Queen Elizabeth

Elizabeth’s ministers, with short-sighted animosity, had been urging her throughout her reign to give vigorous support to the Huguenots. She herself took a broader view of the situation. She preferred to deal with the legitimate government of France recognised by the vast majority of Frenchmen. Henry III., as she well knew, did not intend or desire to exterminate the Huguenots. If that turbulent faction had been openly abetted in its arrogant claims by English assistance, he would have been obliged to become the mere instrument of Elizabeth’s worst enemies, Guise and the Holy League. France would have ceased to be any counterpoise to Spain. The English Queen had so skilfully played a most difficult and delicate game that Henry of Navarre had been able to keep his head above water; Guise had upon the whole been held in check; the royal authority, though impaired, had still controlled the foreign policy of France, and so, since 1572, had given England a firm and useful ally. As long as this balanced situation could be maintained, England was safe.

But the time was now at hand when this nice equilibrium of forces would be disturbed by events which neither Elizabeth nor any one else could help. Alençon, the last of the Valois line, was dying. When he should be gone, the next heir to the French King would be no other than the Huguenot Henry of Bourbon, King of the tiny morsel of Navarre that lay north of the Pyrenees. Henry III. wished to recognise his right. But it was impossible that Guise or Philip, or the French nation itself, should tolerate this prospect. Thus the great war of religion which Elizabeth had so carefully abstained from stirring up was now inevitable. The French alliance, the key-stone of her policy, was about to crumble away with the authority of the French King which she had buttressed up. He would be compelled either to become the mere instrument of the Papal party or to combine openly with the Huguenot leader. In either case, Guise, not Henry III., would be the virtual sovereign, and Elizabeth’s alliance would not be with France but with a French faction. She would thus be forced into the position which she had hitherto refused to accept – that of sole protector of French and Dutch Protestants, and open antagonist of Spain. The more showy part she was now to play has been the chief foundation of her glory with posterity. It is a glory which she deserves. The most industrious disparagement will never rob her of it. But the sober student will be of opinion that her reputation as a statesman has a more solid basis in the skill and firmness with which during so many years she staved off the necessity for decisive action.

Although the discovery of the Throgmorton plot (Nov. 1583), and the consequent expulsion of the Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, were not immediately followed by open war between England and Spain, yet the course of events thenceforward tended directly to that issue. Elizabeth immediately proposed to the Dutch States to form a naval alliance against Spain, and to concert other measures for mutual defence. Orange met the offer with alacrity, and pressed Elizabeth to accept the sovereignty of Holland, Zealand, and Utrecht. Perhaps there was no former ruler of England who would not have clutched at such an opportunity of territorial aggrandisement. For Elizabeth it had no charms. Every sensible person now will applaud the sobriety of her aims. But though she eschewed territory, she desired to have military occupation of one or more coast fortresses, at all events for a time, both as a security for the fidelity of the Dutch to any engagements they might make with her, and to enable her to treat on more equal terms with France or Spain, if the Netherlands were destined, after all, to fall into the hands of one of those powers.

While these negotiations were in progress, William of Orange was murdered (June 30/July 10, 1584). Alençon had died a month earlier. The sovereignty of the revolted Netherlands was thus vacant. Elizabeth advised a joint protectorate by France and England. But the Dutch had small confidence in protectorates, especially of the joint kind. What they wanted was a sovereign, and as Elizabeth would not accept them as her subjects they offered themselves to Henry III. But after nibbling at the offer for eight months Henry was obliged to refuse it. His openly expressed intention to recognise the King of Navarre as his heir had caused a revival of the Holy League. During the winter 1584-5 its reorganisation was busily going on. Philip promised to subsidise it. Mendoza, now ambassador at Paris, was its life and soul. The insurrection was on the point of breaking out. Henry III. knew that the vast majority of Frenchmen were Catholics. To accept the Dutch offer would, he feared, drive them all into the ranks of the Holy League. He therefore dismissed the Dutch envoys with the recommendation that they should apply to England for protection (February 28/March 10, 1585).

The manifesto of the Leaguers appeared at the end of March (1585). Henry of Navarre was declared incapable, as a Protestant, of succeeding to the crown. Henry III. was summoned to extirpate heresy. To enforce these demands the Leaguers flew to arms all over France. Had Henry III. been a man of spirit he would have placed himself at the head of the loyal Catholics and fought it out. But by the compact of Nemours he conceded all the demands of the League (June 28/July 7, 1585). Thus began the last great war of religion, which lasted till Henry of Navarre was firmly seated on the throne of France.

