But we here discontinue this representation of the antitheses of character between them, which first acquired historical import through the differences of position in which the two sovereigns found themselves.

Elizabeth was mistress of her State, as well in its religious as its political constitution. She had revived the obedience once paid to her father; and remodelled the Church in the decidedly Protestant spirit which corresponded to her personal position; at first every man submitted to the new order of things, though many looked on its growth only with aversion. Mary on the contrary had to accommodate herself to a form of Church, and even of State, government, which was founded in opposition to the right of her predecessors, and above all to her own views. If she ever thought of making her own religion predominant, or of oppressing that which was newly established, open resistance was announced to her in threatening terms by its leader John Knox. However much this reaction against her religious belief straitened her on the one side, yet on another side it opened out to her a wider prospect. She already had numerous personally devoted partisans in Great Britain, both in Scotland where she could yet once more call them together, and in England where she was secretly regarded by not a few as the lawful Queen; but, besides this, she had many in Catholic Europe, which had become reunited during these years (the times when the Council of Trent was drawing to a close) around the Papal authority, and was preparing to bring back those who had fallen away. This great confederacy gave Mary a position which made her capable of confronting a neighbour in herself so much more powerful.

Elizabeth once touched on the old claims of England to supremacy over Scotland: the ambition of all the Scotch kings, to prove to the English that they were independent of them, still lived in Mary: when queen was set over against queen, it took a more sharply-expressed shape; any whisper of subjection seemed to her an outrage.

For the moment Mary had, as before mentioned, given up the title of 'Queen of England': but all her thoughts were directed towards the point of getting her presumptive hereditary right to that kingdom recognised, and of preparing for its realisation at a later time.

But now there were two ways by which she might gain her end. She might either get her claim to the English throne recognised by an agreement with its present possessor, which did not appear so unattainable, as Elizabeth was unmarried, and such a settlement would have been legally valid in England; or she might enter into a dynastic alliance with a neighbouring great power, so as to be enabled to carry her claims into effect one day through its military strength.[206]

With this last view negociations were during several years carried on for a marriage with Don Carlos the son of the Spanish King. For in the same proportion that the union of Scotch and French interests dissolved, did the opposite alliance between Spain and England become looser. The most varied reasons made Philip II wish to enter into direct and close relations with Scotland. Immediately after the death of Francis II, a negociation was set on foot with a view to this alliance, on Mary's giving an audience to the Spanish ambassador, to the vexation of Queen Catharine of France, who wished to see this richest of princes, and the one who seemed destined to the greatest power, reserved for her own youngest daughter. After Mary returned to Scotland similar rumours were renewed, and from time to time we meet with a negociation for this object. When her minister Lethington was in London in the spring of 1563, he agreed with the Spanish ambassador that this marriage was the only desirable one: it was longed for by all Scotch and English Catholics. Soon afterwards the ambassador sent a young member of the embassy to Scotland, in the deepest secrecy, by a long circuit through Ireland; not without difficulty he obtained an interview with Mary Stuart, in which he assured himself of her inclination for the marriage. In the autumn of 1563 Catharine Medici showed herself well informed about this negociation and much disquieted by it.[207] It appeared to depend only on Philip's decision whether the marriage was concluded or not.[208] After some time the Scotch Privy Council sent the bishop of Ross to Spain, to bring the matter about. The Queen herself corresponded on it with Cardinal Granvella and the Duchess of Arschot.

Don Carlos was too weak, too morbidly excited, to be married when young. King Philip, who did not wish to feed his ambition, at last gave the plan up, and recommended, instead of his son, his nephew the Archduke Charles of Austria.

But the one was as disagreeable to the English court as the other. Elizabeth had announced eternal enmity to Queen Mary if she married a prince of the house of Austria. Besides, the Spanish influence in England troubled her: she now saw herself already under the necessity of demanding and enforcing the recall of the Spanish ambassador, because he drew the Catholic party round him and incited them to oppose the laws of England. What might have come of it, if a prince of this house should now obtain rule over a part of the island itself?

But while Mary through these secret negociations tried to obtain the support of a great Catholic house for her claims, she neglected nothing that could contribute at the same time to make a good and friendly understanding with Queen Elizabeth possible, and to bring it about. In the company of her half-brother Murray, who held the reins of government with a firm hand, supported by his religious and political friends, she undertook a campaign into the Northern counties (which inclined to Catholicism), to make them submit to the universal law of the land. Only one priest was allowed at court, from whom she heard mass; some of those who read the mass elsewhere were occasionally punished for it; clergymen who complained of the hardship they experienced were referred to Murray. This proceeding too was only temporary, it was intended to incline the Queen of England to her wishes. All quarrel was carefully avoided: on solemn festivals she drank to the English ambassador, to the health of his mistress. Besides, there were negociations for a meeting of the two Queens in person at York, where Mary hoped to be solemnly recognised as presumptive heiress of England.[209] However much it otherwise lies beyond the mental horizon of this epoch of firm and mutually opposed convictions, Mary was then thought capable of willingly adopting the forms of the English Church; to this even the Cardinal of Lorraine had assented. She herself unceasingly declared that she wished to honour Elizabeth as a mother, as an elder sister. But the Queen of England, after all sorts of promises, preparations, and delays, declined the interview. She would hear absolutely nothing of any recognition of the claim of inheritance. With naive plainness she inferred that such a declaration would not lead 'to concord with her sister, the Queen of Scotland,' since naturally a sovereign does not love his heir;—how indeed could that be possible, since every one is wont to make the heir the object of his aim and hopes;—she might increase Mary's importance by the recognition, but at the same time she would undermine her own;—whether Mary had a right to the English throne, she did not know and did not even wish to know: for she was (and as she said this, she pointed to the ring on her finger in proof) married to the people of England; if the Queen of Scotland had a right to the English throne, that should be left to her unimpaired.

And none could deny that such a declaration as Mary required had its hazardous side for Elizabeth. Henry VIII's settlement of the succession, on which Elizabeth's own accession rested, excluded the Scotch line: in virtue of it the descendants of the younger sister, who were natives of England, possessed a greater right. And how if the Queen of Scots, when recognised as heir to England, afterwards gave her hand to a Catholic prince hostile to Elizabeth? The dangers indicated above would then be doubled, the followers of the ancient Church would have attached themselves to the royal couple, and formed a compact party in opposition to Elizabeth's arrangements, which would never have attained stability.

To meet this very objection, it was suggested that Mary might marry a Protestant, in fact Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester, who was looked upon as the favourite of the Queen of England herself. Elizabeth could have been quite secure of him: she herself recommended him. Mary was at the first moment unpleasantly affected by the idea that she was expected to take as a husband one who was a born subject of England; but she was by no means decidedly against it, always supposing that in that case Elizabeth would recognise her right of inheritance in a valid form for herself and her issue by this marriage. Above all men Murray was in favour of this. He said, although his power must be diminished by the Queen's union with Leicester, yet he wished for it, in so far as it was bound up with the confirmation of the heirship; for that was the hope by which he had kept Mary firm to the existing system, and separated her from her old friends all these years past. Such was without doubt the case: it is this point of view that renders Mary's policy and conduct during the last years intelligible. If he, so Murray continued, could not make his promise good, Mary would think he had deceived her: should she afterwards marry a Catholic prince, what would be their position?[210] Once more was the request brought before Queen Elizabeth. But even under these circumstances she could not be induced to grant it. She said, if Mary trusted her and married Leicester, she should never repent it: but these words, which contained no definite engagement, had rather an opposite effect on Mary. In the hope of the recognition of her heirship she had hitherto endured the absolute constraint of her position: she would even have agreed to the choice of a husband by which she feared to be disparaged and controlled: for how could she have concealed from herself, that by it she would have fallen into a permanent dependence on the policy of England? With all her compliances and advances she had nevertheless gained nothing. Her vexation relieved itself by a violent outburst of tears: but during this inward storm she decided at the same time to drop her union with Elizabeth, and thus leave herself free for an opposite policy.

