and punishing treason against his mistress and her Government is obvious, for it was his first duty as a minister; but how far he was from any personal enmity against the unfortunate Mary, may be seen in his many letters to Lord Shrewsbury at Hatfield and elsewhere. On the receipt of Mary’s imprudent letter to the Queen and the arrival of La Mothe in England, a Council was called to consider the removal of the Queen of Scots from the care of Shrewsbury. Mendoza says that “the Treasurer was greatly opposed to her being removed from the Earl’s house, where she had remained for fifteen years, especially as Shrewsbury had not failed fully to carry out his instructions. He said her removal would scandalise the country.”
Burghley’s relative William Davison, in conjunction with Robert Bowes, was sent to Scotland at the same the time as La Mothe, to dissuade James from acceding to French suggestion of associating his mother with himself in his sovereignty; and Walsingham’s brother-in-law, Beale, was deputed to proceed to Sheffield for the purpose of negotiating with Mary with regard to her future. Mary from the first had seen that the interference of Henry III. and his mother was a feint in favour of Alen?on, and sent Fontenay to Mendoza whilst Beale was with her, to ask for his guidance in the negotiation. Elizabeth had secretly authorised Beale, under certain circumstances, to offer Mary her release. This, Mendoza understood, was unfavourable to Spanish ends, because she would almost infallibly fall in such case into the hands of the French, or be compelled, if she stayed in England, to make such renunciations and compromises as would render her useless as an instrument with which to raise the Catholics. The Spaniard therefore naturally advised her to stay where she was, and the unhappy woman followed his interested advice. She gave Beale a somewhat unyielding answer, and her last chance of liberation fled.
In the meanwhile Alen?on continued to clamour for money, and repeated his vows of everlasting love and slavish submission; anything if Elizabeth would only send money to save him from becoming the laughing-stock of Europe. The Protestant Dutchmen were tired of him; Orange saw that he was a useless burden, and prayed Elizabeth to take her bad bargain back again. Seeing that he could expect but little from England, he obtained the help of his mother. Marshal Biron crossed the frontier into Flanders, and in January 1583 the false Valois endeavoured to seize and garrison with Frenchmen the strong places of the Netherlands. The affair failed, and Alen?on fled from Antwerp detested and distrusted. The States disowned him, and Norris, the English general, refused to obey him; and though Elizabeth pretended to be angry with Sir John Norris and the Englishmen, she thought better of it when Alen?on asked her to withdraw them and let his Frenchmen deal with the Flemings, for it was now clear that she could never trust him in Flanders alone.
With the invidious position into which Elizabeth’s tortuous policy had led her; almost hopeless as she was now of conciliating Spain, and conscious of having insulted France beyond forgiveness by her treatment of Alen?on; with Orange discontented, and Scotland in a ferment, it is not strange that division existed in the Queen’s counsels. Burghley himself at this time was tired of the struggle. The fresh Councillors had not been appointed, and he had to contend with infinite diplomacy for every point that he carried. The general tendency of the Queen’s policy was opposed to his view of what was wise; he was now old and almost constantly ill, and either the Queen’s obduracy with regard to his unworthy son-in-law Oxford, or the opposition he constantly met with, led him to seek release from his offices, and to desire to pass the rest of his life in retirement. His complaint would rather seem to have been against the Queen herself, to judge from her very curious letter turning his desire to ridicule. On the 8th May 1583 she wrote:—
“Sir Spirit, I doubt I do nickname you, for those of your kind, they say, have no sense. But I have of late seen an ‘Ecce Signum,’ that if an ass kick you, you feel it so soon. I will recant you from being a spirit if ever I perceive you disdain not such a feeling. Serve God, fear the King, and be a good fellow to the rest. Let never care appear in you for such a rumour; but let them well know that you rather desire the righting of such a wrong by making known their error, than you be so silly a soul as to foreslow that you ought to do, or not freely deliver what you think meetest, and pass of no man so much, as not to regard her trust who putteth it in you. God bless you, and long may you last omnino.
“E. R.”
The duplicity of the young King of Scots and the intrigues of the Guisan envoy were successful in June in withdrawing James from the power of the lords of the English faction, and once more the Scottish Catholics held up their heads. Thus encouraged, Mary at once informed Elizabeth that the conditional promises she had made to Beale and Mildmay in the negotiations for her release, were to be considered void unless she were at once liberated, her attitude being no doubt to some extent the result of the strenuous efforts of the Spaniards through Mendoza to keep her in England, and to prevent her from entering into any compromise as to religion.
This new phase of affairs profoundly disquieted Elizabeth. Her Ambassador in France, Henry Cobham, continued to send alarming news of Guise’s designs, and it is certain that Walsingham, at all events, was aware of the constant communications between Mary and Mendoza. It was therefore decided to send Walsingham himself to Edinburgh, to obtain from James some assurance that English interests should not suffer by his change of ministers, and to offer him a subsidy in consideration of his acceptance of the terms proposed by Elizabeth. That the mission was an unwelcome one to Walsingham, who foresaw its failure, is proved by Mendoza’s statement (19th August): “He strenuously refused to go, and went so far as to throw himself at the Queen’s feet, and pronounce the following terrible blasphemy: he swore by the soul, body, and blood of God, that he would not go to Scotland, even if she ordered him to be hanged for it, as he would rather be hanged in England than elsewhere.… Walsingham says that he saw that no good could come of the mission, and that the Queen would lay upon his shoulders the whole of the responsibility for the evils that would occur. He said she was very stingy already, and the Scots more greedy than ever, quite disillusioned now as to the promises made to them; so that it was impossible that any good should be done.” But Walsingham went nevertheless, and came home safely, though, as he foretold, his embassy was fruitless, for the Catholics had entirely captured James.
Alen?on, in despair of obtaining sufficient help from Elizabeth, now that he had shown his falseness, had retired to France, leaving his forces under Marshal Biron. Lovelorn epistles and frantic protestations continued to pass between him and Elizabeth; but it was acknowledged now that his cause was hopeless, and he fell henceforward entirely under the influence of his mother. The States and Orange again and again urged Elizabeth to take the provinces into her own hands and carry on the war openly. Leicester, Walsingham, Bedford, Knollys, and the Puritans urged her seriously to do so; but she refused on the advice of Burghley, “who told her that she had not sufficient strength to struggle with your Majesty, particularly with so small a contribution as that offered by the States. Leicester and the rest of them are trying to persuade her to send five or six thousand men thither.”
Events were irresistibly nearing a crisis which made it necessary for Elizabeth to take an open course on one side or the other; and Lord Burghley had again been overborne by the zealous Protestants in the Council until a breach with Spain had become unavoidable sooner or later. Walsingham had never lost touch of Mary Stuart’s proceedings, or of her French cousin’s various plans for the murder of Elizabeth, and the invasion of England. Guise had submitted to Philip in 1583 a regular proposal for the Queen’s assassination, and in the autumn had sent his pensioner Charles Paget (Mopo) to England to negotiate for the rising of the English Catholics. One of the results of this was that young Francis Throgmorton, a correspondent of Mary Stuart, and one of her intermediaries with Mendoza, was arrested with others and charged with a plot to assassinate the Queen. How far this accusation was true it is at this moment difficult to say, but there is no doubt that the Throgmortons, with the Earl of Northumberland, who was imprisoned, Lord Paget, who fled, and many other Catholics, were in league with Charles Paget for a rising, in conjunction with Guise.
It is to be noted that Lord Burghley took no part in the prosecution of Throgmorton, which was mainly forwarded by Leicester, who was always suspected of having poisoned Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, the uncle of the accused man. The apprehension of the conspirators and the consequent expulsion of Mendoza (January 1584) certainly served the purposes of the strong Protestant majority led by Leicester and Walsingham in the Council, and aided them in forcing the hands of the Queen and Burghley. The death of Alen?on in June, and the murder of Orange by an agent of the Spaniards in July, still further acted in the same direction. It was no longer possible for England to hold a non-committal position. Either Spain must be permitted to crush Protestantism in the Netherlands, or the head of the Protestant confederacy must cast aside the mask and boldly fight the Catholic powers. There were reasons why this course might now be taken with much more safety than previously. The Queen-mother of France was frantic with rage against Spain for the loss of her favourite son. The King was childless, and the Guises were already plotting to grasp the crown, or partition France on Henry’s death, rather than he should be succeeded by the Huguenot Henry of Navarre. Elizabeth had therefore the certainty, for the first time since her accession, that France nationally would not coalesce with Spain against her, and that any attempt of Guise to injure her would be counteracted by Catharine, Navarre and the Huguenots.
The question of the future policy to be pursued by England under the changed circumstances was, as usual, submitted to the judicial examination of Lord Burghley, whose minutes set forth the whole case pro and contra. The question propounded was, “Shall the Queen defend and help the Low Countries to recover from the tyranny of Spain and the Inquisition; and if not, what shall she do to protect England when he shall have subdued Holland?” After stating the advantages and disadvantages of each course, it is evident that the judgment is in favour of aiding the States, on certain conditions of security, which Burghley himself notes in the margin. The aid is to cost as little as possible; some of the best noblemen of Zeeland are to be held as hostages in the hands of the English; the chief military commands to be held by English officers; the King of Scots to be secured to the English interest; the King of Navarre to embarrass Spain on her frontiers, and a Parliament to be called in England for the purpose of sanctioning the course proposed. But, continues the document, if it is decided that England shall not help the States, then she must be put into a condition of defence, the navy increased, a large sum of money collected, some German mercenaries engaged to watch the Scottish Border, and the English Catholics “put in surety.” “Finally, that ought to be Alpha and Omega, to cause her people to be better taught to serve God, and to see justice duly administered, whereby they may serve God, and love her Majesty; and that if it may be concluded, Si Deus nobiscum, quis contra nos?”
Lord Burghley was thus, after a quarter of a century of striving to keep on friendly relations with Spain, forced by the policy of Leicester, Walsingham, and the strong Protestants, into the contest which he had hoped to avoid. Circumstances had been stronger than individual predilections, and Mary Stuart’s ceaseless designs against the crown and faith of England, and especially her submission to Spain, had given the Protestant party an impetus which swept aside the cautious moderation of Burghley’s policy, and proved even to him the necessity for war.
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. 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 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.
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. 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, 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: “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.”
The more or less hollow negotiations for the liberation of Mary, and for the association of her son with herself in her sovereign rights, had dragged on intermittently for years. Burghley himself has set forth the reasons for the successive failures; in each case the discovery of some fresh plot in her favour. The serious set of conspiracies brought to light in 1584 had caused her removal from the mild custody of Burghley’s friend, Lord Shrewsbury, to that of the rigid Puritan, Sir Amyas Paulet, at Tutbury. In her troubles the captive Queen, like every one else, appealed to Burghley, and especially in the matter of the reckless accusations of immorality brought by the Countess of Shrewsbury and her Cavendish sons against her husband and Mary.
Burghley’s kindness in this matter, and his attempts to soften the fresh severity of the Queen’s captivity, had not only persuaded Mary’s agents that he was her friend, but had given to Leicester and his party an excuse for spreading rumours to the Treasurer’s detriment. At an inopportune time, Nau, Mary’s French secretary, had gone to London with new plans of associated sovereignty; but almost simultaneously the Master of Gray had arrived as James’s Ambassador. He was easily bought by the English Government, as we have seen, with the full approval of Burghley; and on his return to Scotland promptly caused the rejection by the Lords of Nau’s project in favour of Mary. It was never on the question of securing the Scots by bribery to the English interest that Burghley was remiss. It was open war with Spain that he always opposed.
In the meanwhile the toils were closing round the unhappy Mary. She had now thrown herself entirely into the arms of Spain; and the Guises were being gradually but steadily forced into the background by Philip, as being likely to frustrate his plans, by claiming for their kinsman, James Stuart, the succession of England after his mother. Every letter to and from Tutbury was intercepted by Paulet. Morgan, Charles Paget, Robert Bruce, and others, in their communications with Mary, laid bare her hopes and their intrigues. If any doubts had previously existed as to the intentions of Spain and the Queen of Scots, they could exist no longer. The only question for England was how best to withstand the combination against her. Here, as usual, Burghley was at issue with the now dominant party of militant Protestants; and equally, as usual, his opposition was cautious and indirect. Leicester and his friends were for open operations against Spain both in the Netherlands and on the high seas, and for helping Henry III. to withstand the Guises; whilst the Treasurer preferred to stand on the defensive, and keep as much money in hand as possible. Elizabeth rarely required urging to parsimony, and by appealing to her weakness Burghley was able for a time to moderate the plans of the other party.
But events were too strong for him. Mainly by his influence Leicester had been restrained since 1580 from subsidising a great expedition against Philip in favour of the Portuguese Pretender, Don Antonio; but in the spring of 1585 the treacherous seizure of English ships in Spain had aroused the English to fury. Drake’s great expedition of twenty-nine ships was fitted out, and general reprisals authorised. Never was an expedition more popular than this, for the English sailors were aching for a fight with foes they knew they could beat, and Burghley’s cautions were scouted. Drake’s fleet sailed in September, doubtful to the last moment whether the Queen would not be prevailed upon to stay it; and by sacking Santo Domingo and ravaging Santiago and Cartagena almost without hindrance, demonstrated the ineffective clumsiness of Philip’s methods. Leicester and the war-party were now almost unrestrained; for the Lord Treasurer made the best of it, and confined his efforts to minimising the cost of the new policy as much as possible, and suggesting caution to the Queen.
The Commissioners from the States continued to urge the Queen to assume the sovereignty of the Netherlands, and to govern the country, either directly or through a nominee; but this was a responsibility which neither she nor Burghley cared to accept. At length, after much hesitation on the part of the Queen, Sir John Norris was sent with an English force of 5000 men to take possession of the strong cautionary places offered by the Hollanders, and Leicester was designated to follow as Lieutenant-General of the Queen’s forces (September 1585).
Elizabeth approached the business with fear and trembling. It was a departure from Burghley’s safe and tried policy, and was involving her in large expenditure. She distrusted rebels and popular governments; she did not like to send away her best troops in a time of danger, and she railed often and loudly at Leicester and Walsingham for dragging her into such a pass. Only a day after Leicester’s appointment she changed her mind and bade him suspend his preparations. “Her pleasure is,” wrote Walsingham, “that you proceed no further until you speak with her. How this cometh about I know not. The matter is to be kept secret. These changes here may work some such changes in the Low Countries as may prove irreparable. God give her Majesty another mind, … or it will work both hers and her best affected subjects’ ruin.” To this Leicester wrote one letter of submission to be shown to the Queen, and the other for Walsingham’s own eye, full of indignation. “This,” he says, “is the strangest dealing in the world.… What must be thought of such an alteration? I am weary of life and all.”
Elizabeth had, however, gone too far now to retire, and Leicester’s journey went forward. But it is plain to see that whilst he was making his preparations to act as sovereign on his own account, the Queen, influenced by Burghley, was drafting his instructions in a way that strictly limited his power for harm, and minimised her responsibility towards Spain. Leicester was directed to “let the States understand that whereby their Commissioners made offer unto her Majesty, first of the sovereignty of those countries, which for sundry respects she did not accept; secondly, under her protection to be governed absolutely by such as her Majesty would appoint and send over as her Lieutenant. That her Majesty, although she would not take so much upon her as to command them in such absolute sort, yet unless they should show themselves forward to use the advice of her Majesty … she would think her favours unworthily bestowed upon them.”
This must have been gall and wormwood for Leicester, for in his own notes he lays down as his guiding principles, “First, that he have as much authoryte as the Prince of Orange had; or any other Captain-General hath had heretofore: second, that there be as much allowance by the States for the said Governor as the Prince had, with all offices apportenaunt.” He had infinite trouble in getting money from the Queen, and went so far as to offer to pledge his own lands to her as security; but at last, in December, all was ready, and Leicester foolishly went to Holland with his vague ambitions, leaving Burghley in possession at home. It is plain from his beseeching letter of farewell to the Lord Treasurer that he recognised the danger. He prays him earnestly not to have any change made in the plans agreed upon, and to provide sufficient resources for the sake of the cause involved and for the Queen’s honour. “Hir Majesty, I se, my lord, often tymes doth fall into myslyke of this cause, and sondry opinions yt may brede in hir withal, but I trust in the Lord, seeing hir Highness hath thus far resolved, and gone also to this far executyon as she hath, and that myne and other menne’s poor lives are adventured for hir sake, that she will fortify and mainteyn her own action to the full performance that she hath agreed on.” Burghley was very ill at the time, unable to rise from his couch, but in answer to the Earl’s appeal he assured him that he would consider himself “accursed in the sight of God” if he did not strive earnestly to promote the success of the expedition.