Elizabeth had now finally lost the French alliance, the sheet-anchor of her policy since 1572, and she prepared for the grand struggle which could no longer be averted. As France failed her, she must make the best of the Dutch alliance. She did not conceal from herself that she would have to do her share of the fighting. But she was determined that the Dutch should also do theirs. Deprived of all hope of help from France they wished for annexation to the English crown, because solidarity between the two countries would give them an unlimited claim upon English resources. Elizabeth uniformly told them, first and last, that nothing should induce her to accept that proposal. She would give them a definite amount of assistance in men and money. But every farthing would have to be repaid when the war was over; and in the meantime she must have Flushing and Brill as security. They must also bind themselves to make proper exertions in their own defence. Gilpin, her agent in Zealand, had warned her that if she showed herself too forward they would simply throw the whole burden of the war upon her. Splendid as had often been the resistance of separate towns when besieged, there had been, from the first, lamentable selfishness and apathy as to measures for combined defence. The States had less than 6000 men in the field – half of them English volunteers – at the very time when they were assuring Elizabeth that, if she would come to their assistance, they could and would furnish 15,000. She was justified in regarding their fine promises with much distrust.

While this discussion was going on, Antwerp was lost. The blame of the delay, if blame there was, must be divided equally between the bargainers. The truth is that, cavil as they might about details, the strength of the English contingent was not the real object of concern to either of them. Each was thinking of something else. Though Elizabeth had so peremptorily refused the sovereignty offered by the United Provinces, they were still bent on forcing it upon her. She, on the other hand, had not given up the hope that her more decisive intervention would drive Philip to make the concessions to his revolted subjects which she had so often urged upon him. In her eyes, Philip’s sovereignty over them was indefeasible. They were, perhaps, justified in asserting their ancient constitutional rights. But if those were guaranteed, continuance of the rebellion would be criminal. Moreover, she held that elected deputies were but amateur statesmen, and had better leave the haute politique to princes to settle. “Princes,” she once told a Dutch deputation, “are not to be charged with breach of faith if they sometimes listen to both sides; for they transact business in a princely way and with a princely understanding such as private persons cannot have.” Her promise not to make peace behind their backs was not to be interpreted as literally as if it had been made to a brother prince. It merely bound her – so she contended – not to make peace without safeguarding their interests; that is to say, what she considered to be their true interests. Conduct based on such a theory would not be tolerated now, and was not tamely acquiesced in by the Dutch then. But to speak of it as base and treacherous is an abuse of terms.

It would be impossible to follow in detail the peace negotiations which went on between Elizabeth and Parma up to the very sailing of the Armada (1586-8). The terms on which the Queen was prepared to make peace never varied substantially from first to last. We know very well what they were. She claimed for the Protestants of the Netherlands (who were a minority, perhaps, even in the rebel provinces) precisely the same degree of toleration which she allowed to her own Catholics. They were not to be questioned about their religion; but there was to be no public worship or proselytising. The old constitution, as before Alva, was to be restored, which would have involved the departure of the foreign troops. These terms would not have satisfied the States, and if Philip could have been induced to grant them, the States and Elizabeth must have parted company. But, as he would make no concessions, the Anglo-Dutch alliance could, and did, continue. The cautionary towns she was determined never to give up to any one unless (first) she was repaid her expenses for which they had been mortgaged, and (secondly) the struggle in the Netherlands was brought to an end on terms which she approved. There was, therefore, never any danger of their being surrendered to Philip, and they did, in fact, remain in Elizabeth’s hands till her death.

Elizabeth has been severely censured for selecting Leicester to command the English army in the Netherlands. It is certain that he was marked out by public opinion as the fittest person. The Queen’s choice was heartily approved by all her ministers, especially by Walsingham, who kept up the most confidential relations with Leicester, and backed him throughout. Custom prescribed that an English army should be commanded, not by a professional soldier, but by a great nobleman. Among the nobility there were a few who had done a little soldiering in a rough way in Scotland or Ireland, but no one who could be called a professional general. The momentous step which Elizabeth was taking would have lost half its significance in the eyes of Europe if any less conspicuous person than Leicester had been appointed. Moreover, it was essential that the nobleman selected should be able and willing to spend largely out of his own resources. By traditional usage, derived from feudal times, peers who were employed on temporary services not only received no salary, but were expected to defray their own expenses, and defray them handsomely. Never did an English nobleman show more public spirit in this respect than Leicester. He raised every penny he could by mortgaging his estates. He not only paid his own personal expenses, but advanced large sums for military purposes, which his mistress never thought of repaying him. If he effected little as a general, it was because he was not provided with the means. Serious mistakes he certainly made, but they were not of a military kind.