She had refused the Archduke because his possessions were too small to secure her ends, too distant for him to be able to help her. Then another suitor presented himself for her hand, who would not indeed bring her any increase of power, but would strengthen her claims, which seemed to her very desirable. This was the young Henry Lord Darnley, through his mother likewise a descendant of Henry VII's daughter who had married in Scotland, and through his father Matthew Earl of Lennox related to that family of the Stuarts which was descended from Alexander, a younger son of James Stuart the ancestor of the Scotch kings. In his descent there lay a double recommendation for him. It was remarked also that he had in his favour in Scotland itself the numerous and important Stuarts (Lord Athol too belonged to them); but mainly that a scion of this marriage would not find in England any rival of similar claims, which might be easily the case if young Darnley should marry into a family of the English nobility and bring it his rights.[211] Darnley was a youth remarkable for his fine figure, tall and well built; he made a great impression on the Queen at his very first appearance. In July 1565 the marriage was celebrated and Henry Darnley proclaimed King: the heralds named his name first, when they delivered the royal proclamations.

He had hitherto, at least publicly, held to the Protestant faith: even now he occasionally attended the preaching: but after a little wavering he avowed himself a Catholic and drew over a number of lords with him by his example. The Catholic interest thus obtained a complete ascendancy at court.

And now Mary did not delay a moment longer in making decisive advances to the Catholic powers. She had in fact no need to fear that the King of Spain would be offended at her refusing his nephew, if she attached herself to him in other matters. When she announced her marriage to him, she not merely requested him to interest himself for her and her husband's claims in England; she designated him as the man whom God had raised up above all others to defend the holy Catholic religion, and asked for his help to enable her to withstand the apostates in her kingdom: as long as she lived, she would join him against all and every enemy.[212] This quite fell in with the ideas which Philip himself cherished. From the park of Segovia in October 1565 he commissioned Cardinal Pacheco to reassure the Pope with the declaration that he meant to support the Queen of Scots not less than the Pope himself. In this they must, he remarked, keep three points in view: first the subjugation of her rebellious subjects, which he thought not difficult, as Elizabeth would not support them; then the restoration of the Catholic Church in Scotland, than which nothing would give him greater satisfaction; lastly, the most difficult of all, the obtaining the recognition of her right to the English throne: in all this he would support the Queen with his counsel and with money: he could not however come forward himself, it could only be done in the Pope's name.[213]

The ordinary accounts of the conferences at Bayonne have proved erroneous, as the proposals which were certainly made there by the Spaniards were not accepted. But Philip II's resolutions seem not less comprehensive in this case; these were his hostility to Queen Elizabeth, still concealed from the world but fully clear to his own consciousness, and his resolve to do everything in his power to place Mary, if not now, yet at a future time on the English throne. The great movement he was designing was to begin from Scotland. Like the Guises at a later time, so now Mary and her partisans in England and Scotland, if he supported her, were to be instruments in his hand.

Mary had the good fortune to break up the seditious combination of some lords who opposed her marriage. Strengthened by this she prepared for quite a different state of things. She received money from Spain: Pope Pius V had promised to support her as long as he had a single chalice to dispose of. She expected disciplined Italian troops from him: artillery and other munitions of war were brought together for her in the Netherlands. Leaning on Rome and Spain the spirited Queen hoped to become capable of any great enterprise.[214]

It was clearly to be expected that she would unite a political tendency with the religious one. In the letter quoted above Philip reminds her how dangerous to monarchy were the doctrines of the pretended Gospellers:[215] opinions like those which Knox, regardless of all else, put before her personally, as to the limitations of royal power justified by religion, she as a matter of course would not endure. It is more surprising to find that she also called in question the rights which the nobility claimed as against the royal government, assigning a sort of theoretic ground for her view. The nobles base them, so she said, on the services of their ancestors; but if the children have renounced their virtue, neglect honour, care only for their families, despise the King and his laws and commit treason, must the sovereign even then still let his power be limited by theirs? How vast were the plans which this Queen entertained—to restore Catholicism in Scotland, to resume the war against the nobility in which her ancestors had failed, to overthrow the Protestant opinions, and therewith to become one day Queen of England!

Among those around her was an Italian, David Riccio of Poncalieri in Piedmont, who had previously been secretary to the Archbishop of Turin, and then in the same capacity accompanied his brother-in-law, the Conte di Moretta, who went to Scotland as ambassador of the Duke of Savoy. He knew how to express himself well in Italian and French, and was besides skilful in music.[216] As he exactly supplied a voice which was wanting in the Queen's chapel, she asked the ambassador to let him enter her service. Riccio was not a blooming handsome man; though still young, he gave the impression of advanced years: he had something morose and repellent about him; but he showed himself endlessly useful and zealous, and won greater influence from day to day. He not merely conducted the foreign correspondence, on which all now depended and for which he was indispensable,—it became his office to lay everything before the Queen that needed her signature, and through this he attained the incalculable actual power of a confidential cabinet-secretary; he saw the Queen, who took pleasure in his company, as often as he wished, and ate at her table. James Melvil, whom she had commissioned to warn her, if he saw her committing faults, did not neglect doing it in this case; he represented to her the ill effects which favouring a foreigner drew after it: but she thought she could not let her royal prerogative be so narrowly limited.[217] Riccio had promoted the marriage with Darnley: the latter seemed to depend on him;[218] it was even said that the secretary used at pleasure a signet bearing the King's initials. It was no wonder indeed if this influence created him enemies, especially as he took presents which streamed in on him abundantly: yet the real hostility came from quite another quarter.

The English Council of State did not fail to notice the danger which lay in a policy of estrangement on the part of Scotland. It was proposed to put an end to its progress once for all by an invasion of Scotland: or at least the wish was expressed to arm for defence, e.g. to fortify Berwick, and above all to renew the understanding with the Scotch lords; Murray, whom Mary had in vain tried to gain over by reminding him of the interest of their family and the views of their father, would most gladly have delivered Darnley at once into the hands of the English. By thus openly choosing his side he had been forced, together with his chief friends, Chatellerault, Glencairn, Rothes, and some others, to leave Scotland: the Queen, refused with violent words the demand of the English court that she should receive them again; she called a Parliament instead for the beginning of March, in which their banishment was to be confirmed and an attempt made to restore Catholicism. This was not so difficult, as the resolutions of 1560 had never yet been ratified. There appeared at court the Catholic lords, Huntley, Athol, and Bothwell who was ever ready for fighting (he had returned from banishment); they came to an understanding with Riccio. But now it happened that the personal union (on which all rested) between the King, the Queen, and the powerful secretary changed to discord. Darnley, who wished not merely to be called King but to be King, demanded that the matrimonial crown should be conferred on him by the Parliament; this would have given him independent rights. The Queen on her side wished to keep the supreme power undiminished in her hands: and Riccio may well have confirmed her in this, as his own importance depended thereon: Darnley ascribed the opposition he met with from his wife not so much to her own decision as to the low-born foreigner against whom he now conceived a violent hatred. His father, Lennox, who cared little for the restoration of Catholicism in itself, entirely agreed with him as to this. They held it allowable to put out of the way the intruder who dared to hinder their house from mounting to the highest honours, and who by the confidential intimacy in which he stood with the Queen gave rise to all kinds of offensive rumours. With this object they—for the instigation came from them—joined in a union with the Protestant nobles. These regarded Riccio as their most thoroughgoing opponent: they too wished him to be got rid of; but his death alone could not content them. A Parliament was to meet at once, from which they expected nothing but a complete condemnation of their former friends, and absolutely ruinous resolutions against themselves. They made the overthrow of this system a condition of their taking a share in getting rid of Riccio. The King consented that Murray should be again placed at the head of the government, in return for which the matrimonial crown was promised him.