The Lord Treasurer was, of course, sincere in his desire to prevent the collapse of the Protestant cause in the Netherlands, for he had never ceased for years to insist that the quietude of England mainly depended upon it. Where he differed from Leicester was in his determination, if possible, to avoid such action as would lead to an open breach with Spain. Before even Leicester landed at Flushing he had begun to quarrel with the Dutchmen, and in a fortnight was intriguing to obtain an offer of the sovereignty of the States for himself. The offer was made, and modestly refused at first; but on further pressure Leicester accepted the sovereignty, as he had intended to do from the first (January 1586). The rage of Elizabeth knew no bounds. This would make her infamous, she said, to all the world. Leicester was timid at the consequences of the step he had taken, and made matters worse by delaying for weeks to write explanations to the angry Queen. Walsingham and Hatton did their best, but very ineffectually, to appease her. Burghley in a letter to Leicester (7th February) assured him that he too had done so, and that he himself approved of his action, and hoped to “move her Majesty to alter her hard opinion.” As we have seen, Burghley’s opposition was seldom direct, and it may be accepted as probable that he mildly deprecated the Queen’s anger against her favourite; but a remark in a letter (17th February) from Davison, who was sent by Leicester to explain and extenuate his act to the Queen, seems to show that the Lord Treasurer’s advocacy had not been so earnest as he would have had Leicester to believe.
The Queen had ordered Heneage to go to Holland post-haste, to command Leicester openly to abandon his new title; but from the 7th February till the 14th, whilst Heneage’s harsh instructions were being drafted, Burghley was diplomatically absent from court, and the pleading of Walsingham and Hatton had no softening effect upon the Queen. On the 13th February, Davison at length arrived with Leicester’s excuses. The Queen railed and stormed until he was reduced to tears. She refused at first to receive Leicester’s letter or to delay Heneage’s departure. Burghley arrived the next day, and Davison writes on the 17th that he “had successfully exerted himself to convince the Lord Treasurer that the measures adopted were necessary, and that his Lordship had urged the Queen on the subject.”
The only effect of Burghley’s persuasion, however, was to obtain for Heneage discretion to withhold, if he considered necessary, the Queen’s letter to the States, and to save Leicester from the degradation of a public renunciation. Burghley had thus done his best to preserve Leicester’s friendship and gratitude; but, after all, it was his policy, and not that of Leicester, that was triumphant. Heneage was a friend of the Earl’s, and on his arrival in Holland delayed action; but the Queen was not to be appeased. She had, she said, been slighted, and her commission exceeded, and would send no money till her instructions were fulfilled. Confusion and danger naturally resulted, and Leicester’s friends redoubled their efforts to save him. Burghley himself assured Leicester (31st March) that he had threatened to resign his office unless she changed her course. “I used boldly such language in this matter, as I found her doubtful whether to charge me with presumption, which partly she did, or with some astonishment of my round speech, which truly was no other than my conscience did move me, even in amaritudine anima. And then her Majesty began to be more calm than before, and, as I conceived, readier to qualify her displeasure.”
When the Queen saw that Heneage and Leicester were construing her leniency into acquiescence of the Earl’s action, she blazed out again; and when Burghley begged her to allow Heneage to return and explain the circumstances, “she grew so passionate in the matter that she forbade me to argue more;” and herself wrote a letter to Heneage containing these words: “Do as you are bidden, and leave your considerations for your own affairs; for in some things you had clear commandment, which you did not do, and in others none, which you did.” At the urgent prayer of the States, however, representing the danger to the cause which a public deposition of Leicester would bring about, the Queen finally allowed matters to rest until they could devise some harmless way out of the difficulty.
Throughout the whole business Burghley almost ostentatiously acted the part of Leicester’s friend. It was a safe course for him to take, for the Queen was so angry that he could keep the good-will of Leicester and the Protestants, and yet be certain of the ultimate failure of his opponent. As soon as the States understood Leicester’s position, and had realised his incompetence, they were only too anxious to be rid of him; and throughout his inglorious government Burghley could well speak in his favour, for it must have been evident that the Earl was working his own ruin, and that his position was untenable. One curious feature in the matter is that both Burghley and Walsingham hinted to Leicester that the Queen was being influenced by some one underhand. “Surely,” writes the Secretary, “there is some treachery amongst ourselves, for I cannot think she would do this out of her own head;” and the gossip of the court pointed at Ralegh, who wrote to Leicester vigorously protesting against the calumny.
There were, however, wheels within wheels in Elizabeth’s court. Two of her Councillors were Spanish spies, Ralegh was Burghley’s partisan, the Conservative party in favour of friendship with the House of Burgundy was not dead, and, notwithstanding all that has been written, it may be fairly assumed that the decadence of Leicester and the militant Protestant party during the Earl’s absence in Holland did not take place without some secret prompting from Lord Burghley.
In the meanwhile the plans for the invasion of England were gradually maturing in Philip’s slow mind. The raid of Drake’s fleet upon his colonies, and Leicester’s assumption of the sovereignty of the Netherlands, had at last convinced Philip, after nearly thirty years of hesitancy, that England must be coerced into Catholicism, or Spain must descend from its high estate. So long as the elevation of Mary Stuart meant a Guisan domination of England, with shifty James as his mother’s heir, it had not suited Philip to squander his much needed resources upon the overthrow of Elizabeth; but by this time Guise was pledged to vast ambitions in France, which could only be realised by Philip’s help. The Jesuits and English Catholics had persuaded the Spaniard that he would be welcomed in England, whilst a Scot or a Frenchman would be resisted to the death. Most of Mary’s agents, too, had been bribed to the same side, and Mendoza in Paris was her prime adviser and mainstay. Various attempts were made by the Scottish Catholics and Guise’s friends to manage the subjugation of England over the Scottish Border; but though Philip affected to listen to their approaches, and used them as a diversion, his plan was already fixed—England must be won by Spaniards in Mary’s name, and be held thenceforward in Spanish hands. Mary was ready to agree to anything, and at the prompting of Philip’s agents she disinherited her son (June 1586) in favour of the King of Spain. Morgan, Paget, and others had at last succeeded in reopening communication with Mary, who had now lost all hope of release except by force. A close alliance between England and James VI. had been agreed to: she knew that no help would come from her son or his Government; and her many letters to Charles Paget, to Mendoza, and to Philip himself, leave no doubt whatever that she was fully cognisant of the plans for the overthrow, and perhaps murder, of Elizabeth, in order that she, Mary, might be raised by Spanish pikes to the English throne.
In May 1586 the priest Ballard had seen Mendoza in Paris, and had sought the countenance of Spain for the assassination of Elizabeth; and in August the matter had so far progressed as to enable Gifford to give to Mendoza full particulars of the vile plan. There was, according to his account, hardly a Catholic or schismatic gentleman in England who was not in favour of the plot; and though Philip always distrusted a conspiracy known to many, he promised armed help from Flanders if the Queen were killed. Mendoza, when he saw Gifford, recommended that Don Antonio, Burghley, Walsingham, Hunsdon, Knollys, and Beale should be killed; but the King wrote on the margin of the letter, “It does not matter so much about Cecil, although he is a great heretic, but he is very old, and it was he who advised the understandings with the Prince of Parma, and he has done no harm. It would be advisable to do as he [i.e. Mendoza] says with the others.”
The folly of Babington and his friends almost passes belief. They seem to have been prodigal of their confidences, and to have had no apprehension of treachery. Babington’s own letter to Mary setting forth in full all the plans in favour of “his dear sovereign” (6th July) was handed immediately by the false agent Gifford to Walsingham. No move was made by Walsingham, except to send the clever clerk Phillips to Chartley to decipher all intercepted letters on the spot, and so to avoid delay in their delivery, which might arouse the suspicion of the conspirators. Surrounded by spies and traitors, but in fancied security, the unhappy Queen involved herself daily deeper in the traps laid for her; approved of Babington’s wild plans, and made provision for her own release, whilst Walsingham watched and waited. When the proofs were incontestable, and all in the Secretary’s hands, the blow fell. On the 4th August Ballard was arrested, Babington and the intended murderer Savage a day or so afterwards, and Mary Stuart’s doom was sealed. She was hurried off temporarily to Tixhall; Nau and Curll were placed under arrest, the Queen’s papers seized, and her rooms closely examined. Amias Paulet was a faithful jailer, and he did his work well. “Amyas, my most faithful, careful servant,” wrote Elizabeth, “God reward thee treblefold for the most troublesome charge so well discharged. If you knew, my Amyas, how kindly, besides most dutifully, my grateful heart accepts and prizes your spotless endeavours and faultless actions, your wise orders and safe regard, performed in so dangerous and crafty a charge, it would ease your travail and rejoice your heart.… Let your wicked murderess know how with hearty sorrow her vile deserts compel these orders, and bid her from me ask God’s forgiveness for her treacherous dealing.” Elizabeth and her ministers rightly appreciated the great peril which she had escaped, and from the first it was recognised by most of them that Mary had forfeited all claim to consideration at their hands.
It is usually assumed by a certain class of writers that Mary was unjustly hounded to her death, mainly by the personal enmity of Lord Burghley. Nothing, in reality, is more distant from the truth. A most dangerous conspiracy against the government and religion of England had been discovered, in which she was a prime mover. Her accomplices rightly suffered the penalty of their crime, and it was due to justice and to the safety of the country that the mainspring of the conspiracy should be disabled for further harm. But still the matter was a delicate and dangerous one, for Catholics were numerous in England, and the great Catholic confederacy abroad was ready to take any advantage which a false step on the part of Elizabeth might give them. As we have seen, moreover, the feelings of the Queen of England herself with regard to the sacredness of anointed sovereigns was strong, and no more difficult problem had ever faced the Government than how to dispose of their troublesome guest in a way that should in future safeguard England from her machinations, whilst respecting the many susceptibilities involved. As usual in moments of difficulty, Elizabeth turned to her aged minister, and as a result of a long private conference with him the question was submitted to the Privy Council. The Catholic members advocated only a further stringency in Mary’s imprisonment. Leicester was in favour of solving the difficulty by the aid of poison, whilst Burghley, followed by Walsingham and others, proposed a regular judicial inquiry, which was now legally possible by virtue of the Act of Association passed by Parliament in the previous year. A commission was consequently issued on the 6th October for the trial of Mary, containing the names of forty-six of the principal peers and judges, and all the Councillors, but only after some bickering between the Queen and Burghley with regard to the style to be given to Mary and other details.
Before this point had been reached, however, measures had been taken to test the feeling of foreign powers on the subject. Diplomatic relations had ceased between Spain and England; but as soon as the Babington conspiracy was discovered, Walsingham impressed upon Chateauneuf, the French Ambassador, that the Spaniards were at the bottom of it, and that it was directed almost as much against the King of France as against Elizabeth herself. The Ambassador himself was a strong Guisan, and personally was an object of odium and suspicion to the excited Londoners; but his master’s hatred of the Guises and dread of their objects was growing daily, and when Madame de Montpensier prayed Henry to intercede for the protection of Mary, she obtained but a cold answer; and no official step by the French was taken in her favour at the time, except as a matter of justice Elizabeth was requested that she might have the assistance of counsel. It was clear, therefore, that Henry III. would not go to war for the sake of his sister-in-law.
Mary was removed to Fotheringay for trial on the 6th October, and on the following day Paulet and Mildmay delivered to her Elizabeth’s letter, informing her of the charges against her, and the tribunal to which she was to be submitted. She indignantly refused to acknowledge Elizabeth’s right to place her, an anointed sovereign, upon her trial; but she denied all knowledge and complicity in the murder plot. This was the safest attitude she could have assumed, although the proofs against her already in the hands of Elizabeth were overwhelming; and the arguments of Burghley and Lord Chancellor Bromley failed to alter Mary’s determination. This was embarrassing, and in the face of it Elizabeth wrote to Burghley instructing him that, although the examination might proceed, no judgment was to be delivered until she had conferred with him. At the same time she wrote to Mary a letter of mingled threats and hope, with the object of changing her attitude towards the tribunal. This, added to the persuasions of Hatton, succeeded in the object, and Mary, unfortunately for her, retreated from her unassailable position.
On the 14th, two days afterwards, the tribunal sat in the great hall of Fotheringay Castle, and Mary, almost crippled with rheumatism, painfully hobbled to her place, supported by her Steward, Sir Andrew Melvil. On the right of the Lord Chancellor sat Lord Burghley. That the proceedings against Mary, in which he had from the first taken an active part, were in his opinion necessary for the safety of England, is clear from his many letters upon the subject; but it is equally evident that if he could decently have avoided personal identification with them he would have been better pleased. His letters to Popham, the Attorney-General, show that he wished to be absent from the trial; but as he wrote at the time to Sir Edward Stafford, the English Ambassador in France, “I was never more toiled than I have been of late, and yet am, with services that here do multiply daily; and whosoever scapeth I am never spared. God give me grace.”
Much of the obloquy that has been unjustly cast upon him in the matter of Mary Stuart arises from his inveterate habit of putting everything in writing, which other men did not do. For instance, the draft of the whole case, or, as he puts it, “the indignities and wrongs done and offered by the Queen of Scots to the Queen,” is in his handwriting, and the letters to the Queen detailing the progress of events at Fotheringay are sent from him, whilst Elizabeth’s instructions through Davison are all addressed to Walsingham and Burghley. But it must be remembered that he was the Queen’s most trusted and experienced Councillor, and the existence of records written by or to him does not show that he was more eager than the rest for the sacrifice of the Scottish Queen.
Mary defended herself with consummate ability before a tribunal almost entirely prejudiced against her. She was deprived of legal aid, without her papers, and in ill health; and, according to modern notions, the procedure against her was unjust in the extreme. Once she turned upon Walsingham and denounced him as the contriver of her ruin, but soon regained her composure; and in her argument with Burghley, with respect to the avowals of Babington and her Secretaries, reached a point of touching eloquence which might have moved the hearts, though it did not convince the intellects, of her august judges. But her condemnation was a foregone conclusion; and although the sentence was not pronounced until the return of the Commission to Westminster (October 25), Mary left the hall of Fotheringay practically a condemned felon on the 15th.
But it was one thing to condemn and another thing to execute. Here Elizabeth’s scruples again assailed her. The two Houses of Parliament addressed her on the 12th November, begging that for the sake of the realm and her own safety the sentence might be carried into effect. At no point of her career was the profound duplicity of Elizabeth more resorted to than now. She had evidently determined that Mary must die, which is of itself not surprising; but she was equally determined that, if she could help it, no blame should personally attach to her for having disregarded the privileges of a crowned head. After much pretended sorrow and repudiation of any desire for revenge, but at the same time setting forth a careful recapitulation of Mary’s offences, she complained of Parliament for passing the Act which made it necessary for her to pronounce sentence of death on a kinswoman, and said she must take time for prayer and contemplation before she could give an answer to the petition. A few days afterwards she besought the Houses to consider again whether some other course could not be adopted instead of executing Mary, but she was assured by them that there was “no other sound and assured means” than that which they had formerly recommended (18th November). Her next address to the Houses was still more hypocritical. After infinite talk of her mercy, her goodness, and her hatred of bloodshed, even for her own safety, she ended enigmatically: “Therefore if I should say I would not do what you request, it might be peradventure more than I thought, and to say I would do it might perhaps breed peril of what you labour to preserve, being more than in your own wisdoms and discretions would seem convenient.”
Several days before this, Mary’s sentence had been communicated to her by Lord Buckhurst and Beale. She was dignified and courageous, rejoiced that she was to die, as she said, for the Catholic faith, and again affirmed that she had taken no part in the plot for the murder of Elizabeth, which was doubtless true so far as active participation or direction was concerned. Her letters written immediately afterwards to Mendoza and the Duke of Guise are conceived in the same spirit, and appear to entertain no expectation of mercy. The Spaniards, however, were more hopeful, and ascribed to Burghley a deep scheme for selling Mary’s life to France, in exchange for concessions to English interests.