Leicester was now fifty-four, bald, white-bearded, and red-faced, but still imposing in figure, carriage, and dress. To Elizabeth he was dear as the friend of her youth, one who, she was persuaded, had loved her for herself when they were both thirty years younger, and was still her most devoted and trustworthy servant. Burghley she liked and trusted, and all the more since he had become a more docile instrument of her policy. Walsingham, a keener intellect and more independent character, she could not but value, though impatient under his penetrating suspicion and almost constant disapproval. Leicester was the intimate friend, the frequent companion of her leisure hours. None of her younger favourites had supplanted him in her regard. By long intimacy he knew the molles aditus et tempora when things might be said without offence which were not acceptable at the council-board. The other ministers were glad to use him for this purpose. There can be no question that his appointment to the command in the Netherlands was meant as the most decisive indication that could be given of Elizabeth’s determination to face open war with Philip rather than allow him to establish absolute government in that country.

Since the deaths of Alençon and William of Orange, the United Provinces had been without a ruler. The government had been provisionally carried on by the “States,” or deputies from each province. Leicester had come with no other title than that of Lieutenant-General of the Queen’s troops. But what the States wanted was not so much a military leader as a sovereign ruler. They therefore urged Leicester to accept the powers and title of Governor-General, the office which had been held by the representatives of Philip. From this it would follow, both logically and practically, that Elizabeth herself stood in the place of Philip – in other words, that she was committed to the sovereignty which she had so peremptorily refused.

The offer was accepted by Leicester almost immediately after his arrival (Jan. 14/24, 1586). There can be little doubt that it was a preconcerted plan between the States and Elizabeth’s ministers, who had all along supported the Dutch proposals. Leicester, we know, had contemplated it before leaving England. Davison, who was in Holland, hurried it on, and undertook to carry the news to Elizabeth. Burghley and Walsingham maintained that the step had been absolutely necessary, and implored her not to undo it. Elizabeth herself had suspected that something of the sort would be attempted, and had strictly enjoined Leicester at his departure to accept no such title. It was not that she wished his powers – that is to say, her own powers – to be circumscribed. On the contrary, she desired that they should in practice be as large and absolute as possible. What she objected to was the title, with all the consequences it involved. And what enraged her most of all was the attempt of her servants to push the thing through behind her back, on the calculation that she would be obliged to accept the accomplished fact. Her wrath vented itself on all concerned, on her ministers, on the States, and on Leicester. To the latter she addressed a characteristic letter: —

“To my Lord of Leicester from the Queen by Sir Thomas Heneage.

“How contemptuously we conceive ourself to have been used by you, you shall by this bearer understand, whom we have expressly sent unto you to charge you withal. We could never have imagined, had we not seen it fall out in experience, that a man raised up by ourself and extraordinarily favoured by us above any other subject of this land, would have in so contemptible [contemptuous] a sort, broken our commandment, in a cause that so greatly toucheth us in honour; whereof although you have showed yourself to make but little account, in most undutiful a sort, you may not therefore think that we have so little care of the reparation thereof as we mind to pass so great a wrong in silence unredressed. And therefore our express pleasure and command is that, all delays and excuses laid apart, you do presently, on the duty of your allegiance, obey and fulfil whatsoever the bearer hereof shall direct you to do in our name. Whereof fail not, as you will answer the contrary at your uttermost peril.”

Nor were these cutting reproaches reserved for his private perusal. She severely rebuked the States for encouraging “a creature of her own” to disobey her injunctions, and, as a reparation from them and from him, she required that he should make a public resignation of the government in the place where he had accepted it.

It is not to be wondered at that Elizabeth should think the vindication of her outraged authority to be the most pressing requirement of the moment. But the result was unfortunate for the object of the expedition. The States had conferred “absolute” authority upon Leicester, and would have thought it a cheap price to pay if, by their adroit manœuvre, they had succeeded in forcing the Queen’s hand. But they did not care to entrust absolute powers to a mere general of an English contingent. After long discussion, Elizabeth was at length persuaded that the least of evils was to allow him to retain the title which the States had conferred on him (June 1586). But in the meantime they had repented of their haste in letting power go out of their own hands. Their efforts were thenceforth directed to explain away the term “absolute.” The long displeasure of the Queen had destroyed the principal value of Leicester in their eyes. He himself had soon incurred their dislike. Impetuous and domineering, he could not endure opposition. Every man who did not fall in with his plans was a malicious enemy, a traitor, a tool of Parma, who ought to be hanged. He still enjoyed the favour of the democratic and bigoted Calvinist party, especially in Utrecht, and he tried to play them off against the States, thereby promoting the rise of the factions which long afterwards distracted the United Provinces. The displeasure of the Queen had taken the shape of not sending him money, and his troops were in great distress and unable to move. Moreover, rumours of the secret peace negotiations were craftily spread by Parma, who, knowing well that they would come to nothing, turned them to the best account by leading the States to suspect that they were being betrayed to Spain.