On the 7th March the Queen went to the old council-house of Edinburgh to make the necessary arrangements for the Parliament. The insignia of the realm, sword crown and sceptre, were borne before her by the Catholic lords, Huntley, Athol, and Crawford, the heads of those houses which had once already, in France, offered her their alliance. The King had refused to take part in the ceremony. She named the Lords of Articles, who from of old exercised a decisive influence in the Scotch Parliaments, and restored the bishops to their place among them. As the Queen declares, her object was to promote the restoration of the old religion and to have the rebels sentenced by the assembled Estates. In Holyrood, besides Huntley and Athol, Bothwell, Fleming, Levingstoun, and James Balfour had also found favour, all men who had taken an active part for the restoration of Catholicism or for the re-establishment of the power of the crown: how much it must have surprised men to find that the Queen granted Huntley and Bothwell, who had been declared traitors, admittance into the Privy Council. If the Parliament adopted resolutions in accordance with these preliminaries, it was to be expected that the work of political and religious reaction would begin at once, with the active participation not only of the Pope from whom some money had already come, but also of other Catholic powers with whom Riccio kept the Queen in communication.

A serious danger assuredly for the lords and for Protestantism; there was not a moment to lose if they wished to avert it; but the attempt to do so assumed, through the wild habits of the time and the country, that character of violence which has made it the romance of centuries. The event had such far-reaching results that we too must devote a discussion to it.

In the low, narrow, and gloomy rooms of Holyrood House there is a little chamber to which the Queen retired when she would be alone: it was connected by an inner staircase with the King's lodgings. Here Mary was sitting at supper on Saturday the 9th March 1566, with her natural sister the Countess of Argyle, her natural brother the Laird of Creich, who commanded the guard at the palace, and some other members of her household, among whom was also Riccio; when the King, who had been expected somewhat earlier, appeared and seated himself familiarly by his wife. But at the same moment other unexpected guests also entered. These were Lord Ruthven, who had undertaken to execute the vengeance of King and country on Riccio, and his companions; under his fur-fringed mantle were seen weapons and armour: the Queen asked in affright what brought him there at that unwonted hour. He did not leave her long in doubt. 'I see a man here,' said Ruthven, 'who takes a place that does not become him; by a servant like this we in Scotland will not let ourselves be ruled,'[219] and so prepared to lay hands on him.

Riccio took refuge near her; the Queen declared that she would punish an attack on him as high treason, but swords were bared before her eyes, Riccio was wounded by a thrust over her shoulder, and dragged away: on the floor and on the steps he received more than fifty wounds: the King's own dagger was said to have been seen in the body of the murdered man. This may be doubted, as his jealousy was by no means so real; yet he said soon after that he was responsible for the honour of his wife. In the turmoil he had only just stretched out his hand, to guard her person from any accident. For the nobles, who though acting with the utmost violence yet did not wish to risk their whole future, it was enough that he was there: his presence would authorise their act and give it impunity. When the murder was done Ruthven returned to the Queen and declared to her that the influence she had given Riccio had been unendurable to them, as had been also his counsels for the restoration of the old religion, his enmities against the great men of the land, his connexions with foreign princes; he announced to her plainly the return of the banished lords, with whom the others would unite in an opposite policy. For they had not merely aimed at Riccio: at the same time the Lords Morton and Lindsay, who had collected a number of trustworthy men, had advanced with them and beset the approaches to the palace-yard. Their plan was to get into their hands all their enemies who had gathered round the Queen. But while their attention was fastened on Riccio's murder, most of the threatened persons succeeded in escaping. All the rest who did not belong to the household, and were taken in the palace, were removed without distinction: the Queen was treated like a prisoner.[220] She still possessed a certain popularity, as being hereditary sovereign: a movement arose in the city in her favour, but this was counterbalanced by the antipathies of the Protestants, and a declaration of the King sufficed to still it. The next day a proclamation appeared in his name which directed the members of the Parliament, who had already arrived, to depart again.

It was at any rate secured that a restoration of Catholicism or a legal prosecution of the banished lords was not to be thought of; the original plan however was not completely carried out. As it appears, the temper of the country had not been so far prepared beforehand as to make it possible to deprive the Queen of her power. And the spirited princess did not let herself be so easily subdued. Above all she succeeded in gaining over her husband again, to whom the predominance of the lords was itself derogatory; he helped her to escape and accompanied her in her flight. When they were once safe in a strong place, her partisans gathered round her; she placed herself at the head of a force, small though it was, and occupied the capital; the chief accomplices in the attack of Holyrood, Morton and Ruthven, fled from the country. She did not however revert to her old plans: she resumed her earlier connexions instead, her half-brother Murray again obtained influence, the old members of the Privy Council stood by his side, after some time Morton was able to return. Foreigners found that Scotland was as quiet as before.

But this apparent quiet concealed a discord destined to produce still greater complications. The Queen had only learnt afterwards the share which Darnley had taken in Riccio's murder: it was her husband who had instigated this insult to her royal honour: how could she ever again repose confidence in him? And he no longer found support in the lords whom he had deserted at the moment of the crisis. He was very far now from obtaining the matrimonial crown or even any real influence: he saw himself excluded from affairs more than ever, and despised. When his son was baptised at Stirling, the father could not appear, though he was in the palace: he was afraid of being insulted in public. His condition filled him with shame: he often thought of leaving the kingdom, and made preparations for doing so. But he was not able to state and prove his grievances: he had to acknowledge before the assembled Privy Council that he had no complaints worth mentioning.

The Queen on her side had sometimes let drop her wish to be rid of such a husband. She could not however think seriously of having her marriage with him dissolved, as this could only be done by declaring it null and void, and by that step her son, of whom she had just been delivered, and who was to inherit all her rights, would have been at the same time declared illegitimate. She was told that means would be found to carry the matter through without prejudice to her son. She warned her friends not to undertake anything which, though meant to help her, might prepare yet more trouble.

How men stood to each other is clear from the fact that on the one side Darnley and his father linked themselves with the Catholic party—they were said to have adopted a plan of seizing the government, in the Queen's despite, in the name of her new-born son[221]—while on the other side the rest of the barons pledged themselves not to recognise him but only the Queen. A league was already concluded between some of them, originating with Sir James Balfour (who had been marked out for death by the halter in Holyrood), to rid the world by force of a tyrant and enemy of the nobility, against whom men must secure their lives.

Thus all was in preparation for a fresh catastrophe; a new personal relation of the Queen brought it to pass.