The arrangements for the invasion of England by a great fleet from Spain were now so far advanced as to be impossible of concealment, and the English Government were actively adopting measures of defence and reprisal. Under the transparent pretext of aiding Don Antonio, English armed ships were hounding Spanish commerce from the seas and harrying Spanish settlements; the English troops under Leicester, and the Scots under the Master of Gray, were fighting Spaniards in Holland, and the English militant Protestant party had now supplanted Burghley’s policy on all sides. But still the cautious old statesman patiently worked in his own way to minimise the dangers with which his political opponents had already surrounded the Queen. There were two things only that he could do, namely, once more to endeavour to disarm Spain by making a show of friendship, and to sow discord between France and Spain; and both these things he did. One of Ralegh’s privateers had captured Philip’s governor of Patagonia, the famous explorer and navigator, Sarmiento; and almost simultaneously with the passing of Mary’s sentence, Ralegh was invited to bring his prisoner to Cecil House for a private conference. Sarmiento was flattered and made much of, and received his free release on condition of his taking to Spain messages from Burghley and Ralegh suggesting a friendly arrangement between the countries. Ralegh, indeed, went so far as to offer—whether sincerely or not does not affect the question—two of his ships for Philip’s service, and for many weeks sympathetic messages found their way secretly from the Lord Treasurer and Sir Walter to Spain and Flanders.
At the same time Sir Henry Wotton was sent to Paris with certified copies of Mary’s will in favour of Philip, and of her correspondence with Mendoza. “He is instructed to point out how much she depended upon your Majesty, and how shy she was of France.” This was exactly the course most likely to alienate Henry III. from Spain and his sister-in-law; and although he tardily sent Pomponne de Bellièvre to remonstrate with Elizabeth, the Spaniards and Guisans, at all events, never believed in the sincerity of his protests. Mendoza writes: “Elizabeth has given orders that directly Bellièvre arrives in England the rumour is to be spread that the Queen of Scots is killed, in order to discover how he takes it. Bellièvre, however, is forewarned of it, and has his instructions what to say when he hears it. It is a plan of Cecil’s arising out of a desire (as I wrote to your Majesty) to sell to the French on the best terms they can what they do not dream of carrying out. The English and French will have no difficulty in agreeing on the point, because the King and his mother are very well pleased that the Queen of Scots should be kept alive, though a prisoner, in order to prevent the succession of your Majesty to the English throne; whilst the English see plainly that the many advantages accruing to them from keeping the Queen of Scots a prisoner would change into as many dangers if they made away with her.”
On the 6th December public proclamation of Mary’s sentence was made in London amidst signs of extravagant rejoicing on the part of the populace. The next day Bellièvre delivered a long speech to the Queen, in which he made no attempt to deny Mary’s guilt, but appealed to Elizabeth’s magnanimity, and proposed guarantees from France to insure Mary’s future harmlessness. The Queen repeated bitterly her grievances against Mary, and replied that the life of Mary was incompatible with her own safety; and Lord Burghley, in a subsequent interview with the Frenchman, repeated more emphatically the same idea. Shortly afterwards, at the renewed request of Bellièvre and Chateauneuf, Elizabeth ungraciously consented to grant a respite of twelve days to Mary to enable the Ambassadors to communicate with their master. But Henry III. himself was now in a hopeless condition. “Such is the confusion of the court, the vacillation of the King, and the jealousy, hatred, and suspicion of the courtiers, that decisions are adopted and abandoned at random.… The King is trying to draw closer to the Queen of England, which is the principal object of Bellièvre’s mission.” The only reply, therefore, sent to Bellièvre and Chateauneuf from France was a pedantic and wordy appeal to Elizabeth’s mercy, which must have convinced her that she need fear nothing from the French.
Notwithstanding the first movement of indignation on the part of James also, it soon became clear that selfish reasons would confine his action to protest. This is not altogether to be wondered at. He had been informed that Mary had disinherited him, and told De Courcelles, the French Ambassador, that he knew “she had no more good-will towards him than towards the Queen of England.” The Master of Gray, at his side, too, was the humble servant of England, and the traitor, Archibald Douglas, represented him in the English court. On pressure from France, however, James sent Sir William Keith, another English partisan, to intercede for his mother, or at least to induce Elizabeth to delay the execution until a fitting embassy from him might be sent. Elizabeth hectored and stormed at James’s threatening letters; but when she became calmer she granted the twelve days’ respite already referred to. The Master of Gray and Sir Robert Melvil subsequently arrived at the English court and were equally unsuccessful. Melvil undoubtedly did his best, and Elizabeth threatened his life in consequence; but the Master of Gray’s advocacy went no further than he knew would please the English Government.
It is certain that Elizabeth herself had decided that Mary should die, if the execution could be carried out without uniting France and Spain against her, and especially if she herself could manage to escape personal opprobrium. Of Lord Burghley’s personal opinion on the matter it is extremely difficult to judge. He is generally represented by historians as being the prime enemy and persecutor of the unhappy woman, which he certainly was not. He was a cautious man and took his stand behind legal forms; but the slightest slackness on his part was represented by Leicester and his friends as a desire to curry favour with Mary. He, the Howards, Crofts, and the other conservatives were, as usual, desirous of staving off the rupture with Spain, but dared not appear for a moment to favour so unpopular a cause as that of Mary. The truth of this view is partly shown by the revelations of Sir Edward Stafford, the English Ambassador in Paris, a great friend of Burghley’s and a paid agent of Spain. Stafford told Charles Arundell in January that Burghley had written that Bellièvre had not acted so cleverly as they had expected, and if that he (Burghley) had not prompted him he would have done worse still. “He was advised to ask for private audience without Chateauneuf, and was closeted with the Queen, who was accompanied by only four persons. What passed at the interview was consequently not known; but that he (Cecil) could assure him (Stafford) that the Queen of Scotland’s life would be spared, although she would be kept so close that she would not be able to carry on her plots as hitherto. This is what I have always assured your Majesty was desired by the Queen of England, as well as the King of France. Cecil also says that, although he has constantly shown himself openly against the Queen of Scots, Leicester and Walsingham, his enemies, had tried to set the Queen against him by saying that he was more devoted to the Queen of Scotland than any one. But she (Elizabeth) had seen certain papers in her (Mary’s) coffers that told greatly against Leicester, and the Queen had told the latter and Walsingham that they were a pair of knaves, and she saw plainly now that, owing to her not having taken the advice of certain good and loyal subjects of hers, she was in peril of losing her throne and her life, by burdening herself with a war which she was unable to carry on. She said if she had done her duty as Queen she would have had them both hanged.”
By this and several similar pronouncements it would appear that Burghley, true to his invariable method, was still by indirect and cautious steps endeavouring to lead the Queen back to the moderate path from which Leicester, Walsingham, and the militant Protestants had diverted her; and that, very far from being the mortal enemy of Mary, he would probably have saved her if he could have done it with perfect harmlessness to himself, and have insured the future security of the Queen and Government. But whilst the Queen was very slowly being influenced by the Catholics and Conservatives near her, events were precipitated and Mary paid the last penalty. There is no space in this work to tell in detail the obscure and much debated story of the issue of the warrant for Mary’s execution; but a summary glance at Burghley’s share in it cannot be excluded in any biography of the statesman. Soon after the proclamation of the sentence (6th December 1586) Elizabeth herself directed Burghley to draft the warrant for the execution. He did so, and sent for Secretary Davison—Walsingham being absent from illness—and informed him that as he, Burghley, was returning to London, the court then being at Richmond, he would leave the draft with Davison that it might be engrossed and presented to the Queen for signature. When Davison laid the document before the Queen she told him to keep it back for the present. Six weeks passed without anything more being done, and Leicester in the interval complained to Davison, in Burghley’s presence, of his remissness in not again laying the document before the Queen.
The Master of Gray left London at the end of January, and on the 1st February Lord Admiral Howard told the Queen that there was much disquieting talk in the country with regard to attempts to be made for the rescue of Mary, &c. Elizabeth then requested Howard to send for Davison and direct him to lay the warrant before her for signature. The Secretary accordingly carried the warrant to the Queen, who was full of smiles and amiability, and asked him what he had there. Davison told her, and she signed the warrant, explaining to him whilst doing so, that she had hitherto delayed it for the sake of her own reputation. Then, with a joke, she handed the signed warrant back to him, and, according to Davison, bade him carry it at once to the Lord Chancellor, have it sealed with the great seal as privately as possible, and send it away to the Commissioners, so that she should hear no more about it.
Elizabeth afterwards, however, swore that she had given him no such instructions. As he was leaving, Elizabeth directed him to call on Walsingham, who was confined to his house by illness, and to tell him what had been done. She then spoke bitterly of Amias Paulet for not having made the warrant unnecessary, and hinted to Davison that he might write to Paulet again suggesting the poisoning of Mary. This Davison demurred at doing, as he knew that it would be fruitless, and he did not relish the task, but promised to mention it to Walsingham. The Secretary’s story is that he went straight to Lord Burghley and showed him and Leicester the warrant, repeating the Queen’s directions. He then proceeded to Walsingham House; and the result of his visit is seen in a memorandum (dated the next day, 2nd February) in Walsingham’s hand, annotated by Lord Burghley, laying down the steps to be taken for immediately carrying the warrant into effect. The fullest details, even for the burial, are set forth, and at the end it is directed that “the Lords and court are to give out that there will be no execution.”
Thus far Davison’s statement has been followed; but there is at Hatfield (part iii., No. 472) a rough draft in Lord Burghley’s handwriting, which, in view of the date upon it, 2nd February, throws rather a new light upon the matter, and proves that, unknown to Davison, Lord Burghley and the rest of the Council were accomplices of the Queen in her intention of subsequently repudiating her orders and ruining her Secretary, and that the tragi-comedy was not played by Elizabeth alone, but by her grave Councillors as well. The draft document is in the name of the Council, and sets forth the reasons that had moved them to despatch the warrant without further consulting the Queen; “and yet we are now at this time most sorry to understand that your Majesty is so greatly grieved with this kind of proceeding, and do most humbly beseech your Majesty,” &c. This, be it remembered, is dated the 2nd February, before the warrant had been sent off or the Queen even knew it had been sealed.
Early in the morning of the 2nd the Queen sent Killigrew to Davison, directing him not to go to the Lord Chancellor until he had seen her. When he entered her presence she asked him, to his surprise, whether he had had the warrant sealed, and he informed her that he had. Why so much haste? she asked; to which he replied that she had told him to use despatch. He then inquired if she wished the warrant executed. Yes, she said; but she did not like the form of it, for it threw all the responsibility upon her, and again suggested poison as the best way out of her difficulty.
All this made Davison suspicious, and he went to Hatton and told him that he feared the intention was subsequently to disavow him. He would, he said, take no more responsibility, but would go at once to Lord Burghley. This he did, and the latter summoned the Privy Council for next day; whilst he, Burghley, busied himself in drafting the letters to the Commissioners, the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury. The next morning (3rd February) the Council met in Lord Burghley’s room, and the Lord Treasurer laid the whole matter before them, repeating Davison’s story, and recommending that the warrant should be despatched without further reference to the Queen. This was agreed to, and the instructions and warrant were sent the same night (Friday, 3rd February) to the Commissioners, Burghley himself handing the document to Beale to carry down into the country.
The next morning when Davison entered the Queen’s room at Greenwich she was chatting with Ralegh, and told the Secretary that she had dreamed the previous night that the Queen of Scots was executed, which made her very angry. It was a good thing, she said, that Davison was not near her at the time. This frightened Davison, and he asked her whether she really did not wish the warrant executed. With an oath she said she did, but again repeated what she had said the previous day about the responsibility, and “another way of doing it.” A day or so afterwards, Davison informed the Queen that Paulet had indignantly refused Walsingham’s suggestion to poison Mary, whereupon she broke into complaints of the “daintiness of these precise fellows,” and violently denounced people who professed to love and defend her, but threw all responsibility upon her.
On the 8th February the tragedy of Fotheringay was consummated, and in the afternoon of the 9th young Talbot brought the news to London. Lord Burghley at once summoned Davison, and after consulting with Hatton and others, it was decided not to tell the Queen suddenly. When she learnt it later in the day the well-prepared blow fell upon Davison. The Queen pretended to be infuriated, swore that she had never intended to have the warrant divulged, and whilst blaming all the Councillors, threw most of the onus upon Davison. The Council advised him to retire from court, and he was soon afterwards cast into the Tower and degraded from his office. After a long and tedious trial and a painful imprisonment, he was condemned to a fine sufficient to ruin him, and thenceforward lived in poverty and obscurity. The Earl of Essex fought manfully in his favour whilst he lived, but Lord Burghley and the rest of the Councillors were too strong for him, and the man they had ruined was never allowed to raise his head again.
That Burghley and the other principal Councillors were parties to the plot, and that the Queen’s anger with them was assumed, is also seen by a memorandum in Burghley’s handwriting at Hatfield, dated 17th February, headed “The State of the Cause as it ought to be conceived and reported concerning the Execution done upon the Queen of Scots,” in which the Queen’s version is adopted, and all the blame thrown upon Davison and the Council. Even before this was written the affair was so reported to Burghley’s friend Stafford in Paris, in order that this version might be spread on the Continent. Charles Arundell, in conveying the news from Stafford to Mendoza, says that Burghley was absent through illness, and that the execution was carried through by Davison, “who is a terrible heretic,” and the rest of Mary’s enemies. This is perhaps the blackest stain that rests upon Burghley’s name. We have seen before that he was not generous or magnanimous in his treatment of others when his own interests were at stake; and the sacrifice of Davison would probably appear to him a very small price to pay for helping Elizabeth out of a difficult position, and maintaining his own favour.
Although we have seen that the Lord Treasurer from motives of policy had been forced to take a prominent part in the condemnation and execution of Mary, it cannot be supposed that the position of affairs at the time was agreeable to him. The wars in Flanders, the persecution of English Protestants in Spain, the reprisals of Drake and the privateers, and the Catholic plots in the interests of Mary had aroused a strong Protestant war feeling in the country. Leicester and his friends had the popular voice on their side, and Burghley and the Conservatives could only very cautiously and tentatively endeavour to stay the impetus with which the country was rushing towards a national war with the strongest power in Christendom. The great Armada was in full preparation, and the ports of Italy, Flanders, Spain, and Portugal rang with the sound of arms. Don Antonio once more was welcomed in England, to be used as a stalking-horse, this being Lord Burghley’s last hope of levying war without national responsibility.
But though there was much talk about Don Antonio, and Spanish spies in England continued to report that the great fleet under Drake was to be employed in his interests, its real object was to render impossible, at least for that year, the junction of Philip’s naval forces in Lisbon. Thanks to the efforts of Burghley and his party, an elaborate pretence was kept up of the expedition being a private one; but it was really controlled and organised by government officers, and the second in command, Borough, was a Queen’s admiral, sent avowedly to place a check upon Drake, and to prevent him from going too far in his open attack upon Spain. Drake’s instructions were “to prevent or withstand any enterprise as might be attempted against her Highness’s dominions, and especially by preventing the concentration of Philip’s squadrons;” and he was to distress the ships as much as possible, both in the havens themselves and on the high seas. Drake arrived in Plymouth from the Thames on the 23rd March, and in a week of incessant energy had everything ready. The secret of his intentions was well kept, and Mendoza’s many spies could only tardily report the loose gossip of the streets. Sir Edward Stafford assured his Spanish paymaster that no living soul but the Queen and the Lord Treasurer knew what the design was to be.
Leicester was now at Buxton (April 1587), shortly to start on another visit to Flanders, and in his absence Burghley’s influence, both Ralegh and Hatton being on his side, as well as Crofts and the Catholics, overshadowed that of Walsingham and Knollys. Drake seems to have feared the consequence of this, and hurried his departure from Plymouth (2nd April). He was only just in time, for as soon as he had gone a courier came in hot haste with orders from the Council, which now meant Burghley, strictly limiting Drake’s action: “You shall forbear to enter forcibly into any of the said King’s ports or havens, or to offer any violence to any of his towns or shipping within harbour, or to do any act of hostility on land.”