Elizabeth had sent her army abroad more as a warning to Philip than with a view to active operations. It was no part of her plan to recover any of the territory already conquered by Parma, even if it had lain in her power. She knew that the majority of its inhabitants were Catholics and royalists. She knew also that Parma’s attenuated army was considerably outnumbered by the Anglo-Dutch forces, and that he was in dire distress for food and money. The recovered provinces were completely ruined by the war. Their commerce was swept from the sea. The mouths of their great rivers were blockaded. The Protestants of Flanders and Brabant had largely migrated to the unsubdued provinces, whose prosperity, notwithstanding the burdens of war, was advancing by leaps and bounds. Their population was about two millions. That of England itself was little more than four. Religion was no longer the only or the chief motive of their resistance. For even the Catholics among them, who were still very numerous – some said a majority – keenly relished the material prosperity which had grown with independence. Encouraged by English protection, the States were in no humour to listen to compromise. But a compromise was what Elizabeth desired. She was therefore not unwilling that her forces should be confined to an attitude of observation, till it should appear whether her open intervention would extract from Philip such concessions as she deemed reasonable.

Leicester was eager to get to work, and he was warmly supported by Walsingham. Burghley’s conduct was less straightforward. He had long found it advisable to cultivate amicable relations with the favourite. He had probably concurred in the plan for making him Governor-General. Even now he was professing to take his part. In reality he was not sorry to see him under a cloud; and though he sympathised as much as ever with the Dutch, he cared more for crippling his rival. Hence his activity in those obscure peace negotiations which he so carefully concealed from Leicester and Walsingham. To keep Walsingham long in the dark, on that or any other subject, was indeed impossible. It was found necessary at last to let him be present at an interview with the agents employed by Burghley and Parma, which brought their back-stairs diplomacy to an abrupt conclusion. “They that have been the employers of them,” he wrote to Leicester, “are ashamed of the matter.” The negotiations went on through other channels, but never made any serious progress.

To compel Philip to listen to a compromise, without at the same time emboldening the Dutch to turn a deaf ear to it – such was the problem which Elizabeth had set herself. She therefore preferred to apply pressure in other quarters. Towards the end of 1585, Drake appeared on the coast of Spain itself, and plundered Vigo. Then crossing the Atlantic, he sacked and burned St. Domingo and Carthagena. Again in 1587, he forced his way into Cadiz harbour, burnt all the shipping and the stores collected for the Armada, and for two months plundered and destroyed every vessel he met off the coast of Portugal.

Philip had so long and so tamely submitted to the many injuries and indignities which Elizabeth heaped upon him, that it is not wonderful if she had come to think that he would never pluck up courage to retaliate. This time she was wrong. The conquest of England had always had its place in his overloaded programme. But it was to be in that hazy ever-receding future, when he should have put down the Dutch rebellion and neutralised France. Elizabeth’s open intervention in the Netherlands at length induced him to change his plan. England, he now decided, must be first dealt with.

In the meantime, Parma’s operations in the Netherlands were starved quite as much as Leicester’s. Plundering excursions, two or three petty combats not deserving the name of battles, half-a-dozen small towns captured on one side or the other – such is the military record from the date of Elizabeth’s intervention to the arrival of the Armada. Parma had somewhat the best of this work, such as it was. But the war in the Netherlands was practically stagnant.

At the end of the first year of Leicester’s government, events of the highest importance obliged him to pay a visit to England (Nov. 1586). The Queen of Scots had been found guilty of conspiring to assassinate Elizabeth, and Parliament had been summoned to decide upon her fate.

CHAPTER IX

EXECUTION OF THE QUEEN OF SCOTS: 1584-1587

THROGMORTON’S plot – of which the Queen of Scots was undoubtedly cognisant, though it was not pressed against her – brought home to every one the danger in which Elizabeth stood (1584). To the Catholic conspiracy, the temptation to take her life was enormous. It was becoming clear that, while she lived, the much talked of insurrection would never come off. The large majority of Catholics would have nothing to do with it – still less with foreign invasion. They would obey their lawful sovereign. But if once Elizabeth were dead, by whatever means, their lawful sovereign would be Mary. The rebels would be the Protestants, if they should try to place any one else on the throne. The Protestants had no organisation. They had no candidate for the crown ready. It was to be feared that no great noble would step forward to lead them. Burghley himself, though longing as much as ever for Mary’s head, had with a prudent eye to all eventualities, contrived some time before to persuade her that he was her well-wisher. Houses of Commons, it is true, had shown themselves strongly and increasingly Protestant. But with the demise of the crown, Parliament, if in being at the time, would be ipso facto dissolved. The Privy Council, in like manner, would cease to have any legal existence. Burghley, Walsingham, and the other new men of whom it was mostly composed, had no power or weight, except as instruments of the sovereign. Her death would leave them helpless. The country would take its direction not from them, but from the great nobles of large ancestral possessions. Nor could they provide for such an emergency by privately selecting a Protestant successor beforehand, and privately organising their partisans. It would have been as much as their lives were worth if their mistress had caught them doing anything of the kind.