Among the nobles of Scotland James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, was especially distinguished for a fine figure, for youthful strength, intrepid manly courage, proved in a thousand adventures, and decided character. Though professedly a Protestant, he had attached himself to the Regent without wavering, and assured the Queen of his assistance while she was still in France. Can we wonder if Mary, under the pressure of the party combinations around, needing before all things a friend personally devoted to her, sought for support in this tried and energetic man? As she in general prized nothing more highly than bold and valiant deeds, she had often told him how much she admired him; but yet more than this,—we cannot doubt that she let herself be drawn into a passionate connexion with him. Who does not know the sonnets and the love-intoxicated letters she is believed to have addressed to him? I would not say that every word of the latter is genuine; through the several translations—from the French original (which is lost) into the Scotch idiom, from this into Latin, and then back into French as we now have them—they may have suffered much alteration: we have no right to lay stress on every expression, and interpret it by the light of later events: but in the main they are without doubt genuine: they contain circumstances which no one else could then know and which have since been proved to be true; no human being could have invented them.[222] It does not seem as if Mary's fondness for Bothwell was returned by him in the same degree: in her letters and poems she is constantly combating a rival, to whom his heart seems to give the preference. This was Bothwell's own wife whom he had only shortly before married: she stayed with him for a time in the neighbourhood of the court, but he took care that the Queen knew nothing of her being there. As he was before all things ambitious and desirous of power, he only cared for the Queen's love and the possession of her person so far as it would enable him to share her authority and to obtain the supreme power in Scotland. But for this another thing was necessary; the King must be removed out of the way. As Darnley had once joined Riccio's political enemies in the Holyrood assassination, so Bothwell now united himself with Darnley's enemies with a view to his murder, for which they were already quite prepared. Morton was asked to join the enterprise this time also: but he demanded a declaration from the Queen that she was not against it: and this Bothwell could not obtain.

But, it may be said, was not the Queen in collusion with him? Did she not purposely bring back her husband, who had fallen sick at Glasgow, to Edinburgh, and did she not lodge him in a lonely house there not far from the palace under the pretence that the purer air would contribute to his recovery, but in fact to deliver him over all the more surely to destruction? Such has been always the general belief: even her partisans, the zealous Catholics, at that time inclined to believe that the Queen at least connived in the plot.[223] But there was yet another view taken at the time, according to which the better relations that had begun between husband and wife were not due to hypocrisy but were genuine, and a complete reconciliation and reunion was to have been expected: the returning inclination towards her husband was contending in the Queen with her passion for Bothwell; and he was driven on, by the apprehension that his prey and the prize of his ambition would escape him, to hasten the execution of his scheme.[224] And psychologically the event might be best explained in this way. But the statement has not sufficiently good evidence for it to be maintained historically. A poet might, I think, so apprehend it: for it is one of the advantages of poetic representation, that it can take up even a slightly supported tradition, and following it can infer the depths of the heart, those abysmal depths in which the storms of passion rage, and those actions are begotten which laugh laws and morality to scorn, and yet are deeply rooted in the souls of men. The informations on which our historical representation must be based do not reach so far: on a scrupulous examination they do not allow us to attain a definite conviction as to the degree of complicity. Only there can be no doubt as to the fact that this time too ambition and the lust of power played a great part. If Bothwell once said he would prevent Darnley from setting his foot on the necks of the Scotch, he thereby only expressed the feeling of the other nobles. Yet he executed his murderous plot without their joining in it and by means of his own servants.[225] In the house before mentioned he caused a quantity of gunpowder to be laid under the chamber in which Darnley slept, in order to blow him into the air: alarmed at the noise made by opening the door, the young sovereign sprang from his bed; while trying to save himself, he was strangled together with the page who was with him: the powder was then fired and the house laid in ruins.[226]

So the dreadful deed was done: the news of it filled men at first with that curiosity which always attaches to dark events that touch the highest circles; they then busied themselves with the question as to who would ascend the Scottish throne and give the Queen his hand,—among the other suitors Leicester now thought the time come for him, and for renewing good relations between England and Scotland:—but meanwhile to every man's astonishment and horror a rumour spread that the Queen would unite herself with the man to whom the murder of her husband was ascribed. Men fell on their knees before her, to represent the dishonour she would thus draw on herself, and even the danger into which she would bring her child. Letters from England were shown her in which the ruin of all her prospects as to the English throne was intimated, if she took this step: for it would strengthen the suspicion, which had arisen on the spot, that she had been an accomplice in her husband's murder. But she was already no longer her own mistress. Bothwell now did altogether what he would. He obtained from the lords, who feared him, a declaration that he was guiltless of any share in the King's murder, and even their consent to his marriage with the Queen. He said publicly he would marry the Queen, whoever might be against it, whether she would or not. And if Mary wished ever again to govern the country, and make the lords feel her vengeance, Bothwell might appear to her the only man who could assist her in this. Half of her free will, half by force, she fell into his power and thus into the necessity of giving him her hand. An archiepiscopal matrimonial court found in a near relationship between Bothwell and his wife a pretext for dissolving his previous marriage.[227] Bothwell was created Duke of Orkney: he began to exercise the royal power for his own objects; his friends, even the accomplices in the murder, were promoted.[228]

But how could it be expected that the Lords would tolerate in the much more dangerous hands of Bothwell a power they would not have endured in Darnley's? Against him they had the full support of the people; filled with moral aversion to the Queen for the guilt she had incurred, or which was attributed to her, they expressed their loyalty only in hostility to her; a general uneasiness showed itself as to the safety of her son who was likewise threatened by his father's murderers.

Under a banner on which were depicted the murdered King and his child the latter praying for help, a great army marched against the castle where the newly-married pair dwelt. Bothwell merely regarded the hostile lords as his rivals, who envied him the great position to which he had raised himself, and thought to rout them all with the feudal array which gathered round him at the Queen's summons. But at the decisive moment the feeling of the country infected his own people as well; instead of being able to fight he had to fly. He was forced to live as a pirate in the Northern Seas; for he could no longer remain in the country. The Queen fell into the power of the Lords, who placed her in the strong castle which the Douglas had built in the middle of Loch Leven, and detained her as a prisoner.

In France it was not wholly forgotten that she had once been the Queen of that realm; a fiery champion of the Catholics boasted that, if they would give him a couple of thousand arquebusiers, he would free her from custody in despite of the Scots; but Catharine Medici, who besides was no friend of hers, rejected this absolutely, as they had already so many irons in the fire.[229] On the other hand Elizabeth concerned herself for the interests of her endangered neighbour with a certain emphasis. But the Scots were already discontented with the conduct of England, and complained loudly that since the treaty of Leith nothing good had come to them from thence;[230] they were resolved to pay their neighbour no more attention, but to manage their own affairs for themselves.

Their path was clearly marked out for them. They had murdered Riccio, conspired against Darnley, driven Bothwell away, and all for the special reason that they had tried to create a strong supreme power over them: they could not possibly allow the Queen, irritated and insulted as she was, to again obtain the exercise of her power. Mary therefore was forced to resign the Scotch crown in favour of her son, and to name her brother Murray regent during his minority. Immediately on this the ceremony of anointing and crowning the child was performed in an almost grotesque manner.[231] Two superintendents and a bishop set the crown on his head, which the Lords there present touched in token of their consent; two of them, Morton and Hume, then swore in the name of the new King, James VI, that he would uphold the religion now prevailing in Scotland, and combat all its enemies.

When after this Murray, who had exiled himself to France, and had taken no share in the last catastrophe (which he foresaw), returned, he was in a position once more to conduct the government according to his old policy, only with greater independence. A Parliament was called which now for the first time confirmed the statutes made in 1560 in favour of the Kirk, and also came to such an arrangement about the confiscated church-property as made it possible for it to exist.

So ruinous for Mary were the results of her attempt to break through the combination which formed the condition of her government in Scotland, and to effect a restoration of the old ecclesiastical and political forms. Before the power which she wished to overthrow her own had gone down.