This was exactly what Drake had foreseen. The ship sent after him with the orders failed to reach him, and the great seaman went on his way. But, as usual with Drake, the official drag on the wheel had to be overcome. Off Cape St. Vincent, Borough recited to the Admiral the conditions under which the Queen’s ships accompanied him, evidently expecting that he would not confine his operations to preventing the concentration of the Spanish squadrons. But Drake was on his own element now, and sailed straight to Cadiz, as some people had shrewdly expected he meant to do from the first. Borough warned him not to exceed the Queen’s orders, and was placed under arrest for his pains; and unopposed, Drake sailed into Cadiz harbour, to the dismay of the astounded Spaniards. He plundered, burned, and sank all the ships in port, destroyed the stores, and then quietly sailed out again unmolested. He did damage to the extent of a million ducats (though Philip wrote that he felt the insolence of the act more than the material damage), and if he had cared to disobey the Queen’s orders further he might have stopped the Armada for good by burning the ships in Lisbon, for they had neither guns nor men on board to protect them. But he knew now that the peace party in the Council were busy arranging with Parma’s envoy for the meeting of a conference, and doubtless thought he had gone far enough in his brilliant disobedience.
The indispensable Andrea de Looe had arrived in London from the Prince of Parma immediately after Drake sailed, and was soon deep in negotiation with Burghley with the object of arranging a meeting of Peace Commissioners. When he had returned to Brussels with the proposals, news came of Drake’s daring raid. De Looe then wrote a long letter to Burghley (11th July), pointing out how much the cause of peace was injured by such acts of aggression. Burghley’s answer (28th July) perfectly defines his position towards Drake’s action. After professing the Queen’s desire for peace, and readiness to send her Commissioners to Flanders if the Duke of Parma will suspend hostilities (before the Sluys), he says: “True it is, and I avow it upon my faith, her Majesty did send a ship expressly with a message by letters charging him (Drake) not to show any act of hostility before he went to Cadiz, which messenger, by contrary winds, could never come to the place where he was, but was constrained to come home, and hearing of Sir Fras. Drake’s actions, her Majesty commanded the party that returned to be punished, but he acquitted himself by oath of himself and all his company. And so unwitting, yea unwilling, to her Majesty those actions were committed by Sir Fras. Drake, for the which her Majesty is greatly offended with him; and now also for bringing home of a rich ship that came out of the East Indies.” And then, as some counterbalance to these enormities, Lord Burghley sets forth once more the various grievances of England against Spain.
Whilst the elaborate and frequently insincere negotiations for peace were being laboriously pursued for many months, Lord Burghley’s other standing policy was not neglected, namely, that of causing jealousy between France and Spain. Henry III. was now in mortal fear of Guise, and was ready to listen to English and Huguenot suggestions that Philip’s conquest of England would be followed by a Guisan dynasty under Spanish patronage in France. All the French influence at the Vatican was exercised to procure the conversion of James Stuart and the opposition of Spanish aims, and before the end of the year Lord Burghley had the satisfaction of seeing that Henry III. and his clever mother in no case would aid Philip to subjugate England.
Elizabeth, in the meanwhile, was assailed by doubts and fears, and periodical fits of penuriousness in the midst of her danger, which drove her Councillors to despair. Stafford told Mendoza that “Cecil writes that the Queen is so peevish and discontented that it was feared she would not live long. Her temper is so bad that no Councillor dares to mention business to her, and when even he (Cecil) did so, she had told him that she had been strong enough to lift him out of the dirt, and was able to cast him down again. He (Cecil) was of opinion that the Councillors might be divided into three classes—those who wished to come to terms with Spain, those who desired a close friendship with France, and those who wanted to stand aloof from both, whilst enriching themselves with plunder. He (Cecil) was neither a Spaniard nor a Frenchman, but wished the Queen to be friendly with both powers. King Henry, under whom the country was powerful and tranquil, thought he was doing a great thing when he was able to make war with France when he had an alliance with Spain; and now it happened that the French were as desirous of being friendly as the English were, and he urges the Ambassador to hasten the conclusion of an agreement.”
But whilst he was writing amiably for the French, he took care, on the other hand, to make the most of the peace negotiations with Spain, and thus to cause Henry to be the more anxious for England’s friendship. The old statesman was thus cautiously and slowly going on his traditional way, hopeless though he must have been of the final result as regarded keeping peace with Spain. The long-continued preparations of the Armada were rapidly approaching completion; the Pope had been cajoled into promising funds unwillingly to aid Philip’s aims; the English Catholic refugees were eagerly awaiting the harvest of their efforts; the great, cumbrous machine for crushing England was already in motion, and no efforts of diplomacy could stop it.
But yet Burghley did his best. The war and plunder party, as usual, checked him at every turn; but early and late, through constant pain and sickness, family trouble and public disappointment, he struggled on in the way he had marked out for himself so many years before—to divide England’s possible enemies, and keep the peace with Spain so long as was humanly possible. The Queen was full of qualms and misgivings; swaying now to one side, now to another, and abusing in turn both the party of peace and the advocates of war. “The Queen has been scolding the Lord Treasurer greatly for the last few days, for having neglected to disburse money for the fleet,” wrote a Spanish spy in November; and a few days afterwards, when she was alarmed at the delay in Parma’s reply, she flew into a tremendous rage with Burghley, “upon whom she heaped a thousand insults,” for having induced her to negotiate for peace whilst the enemy completed his preparations. “She told the Treasurer he was old and doting; to which he replied that he knew he was old, and would gladly retire to a church to pray for her.” But the old minister gave the Queen as good as she brought, and in vigorous words pointed out in detail that her present dangers arose entirely from her neglect of his advice and the imprudence of his opponents in the Council. But the next day came Parma’s answer, and the Queen was all smiles again towards Burghley and the peacemakers.
Whilst the tedious negotiations with Parma were dragging on, no slackness was visible in the preparations for resisting the attack on England. Drake was sent to the mouth of the Channel with a fine squadron of ships, whilst the Lord Admiral’s fleet was being put in readiness in the Thames with all haste; and Ralegh in Devonshire, Hunsdon in the north, and Lord Grey and Sir John Norris in the home counties, were busily organising the land forces. As usual, upon Lord Burghley rested much of the labour and responsibility, and to him matters great and small were referred for decision. The English preparations met with many difficulties. The Queen was fractious and fickle, one day hectoring and threatening, and the next cursing Walsingham and his gang, who had drawn her into this strait, and were for ever pestering her for money, which she doled out as sparingly as possible. There was, moreover, no great alacrity shown at first by the people at large in providing special funds to meet the great national emergency, and the trading classes were grumbling at Leicester and the greedy gentlemen whose piracy was largely responsible for the coming war.
The sending of Peace Commissioners to Parma was, as usual, the subject of division in the Council, Burghley naturally advocating the pacific policy, and Leicester, Walsingham, and Paulet violently opposing the negotiations except on impossible terms. The Queen wavered constantly, but was more frequently on the side of peace. Soon after Leicester returned from Holland (January 1588) he opposed in the Council the sending of Commissioners. A comedy was played the same night before the Queen and court, and as the company rose, Elizabeth turned upon Leicester in a great rage and told him she must make peace with Spain at any cost. “If my ships are lost,” she said, “nothing can save me.” Leicester tried to tranquillise her by talking about Drake; but she replied that all he did was to irritate the enemy to her detriment.
The instructions to the Peace Commissioners, as drafted by Burghley, seem to be an honest attempt to come to terms. England was to pledge herself not to send aid of any sort, to the prejudice of Philip, to any of the dominions he had inherited (thus excluding Portugal), and Philip was asked, at least, to bind himself to prevent the molestation by the Inquisition of English mariners on board their ships in Spanish ports. But side by side with this there is reason to believe that Lord Burghley, probably through Crofts, endeavoured to gain the Duke of Parma personally to the side of peace. He had been badly treated by Philip in the matter of Portugal, and was still in the dark as to the King’s real intentions. He was liable to dismissal at any moment; he was short of money, and chafing at the inexplicable delay of the Armada. It was suggested that a condition of the peace might be to give him fixity of tenure of his government of Flanders for life. How far these approaches may have influenced him it is at present difficult to say, but he certainly appealed to Philip earnestly and solemnly to allow him to make peace, and when the Armada finally appeared in the Channel he did nothing to falsify his own prediction of the disaster which awaited it.
The English Commissioners embarked for Ostend (a town in English-Dutch occupation) in March, but one of them, Crofts, a Spanish agent, made no hesitation of landing in Philip’s town of Dunkirk and proceeding overland to Ostend. After infinite bickering as to the place of meeting, the preliminary conferences were held in a tent between Ostend and Nieuport; but on questions of procedure and powers the negotiations were delayed until the Armada had sailed from Lisbon, and Philip’s pretence could be kept up no longer, when the Commissioners hurriedly returned. Crofts’ desire to serve his Spanish paymasters, and to obtain peace at any price, caused him to go beyond his public instructions in making concessions, and at the instance of Leicester he was cast into the Tower on his return; but the rest of the Commissioners acknowledged that they had been tricked, and that Philip had never intended peace. Many persons had thought so from the first, though the delay had been advantageous for England. The Lord Admiral, writing to Walsingham before the Commissioners left England, says: “There never was since England was England such a stratagem and mask made to deceive England, withal, as this is of the treaty of peace. I pray God we have not cause to remember one thing that was made of the Scots by the Englishmen; that we do not curse for this a long grey beard with a white head, witless, that will make all the world think us heartless. You know whom I mean.”
Though Burghley had struggled for thirty years to maintain peace with Spain, when war was inevitable he took far more than his share of the labour of organising it. As usual, he worked early and late, sometimes almost in despair at the Queen’s penuriousness and irritability, and himself suffering incessantly. Whilst he was still striving for peace (10th April) he thus writes to Walsingham: “I cannot express my pain, newly increased in all my left arm. My spirits are even now so extenuated as I have no mind towards anything but to groan with my pain.… Surely, sir, as God will be best pleased with peace, so in nothing can her Majesty content her realm better than in procuring it.… So forced with pain, even from my arm to my heart, I end.” In the midst of the preparations, when Howard, Winter, Drake, and Hawkins were daily writing reports or requests to the over-burdened Lord Treasurer, his favourite but unfortunate daughter, Lady Oxford, died. In his diary he simply records the fact in the words, “Anna Comitissa Oxoni?, filia mia charissima, obiit in Do. Greenwici et 25, Sepult. Westminster;” but the bereaved father was in a few days hard at work again, though still confined to his bed.
At length, on the 30th July (N.S.), the long looked for Armada appeared in the Channel. The story of how the sceptre of the sea passed to England during the next week has often been told elsewhere, and need not be here repeated; but Burghley’s share of the glory at least must not go unrecorded. We have seen how the details of organisation were largely left in his hands; but, in addition to this, like other great nobles, he raised a special force, clothed in his colours, and maintained at his expense, and visited the army encamped at Tilbury, “where,” says Leicester, “I made a fair show for my Lord Treasurer, who came from London to see us.” It is usually asserted also that his two sons, Sir Thomas and Sir Robert, joined the English fleet, like so many other gentlemen of rank; and although this may be true, for certainly Sir Robert was at Dover, and might perhaps have gone on board one of the ships, it is questionable, and their names do not appear in any of the records as being present.
It was hardly to be supposed that the Spaniards would so readily submit to defeat as not to renew the attack, for Englishmen had not yet gauged the paralysing effect of Philip’s system upon his subjects, and, like the rest of the world, took Spain largely on trust; but Burghley was right in his forecast that the Armada itself was so broken and weak that it would run round Ireland and return no more. When the heroics in England were over and matters were settling down, there was still no cessation in the work of the Lord Treasurer. There were intricate victualling accounts to be laboriously calculated in perplexing Roman numerals; there were wages to be paid; captains and admirals to be brought to book for every item of their expenditure, for the Queen would have no slackness in that respect, even though the country and herself had been rescued from a great peril; there were prisoners to interrogate, and plans to be made for future defence, and, as usual, Puritans and prelates to be appeased and reconciled. The lion’s share of all this fell to the gouty, crippled old man with the bright eyes, the grave face, and the snowy hair—to Lord Treasurer Burghley.
Shortly after the disappearance of the Armada, Leicester died (4th September), on his way to Kenilworth, and Burghley lost the political rival who had continued to thwart him for nearly thirty years. Nothing proves more clearly Burghley’s consummate prudence and tact than the fact that, to the very last, his relations with the Earl were always outwardly polite, and even friendly. That this was not owing to the forbearance of Leicester is seen by his violent quarrels with Sussex, Arundel, Ormonde, Heneage, Ralegh, and others who crossed his path.
The death of Leicester, together with that of Sir Walter Mildmay, which happened shortly afterwards, changed the balance of Elizabeth’s Council. The old ministers were dropping off one by one and giving place to younger men, who could not expect to exercise over the experienced and mature ruler the same influence as that of her earlier advisers. In order to strengthen his party Lord Burghley had patronised Ralegh; but Leicester had retorted by bringing forward his young stepson Essex, whom his dying father had left as a solemn charge to Burghley. Essex was a mere lad of twenty-two when Leicester died, and as yet too young to head a party against the aged minister; but he had absorbed all the traditions of the dead favourite, and henceforward thwarted the Cecils to the best of his power with all the persistence of Leicester, but with a haughty incautiousness which belonged to himself alone, and ultimately led him to his tragic death.
Notwithstanding the crushing blow that Spanish power had received, English public feeling continued apprehensive and nervous. Spies abroad still sent alarmist reports of Philip’s future plans, and few Englishmen had yet realised how completely their foe was disabled. When Parliament met, therefore, in February (1589), the largest subsidies ever voted were granted for the defence of the country, and the Houses petitioned her Majesty “to denounce open war against the King of Spain.”
There were, however, other ways of crippling the foe more acceptable both to the Queen and her principal minister. Since 1581 Elizabeth had been playing fast and loose with Don Antonio, the claimant to the crown of Portugal. Leicester and Walsingham had more than once encouraged him to spend large sums of money in England—raised on the sale or security of his jewels—in fitting out naval expeditions in his favour, but nothing effectual had been done for his cause. Catharine de Medici, on the other hand, had countenanced the despatch of two fine expeditions from France to the Azores, both of which had been disastrously defeated; and in the Armada year Antonio again came to England to seek for aid against the common enemy. He was sanguine, and ready to promise anything for immediate aid. Just before the Armada arrived, the plan of diverting Philip’s forces by an attack on Portugal had been broached by the Lord Admiral in a letter to Walsingham, but the Queen would not then hear of any of her ships being sent away.
In September, however, circumstances had changed. It was useless to ask the Queen to accept the whole expense and responsibility of an expedition; but in September 1588, Antonio saw Lord Burghley, who wrote down the plans and offers he made. If, said the pretender, he could once land in Portugal with a sufficient force, all the country would rise in his favour; and his suggestion, supported by Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake, was to form a joint-stock undertaking with the countenance and help of the Queen and the Dutch, for the purpose of invading and capturing Portugal in his interest. In exchange he promised to pay the soldiers, and handsomely; to allow them to loot Spanish property in Lisbon; and, above all, to burn Philip’s ships in Lisbon and Seville, and recoup the adventurers their expenditure with a large bonus. If war were to be made at all, this was a method of making it likely to find favour in the eyes of the Queen and Burghley; and in February 1589 a warrant was issued authorising the expedition, and appointing rules for its government. Drake was to command at sea, and Norris by land, and the objects are carefully set forth in Burghley’s words: “first, to distress the King of Spain’s ships; second, to obtain possession of the Azores in order to intercept the treasure ships; and third, to assist Don Antonio to recover the kingdom of Portugal if it shall be found that the public voice be favourable to him.”
The Queen contributed ￡20,000 and seven ships of the navy, and strict conditions were made that her money should not be wasted. But the affair was mismanaged from the first. Most of the men who went were idle vagabonds, the scum of the towns and the sweepings of the jails. The Dutch contingent fell away, the promises of support in England were not kept, money ran short, and the victuals went bad. The Queen lost her temper and began to frown upon the expedition when Drake’s constant demands for further help became too pressing; but finally, after weeks of galling delay, through bad weather and other causes, the expedition put to sea (13th April), nearly 200 sail of all sorts, with 20,000 men. Shortly before it left, the Earl of Essex, with his brother and other gentlemen, had fled to Plymouth in disguise, shipped on board the Swiftsure and put to sea. The Queen had specially refused him permission to accompany the expedition; and when she found that her favourite had disobeyed her, her fury knew no bounds.