In this dilemma an ingenious plan suggested itself to them. They drew up a “Bond of Association,” by which the subscribers engaged that, if the Queen were murdered, they would never accept as successor any one “by whom or for whom” such act should be committed, but would “prosecute such person to death.”

This was a hypothetical way of excluding Mary and organising a Protestant resistance to which Elizabeth could make no objection. But the ministers knew that, as a merely voluntary association without Parliamentary sanction, it would add little strength or confidence to the Protestant party. It would not even test their numbers; for no Marian ventured to refuse the oath. Mary herself desired to be allowed to take it. The bond was therefore converted into a Statute by Parliament, though not without some important alterations (March 1585). It was enacted that if the realm was invaded, or a rebellion instigated, by or for any one pretending a title to the succession, or if the Queen’s murder was plotted by any one, or with the privity of any one that pretended title, such pretender, after examination and judgment by an extraordinary commission to be nominated by the Queen, and consisting of at least twenty-four privy councillors and lords of Parliament assisted by the chief judges, should be excluded from the succession, and that, on proclamation of the sentence and direction by the Queen, all subjects might and should pursue the offender to death. If the Queen were murdered, the lords of the Council at the time of her death, or the majority of them, should join to themselves at least twelve other lords of Parliament not making title to the crown, and the chief judges; and if, after examination, they should come to the above-mentioned conclusion, they should without delay, by all forcible and possible means, prosecute the guilty persons to death, and should have power to raise and use such forces as should in that behalf be needful and convenient; and no subjects should be liable to punishment for anything done according to the tenor of the Statute.

Here, then, was a legal way provided by which the Protestant ministers might act against Mary if Elizabeth were murdered. They were in fact creating a Provisional Government, with power to exclude Mary from the throne. Whether they would have the courage or strength to do so remained to be seen; but they would at least have formal law on their side.

It had never entered into Mary’s plans to wait for Elizabeth’s natural death. She therefore read the new Act as a sentence of exclusion. Another blow soon fell on her. In 1584, elated by her son’s victory over the raiders of Ruthven, and believing that he was willing to recognise her joint sovereignty and co-operate with a Guise invasion, she had scornfully refused the last overtures that Elizabeth ever made to her. She now learnt that he had never intended to accept association with her, and that he had urged Elizabeth not to release her. In the following year he had accepted an annual pension of £4000 with some grumbling at its amount; and a defensive alliance was at length concluded between the two countries, Mary’s name not being mentioned in the treaty (July 1586).

As the prospects of the Scottish Queen became darker both in England and her own country, she grew more desperate and reckless. Early in 1586, Walsingham contrived a way of regularly inspecting all her most secret correspondence. He soon discovered that she was encouraging Babington’s plot for assassinating Elizabeth. Some of the conspirators, though avowed Catholics, had offices in the royal household; such was Elizabeth’s easy-going confidence. It was hoped that Parma would at the moment of the murder land troops on the east coast. Mendoza, now Spanish ambassador in Paris, warmly encouraged the project.

The Scottish Queen was now in the case contemplated by the Statute of the previous year. But it required all the urgency of the Council to prevail with Elizabeth to have her brought to trial. Elizabeth’s whole conduct shows that she would even now have preferred to deal with her rival as she did in the inquiry into the Darnley murder. She would have been content to discredit her, to expose her guilt, and, if possible, to bring her to her knees confessing her crimes and pleading for mercy. But Mary was not of the temper to confess. Humiliation and effacement were to her worse than death. She chose to brazen it out with a well-grounded confidence that, as long as she asserted her innocence, people would always be found to believe in it, let the evidence be what it would. Besides, long impunity had convinced her that Elizabeth did not dare to take her life.