But she was not yet minded to submit to it. And mainly through a personal relation which she had entered into with the young George Douglas, who conceived hopes of her hand, she succeeded in escaping out of her prison and over the lake, bold and venturous as she always was. In the country there were many who thought themselves to stand so high above the bastard Earl of Murray, that they held it a disgrace to obey him: all these gathered round her; and as she then, the very day after her escape, revoked her abdication, they bound themselves together to replace her on the throne. In the league, at the head of which stood the Hamiltons, we find eight bishops and twelve abbots,—for the re-establishment of the Catholic Church was part of the plan: a considerable army was brought into the field with this object. Murray and his party were however the stronger of the two, they represented the organised power of the State, and their soldiers were the best disciplined. The Queen, who, at Langsyde, from a neighbouring eminence, looked on at the battle between the two armies, had to witness her own men being scattered without having done the enemy any damage,—Murray is said to have lost only one man. He himself put a stop to the slaughter of the fugitives. Still even now her affairs did not seem to those around her utterly lost, for all her friends had not yet appeared in the field, and there were still strong places to which she could retreat. But she aimed not merely at defence, but at overpowering her enemies. As what she had just seen left her no hope of this in Scotland, she adopted the idea of demanding help from the Queen of England. For the latter had in the strongest terms made known to the Scotch barons her displeasure at the treatment of their Queen, which was not in harmony with the laws of God or man, and had threatened to punish them for the wound thus inflicted on the royal dignity. She had once sent Mary herself a jewel as a pledge of her friendship. Mary was warned by those around her not to put full trust in these assurances. But she was quite accustomed to take her resolutions under passionate emotion, and could not then be dissuaded from her views. Through forests and woods, over stock and stone, without a single woman attendant, without any other food than the Scotch oatcake, day and night she kept on her way to the coast, from which she betook herself in a small boat to Carlisle. Her soul was thirsting to subdue the rebels: her firm trust was to draw Queen Elizabeth into the war against them: she came, not to seek a refuge, but to gain troops and assistance.

NOTES:

[203] Throckmorton to Chamberlain, 21 Nov. 1560, in Wright, Elizabeth i. 52.

[204] Throckmorton, in Tytler, History of Scotland vi. 194. In a memoir of Cecil, 'a note of indignities and wrongs done by the Queen of Scots to the Queen's Majesty,' in Murdin 582, the greatest stress is justly laid on this refusal.

[205] Castelnau, Memoires iii. 13. 'Cette jeune princesse avoit un esprit grand et inquiete, comme celui du feu Cardinal de Lorraine son oncle, auxquels ont succede la pluspart des choses contraires a leurs deliberations.'

[206] As it is once expressed in one of her letters: 'pour l'advanchement de mes affaires tant en ce pays (Scotland) qu'en celuy la, ou je pretends quelque droit (England).' In Labanoff, Lettres et Memoires de Marie Stuart i. 247.

[207] 'Que la conveniencia publica, en especial la de la religion aconsejaba que la reina su ama, se casase con el principe Don Carlos.' From the ambassador's reports in Gonzalez 299.

[208] 'Qu'il ne tiendra, qu'au dit Espagne qu'il (ce mariage) se ne fasse.' Additions a Castelnau.

[209] Compare Conaeus, Vita Mariae, in Jebb i. 24.

[210] Conversation with Randolph, in Tytler vi. 316. Murray says to him: 'the Queen would dislike and suspect him, because he had deceived her with promises which he could not realise: he was the counsellor and devizer of that line of policy, which for the last five years had been pursued towards England; he it was that had induced her to defer to Elizabeth.'

[211] Spottiswood, History of the Church of Scotland ii. 25. 'If it should fall him to marry with one of the great families of England, it was to be feared that some impediment might be made to her in the right of succession.'

[212] Lislebourc (Edinburgh), 24 July 1565, in Labanoff vii. 430.

[213] Compare Apuntamientos 312. The letter itself in Mignet ii. App. E.

[214] Sacchinus, Historia societatis Jesu, pp. iii, xiii, no. 166.

[215] Fragment d'un Memoire de Marie Stuart sur la noblesse. Labanoff vii. 297.

[216] Memoire adresse a Cosme I, from the Archivio Mediceo at Florence, in Labanoff vii. 65.

[217] James Melvil, Memoirs 59.

[218] From a despatch of Randolph's in Mackintosh, History of England iii. 73. 'David is he that worketh all, chief secretary of the Queen of Scotland, only governor to her good man.' Can the date be right?

[219] 'Volemo quel galante la e non volemo esser governati per un servitor.' Letter to Cosimo I, in Tuscany, in Labanoff vii. 92.

[220] Queen Mary to the Archbishop of Glasgow, 2 April 1566, in Keith and Labanoff. Of all the reports on this event the most important and trustworthy.

[221] 'That the king ... suld take the prince our son and crown him and being crownit as his father suld tak upon him the government.' Mary to the Archbishop of Glasgow, in Labanoff i. 396.

[222] Compare Robertson, Dissertation on King Henry's murder, Works i., History of Scotland 243. From a letter of Thuanus to Camden (1606) it is clear how much trouble it already cost him to arrive at a decided opinion.

[223] 'Monsenor de Moreta ... anadio (to his narrative of the event) algunas particularidades, que en juicio del embajador probaban o inducian mucha sospecha que la reina avia sabido y aun permetido el suceso.' Apuntamientos 320. The affair has been very wrongly drawn into the sphere of religious controversy.

[224] Account in the collection for the history of the times of the Emperor Maximilian II, which Simon Schardius embodied in the tomus rerum Germanicarum iv, not authentic, yet based on what was then held in Scotland to be true. It runs: 'Rex cum illa se accedente ita suaviter sermones commutat, ut reconciliatae annulum daret, hoc pacto, ut illa se in lectum conjugalem intra duos dies admitteret. Erant in aula, qui hanc offensionem placari minime vellent, unde, priusquam rex voti compos fieret, eum e medio tollere constituerunt.'

[225] Trial of James Earl Bothwell. State trials.

[226] Report of the Nuncio, which agrees fairly with the statements in Schardius.

[227] Mary's confessor told the Spanish ambassador in answer to his questions: 'Que el caso se habia consultado con los obispos catolicos y que unanimemente havian dicho que lo podia hacer (casarse) por que la muger de Bodwell era pariente sua en quarto grado.'

[228] Memorandum of Cecil. 'She committed all autority to him and his compagnons, who exercised such cruelty as none of the nobility that were counsel of the realm durst abide about the Queen.'

[229] Norris to Elizabeth 23 July 1567, in Wright i. 260.

[230] Throckmorton to Cecil: 'upon other accidents [since Leith] they have observed such things in H. My's doings, as have tended to the danger of such as she had dealt withall.' Wright 251.

[231] Calderwood ii. 384: 'Modo cha ha usato la regina di Scotia per liberarsi,' from the Florentine archives, in Labanoff vii. 135.



CHAPTER IV.

INTERDEPENDENCE OF THE EUROPEAN DISSENSIONS IN POLITICS AND RELIGION.

If we inquire into the reason why Philip II gave up his previous relations with England and sided with the Queen of Scots, we shall find it mainly in the fact that the victory of Protestant ideas in England exercised a counter-action which was insupportable for the government he had established in the Netherlands. But that he gave Mary no help in her troubles, though information was once collected as to how it might be done, may also be traceable to the disturbances that had broken out in the Netherlands, the suppression of which occupied all his attention and resources.

In 1568 the Duke of Alva was master of the Netherlands: he was already able to send a considerable force to help the French government, which had once more broken an agreement forced upon it by the Huguenots; the stress of the religious war was transferred to France, and there too the Catholic military force by degrees gained the upper hand.