From that hour the expedition and commanders got nothing but ill words from her. Not content simply to burn the few ships in Coru?a, the commanders lost a precious fortnight, in direct violation to orders, in besieging the place and burning the lower town. Wine was found in plenty, and excess incapacitated the greater part of the Englishmen; pestilence and desertion worked havoc in their ranks, and subsequently, as a crowning disaster, Norris, persuaded by Antonio against Drake’s advice, marched overland from Peniche to Lisbon, instead of forcing the Tagus.
But Antonio had been deceived. None but a few country people joined him; the Portuguese in Lisbon were utterly cowed by the firmness and severity of the Archduke Albert and his few Spaniards, and Norris had no siege artillery. After a few days of useless heroism, in which young Essex showed himself the brave, rash, generous lad he was, the attempt was abandoned; and harassed by enemies in flank and rear, beset by famine, sickness, and panic, Norris, and what was left of his army, beat a retreat to Cascaes, where Drake and the ships awaited them. The Azores were never approached, and the ships in Lisbon and Seville were not burned, and the inglorious expedition slunk back again to England with a loss of two-thirds of its number of men.
Although Burghley had drawn up the conditions of the Queen’s aid to the expedition, he took no active part in its subsequent organisation, for a great sorrow was impending, which fell upon him ten days before the expedition sailed. He had lived in harmony and affection with his wife for forty-three years, and her death on the 4th April cast him for a time into the deepest sorrow. But even in the midst of his grief, his passion for placing everything on record led him to write a most interesting series of meditations on his loss, which is still extant. Commencing by a reflection on the fruitlessness of wishing his “dear wife alive again in her mortal body,” he proceeds at great length to lay down the direction his thoughts should take for consolation, such as gratitude to God for “His favour in permitting her to have lived so many years together with me, and to have given her grace to have the true knowledge of her salvation.” But most of the curious document is occupied by a statement of the liberal anonymous charities of Lady Burghley, which during her life she had kept inviolably secret, even from her husband; and as some indication of the reality of Lord Burghley’s grief, it may be mentioned that he signs the paper “April 9, 1588. Written at Colling’s Lodge by me in sorrow.”
Through the whole course of his life we have seen William Cecil pursuing the traditional policy of suspicion of France and Scotland, and a desire to draw closer to the rulers of the Netherlands. But in his old age a series of circumstances which were impossible to have been foreseen, entirely revolutionised the political balance of Europe, and for a time led even Lord Burghley to reverse his main policy. The heavy yoke of the Guises, doubly heavy now that they had the power of Spain behind them, had at last galled to desperation the vicious Valois who ruled France. The long-foretold and carefully-planned blow which had murdered the Duke of Guise and his brother, and rid Henry of his hard taskmaster, had been followed by a combination of all French Catholicism against the royal murderer. The subjects were declared to be absolved from their allegiance to the King, Paris flew to arms, the Church thundered denunciations, and the erstwhile royal bigot and monk, the figurehead of the Catholic League, the sleepless persecutor of Protestants, found himself driven into the arms of the only subjects he had who were not ready to tear him to pieces, namely, the Huguenots and excommunicated Henry of Navarre, the legitimate heir to the throne. Together they advanced upon Paris to crush the Guisan Catholics, and wreak vengeance upon the citizens who had deposed their sovereign. Henry of Navarre had often sought and obtained Elizabeth’s help against the Catholics, and looked to her again in this supreme struggle which was to decide, as it seemed, the fate of France. For the first time, however, on this occasion English aid took the form of supporting the sovereign against rebels, instead of the reverse.
In Scotland also the Catholic nobles had been busy intriguing for the landing of a Spanish force, which should coerce or depose James, and finally crush Protestantism there. The plan had been discovered, and Elizabeth, who had again made sure of James, had urged him to severity, and offered him support if necessary against his Catholic nobles. So that in Scotland, as in France, it was Catholicism that represented rebellion, and Protestantism in both countries looked to England to uphold legality. That the position struck Lord Burghley as curious is seen in a letter from him to Lord Shrewsbury (16th June). “The world,” he says, “is become very strange! We Englishmen now daily desire the prosperity of a King of France and a King of Scots. We were wont to aid the subjects oppressed against both these Kings; now we are moved to aid both these Kings against their rebellious subjects; and though these are contrary effects, yet on our part they proceed from one cause, for that we do is to weaken our enemies.” In another letter he says, “Seeing both Kings are enemies to our enemies we have cause to join with them.” In fact, once more for a time religious union had become stronger than national divisions. It was the Protestantism of England, France, Scotland, and Holland, led by Elizabeth, against militant Catholicism everywhere, championed by the Spanish King.
Six weeks after the above letter was written the changed position towards France was further accentuated by the murder of Henry III. at the hands of a fanatic monk in the interests of the Catholics. With the Huguenot Henry of Navarre as King of France, and with Spain as the power behind the League, England and France were pledged to the same cause. The main sources of distrust in England against France always had been the fear that the latter power might dominate Flanders or gain a footing in Scotland. James’s adhesion to the Protestant party, his alliance with England, and his growing hopes of the English succession, had made the latter contingency one which might now be disregarded, whilst the possession of strong places in the Netherlands in English hands, the religion of the new King of France, and his need to depend upon England for support, rendered it in the highest degree improbable that he would dream of conquering and holding Spanish Flanders against the wish of Elizabeth.
For the last three years Elizabeth had continued to supply Henry of Navarre with large sums of money to pay mercenaries; but if Henry was to reign over France he must now fight the League and Spain; and to enable him to do this, England would have to subscribe more handsomely than ever. Henry accordingly sent Beauvoir la Nocle to London to push his master’s cause. Great quantities of ammunition were shipped to the coast of Normandy, whither Henry had retired with his army; but men were wanted too, and on the 17th August Beauvoir dined with the Lord Treasurer at Cecil House, and concluded an arrangement by which Elizabeth was to lend 300,000 crowns to pay for German reiters in the spring, and to make a cash advance to Henry of 70,000 crowns.
By a letter from Beauvoir in the following year (16th June 1590) it is clear that Burghley’s old distrust of the French had not been overcome without difficulty. “At last,” he says, “I have conquered the Lord Treasurer! Now it must be borne in mind that if the Queen says ‘Do this,’ and Burghley says ‘Do it not,’ it is he who will be obeyed. Still I find him easier and more tractable than he was; these are humours that come and go, like the wind blows. Nevertheless he does well, though he is not one of those who act up to the proverb ‘Quis cito dat, bis dat.’” In the same despatch Beauvoir fervently urges the King to keep his promise with regard to the payment for the ammunition, &c., supplied to him. He says that the failure to meet such engagements is called in England “to play the Vidame.” “For God’s sake,” he continues, “make provision for payment, or abandon all hope of getting anything else here except on good security.”
Henry’s first attack on Paris failed, and he was forced to retire (November 1589); but he sent the gallant old hero La Noue to Picardy to withstand the League there. When young Essex heard of his proximity he was anxious to join him. From the first he had been trying to persuade the Queen to send national forces under his command to aid the Huguenots, but cautious Burghley was always at hand to hint at expense and responsibility, and the auxiliary English troops under Willoughby, now in Henry’s service, were complaining bitterly of the hardships and penury they were undergoing. A great fleet also was being fitted out in Spain, the destination of which was kept secret, but rumours ran that it was coming to England, or what was almost as bad, to capture a French port in the Channel as a naval base from which the invasion of England could be effected. Brittany was held by the Duke de Merc?ur for the League by Spanish aid, and already (January) overtures had been made by him to Philip to occupy a port on the coast.
But whether England was to be attacked direct or a Brittany port first taken possession of, it behoved Elizabeth to stand on her guard, and on the 15th March a great plan for the muster and mobilisation of troops all over England was issued by the Lord Treasurer. On the day before the order was made in England the Huguenot King had gained the great battle of Ivry, crushing Mayenne’s army and rapidly beleaguering Paris again. For the moment, therefore, Henry was able to hold his own, and the apprehension of the English Government was mainly directed towards Brittany, where a Spanish force of 4000 men were supporting the Duke de Merc?ur; and the claim of Philip’s daughter to the duchy, if not to the crown of France, was being advanced.
Burghley’s age was now telling upon him greatly. He had become very deaf, and almost constant gout kept him crippled; but still he remained, as ever, the resource of every one with an appeal to make, a question to be decided, or an end to be served. The recent death of Walsingham (April 1590) left him the only one of the Queen’s early Councillors, except Crofts, who died soon afterwards, and Sir Francis Knollys, whose fanatical Puritanism and anti-Prelatism still gave much trouble to the Treasurer. The latter had evidently marked out his brilliant younger son Robert Cecil for Walsingham’s successor; and certainly no better choice could have been made, for he had for some time past relieved his father of some of his most laborious work, and had imbibed much of his policy and method. The mere hint of such an intention, however, was sufficient to arouse the opposition of Essex, who, either out of generosity or in a mere spirit of contradiction of “the Cecils,” took up the cause of Davison, and endeavoured to bring him back to office. The Lord Treasurer was powerful enough to prevent that; but did not push the matter to extremes by obtaining the appointment of his own son until some years afterwards, although Robert Cecil was knighted (May 1591) and was sworn a Member of the Privy Council shortly afterwards (August 1591), and thereafter practically discharged much of the duty of Secretary of State. Burghley has frequently been blamed for a want of generosity towards Davison at this juncture. He was, as we have had occasion to notice more than once, not a generous man; but this was a crucial trial of strength between him and young Essex, and if Davison had been reappointed Secretary of State the influence of Burghley would have suffered irreparably. It was obvious now that Essex was determined, if possible, to force Elizabeth into an aggressive policy, especially against Spain, and it was exactly this policy which Burghley still devoted his life to opposing. But it is clear that the Treasurer did not gain his point with regard to Davison without some little trouble. Whilst the matter was in dispute he pleaded his age and infirmities as a reason for his complete retirement from office; and such a hint always brought the Queen to her bearings.
He, however, absented himself from court and stayed in dudgeon at Theobalds, where the Queen, to pacify him, paid him a stately visit in May, and the notes at Hatfield in the Lord Treasurer’s writing show that on this occasion, as usual, the smallest details of the Queen’s reception were arranged by him. Whilst there the Queen appears to have written the extraordinary jocose letter to “The disconsolate and retired spryte, the hermite of Tyboll,” in which, with tedious and affected jocularity, Hatton, in her name, exhorts him to return to the world and his duty. He must have done so promptly, for he was with the court at Greenwich again as busy as ever in a fortnight, writing to Mr. Grimstone, the agent in France, a letter (June), which shows that already the old distrust of French methods was reasserting itself. “In truth, her Majesty findeth some lack that the King doth not advertise her more frequently of his actions and intentions; and especially she findeth it strange that there is no more care had for the state of Brittany, in that the King sendeth no greater forces thither to encounter the Spaniards’ new descents, or to recover such port towns as be of most moment. And her Majesty is truly comforted with certain successes that have happened in Brittany since the arrival (there) of Sir John Norreys.” The letter ends with an emphatic reminder of Henry’s obligations to Elizabeth, and a somewhat doubting hope that he will be properly grateful.
Henry naturally was for winning Paris, the headquarters of the League and the capital of his realm, and he was already giving pause to Elizabeth and Burghley by his willingness to “receive instruction” from priests, with a view to his conversion. What from the English point of view was most to be feared was that he might at last be forced or cajoled into consenting to a partition of France, in which the Infanta’s claim to the Duchy of Brittany, which was a very strong one, should be acknowledged. This would have brought the Spaniards into the Channel opposite England, and have completely altered the balance of power. Already Don Juan del Aguila had a firm grip upon the port of Blavet, and Elizabeth’s Government were pressing Henry to direct his attention to the north of France, where the League had occupied most of the principal ports, except Dieppe. Henry himself was reducing Chartres and other places near Paris, whilst his officers in the north, with inadequate forces, were doing their best to recover the coast towns.
At the urgent desire of Elizabeth, Henry promised to come to Normandy, and Essex prevailed upon the Queen to give him command of a considerable English force to besiege Rouen (July). The young Earl was in semi-disgrace in consequence of his recent marriage with Walsingham’s daughter (Sir Philip Sidney’s widow), but the Queen gave him strict orders not to expose himself to danger. Henry, however, did not keep his word to meet Essex on the coast, and as soon as Essex landed, made an attempt to utilise the English force elsewhere. Essex was indignant, and rushed off to Noyon to remonstrate with Henry. When, however, Rouen was at last besieged, he violated the Queen’s commands and took an active part in the siege.
At length Elizabeth declared that she would be played with no longer by him, and he was forced to return to his infuriated mistress, whilst the siege of Rouen dragged on for months longer, sometimes in the presence of Henry himself, until the arrival of Parma and Mayenne caused it to be abandoned (May 1592). The anger of the Queen with Essex and the war-party was increased by the ill success in the autumn (1591) of the attempt to intercept the Spanish treasure fleet off the Azores; and for a time “the Cecils” had their way, which was to administer just so much aid, and no more, as should prevent Maurice of Nassau in Holland and Henry of Navarre in France from succumbing to the power of Spain, whilst the Queen in the meanwhile railed at Navarre for his shiftiness, and at Essex for his disobedience. Her Englishmen, she said, had been badly treated and exposed to undue hardships, her advances were unpaid, nobody was grateful to her; and in future she declared, that though Henry might have her prayers he should have no more of her money.
The determined efforts of Essex and his party, and more especially of the two Bacons, Francis and Antony, to wound and discredit the Cecils, stopped at no inconsistency. From their earliest childhood the Earl and the Bacons had been attached to the Puritan party, and still posed as its champions; and yet they were the first to endeavour to cast upon Burghley the odium of the severe proclamation and fresh persecution of the seminary priests that had been considered necessary. From the action of Allen, Persons, and their friends at the time of the Armada, from the letters intercepted by Burghley disclosing the Jesuit plot in Scotland, and from the continued bitter writings of Person’s directed against Elizabeth and her minister, it was beyond question now, that whatever may have been the case at the beginning of their propaganda, the aim of the seminarists was simply to undermine and overturn the political government of the country. And yet the Bacons, nephews of Burghley and sons of a fiercely Puritan mother, prompted by the double spy Standen and men of the same evil class, almost violently took up the cause of the persecuted Catholics when they thought it would injure the kinsman to whom they owed so much, and his son, of whom they were jealous.
The renewed severity against the seminarists at this time was certainly not without justification. The shifty James Stuart was again listening to the charming of his Catholic nobles and the agents of Spain, though doubtless with the intention of outwitting them, and from all sides came the news of a powerful fleet being prepared in the Spanish ports either for England, Scotland, or Ireland. For a time in the autumn of 1592, whilst Lord Burghley was accompanying Elizabeth through the southern counties, a perfect panic of apprehension fell upon the people; partly, it must be confessed, caused by the fear of reprisals for the ceaseless ravages of the English upon Spanish shipping. Burghley himself had always been opposed to these ravages, and had steadily refused to accept any share in the profits of them; but when the prizes were brought back he took care that the Queen’s share was not forgotten. A good instance of this occurred in 1592. Ralegh and the Earl of Cumberland with some associates fitted out a powerful expedition to intercept the treasure galleons, and, if possible, to raid some of the Spanish settlements. When the squadron had sailed, Ralegh was suddenly recalled by the angry Queen and thrown into the Tower (May) for having married.
The Roebuck, Ralegh’s own ship, captured off Flores amongst other prizes the great carrack Madre de Dios, which reached Dartmouth on the 8th September. The riches she contained were beyond calculation; pearls, amber, musk, and precious stones, tapestries, silks, spices, and gold formed her cargo. Plunder began long before she reached England, and when the news came of the capture the great road to the west was crowded by Jew dealers, London tradesmen and fine ladies and gentlemen on their way to buy bargains. Ralegh’s sailors were already sulky at the imprisonment of their beloved master, and when attempts were made by the shore authorities to recover some of the plunder and prevent further peculation, they became unmanageable. Sir John Hawkins wrote to Lord Burghley that Ralegh was the only man who could bring them to order. But Ralegh was in the Tower, “the Queen’s poor prisoner”; and it needed all the Lord Treasurer’s influence, working on Elizabeth’s greed, to obtain permission for Sir Walter, still under guard, to go down to Devonshire and set matters straight. Preceding him by a few hours on the same errand went Sir Robert Cecil, whose letters to his father on his journey, detailing the measures he had adopted on the way to intercept the plunder, are extremely graphic and interesting.