There was nothing for it, therefore, but to bring her to trial. A Special Commission was nominated under the provisions of the Statute of 1585, consisting of forty-five persons – peers, privy councillors, and judges – who proceeded to Fotheringay Castle, whither Mary had been removed.[6 - Some persons whose names do not appear in the Commission sat on the trial, while some who were appointed did not sit.] She at first refused their jurisdiction; but on being informed that they would proceed in her absence, she appeared before them under protest (October 14, 1586). After sitting at Fotheringay for two days, the Court adjourned to Westminster, where it pronounced her guilty (October 25).[7 - Those who wish to know the grounds on which Mary’s complicity in Babington’s plot has been denied can consult Lingard, Tytler, and Labanoff. In my opinion, their arguments are very feeble.] A declaration was added that her disqualification for the succession, which followed by the Statute, did not affect any rights that her son might possess. The verdict was immediately known; but its proclamation was deferred till Parliament could be consulted.

A general election had been held while the trial was going on, and Parliament met four days after its conclusion (October 29). The whole evidence was gone into afresh. Not a word seems to have been said in Mary’s favour; and an address was presented to the Queen praying for execution. If precedents were wanted for the capital punishment of an anointed sovereign, there were the cases of Agag, Jezebel, Athaliah, Deiotarus, king of Galatia, put to death by Julius Cæsar, Rhescuporis, king of Thrace, by Tiberius, and Conradin by Charles of Anjou. In vain did Elizabeth request them to reconsider their vote, and devise some other expedient. Usually so deferential to her suggestions, they reiterated their declaration that “the Queen’s safety could no way be secured as long as the Queen of Scots lived.”

Elizabeth’s hesitation has been generally set down to hypocrisy. It has been taken for granted that she desired Mary’s death, and was glad to have it pressed upon her by her subjects. I believe that her reluctance was most genuine. If not of generous disposition, neither was she revengeful or cruel. She had no animosity against her enemies. She lacked gall. She was never in any hurry to punish the disaffected, or even to weed them out of her service. She rather prided herself on employing them even about her person. Since her accession only two English peers had been put to death, though several had richly deserved it. She could affirm with perfect truth that, for the last fifteen years, she, and she alone, had stood between Mary and the scaffold, and this at great and increasing risk to her own life. There had, perhaps, been a time when to destroy the prospect of a Catholic succession would have driven the Catholics into rebellion. But that time had long gone by, as every one knew. Elizabeth had only two dangers now to fear, invasion and assassination, the latter being the most threatening. There would be little inducement to attempt it if Mary were not alive to profit by it. Yet Elizabeth hesitated. The explanation of her reluctance is very simple. She flinched from the obloquy, the undeserved obloquy, which she saw was in store for her. Careless to an extraordinary degree about her personal danger, she would have preferred, as far as she was herself concerned, to let Mary live. It was her ministers and the Protestant party who, for their own interest, were forcing her to shed her cousin’s blood; and it seemed to her unfair that the undivided odium should fall, as she foresaw it would fall, on her alone.

The suspense continued through December and January. In the meantime it became abundantly clear that no foreign court would interfere actively to save Mary’s life. While she had been growing old in captivity, new interests had sprung up, fresh schemes had been formed in which she had no place. She stood in the way of half-a-dozen ambitions. Everybody was weary of her and her wrongs and her pretensions. The Pope had felt less interest of late in a princess whose rights, if established, would pass to a Protestant heir. Philip could not intercede for her even if he had desired to save her life. He was already at war with England, and, if she had known it, not with any intention of supporting her claims.[8 - There was no formal proclamation of war on either side.] James by his recent treaty with England had tacitly treated his mother as an enemy. Her scheme for kidnapping and disinheriting him, found among her papers at Chartley, had been promptly communicated to him. Decency required that he should make a show of remonstrance and menace. But he had every reason to desire her death, and his only thought was to use the opportunity for extorting from Elizabeth a recognition of his title to the English crown and an increase of his pension. He sent the Master of Gray to drive this bargain. The very choice of his envoy, the man who had persuaded him to break with his mother, showed Elizabeth how the land lay, and she did not think it worth her while to bribe him in either way. The Marian nobles blustered and called for war. Not one of them wanted to see Mary back in Scotland or cared what became of her; but they had got an idea that Philip would pay them for a plundering raid into England, and the doubly lucrative prospect was irresistible. James, however, though pretending resentment and really sulky at his rebuff, knew his own interests too well to quarrel with England. What the action of the French King was is less certain. Openly he remonstrated with considerable vigour and persistence; not entering into the question of Mary’s guilt, but protesting against the punishment of a Queen and a member of his family. Probably his efforts, so far as they went, were sincere, for he instructed his ambassador to bribe the English ministers if possible to save her life. But it was evident that, however offended Henry III. might be by the execution of his sister-in-law, he would not be provoked into playing the game of Spain.