It was under these circumstances that Mary Stuart appeared in England with a demand for help. If in the Netherlands the attempts of the nobles and the Protestant tendencies had been alike defeated, they had on the other hand, by a similar union, achieved a decisive victory in Scotland. Was Elizabeth to join Mary in combating them?

Elizabeth disliked the proceedings of the Scotch nobles towards their lawful Queen; the adherents of the Scotch church-system were already troublesome to her in England: but, however much she found to blame in them, in the great contest of the world they were her allies. Mary on the other hand held to that great system of life and thought with which the English Queen and her ministers had broken. Whatever Elizabeth might have previously promised, she did not mean to be bound by it under circumstances so completely altered.[232] Had she chosen to restore Mary, she would have opened the island to all the influences which she desired to exclude. Nor did she wish to let her retire to France, for while Mary had resided there previously, England had not had a single quiet day: without doubt the Catholic zeal prevailing there would have been at once excited in support of her claims to the English throne. An attempt was again made to reconcile the Scotch nobles with their Queen: but as this led to an enquiry respecting her share in the guilt of the King's murder—those letters of Mary to Bothwell now first came to the knowledge of the public—the dissension became rather greater and quite irreconcilable.

One now begins to feel sympathy with the Queen of Scots, especially as her share in the crime imputed to her is not quite clear. Of her own free will she had come to England to seek for assistance on which she thought she could reckon: but high considerations of policy not merely prevented its being given but also made it seem prudent to detain her in England.[233] Elizabeth and her ministers brought themselves to prefer the interests of the crown to what was in itself right and fit. Mary did not however on this account vanish from the stage of the world: rather she obtained an exceedingly important position by her presence in England, where one party acknowledged her immediate claim to the throne, the other at least her claim to the succession; and hence arose not merely inconveniences but very serious dangers for the English government. Even in 1569, at a moment when the Catholic military power had the superiority in France and the Netherlands, Mary's uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, proposed to the King of Spain an offensive alliance against Queen Elizabeth.[234] In the civil wars of France they had just won the victory in two great battles. Who could say what the result would have been if in the still very unprepared condition of England an invasion had been undertaken by the combined Catholic powers?

But the life and the destiny of Europe depend on the fact that the great general antagonisms are perpetually crossed by the special ones of the several states. Philip did not wish for an alliance with the French; it seemed to him untrustworthy, too extensive and, even if it led to victory, dangerous. He declared with the greatest distinctness, that he thought of nothing but of putting down his rebels (including at the time the Moriscoes), and the complete pacification of the Netherlands; he would not hear of a declaration of war against England. The difficulty of this sovereign's position on all sides and his natural temperament were the determining element in the history of the second half of the sixteenth century. His great object, the re-establishment and extension of the Catholic religion, he never leaves out of sight for a moment; but yet he pursues it only in combination with his own special interests. He is accustomed to weigh all the chances, to proceed slowly, to pause when the situation becomes critical, to avoid dangerous enterprises. Open war is not to his taste, he loves secret influences.

In November 1569 a rebellion broke out in England, not without the connivance of the Spanish ambassador, but mainly under the impression made by the Catholic victories in France, as to which Mary Stuart also had let it be known that they rejoiced her inmost soul. It was mainly the Northern counties that rose, as had before been the case in 1536 and 1549. Where the revolt gained the upper hand, the Common Prayer-book and sometimes the English translation of the Bible as well were burnt, and the mass re-established. Many nobles, above all in the North itself, still held Catholic opinions. At the head of the present insurrection stood the Percies of Northumberland, the Nevilles of Westmoreland, the Cliffords of Cumberland; Richard Norton, who rose for the Nevilles, venerable for his grey hair, and surrounded by a troop of sons in their prime, carried the Cross as a banner in front of his men. The nobility did not exactly want to overthrow the Queen, but it wished to force her to alter her government, to dismiss her present ministers, and above all to recognise Mary Stuart's claim to the succession—which would have given her an exceedingly numerous body of supporters in England and thus have seriously hampered the Queen. But now the government possessed a still more decided ascendancy than even in 1549. It had come upon the traces of the enterprise in time to quell it at its first outbreak, and had at once removed the Queen of Scots out of reach of the movement. The commander in the North, Thomas Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex, one of the Queen's heroes, who bore himself bravely and blamelessly in other spheres of action as well as in this, and has left behind him one of the purest of names, encountered the rebels with a considerable force, composed entirely of his own men; these the rebels were the less able to withstand, as they knew that still more troops were on the march. As the ballad of a northern minstrel says, the gold-horned bull of the Nevilles, the silver crescent of the Percies, vanished from the field: the chiefs themselves fled over the Scotch border, their troops dispersed, their declared partisans underwent the severest punishments. Many who knew themselves guilty passed over to the Queen's party in order to escape.

But at the very time of this victory the war against the Queen at home and abroad first received its most vivid impulse through the supreme head of the Catholic faith. Pope Pius V, who saw in Elizabeth the protectress of all the enemies of Catholicism, had issued the long prepared and hitherto withheld excommunication against her. In the name of Him who had raised him to the supreme throne of Right, he declared Elizabeth to have forfeited the realm of which she claimed to be Queen: he not merely released her subjects from the oath they had taken to her: 'we likewise forbid,' he added, 'her barons and peoples henceforth to obey this woman's commands and laws, under pain of excommunication.'[235] It was a proclamation of war in the style of Innocent III: rebellion was therein almost treated as a proof of faith.

The way in which the Queen opened her Parliament in 1571 forms as it were a conscious contrast to the Papal bull, and its declaration that she was deposed. She appeared in the robes of state, the golden coronal on her head. At her right sat the dignitaries of the English Church, at her left the lay lords, on the woolsack in the centre the members of the Privy Council, by the sides stood the knights and burgesses of the lower house. The keeper of the great seal reminded the Houses of the late years of peace, in which—a thing without example in England—no blood had been shed; but now peace seemed likely to perish through the machinations of Rome. All were of one accord that they must confront this attempt with the full force of the law. It was declared high treason to designate the Queen as heretical or schismatic, to deny her right to the throne, or to ascribe such a right to any one else. To proselytise to Catholicism, or to bring into England sacred objects consecrated by the Pope, or absolutions from him, was forbidden and treated as an offence against the State. What a decidedly antipapal character did the Church, which retained most of the hierarchic usages, nevertheless assume! The oath of supremacy became indispensable even for places at court and in the country districts, in which it had not hitherto been required. Men deemed the Queen's ecclesiastical power the palladium of the realm.

In this form the war of religion appeared in England. The Protestant exiles from the Netherlands and France sought and found a refuge here in large bodies; it has been calculated that they then composed one-twentieth of the inhabitants of London, and they were settled in many other places. But the fiery passions, which on the Continent led to the re-establishment of Catholicism, reacted on the old English families of the Catholic faith as well, and produced, under the influence of Spanish or Italian agitators, ever new attempts at overthrowing the government.