Such depredations upon Spanish shipping as this—and they were of constant occurrence—although they might enrich the adventurers, and to some extent even the Queen, were a means of keeping the English people generally in a constant state of apprehension, and rendering legitimate commerce dangerous and difficult. As we have seen, Lord Burghley had steadily set his face against piracy of all sorts, and Sir Robert Cecil followed his lead. Ralegh had from his first appearance at court been a friend of the Cecils, as against Leicester and Essex, and he still remained on their side; but he was greedy and unscrupulous, and certainly from the time of the capture of the great carrack the cordiality between the Cecil party and himself diminished. The talk of the court generally was that Burghley was jealous of the rise of all men who might compete with his beloved son Robert; and Ralegh’s friend Spenser puts the thought in verse (“The Ruins of Time”) thus:—
“O grief of griefs! O gall of all good hearts!
To see that virtue should despisèd be
Of him that first was raised for virtuous parts,
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. 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.”
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. 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;” and much more of the same sort. These grosser calumnies and accusations of corruption 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. 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; 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 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, 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, 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.
This case has been stated here somewhat at length, because it has become usual to cast upon Lord Burghley the odium for cruel persecution both of Catholics and Protestants, in disregard of the fact that there were in England two extreme parties struggling with each other, he being, so far as religion was concerned, a moderator between the two. He was, of course, the most prominent man in the Government, but he only maintained his influence by avoiding the extremes of both parties, and in order to do this he was obliged to refrain from running strongly counter to either. It may be said that in this case of the Brownists, as well as that of the Catholics, he might have firmly put his foot down and have prevented the sacrifice; but in that event he would not have been William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and he would not have held the tiller of the State for forty years.
In the summer, Essex received a strange and powerful coadjutor in his policy of aggressive war against Spain. He and his friends the Bacons, much to the Puritan Lady Bacon’s concern, were already deep in confidence with Standen, and other double spies and professed Catholics, the object apparently being to organise, for the benefit of Essex, a separate spy system, independent of the universal network controlled by the Cecils. The new recruit to Essex was a man of a very different calibre to the other instruments. Antonio Perez, the former all-powerful minister of Philip II., was at deadly feud with his master, and had been welcomed at the court of France as the bitterest enemy of his native country. He was one of the most brilliant and fascinating scoundrels that ever lived, and soon won the good graces of the jolly Béarnais, who was already meditating what he called the “mortal leap” of going to Mass, and turning the Huguenot Navarre into the Catholic King of France, eldest son of the Church. He had depended much upon Elizabeth’s help; although of late that had been slackening as Essex’s influence waned, and he knew that the step he was about to take would turn her full fury upon him. Who could so plausibly plead his cause and inflame the hearts in England against Spain as this mordant foe of Philip, who knew every weakness, every secret, of his former master? So in June, Perez went to England with Henry’s blessing, and with the cold permission of Elizabeth, for she had no love for traitors, and Burghley knew Perez’s errand.
When he arrived he found Elizabeth already fuming at Henry’s apostasy, and complaining bitterly to Beauvoir de Nocle of his master’s ingratitude. She refused absolutely to receive the “Spanish traitor,” and the cautious Cecils gave him a wide berth. Essex in some notes to Phillips, soon after Perez’s arrival, directs him to set informers to work to discover the real reason of the Spaniard’s coming. Lord Burghley, he says, has seen him once, and the Earl of Essex twice. “Burghley only wished to compare his judgment with his own experience; but he (Essex) wished to found upon Perez some action, for all his plots are to make war offensive rather than defensive.” Essex soon got over his doubts, and plausible Perez stood with Bacon ever at his right hand, living at his cost, writing his biting gibes, weaving his plots against Philip, and with his matchless ability and experience advising the young Earl how best to drag England into war with Spain, even though Henry was a Catholic, and so to outwit the watchful Cecils. It was not long, too, before he flattered and wormed himself into the good graces of the Queen, who gave him a handsome pension; and so gradually the war-party gained ground in Elizabeth’s councils, for in this Ralegh too was on the side of Essex, and the ceaseless talk of the intrigues of the Jesuits kept the English war feeling at fever heat.
Most of the routine work formerly falling upon Lord Burghley was now undertaken by his son. Letters from all quarters, and upon all subjects, came to Sir Robert, whose diligence must have been almost as indefatigable as that of his father; but apparently only those of special importance and touching foreign affairs were submitted to the Lord Treasurer. But though Sir Robert might be diligent, he certainly lacked the high sense of dignity which had always been characteristic of his father. At a time when courtiers vied with each other in addressing almost blasphemous flattery to the Queen, when all the firmament was ransacked to provide comparisons favourable to her Majesty’s beauty and wisdom, Lord Burghley, although always respectful and deferential to the Queen, never sacrificed his dignity to please her.
That his son was more of a supple courtier than he, is seen by the address penned by him to be delivered to the Queen by a man dressed as a hermit on her entrance to Theobalds, where she passed some days on a visit to the Lord Treasurer, in October. For turgid affectation and grovelling humility this production could hardly be excelled by the egregious Simier, or Hatton himself. The subject evidently has reference to the Queen’s previous visit to the house when Lord Burghley was in deep trouble and living in retirement. On that occasion there was much affected verbosity about the Lord Treasurer as a hermit, and in October 1593, when the pretended hermit addressed her Majesty, he reminded her that the last time she came, “his founder, upon a strange conceit to feed his own humour, had placed the hermit, contrary to his profession, in his house, whilst he (Burghley) had retired to the hermit’s poor cell.” Whilst his founder (Burghley) lived he was assured that he would not again dispossess him (as he never turned out tenants) “Only this perplexeth my soul, and causeth cold blood in every vein, to see the life of my founder so often in peril, nay, his desire as hasty as his age to inherit his tomb. But this I hear (which is his greatest comfort), that when his body, being laden with years, oppressed with sickness, having spent his strength in the public service, desireth to be rid of worldly cares, even when he is grievously sick and lowest brought, what holds him back and ransometh him, is the fear that my young master may wish to use my cell. And therefore, hearing of all the country folks I meet, that your Majesty doth use him in your service, as in former time you have done his father, my founder, and that though his experience and judgment be not comparable, yet as report goeth he hath something in him like the child of such a parent,” he (the hermit) begs the Queen, whose will is law, to bid Robert Cecil to continue in active life, and leave to the hermit the cell granted to him by his father.
This was doubtless considered at the time a highly ingenious device for asking the Queen for a reversion of the fathers’ offices for the son, and is certainly not lacking in the worldly wisdom which looks ahead; but surely never was any man’s coming death talked about so much in his lifetime, and with so little constraint, as that of Lord Burghley.
All through the year 1593 Lord Burghley’s agents in Spain had sent news of the powerful naval preparations being made at Pasages, Coru?a, and elsewhere, and the war-party at home and abroad had strained every nerve to induce the Queen to assume the offensive. Raleigh, Drake, and Hawkins supported Essex in his efforts; but the caution of “the Cecils,” the Queen, and the Lord Admiral restrained, as well as might be, the ardour of the forward party.
There were, indeed, many elements of danger near home which amply justified a cautious policy. James Stuart’s extraordinary lenity to the Catholic lords who had rebelled against him, and his known dallying with Spain and Rome, again suggested the possibility of a Spanish invasion of England over the Border, simultaneously with a rising of Catholics in England. The almost complete control of the coast of Brittany by the Spaniards, their recent seizure and fortification of a strong position in Brest harbour, and their continued intrigues in Ireland, all pointed to the aggressive policy against this country which Philip’s newly reorganised fleet enabled him to adopt. What would have caused but modified alarm to England a few years before, became much more terrible now that Henry IV. had become a Catholic and was making peace with the League. Elizabeth and her trusted advisers, therefore, kept Drake and Hawkins at home, and with the exception of sending Frobisher and Norris in the autumn of 1594 to oust the Spaniards from Brest harbour, stood on the defensive.
Essex, often in temporary disgrace with the Queen, headstrong and inexperienced, was no match in diplomacy for Robert Cecil, fortified by the experience and sagacity of his father; but he had enlisted in his service some of the cleverest and most unscrupulous spies and agents to aid him. Wherever the Queen had an ambassador, or the Cecils an agent, Essex also had a man to represent his interest. Every envoy that came from James Stuart or Henry IV. to ask for aid which the Cecils considered it imprudent to give under the circumstances, was received by Essex and his friends with open arms; and counter intrigues were carried on through them against the policy of Lord Burghley. In Scotland, Holland, and France, it was Essex who posed as the friend at the expense of the Cecils.
It had been to a considerable extent owing to the diplomacy of Antonio Perez that Henry IV. had decided to come to terms with the League, in order that the united forces of France might be opposed to the Spaniards. It was now Perez’s secret mission from the French King, with the aid of Essex, to exacerbate English feeling against Spain nationally, and to pledge Elizabeth to help him against the common enemy, independently of the question of religion. This would have been a distinct departure from the traditional policy of England, which had usually been to stand aloof whilst the two great rivals were fighting; and only the attachment of the King of France to the Protestant cause had for a time altered this policy. Elizabeth’s interests in France, now that Henry was a Catholic, were limited to preventing the permanent establishment of the Spanish power on the north coast opposite England, and to that end the Cecils directed their efforts. This, however, did not satisfy Essex and the war-party; and the persistent plots of the English Jesuits in Spain and Flanders added constant fuel to the flame, which Perez so artfully fanned from Essex House.
An opportunity occurred late in 1593 by which some of the instruments of the Cecils might be discredited, and a fresh blow dealt at the policy of cautious moderation. Many of the Portuguese gentlemen who surrounded the pretender, Don Antonio, had for years sold themselves both to Philip and to England—and played false to both. It has been seen that Lord Burghley’s network of secret intelligence, under the management of Phillips, was extremely extensive; and, amongst others, several of these Portuguese were employed. The most popular physician in London at the time was Dr. Ruy Lopez, a Portuguese Jew, the Queen’s physician, who was frequently employed by Burghley as an intermediary with the spies, in order to avert suspicion from them. On several occasions suggestions had been made to Philip by these spies of plans to kill the pretender, and Lopez’s name had been mentioned to the Spanish Government as one who would be willing to undertake the task of poisoning him.
In 1590 one Andrada had been discovered in an act of treachery against Don Antonio, and arrested in England, and a letter of his to Mendoza had been intercepted, in which he said that he had won over Lopez to the cause of Spain. In another letter, not intercepted, he gave particulars of a proposal of Lopez to bring about peace between England and Spain, if a sum of money was paid to him. Through the influence of Lopez, however, Andrada was liberated, and sent abroad as a spy in the interests of England. Thenceforward for three years secret correspondence was known, by Lord Burghley, to be passing between Spanish agents in Flanders and Spain, and Dr. Lopez, through Andrada and others. The intermediaries were all double spies and scoundrels who would have stuck at nothing, and were so regarded by Lord Burghley; but Lopez was thought to be above suspicion, and to be acting solely in English interests. He had, however, made an enemy of Essex; and Perez artfully wheedled some admissions from him that he was in communication with Spanish agents about some great plan. In October 1593, Gama, one of the agents, was, at Essex’s suggestion, arrested in Lopez’s house and searched. The letters found upon him were enigmatical, but suspicious. Then another agent named Tinoco, with similar communications and bills of exchange in his pocket from Spanish ministers, was laid by the heels. Essex, prompted by Perez, was indefatigable in the examination of the men. They lied and prevaricated—for it is certain that they were paid by both sides; but one of them mentioned Dr. Lopez as being interested in some compromising papers found upon him, and suddenly on the 30th January the Queen’s physician was arrested. He was immediately carried to Cecil House in the Strand, and there examined by the Lord Treasurer, Sir Robert Cecil, and Essex.
His answers seemed satisfactory to the Cecils, whose agent Lopez was, but did not please Essex. The Earl, however, was forestalled by Robert Cecil, who posted off to Hampton Court and assured Elizabeth of the physician’s innocence. Whilst he was assuring her that the only ground for the accusation—which had now assumed the form of a plot to murder the Queen—arose from the Earl’s hatred of Lopez, Essex was endeavouring to strengthen the proofs against the accused. When the Earl appeared at court the Queen burst out in a fury against him, called him a rash and temerarious youth to bring this ruinous accusation of high treason against her trusty servant from sheer malice, and told him that she knew Lopez was innocent, and her honour was at stake in seeing justice done. Gradually, however, the nets closed around the doctor. The Cecils did as much as they dared in his favour, but the presumptive evidence against him was too strong. The underlings competed with each other in the fulness of their confessions against Lopez, in hope of favour for themselves; and at length some sort of confession was said to have been wrung from Lopez himself, Robert Cecil, with horror, was forced to admit his belief that he was guilty, and Lopez and his fellow-criminals were executed at Tyburn early in June. This, together with the simultaneous declaration of other Spanish Jesuit plots against the Queen, and the activity of Perez’s venomous pen, aroused a feeling of perfect fury against Philip and his country.
All eyes looked to Drake and the sailors again to punish Spain upon the sea. Talk of great expeditions to America, to the Azores, to Spain itself, ran from mouth to mouth. What had been done with impunity before, might, said the Englishmen, be done again, even though the King of France had become a Papist and was unworthy of English help. But the Queen was in one of her timid moods, and the Cecils held the reins tightly. Essex remained sulking or in disgrace for the greater part of the summer, and, we learn from a letter from Sir Thomas Cecil to his brother, only became ostensibly reconciled with the Lord Treasurer in August.
Little of the routine business passed through Lord Burghley’s hands now, thanks to the activity of his son, but we get a glance occasionally at the aged minister from friends and foes who visited him. In the latter category we may place the spy Standen, a place-hunter and double traitor, who had fastened himself upon Essex, and yet was for ever pestering Burghley for an appointment. Sometimes the Lord Treasurer pretended to forget who he was, sometimes he gravely and politely expressed his regret at his inability to help him; but on one occasion, at least, he let him know that as he had joined Essex he must expect nothing from him. Standen was hanging about Hampton Court in the spring, and when the Queen had left, thinking the Lord Treasurer would be less busy than usual, “he stepped into his Lordship’s bedchamber, and found him alone sitting by the fire.” After some compliments, the place-hunter, for the hundredth time, set forth his claims. Burghley replied as before, that Standen was in England for a long time after his return from abroad without even coming to salute him. Standen said he had been ill with ague; “but,” said the minister, “you have been about the court all the winter and must have had some good days. And,” he asked, “how is it I have not seen the statement the Queen told you to draw up about Spain and to hand to me?” Standen hemmed and ha’d, but at last had to confess that he had given the statement to Essex for the Queen six months before. “Then my Lord began to start in his chair, and to alter his voice and countenance from a kind of crossing and wayward manner which he hath, into a tune of choler,” and told the spy that since he had begun with the Earl of Essex he had better go on with him, and hoped him well of it. Then angrily telling him some home-truths about his conduct, the Lord Treasurer dismissed the spy; though for the rest of the great minister’s life he was not free from his importunities.
It was not often that Lord Burghley thus exhibited anger, even to a man like Standen. We seem to know the aged statesman better in the following pathetic little word-picture contained in a letter from his faithful secretary, Sir Michael Hicks, to Sir Robert Cecil (27th September): “My Lord called me to him this evening, and willed me to write to you in mine own name, to signify to you that the Judge of the Admiralty came hither to him a little before supper time, to let him understand that he was not furnished with sufficient matter to meet the French Ambassador, and required five or six days’ further respite … wherewith he (Burghley) was well contented … for at the time of his coming to him he found himself ill, and not fit to hear and deal in suits, and he doth so continue. And truly, methinks, he is nothing sprighted, but lying on his couch he museth or slumbereth. And being a little before supper at the fire, I offered him some letters and other papers, but he was soon weary of them, and told me he was unfit to hear suits. But I hope a good night’s rest will make him better to-morrow.”