A warrant for the execution had been drawn soon after the adjournment of Parliament, and all through December and January Elizabeth’s ministers kept urging her to sign it. At length, when the Scotch and French ambassadors were gone, and with them the last excuse for delay, she signed it in the presence of Davison (who had lately been made co-secretary with Walsingham), and directed him to have it sealed (February 1). What else passed between them on that occasion must always remain uncertain, because Davison’s four written statements, and his answers at his trial, differ in important particulars not only from the Queen’s account but from one another. So much, however, will to most persons who examine the evidence be very clear. Elizabeth meant the execution to take place. There is no reason to doubt Davison’s statement that she “forbade him to trouble her any further, or let her hear any more thereof till it was done, seeing that for her part she had now performed all that either in law or reason could be required of her.” But signing the warrant, as both of them knew, was not enough. The formal delivery of it to some person, with direction to carry it out, was the final step necessary. This, by Davison’s own admission, the Queen managed to evade. He saw that she wished to thrust the responsibility upon him and Walsingham, and he suspected that she meant to disavow them. Although, therefore, she had enjoined strict secrecy, he laid the matter before Hatton and Burghley.

Burghley assembled in his own room the Earls of Derby and Leicester, Lords Howard of Effingham, Hunsdon, and Cobham, Knollys, Hatton, Walsingham, and Davison (February 3). These ten were probably the only privy councillors then at Greenwich.[9 - The remaining Privy Councillors were Archbishop Whitgift, Lord Chancellor Bromley, the Earls of Shrewsbury and Warwick, Lord Buckhurst, Sir James Crofts, Sir Ralph Sadler, Sir Walter Mildmay, Sir Amyas Paulet, and the Latin Secretary, Wolley.] He laid before them Davison’s statement of what had passed between the Queen and himself at both interviews. He said that she had done as much as could be expected of her; that she evidently wished her ministers to take whatever responsibility remained upon themselves without informing her; and that they ought to do so. His proposal was agreed to. A letter was written to the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury instructing them to carry out the execution. This letter all the ten signed, and it was at once despatched along with the warrant. They quite understood that Elizabeth would disavow them. They saw that she wished to have a pretext for saying that Mary had been put to death without her knowledge, and before she had finally made up her mind. They were willing to furnish her with this pretext. Of course there would be more or less of a storm to keep up the make-believe. But ten privy councillors acting together could not well be punished.

On Thursday (February 9) the news of the execution arrived. Elizabeth now learnt for the first time that the responsibility which she had intended to fix on the two secretaries, one a nobody and the other no favourite, had been shared by eight others of the Council, including all its most important members. Storm at them she might and did, and all the more furiously because they had combined for self-protection. But to punish the whole ten was out of the question. Yet if no one were punished, with what face could she tender her improbable explanation to foreign courts? The unlucky Davison was singled out. He could be charged with divulging what he had been ordered to keep secret and misleading the others. He was tried before a Special Commission, fined 10,000 marks, and imprisoned for some time in the Tower. The fine was rigidly exacted, and it reduced him to poverty. Burghley, whose tool he had been almost as much as Elizabeth’s, took pains to make his disgrace permanent, because he wanted the secretaryship for his son, Robert Cecil.

The strange thing is, that Elizabeth not only expected her transparent falsehoods to be formally accepted as satisfactory, but hoped that they would be really believed. Her letter to James was an insult to his understanding. “I would you knew (though not felt) the extreme dolour that overwhelms my mind, for that miserable accident which (far contrary to my meaning) hath befallen… I beseech you that as God and many more know how innocent I am in this case, so you will believe me that if I had bid [bidden] ought I would have bid [abided] by it… Thus assuring yourself of me that as I know this [the execution] was deserved, yet if I had meant it I would never lay it on others’ shoulders, no more will I not damnify myself that thought it not.”

Little as James cared what became of his mother, it was impossible that he should not feel humiliated when he was expected to swallow such a pill as this – and ungilded too. He had no intention of going to war with the country of which he might now at any moment become the legitimate King. But to let Elizabeth see that unless he was paid he could be disagreeable, he winked at raids across the border and coquetted with the faction who were inviting Philip to send a Spanish army to Scotland. It was but a passing display of temper. The end of the year (1587) saw him again drawing close to Elizabeth, and she was able to give her undivided attention to the coming Armada.

It cannot be seriously maintained that because Mary was not an English subject she could not be lawfully tried and punished for crimes committed in England. Those, if any there now be, who adopt her own contention that, being an anointed Queen, she was not amenable to any earthly tribunal, but to God alone, are beyond the reach of earthly argument. The English government had a right to detain her as a dangerous public enemy. She, on the other hand, had a right to resist such restraint if she could, and she might have carried conspiracy very far without incurring our blame. But for good reasons we draw a line at conspiracy to murder. No government ever did or will let it pass unpunished. If Napoleon at St. Helena had engaged in conspiracies for seizing the island, no one could have blamed him, even though they might have involved bloodshed. But if he had been convicted of plotting the assassination of Sir Hudson Lowe, he would assuredly have been hanged.