It was just then, there cannot be any doubt of it, that Thomas duke of Norfolk, who might be regarded as almost the chief noble of the realm, became concerned in such an attempt. Somewhat earlier the idea had been entertained that his marriage with Mary Stuart might contribute to restore general quiet in both kingdoms: but Queen Elizabeth had abandoned this plan, and he had pledged himself to her under his hand and seal not to enter into any negociation about it without her previous knowledge. Nevertheless he had allowed himself to be drawn by an Italian money-changer, Roberto Ridolfi, who had lived long in England, not merely into a new agreement with this object in view but into treasonable designs. Norfolk possessed an immense following among the nobility of both religious parties: and, as he would not declare himself a Catholic at once, he thought to have the Protestant lords also on his side, if he married Mary Stuart, whom many of them regarded as the lawful heiress of the realm. He applied for the Pope's approval of his proceedings, and promised to come forward without reserve if a Spanish force landed in England: he affirmed that his views were not directed to his own advancement, but only to the purpose of uniting the island under one sovereign, and re-establishing the old laws and the Catholic religion. These thoughts hardly originated with the duke, they were suggested to him by Ridolfi, who himself drew up the instructions with which Norfolk and Mary despatched him to the Pope and the King of Spain.[236] Ridolfi had been sent to Mary with full powers from the Pope, and also well provided with money. When he now appeared again in Rome with his instructions, which really contained simply the acceptance of his proposals, he was, as may be imagined, received with joy: the Pope, who expected the salvation of the world from these enterprises, recommended them to King Philip. In Spain also they met with a good reception. We are astonished at the naivete with which the Council of State proceeded to deliberate on the proposal of a sudden stroke by which an Italian partisan undertook to seize the Queen and her councillors at one of her country-houses. The King at last left the decision to the Duke of Alva. Alva would have been in favour of the plan itself, but he took into consideration that an unsuccessful attempt would provoke a general attack from all sides on the Netherlands, which were only just subdued and still full of ferment. He thought the King should not declare himself until the conspirators had succeeded in getting the Queen into their hands, alive or dead. If Norfolk made his rising contingent on the landing of a Spanish force in England, Alva on the other hand required that he should already have got the Queen into his power before his own master made his participation in the scheme known.[237]

But while letters and messages were being exchanged in this way (for Ridolfi held it necessary to be in communication with his friends in England and Scotland), Elizabeth's watchful ministers had already discovered all. Even before Ridolfi reached Spain, Elizabeth gave the French ambassador an intimation of the commission with which the Queen of Scots had entrusted him.[238] The latter had not yet received any kind of answer from Spain when the Earl of Shrewsbury, in whose custody she then was at Sheffield, reproached her with the schemes in which she was implicated, and announced to her a closer restriction of her liberty as a punishment for them: further Elizabeth would not at that time as yet proceed against her. In Spain and Italy they were still expecting the Duke of Norfolk to take up arms, when he was already a prisoner. Elizabeth struggled long against giving him over to the arm of the law, but her friends held an execution absolutely necessary for her personal security. On the scaffold in the Tower Norfolk said he was the first to die on that spot under Queen Elizabeth and trusted he would be the last. All people said Amen.

The scheme of this revolt proceeded more from Italy and Rome than from Spain: King Philip had taken no active part in it, the Duke of Alva had rather set himself against it: but we need only glance at their correspondence to perceive how completely nevertheless they were implicated in the matter. To carry on the war against Elizabeth not in his own name but in the name, and for the restoration of the rights, of the Queen of Scotland, would have exactly suited the policy of Philip II: he thought such an opportunity would never present itself again; they must avail themselves of it and finish the affair as quickly as possible, that France might not take part in it. If Alva counts up the difficulties which manifestly stood in the way of the scheme, yet he promises to execute the King's wishes with all the means in his power, with person and property: 'God will still send the King other favourable opportunities as a reward for his religious zeal.'[239]

Queen Elizabeth expelled the Spanish ambassador, Gueran de Espes, who had undeniably taken part in Ridolfi's schemes as well as in the last rising, from England; as soon as he reached Brussels, the English and Scotch fugitives gathered round him, and communicated to him many new schemes of invasion, to which his ear was more open than that of the Duke of Alva. An attack was to be tried, now on Scotland, now on Ireland, now on England itself.

We cannot suppose that in England they knew every word that was uttered about these plans, or that everything they did believe there was well grounded. But from year to year men's minds were more and more filled with the idea that Philip II was the great enemy of their religion and of their country. In the sphere of classical literature the translation of Demosthenes in 1570 is noteworthy in this respect. What Demosthenes says against Philip of Macedon, in regard to the Athenians, the translator finds applicable to Philip II; he calls the English to open war in the words of the ancient orator, 'for as it was then, so is it now, and ever will be.'

But for this Elizabeth on her side did not feel inclined or prepared. Many acts of hostility took place at sea in a piratical war, in politics they stood sharply opposed to each other: but they were not inclined on either side for an open contest, front to front.

Above all the English held it necessary now to come to a good understanding with the other of the two great neighbouring powers. It stood them in good stead that a tendency to moderate measures gained sway in France; the English ambassadors took a very vivid interest in the project of a marriage between Henry of Navarre and Margaret of Valois. While the victory of Lepanto filled the hearts of the partisans of Spain with fresh hopes, the jealousy it awakened in the French contributed largely to their withdrawal from Spain and the Pope, and their readiness for an alliance with England. The two powers promised each other mutual support against any attack, on whatever ground it might at any time be undertaken. A later explanation of the treaty expressly confirmed its including the case of religion.[240]

Thus secured on this side the Queen proceeded to carry out an idea which had immense consequences. It is not a mere suspicion, partially derived from the result, to suppose that she thought King Philip's combining with her rebels gave her a right to combine with the King's revolted subjects: she herself said so once to the French ambassador: while talking with him, she one day dropped her voice, and said that as Philip kept her state disturbed, she did not hold herself any longer bound to treat him with the regard she had hitherto shewn him in the quarrels of the Netherlands.

It is not quite true that she supported with her own power the Gueux ('Beggars'), who had fled to the sea from Alva's persecutions, in the decisive attacks they now made on Brielle and Vliessingen (Brill and Flushing): but this was hardly needed, it was quite enough that her feeling was known, she merely let things take their way, she did not prevent the attack of the rebels against Philip II (powerful at sea as they were) being supported by the fugitive Walloons residing in England, and by Englishmen also. It was estimated that there were then in Vliessingen 400 Walloons and 400 English: 1500 English lay before the town, to keep off the attacks of the Spaniards. French troops gave aid in corresponding numbers. They were all recalled at a later time; but meanwhile the insurrection had gained a consistency which made it impossible for the Spaniards to subdue the Netherlands.

As formerly Elizabeth had joined the Scotch lords against the Regent and the Queen of Scotland, so now she helped the insurgents of the Netherlands against the King of Spain. In the first case she had Philip II himself on her side, in the second case France.

By this policy she found the means of securing herself at home, from the Spanish attacks. It was more than ever necessary for Philip to concentrate on the war in the Netherlands all the forces of which he could dispose. The Queen did not yet take direct part in it, and Philip had to avoid everything that could induce her to do so. It was not her object to bring about the independence of the Provinces: but she insisted on the departure of the Spanish troops, the observance of the provincial constitutions, and above all assured liberty for the Protestant faith. In 1575 she offered the King her mediation, not however without including one special English matter, namely the mitigation of the severe religious laws in reference to English merchants in the Spanish countries: the King took the opinion of the Grand Inquisitor on it. As if he could ever have been in its favour himself! The Pacification of Ghent in 1576 was quite in accordance with the Queen's views, since it established the supremacy of the Estates, and freedom of religion for the chief Northern provinces. To maintain this, she had no hesitation in concluding an alliance with the States, and in consequence despatching a body of English troops to the Netherlands. She informed the King himself of this, and requested him to recall the Stadtholder Don John, his half-brother (who was trying to break the peace), and to receive the Estates into his favour: she did not by this think to come to a breach with him.