But though the great statesman was nearing his end, his mind was as keen as ever, and his influence was strong enough to prevent Essex from dragging England into an offensive war with Spain for the benefit of Henry IV. The Béarnais had still to cope with rebellion in various parts of his realm, and the Spaniards had secured a firm footing in Picardy and Brittany; his finances were in the utmost disorder, and against the advice of Sully he declared a national war against Philip in January. He had clamoured and cajoled in vain for more aid from Elizabeth, and in his pressing need had appealed with more success to the Hollanders.
This was the last straw. All the old distrust of the Burghley school against the French revived. The Queen was furious that these ingrate Dutchmen, whom she alone had rescued from the Spanish tyranny, should now curry favour with France. They owed her vast sums of money and eternal gratitude, they had offered her the sovereignty of their States, and yet instead of paying their debts and releasing some of her forces occupied in their service, they must needs seek fresh friends. If possible she was more indignant still with Henry; for, as we have seen, one of the two pivots upon which English policy turned was to exclude French influence in the Low Countries. Thomas Bodley was sent back to the States with reproaches for their ingratitude, and a peremptory demand that they should pay her what they owed her. Before he left England, however, he also was gained by Essex, and notwithstanding Burghley’s and the Queen’s strict instructions, was far more careful to provide excuses for the States than to press them. Henry IV., too, never ceased to declare that unless much more English help was sent to him, the north of France would slip from his grasp whilst he was busy in the south; and in the autumn, point was given to his warning by the treacherous surrender of Cambray to the Spaniards. This was a direct danger to England, and Henry made the most of it by sending a special envoy to demand fresh English aid. But still Burghley was against violent measures, for a great Spanish fleet was being fitted out in Galicia, and Tyrone’s rebellion in Ireland was being actively promoted by Philip. Defence, as usual, was the first thought of the Lord Treasurer; and disabled as he was, he drew up in the autumn a complete scheme for the protection of the country against invasion.
But though Elizabeth would not commence offensive warfare against Spain, she was induced to listen at last to Drake’s oft-rejected prayer for permission to raise a powerful privateer squadron to capture prizes and raid Panama. This was what people wanted. Drake’s name had not lost its magic, and volunteers joined in thousands, eager for fighting and loot under the great admiral. The ports of Spain and Portugal were panic-stricken at the mere prospect of a visit, and if the fleet had sailed promptly in the spring, Philip might have been crippled again. But the Queen and Burghley were still apprehensive, and loath to let Drake sail too far away. Suddenly on 23rd July four Spanish pinnaces landed 600 soldiers on the Cornish coast, and without resistance they ravaged and burnt the country round Penzance. It was a mere predatory raid from the Brittany coast; but it seemed to justify all Elizabeth’s fears, and, to Drake’s despair, she forbade him to go direct to Panama. He was, she said, to cruise about the Channel and Ireland for a month, then to intercept any fleet from Spain that might threaten, and finally to lay in wait for the Spanish treasure flotilla before he crossed the Atlantic. The orders doubtless originated from Howard, who was as cautious as Burghley himself; but Drake and his officers flatly refused to obey them. They had, they said, on the Queen’s commission fitted out at vast expense a private fleet for a certain purpose, and it was utterly inappropriate to the service now demanded of it. The Queen was angry, and, as usual, called upon Burghley to refute the strategical arguments of the sailors, which he did in a learned minute. But it was never sent, for Drake was obviously in the right, and the Queen was obliged to give way. She made Drake pledge his honour to be back in England again in the following May to fight the new Armada, and, on the 28th August, Drake and Hawkins sailed out of Plymouth to failure and death.
All through the year, with but short intervals of comparative ease, Lord Burghley remained ill, but manfully determined to perform his duty. His letters to his son, written, of course, with greater freedom than to others, disclose more of his private feelings than we have been able to see at any earlier period of his career. Both in these letters and those of his secretaries the note touched is intense devotion to the public service at any cost to his own repose. Maynard writes to Sir Robert Cecil (23rd December 1594) that the sharp weather had increased the Lord Treasurer’s pain. “But for your coming hither his Lordship says you shall not need, although you shall hear his amendment is grown backward.” A few months later at Theobalds, Clapham sends to Sir Robert very unfavourable news of the invalid, and in the following month of May we find him confined to his bed at Cecil House in London, suffering greatly, and fretting at his inability to go to court. In the autumn he tells his son that he is obliged to sign his letters with a stamp, “for want of a right hand”; but even then he concludes his letter thus—“And if by your speech with her Majesty she will not mislike to have so bold a person to lodge in her house, I will come as I am (in body not half a man, but in mind passable) to the muster of the rest of my good Lords, her Majesty’s Councillors, my good friends.… Upon your answer I will make no unnecessary delay, by God’s permission.” In the midst of his pain his letters are full of directions upon State matters. In a letter to Cecil in October, urging the Queen to send prompt reinforcements to Ireland, which apparently she was inclined to neglect, he says, “My aching pains so increase that I am all night sleepless, though not idle in mind.”
That the Lord Treasurer’s bodily weakness and overpowering political influence were recognised elsewhere than in England as a powerful factor in the international situation, is evident from the correspondence—amongst many others—of the Venetian Ambassador in France. Henry had gone north, and was besieging La Fère, in Picardy, in the late autumn, after the fall of Cambray, and had sent his agent Lomenie to England to support the efforts of Essex in his favour. But the Earl was in semi-disgrace, and the French agent went back with but small promises of aid. Henry was about to send a stronger envoy, Sancy, but Essex told him it would be useless, and the clever Béarnais, knowing best how to arouse Elizabeth’s jealousy, despatched Sancy to Holland. Thereupon the Venetian Ambassador writes to the Doge: “If Sancy went to England just now he would not find the Queen well disposed towards the policy of his Majesty (Henry IV.), not only on the grounds I have so often explained, but also because she does not approve of the conduct of the French ministers. The chief reason, however, is that there reigns a division in the councils of the Queen, and her two principal ministers are secretly in disaccord. One of these ministers, the Lord Treasurer, is very ill-disposed towards the crown of France, and uses all his influence to prevent the Queen from taking an active part in this direction. There is a strong suspicion that he has been bought by Spanish gold. The other nobleman, a prime favourite with the Queen, is of the contrary opinion, urging that every effort should be made to quench the fire in one’s neighbour’s house to prevent one’s own from being burnt. The Queen is in the greatest perplexity. The Lord Treasurer, in addition to his other arguments, urges the plea of economy, to which women are naturally more inclined than men. All the same, no efforts are being spared to dispose her mind, so that should Sancy go to England he may easily obtain all he asks for.”
When it became evident that Henry was again appealing to the States, Elizabeth was forced to make a counter-move, and decided to send Sir Henry Unton to offer further English help, if certain French towns, especially Calais, were placed in her hands as security. It was clear that Henry neither could nor would agree to such terms, and probably the Queen and Burghley were quite aware of the fact; but upon Unton’s embassy Essex founded a regular conspiracy for the purpose of outwitting the Cecils and dragging England into war. Antonio Perez had already been sent back to France in July 1595, self-pitying and lachrymose at leaving the luxury of Essex House to follow a camp; but to be received in France almost with royal consideration, and to be welcomed once more as the bosom friend of the King. He betrayed everybody; but his real mission was to send alarming news to Essex as to Henry’s intentions, in order that Elizabeth might be frightened into an alliance with him to prevent his joining her enemies against her. Perez thought more of his own discomfort than of his English patron’s policy, and had to be brought to book more than once. The Earl sent Sir Roger Williams to upbraid him for not making matters more lively. “I am doing,” says the Earl, “what I can to push on war in England; but you! you! Antonio, what are you doing on that side?”
But when Unton went on his mission early in January 1596, a stronger ally than Perez was gained. He was entirely in Essex’s interests, and received secret instructions from the Earl. Perez and Unton were to work together, of course without the knowledge of Sir Thomas Edmonds, the regular Ambassador, who was a “Cecil man.” Henry IV. was to be prompted to feign anger and indignation with England, and threaten to make friends with Spain. “He must so use the matter as Unton may send us thundering letters, whereby he must drive us to propound and to offer.” Perez, too, was to keep the game alive by assuring Essex that a treaty was on foot between France and Spain, and to reproach Essex for allowing Unton to be sent on such an errand as would mortally offend the King.
But the Cecils were too clever for Essex and Perez combined. One of Perez’s secretaries played him false, for which he was afterwards imprisoned in the Clink by Essex; and it is probable that the threads of the intrigue, all through, were in the hands of Burghley. In any case, there was no great change in Elizabeth’s policy, and Unton himself died in France before his mission was complete (23rd March 1596). Only a few days afterwards news reached London that the Spaniards were marching on Calais. This, at all events, was calculated to arouse Elizabeth to action; and on Easter Sunday 1596 all the church doors in London were suddenly closed during service, and there and then a number of the men-worshippers pressed for service. They were hurriedly armed and on the same night marched to Dover for embarkation under Essex. No sooner were the men on board and ready to sail than a counter order came from London. Essex was frantic, and wrote rash and foolish letters to the Queen and the Lord Admiral. He writes to Sir Robert Cecil on the same day: “O! pray get the order altered. I have written to the Queen in a passion. Pray plead for me, that I may not be disgraced by any one else commanding the succour whilst I have done the work. Pray do not show the Queen my letter to the Admiral; it is too passionate.” Almost in sight of Essex, the day after this was written (14th), the citadel of Calais fell into the hands of the Spaniards, and Elizabeth found she had overreached herself. When Unton had asked for Calais as the price of her help, the Béarnais had said, with his usual oath, that he would see it in the hands of the Spaniards first; and for once he had told the truth.
The blow to Elizabeth’s policy was undoubtedly a severe one, and a counter-stroke had to be delivered. The old project which on several occasions had been submitted by Howard to the Council for an attack upon the shipping in Cadiz harbour, was revived. Essex was all aflame in the business from the first; but the Queen changed her mind from day to day. “The Queen,” wrote Reynolds in May, “is daily changing her humour about my Lord’s voyage, and was yesterday almost resolute to stay it, using very hard words of my Lord’s wilfulness.” Lord Burghley appears to have been very ill at the time of the preparations; but he was sufficiently well to secure the appointment of the aged Lord Admiral to the joint command of the fleet, to the discontent, and almost despair, of Essex; and to pen an order from the Queen strictly limiting the objects of the expedition to the destruction of the Spanish ships manifestly intended for the invasion of England. The great fleet of 96 sail, with a contingent of 24 sail of Hollanders, left Plymouth on the 5th June, and on the 20th appeared before the astounded eyes of the citizens of Cadiz. The divided command, and the small experience of actual fighting at sea of Howard and Essex, was nearly bringing about a disaster to the English; but at a critical moment Ralegh’s advice was taken. The fleet sailed boldly into the harbour, and destroyed the shipping first, and then captured and sacked the city.
It was the greatest blow that had ever been dealt to the power of Spain; and it proved that Philip’s system was rotten, and that the Spanish pretensions were incapable of being sustained by force of arms. When Essex came back he found that Sir Robert Cecil had been appointed Secretary of State (July) in his absence. The Queen was fractious, and offended that her orders had been exceeded, and above all, that she had not received so much booty as she expected; and for a time Essex was kept at arm’s length. But now that Cecil had obtained the coveted post of Secretary, he wisely endeavoured to make friends with Essex, who had so bitterly opposed him; and, greatly to the Queen’s delight, a new appearance of cordiality between them was the result. Sir Robert even brought Ralegh into the circle of grace. He had been for five years under the Queen’s frown, but Cadiz had made him friendly with Essex, and now Cecil and Essex together brought about a reconciliation with the Queen. On the 2nd June 1597 Ralegh once more knelt before his royal mistress, and donned his long-neglected silver armour as captain of the guard.
The sacking of Cadiz had irretrievably ruined Philip’s prestige; but it had not deprived him of all material resources, heavy and ceaseless as had been the drain upon his treasury for the war in France. The Irish chiefs left him no peace from their importunities, and assured him again and again that with the aid of a few men the island might be his, and Elizabeth and the heretics at his mercy. Promises, sums of money, and slight succour were sent from time to time; but the insult of Cadiz and the exhortations of the Church, at length prevailed upon the King to attempt one great effort in Ireland to crush his enemy before swift approaching death struck him down. We understand now that such a system as his foredoomed to failure any attempt to organise promptly an efficient naval armament; for penury, peculation, delay, and ineptitude were the natural result of the minutest details being jealously retained in the hands of an overworked hermit hundreds of miles away from the centre of activity. But in England the news of his intentions caused far greater apprehension than we now know that they deserved; and Essex was again all eagerness to take out another fleet, and repeat elsewhere the coup of Cadiz.
This time he found no obstacles raised by the Cecils. In a biography of Lord Burghley, it is not necessary to probe the vexed question of the sincerity of Sir Robert Cecil’s reconciliation with Essex. Most inquirers of late years have assumed, with some show of justification, that it was from the first a deep-laid plot of Cecil, perhaps with Ralegh’s co-operation, to ruin the Earl, as in its results it certainly did. But without admitting this, or at least implicating Burghley himself in such a plan, it may fairly be assumed that when Cecil saw how smoothly things went for him, and how soon he obtained the Secretaryship when Essex was absent, he may have welcomed any opportunity of again getting rid of so turbulent and quarrelsome a colleague. The earl’s pride and jealousy had also taken from him much of the Queen’s regard, and she was determined to humble or to break him. The first project had been to raise a small expedition under Ralegh and Lord Thomas Howard to intercept the Spanish treasure fleets; but when it became known that the Adelantado of Castile was making ready a fleet of 100 ships and a powerful army in the Galician ports, Essex proposed a great enlargement of the plan. He was authorised to raise a force of 120 ships, the Dutchmen were induced to send a strong contingent, and with infinite labour Essex and Ralegh induced the Queen to consent to their plan for burning the Spanish fleet, in port or wherever they could find it, and then to intercept and capture the homeward-bound flotillas from the East and West Indies.
Lord Burghley’s attitude is seen by a cordial letter he wrote to Essex early in May (State Papers, Domestic). “I thank you,” he says, “for not reproving my objections for the resolutions for conference. I hope to see you at Court to-morrow, if God by over-great pains do not countermand me. I like so well to attempt something against our Spanish enemy that I hope God will prosper the purpose.”
The fleets gathered in Plymouth Sound early in July, and sailed in three fine squadrons under Essex, Thomas Howard, and Ralegh respectively. On the day he sailed unsuspecting Essex in the fulness of his heart wrote a fervent letter of thanks to Cecil. He would, he said, never forget his kindness whilst he lived; “and if I live to return, I will make you think your friendship well professed.” Unfortunately he returned sooner than he expected, for the fleets were caught in a storm and driven back with much suffering and danger. Famine and sickness broke out, and for a whole month the fleets were wind-bound in the Channel, whilst the Queen began to waver about allowing her ships and men to be exposed again so late in the season. Once more the aged Lord Treasurer wrote to Essex on his return (July 23), “It is not right that I should condole with you for your late torment at sea, for I am sure that would but increase your sorrow, and be no relief to me. I am but as a monoculus, by reason of a flux falling into my left eye; and you see the impediment by my evil writing and short letter.… In the time of this disaster I did by common usage of my morning prayer on the 23rd of every month, in the 107th Psalm, read these nine verses proper for you to repeat, and especially six of them, which I send to you. This letter savours more of divinity. As for humanity, I refer you to the joint-letter from the Lord Admiral, myself, and my son.”
Essex and Ralegh posted to London early in August and prayed the Queen to let them resume their voyage. “Only,” said Essex, “allow me to take half the ships and to do as I please where I like, and I will perform a worthy service.” But the Queen would not hear of such a thing, nor should they with her permission enter any Spanish port at all. At last, as a compromise, she consented to Ralegh’s sending a few fire-ships into Ferrol, on condition that Essex was to keep quite away from the enterprise; and to be sure she should be obeyed, she insisted upon the soldiers being left at home. At length, on the 17th August, the truncated expedition again sailed. Disaster, jealousy and division dogged it from the first. Another great storm drove the squadrons asunder. The winds prevented them from approaching Ferrol. Ralegh, under a misunderstanding, attacked Fayal, in the Azores, in the absence of Essex, and the sycophants around the Earl bred evil blood between them. The main body of the flotillas from the Indies escaped them; and eventually Essex, with his ships battered and disabled, crept into Plymouth at the end of October, bringing with them hardly sufficient plunder to pay their expenses. Fortunately in their absence the Spanish fleet for the invasion of Ireland had also been driven back and practically destroyed by a storm, and all present danger from that quarter had disappeared.