That the execution was a wise and opportune stroke of policy can hardly be disputed. It broke up the Catholic party in England at the moment when their disaffection was about to be tempted by the appearance of the Armada. There had been a time when they had hopes of James. But he was now known to be a stiff Protestant. Only the small Jesuitical faction was prepared to accept Philip either as an heir of John of Gaunt or as Mary’s legatee. There was no other Catholic with a shadow of a claim. The bulk of the party therefore ceased to look forward to a restoration of the old religion, and rallied to the cause of national independence.

NOTE ON PAULET’S ALLEGED REFUSAL TO MURDER MARY

I have not alluded in the text to the story, generally repeated by historians, that Elizabeth urged Paulet and Drury to murder Mary privately. There is no doubt that, after the signature of the warrant, Walsingham and Davison, by Elizabeth’s direction, urged Paulet and Drury to put Mary to death, and that they refused. But was it a private murder that was meant or a public execution without delivery of the warrant? There is nothing in any of Davison’s statements inconsistent with the latter and far more probable explanation. The blacker charge is founded solely on the two letters which are generally accepted as being those which passed between the secretaries and Paulet, but which may be confidently set down as impudent forgeries. They were first given to the world in 1722 by Dr. George Mackenzie, a violent Marian, who says that a copy of them was sent him by Mr. Urry of Christ Church, Oxford, and that they had been found among Paulet’s papers. Two years later they were printed by Hearne, an Oxford Jacobite and Nonjuror, who says he got them from a copy furnished him by a friend unnamed (Urry?), who told him he had copied them in 1717 from a MS. letter-book of Paulet’s. There is also a MS. copy in the Harleian collection, which contains erasures and emendations – an extraordinary thing in a copy. It is said to be in the handwriting of the Earl of Oxford himself. There is nothing to show whence he copied it.

No one has ever seen the originals of these letters. Neither has any one, except Hearne’s unnamed friend, seen the “letter-book” into which Paulet is supposed to have copied them. Where had this “letter-book” been before 1717? Where was it in 1717? What became of it after 1717? To none of these questions is there any answer. The most rational conclusion is that the “letter-book” never existed, and that the letters were fabricated in the reign of George I. by some Oxford Jacobite, who thought it easier and more prudent to circulate copies than to attempt an imitation of Paulet’s well-known handwriting, with all the other difficulties involved in forging a manuscript.

But it may be said, Do not the letters fit in with Davison’s narrative? Of course they do. It was for the very purpose of putting an odious meaning on that narrative that they were fabricated. It was known that letters about putting Mary to death had passed. The real letters had never been seen, and had doubtless been destroyed. Here therefore was a fine opportunity for manufacturing spurious ones.

CHAPTER X

WAR WITH SPAIN: 1587-1603

ELIZABETH is not seen at her best in war. She did not easily resign herself to its sacrifices. It frightened her to see the money which she had painfully put together, pound by pound, during so many years, by many a small economy, draining out at the rate of £17,000 a month into the bottomless pit of military expenditure. When Leicester came back she simply stopped all remittances to the Netherlands, making sure that if she did not feed her soldiers some one else would have to do it. She saw that Parma was not pressing forward. And though rumours of the enormous preparations in Spain, which accounted for his inactivity, continued to pour in, she still hoped that her intervention in the Netherlands was bending Philip to concessions. All this time Parma was steadily carrying out his master’s plans for the invasion. His little army was to be trebled in the autumn by reinforcements principally from Italy. In the meantime he was collecting a flotilla of flat-bottomed boats. As soon as the Armada should appear they were to make the passage under its protection.

It would answer no useful purpose, even if my limits permitted it, to enter into the particulars of Elizabeth’s policy towards the United Provinces during the twelve months that preceded the appearance of the Armada. Her proceedings were often tortuous, and by setting them forth in minute detail her detractors have not found it difficult to represent them as treacherous. But, living three centuries later, what have we to consider but the general scope and drift of her policy? Looking at it as a whole we shall find that, whether we approve of it or not, it was simple, consistent, and undisguised. She had no intention of abandoning the Provinces to Philip, still less of betraying them. But she did wish them to return to their allegiance, if she could procure for them proper guarantees for such liberties as they had been satisfied with before Philip’s tyranny began. If Philip had been wise he would have made those concessions. Elizabeth is not to be over-much blamed if she clung too long to the belief that he could be persuaded or compelled to do what was so much for his own interest. If she was deceived so was Burghley. Walsingham is entitled to the credit of having from first to last refused to believe that the negotiations were anything but a blind.