Essex found that in his absence the Lord Admiral had been made Earl of Nottingham, which, in conjunction with his office, gave him precedence, and that Secretary Cecil had been made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The Earl was furious, and sulked at Wanstead instead of going to court; but the old Lord Treasurer was once more amiability itself—as well he might be, for his son was winning all along the line. On the 9th November he wrote to the Earl, “My writing manifests my sickness. Some of your friends say that the cause of your absence is sickness, so I send my servant to ascertain your health. I wish I could remedy any other cause of your absence; but writing will do no good. It requires another manner of remedy, in which you may command my service.” And again, ten days later, “I hoped you would have come to court for the fortieth anniversary of her Majesty’s coronation. I hear, to my sorrow, that you have been really sick, but hope you will soon be back at court, where you shall find a harvest of business, needful for many heads, wits, and hands.”
Although the young Earl obstinately absented himself from court, he seems to have sent a letter of thanks and friendship to Lord Burghley; for the latter on the 30th November writes expressing his joy at the Earl’s contentment, but chiding him for his continued absence, which he says is exposing him to “diversity of censures.” “I find,” he says, “her Majesty sharp to such as advise her to that which it were meet for her to do, and for you to receive. My good Lord, overcome her with yielding without disparagement of your honour, and plead your own cause with your presence; whereto I will be as serviceable as any friend you have, to my power—which is not to run, for lack of good feet, nor to fight, for lack of good hands, but ready with my heart to command my tongue to do you due honour.” At length, probably at the suggestion of Burghley, the angry Queen made Essex Earl-Marshal, which gave him precedence over Howard, and he came back to court sulky and quarrelsome, galled that cooler heads and keener wits than his could work their will in spite of him.
In the meanwhile the war between France and Spain was wearing itself out. Since the conversion of Henry IV. matters were gradually working back into their natural groove of nationalities instead of faiths. Philip was bankrupt in purse, broken in spirit, and already on the brink of the grave; but the awful sacrifices his ruined country had made had at least prevented France from becoming a Protestant country. He was leaving Flanders to his beloved daughter Isabel, and wished to bequeath to her peace as well. By Henry’s treaty with England and the United Provinces two years before he had bound himself to make common cause with them against the King of Spain; but the main cause of his own quarrel with Spain had nearly disappeared, for the Leaguers were now mostly on his side, and for a year past the Pope (Clement VIII.) had been busy trying to bring about a reconciliation between the two great Catholic powers. The pontiff assured Henry that he was not bound to keep faith with heretics, and might break the treaty with Elizabeth and Holland. “I have,” replied the Béarnais, “pledged my faith to the Queen of England and the United Provinces. How could I treat to their detriment, or even fail in a single point, without betraying my duty, my honour, and my own interests? No pretext would excuse such baseness and perfidy, and if it could, sooner than avail myself of it I would lose my life.”
But when, in the autumn of 1597, the Spaniards were finally routed at Amiens, it was evident that Spain could fight no longer, and that the moment for peace had come. The Archduke, who was to marry the new sovereign of Flanders, was especially anxious for peace before the Spanish King died, and at his instance advances to Henry were made. This was the last great international question in which Burghley was personally interested, and by a curious coincidence it brought once more to the front the traditional English policy, of which he was the representative; a policy which had for many years past been broken and interrupted by the religious position on the Continent. The growing power and ambition of the Dutch United Provinces, and their aid sent to Henry IV. against Spain, together with Henry’s conversion to Catholicism, had once more aroused the fear of England that by an arrangement between them the French might dominate Spanish Flanders. The project of making the Infanta and her husband practically independent sovereigns of the Belgic provinces was therefore eminently favourable to English interests, and drew England once more irresistibly to the side of Spain, as against the Dutchmen and Henry IV.; for the possession of Flanders by the French (or now even by the strong pushing young Republic under French influence) was one of the two eventualities against which for centuries the traditional policy of England had been directed. Coincident, therefore, with Henry’s negotiations, secret approaches were made by England to the Archduke, and once more, after a half-century of fighting, England was smiling as of old on a “Duke of Burgundy,” as against a French King.
In November Henry sent envoys to the States and to England to demand further aid, but with the alternative of a peace conference. The Dutchmen thought they had been betrayed, and indignantly said so; refusing absolutely to make peace with ruined, defeated Spain, except on their own terms, and in their own time. Elizabeth had far greater reason than they for indignation with her ally, and had to be approached more gently and with greater diplomacy. De Maisse, Henry’s envoy, arrived in London on the 2nd, and was received by the Queen on the 8th December. He found the Cecils absolute masters of the Council; for all of Burghley’s predictions of the falsity of Frenchmen had come true, and his objection to the treaty of alliance (May 1596) had been more than justified. Essex, only just returned to court from his sulky fit at Wanstead, took in earnest Henry’s demands for reinforcements against Spain, and was all for fighting again, whilst Burghley of course understood them to be only a mask for the peace suggestion. The Queen and Burghley were determined to assume indignation and grievance in order that, in the coming peace, they might get the best possible terms for England; indignant, however, as they might pretend to be, there was nothing they desired more than a pacification that should open all ports to English trade and leave Flanders in the hands of a modest, moderate sovereign under the guarantee of Spain. But withal it behoved them to walk warily, for Spain had outwitted them in the peace negotiations of 1588, and Protestant Holland could not be abandoned.
On the 8th December De Maisse was received in State by Elizabeth at Whitehall, whither Lord Burghley was brought in a litter, but Essex was still absent. The Queen was enigmatical but polite, and referred the envoy to Lord Burghley, with whom he conferred on the 10th, when it became evident that the object of the English was to gain time whilst other negotiations were proceeding. The Queen exerted all her wiles and ancient coquetry on De Maisse to delay matters, and not without success; whilst she inflamed Caron, the envoy of the Dutch States, with hints of Henry’s desertion and perfidy, in order to embitter French relations with them.
At length Henry IV. got tired of this buckler play, and De Maisse plainly told Elizabeth that the King considered that her delay in giving him a definite answer released him from his pledges under the treaty of alliance. Again he was referred to Burghley, whom he saw again early in January. The Queen could not treat with the Archduke, said the Treasurer. If her envoys were to attend a peace conference, it could only be with the representatives of the King of Spain; besides, he said, the Queen must settle with States before she entered into any negotiations at all. It was well known to Henry and his minister at this time that brisk secret negotiations were being conducted between Elizabeth and the Archduke; and in a final interview with Burghley on 10th January, De Maisse gave him an ultimatum. His master must make peace or be supported in war. Essex was present at the interview; and although the Lord Treasurer invited him to speak he remained obstinately silent, except to say that he did not see how religious dissensions would allow of peace being made with Spain.
At length Burghley announced that the Queen would send an embassy to France to settle with Henry the whole question of peace or war, in conjunction with an embassy from the States. The embassy consisted of Sir Robert Cecil, Sir Thomas Wilkes, and Dr. Herbert; and the instructions taken by them are contained in the last of the important State papers written by the failing hand of the great statesman. The document is a long and sagacious one, laying down as an absolute condition of any peace with Spain that the United Provinces should be secured from all fear of future attempts to subdue them. An earnest desire for peace breathes all through the document, but it must be a real peace, which acknowledged accomplished facts, abandoned inflated claims, and recognised the rights of Protestantism to equal treatment.
Cecil and his companions embarked from Dover on the 17th February, and on the death of Wilkes in Rouen, the whole burden of the embassy fell upon the Secretary. It was not until they reached Angers on the 21st that Cecil saw the King. In effect the Béarnais had already made peace secretly with the Archduke; the States were determined that they would give up no tittle of their hard-won independence, and haughtily refused even a truce if their rights were not recognised. England dared not abandon them, so that Cecil on his interview with Henry could only reproach him for his desertion of the ally to whom he owed so much. Henry replied that his position was such that he could not do otherwise. “I am,” he said, “like a man clothed in velvet that hath no meat to put in his mouth.”
On the 28th March Cecil received a letter from his father dated the 1st, which caused him deep alarm. “The bearer,” it said, “will report to you my great weakness. But do not take any conceit thereby to hinder your service; but I must send you a message delivered to me in writing by Mr. Windebanke. I make no comment, not knowing out of what shop the text is come, but in my opinion non sunt ponendi rumores ante salutem. God bless you in earth and me in heaven, the place of my present pilgrimage.” Cecil unwillingly followed Henry to Nantes on his hollow errand; but this letter disturbed him, and at the earliest moment he took leave of France and returned, although on the way somewhat better news reached him. “Mr. Secretary returned the 1st of the month” (May), says Chamberlain, “somewhat crazed with his posting journey, the report of his father’s dangerous state gave him wings; but for aught I can learn the old man’s case is not so desperate but he may hold out another year well enough.”
Before Cecil had left on his mission, greatly against his inclination, he had received a promise from Essex that during his absence he would not cause any alteration to be made either in policy or court affairs. The Earl had been as good as his word, and for a few days after Cecil’s return they were friendly; but when the Peace of Vervins was actually signed between Henry and Philip the old feud between the policies of peace and war broke out again. This was one of those junctures when France and Spain being friendly, it had always been the Burghley policy to draw closer to the latter power, whilst at the same time fortifying those who were opposing her; and this was the course adopted by the Cecils on the present occasion. Francis Vere was sent to Holland with promises and encouragement for the States to stand firm; whilst the Archduke in Flanders was secretly informed that the Queen desired peace, and would enter into negotiations if she were assured that her desires were reciprocated. This policy soon alienated Essex and the war-party, and after one stormy interview on the subject with the dying Lord Treasurer, the latter handed to the Earl a book of Psalms and silently pointed with his finger to the line, “Bloodthirsty men shall not live out half their days;” a last prophecy which the Earl’s pride and folly hastened to fulfil.
All the summer the aged minister lingered sick unto death in his palace in the Strand, sometimes taking the air in a coach or litter, and on two occasions going as far as Theobalds. During the time his great yearning was to bring about a peace before he died between his mistress and the old enemy, who, in the bitterness of defeat, was dying too in the frowning mountains of the Guadarrama far away. For forty years these two men had striven as none ever strove before to maintain peace between England and Spain; and their efforts had been unavailing, for religious differences had for a time obliterated national lines of policy. But Burghley had had the supreme wisdom of bending before superior force and adapting his varying means to his unvarying objects. England thus had gained, whilst Philip, buoyed up with the fatuous belief in his divine power and inspiration, scorning to give way to considerations of expediency, had been ruined by war and had failed in most of his aims. And yet through the welter of wrong and slaughter, Providence had decreed that the objects that both men aimed at should not be utterly defeated. The alliance between the countries was needed both by Spain and England in order that Flanders should not fall into the hands of the French, and this at least had been attained. By England it was required to counterbalance a possible French domination of Scotland, and this had ceased to be a danger. On the side of Philip had been gained the point that France was still a Catholic country; whilst to England it was to be credited that Protestantism was now a great force which demanded equality with the older form of belief, and, above all, that England was no longer in the leading strings of France or Spain, but had, in the forty years of dexterous balance under Elizabeth and Burghley, attained full maturity and independence, with the consciousness of coming imperial greatness.
To say that this was all owing to the management of the Queen and her minister would be untrue. Circumstances and the faults and shortcomings of their rivals—nay, their own shortcomings and weaknesses as well—aided them powerfully to attain the brilliant success that attended them; but it may safely be asserted that without a man of Burghley’s peculiar gifts at her side Elizabeth would at an early period of her reign have lost the nice balance upon which her safety alone depended.
It was curious that the last hours of Burghley should have been occupied in striving still to bring about peace with Spain, which had been his object through life, though he had attained for England already most of the political advantages which a peace with Spain might bring; but old prejudices against France were still as strong as they had been in his youth, for, as he had truly foretold, the Béarnais had played them false, and thenceforward no Frenchman should ever be trusted again. Spain, in any case, would keep the false Frenchmen out of Flanders; so Spain was England’s friend.
For twelve days the Lord Treasurer lay in his bed at Cecil House before he died, suffering but slightly, and resigned, almost eager for his coming release. On the evening of the 3rd August he fell into convulsions, and when the fit had passed, “Now,” quoth he, “the Lord be praised, the time is come;” and calling his children, he blessed them and took his leave, commanding them “to love and fear God, and love one another.” Then he prayed for the Queen, handed his will to his steward Bellot, turned his face to the wall, and died in the early hours of the next morning; decorous, self-controlled, and dignified to the last.
His death, though long expected, was a blow which the aged Queen felt for the rest of her life. She wept, and withdrew herself from all company, we are told, when she was informed of her loss; and two years afterwards Robert Sidney, writing to Sir John Harrington, says, “I do see the Queen often; she doth wax weak since last troubles, and Burghley’s death doth often draw tears from her goodly cheeks.”
Even Essex, who had wrought so much against him, felt the loss the country had sustained. At the splendid funeral in Westminster Abbey on the 29th August, we are told by an eye-witness that “my Lord of Essex to my judgment did more than ceremoniously show sorrow”; and Chamberlain, writing on the next day, says, “The Lord Treasurer’s funeral was performed yesterday with all the rites that belonged to so great a personage. The number of mourners were above 500, whereof there were many noblemen, and among the rest the Earl of Essex, who (whether it were upon consideration of the present occasion or for his own disfavours), methought, carried the heaviest countenance of the company.”
Throughout Europe the death of the Lord Treasurer was looked upon as a loss to the cause of peace. Essex, it was thought, would now hold sway and launch England upon a policy of warlike adventure. But Essex was himself hurrying to his doom; and Robert Cecil held firmly in his hand the strings of his great father’s policy—a policy which was on the death of the Queen to bring a Scottish king to the English throne, and unite England and Spain again in a friendly alliance. The baseness and trickery that accompanied the reunion of the countries belong to the history of the reign of James, and formed no part of the plan of Lord Burghley or his mistress. There was no truckling in their relations with foreign nations, however powerful they might be, and the servile meanness of the Stuarts in carrying out Lord Burghley’s traditions must be ascribed to their degeneracy rather than to the policy itself.
Of Lord Burghley’s place amongst great statesmen it may be sufficient to say that his gifts and qualities were exactly what were needed by the circumstances of his times. He was called upon to rule in a time of radical change, when vehement partisans on one side and the other were fiercely struggling for the mastery of their opinions. It is precisely in such times as these that the moderate, tactful, cautious man must in the end be called upon to decide between the extremes, and to prevent catastrophe by steering a middle course. This throughout his life was the function of William Cecil. His gifts were not of the highest, for he was not a constructive statesman or a pioneer of great causes. He often stood by and saw injustice done by extreme men on one or the other side rather than lose his influence by appearing to favour the opposite extreme; and, as we have seen in his own words, he was quite ready to carry out as a minister a policy of which as a Councillor he had expressed his disapproval. This may not have been high-minded statesmanship, but at least it enabled him to keep his hand upon the helm, and sooner or later to bring the ship of State back to his course again. He was a man whose objects and ideals were much higher than his methods, because the latter belonged to his own age, whereas the former were based upon broad truths and great principles, which are eternal. But it may safely be asserted that the rectitude of his mind and his great sense of personal dignity would prevent him from adopting any course for which warrant could not be found, either in the law of the land or what he would regard as overpowering national expediency. The first cause he served was that of the State; the second was William Cecil and his house. Through a long life of ceaseless toil and rigid self-control these were the mainsprings of his activity and devotion. If he was austere in a frivolous court, if bribes failed to buy him in an age of universal corruption, if he was cool and judicious amidst general vehemence, it was because the qualities of his mind and his strict self-schooling enabled him to understand that his country might thus be most effectively served, and that it would be unworthy of William Cecil to act otherwise. The gifts which made him a great minister at a period when moderation was the highest statesmanship, would have made him a great judge at any period, and it is in its judicial aspect that the finest qualities of his mind are discovered. It was to the keen casuist who weighed to a scruple every element of a question and saw it on every side; it was to the calm, imperturbable judge, that from the first hour of her reign Elizabeth looked to save her against herself; and whatever may be said of Cecil’s statesmanship in its personal aspect, it had the supreme merit of having kept the great Queen upon the straight path up which she led England from weakness, distraction, and dependence, to unity and strength.
The End