The idea of entrusting Don John of Austria, the victor of Lepanto, with the restoration of Catholicism in West Europe had been at that time adopted in Rome. His was a fiery nature pervaded by Catholic principles, and seized with the most vivid ambition to be something in the world and to effect something. The Irish wished him to be their king; he was to free Mary Stuart from prison, vindicate her rights alike in Scotland and in England, and at her side ascend the throne of the British kingdoms now united in Catholicism. Mary gladly acceded to this, as she had already long wished for a marriage with the Spanish house. It was probably to give this combination a firmer basis that she proposed, in case her son did not prove to be a Catholic, to transfer her claims on the throne of England to the King of Spain, or to any of his relatives whom he should name in conjunction with the Pope.[241] But whom could she mean by these last words but Don John himself, who then stood in close connexion with the Guises, whom she also recommended most pressingly to the King. But she had at the same time directed her aim towards Scotland. There her enemies Murray and Lennox had perished by assassination; under the following regents, Mar and Morton, Mary had still nevertheless so many partisans, that they never could have ventured, as they were requested to do from England, to allow Mary to come to Scotland and be put on her trial: their own power would have been endangered by it. Mary too believed herself to have prepared everything there so well for an enterprise by Don John that, as she says, an overthrow of the Scotch government would infallibly have ensued if Philip II had only put his hand to the work. And how closely were his interests bound up with it! Without a conquest of the island-kingdom, as his brother represented to him, the Netherlands could never be subdued. But even now he shunned an open rupture. Besides this his brother's restlessness and thirst for action, and his political intrigues which were already reacting on Spain, were disagreeable to him; he could not make up his mind to take a decisive step.

He had again and again been vainly entreated to interest himself in the population of Ireland, in which national and religious antagonism contended against the supremacy of England. One of the confidential agents secretly sent thither assured him that he was implored by nine-tenths of the inhabitants to take them under his protection and save their souls, that is restore them the mass, which they could no longer celebrate publicly: they appealed to their primeval relationship with the Iberian people, to ancient prophecies which looked forward to this, and to the great political interests at stake. Philip was not disinclined to attempt the enterprise; but he required the co-operation of France, without doubt to break the opposition of this power in the affairs of the Netherlands; a condition which could not be made acceptable to the French by any interposition of Rome.

And so, if Pope Gregory XIII wished to undertake anything against Ireland, he had to do it himself. Men witnessed the singular spectacle of an expedition against Ireland being fitted out on the coasts of the States of the Church. A papal general from Bologna came to the assistance of the powerful Irish chief, Fitzmaurice. They commanded the Irish districts far and wide, and made inroads into the English: for a long time they were very troublesome, although not really dangerous.

King Philip was then busied in an undertaking which interested him still more closely than even that of the Netherlands: he made good his hereditary claim to Portugal, without being obstructed in it either by the opposition of a native claimant or by the counter-working of the European powers.

In the face of this success, by which the Spanish monarchy became master of the whole Pyrenean peninsula and its many colonies in East and West, it was all the more necessary for the other two powers to hold together. Many causes of quarrel indeed arose between them. How could the shocking event of the night of St. Bartholomew fail to awaken all the antipathies of the English, and indeed of Protestantism in general! Elizabeth did not let herself be prevented by her treaty from supporting the French Protestants in the manner she liked, that is without its being possible to prove it against her. Under Charles IX she contributed to prevent them from succumbing, under Henry III she helped them in recovering a certain political position: for this very object the Palsgrave Casimir led into France German troops paid with English money. Catharine Medici often reproached her with observing a policy like that of Louis XI. But the common interest of the two kingdoms was always more powerful than these differences; frequent and long negociations were carried on for even a closer union. The marriage of Queen Elizabeth with Catharine's youngest son was once held to be as good as certain: he actually appeared personally in England. We refrain from following the course of these negociations. The interest they awaken constantly ends in disappointment, for they are always moving towards their object without attaining it. But perhaps it will repay our trouble to consider the reasons which came into consideration for and against the proposed connexion.

The main reason for it was that England must hinder an alliance between Spain and France, especially one in favour of the Queen of Scots. And certainly nothing had stood the English policy in Scotland in such stead as the good understanding with France. But much more seemed attainable if France and England were united for ever. They would then be able to compel the King of Spain to conclude a peace with the Netherlands which would secure them their liberties; and, if he did not observe it, they would have grounds for a common occupation of a part of the Provinces. If there should be any issue of the marriage, this would put an end to all attacks on Elizabeth's life, and greatly strengthen the attachment of her subjects.

But against it was the fact that this marriage would bring the Queen into disagreeable personal relations; and the country would be as unwilling to see a French king as it had once a Spanish one. And how would it be, if a son sprung from the marriage, to inherit both the French and the English throne? was England to be ruled by a viceroy? What an opposition the world would raise to the union of these mighty kingdoms, into what complications might it not lead! Scotland would again attach itself to the French: the Netherlands and the German princes would be alienated.

The members of the Privy Council, after they had weighed all these considerations, at last pronounced themselves on the whole against it. They recommended the continuance of the present system,—the support of the Protestants, especially in France, a good understanding with the King of Scotland, and the maintenance of religion and justice in England: thus they would be a match for every threat of the King of Spain.[242]

But that sovereign had one ally against whom these precautions could not suffice, the Order of Jesuits and the seminaries of English priests under its guidance.

Young exiles from England, who were studying in the Universities of the Netherlands, to prevent the Catholic priesthood from perishing among the English at home, had been already in Alva's time brought together in a college at Douay, which was then removed to Rheims as the revolt spread in the Netherlands. Pope Gregory XIII was not content with supporting this institution by a monthly subsidy; he was ambitious of imitating Gregory the Great and exercising a direct influence on England: he founded in Rome itself a seminary for the reconversion of that country. He made over for this purpose the old English hospital which was also connected with the memory of Thomas Becket. The first students however fell out with each other, and there was seen in Rome the old antagonism of the 'Welsh' and the 'Saxons'; in the end the latter gained the upper hand, it was mainly their doing that the institution was given over to the Jesuits. Not long after its activity began. Each student on his reception was bound to devote his powers to spreading the Catholic doctrines in England; by April 1580 a company of thirteen priests was ready, after receiving the Pope's blessing, to set out with this object. The chief among them were Robert Parsons, who passed into England disguised as a soldier, and Edmund Campion as a merchant. The first went to Gloucester and Hereford, the other to Oxford and Northampton: they and the friends who followed them found everywhere a rich harvest.[243] It was arranged so that they arrived in the evening at the appointed houses of their friends: there they heard confessions and gave advice to the faithful. Early in the morning they preached, and then broke up again; it was customary to provide them an armed escort to guard them from any mischance.

Withal the forms of the church-service in England had been so arranged that it might remain practicable for the Catholics also to take part in it. How many had done so hitherto, perhaps with a rosary or a Catholic book of prayers in their hands! The chief effort of the seminarist priests, on their return to the country, was to put an end to this: they dissuaded intercourse with the Protestants even on indifferent matters. The Queen's statesmen were astonished to find how much the number of recusants increased all at once; from secret presses proceeded writings of an aggressive, and exceedingly malignant, character; in many places Elizabeth was again designated as illegitimate, a usurper, no longer as Queen. On this the repressive system, which had been already set in motion in consequence of Pope Pius V's bull, was made more stringent; this is what has brought on the Queen's government the charge of cruelty. The Catholics too began to compose their martyrologies. One of the first priests whose execution they describe, Cuthbert Mayne, was condemned by the jury for bringing the Bull with him into other people's houses together with some Agnus Dei.[244] Young people were condemned for trying to make their way to the foreign seminaries. On the wish of the missionaries Pope Gregory XIII explained the bull so far, that the excommunication pronounced in it against all who should obey the Queen's commands was meant to be in suspense till it was possible to execute it against the Queen herself on whom it continued to weigh.[245] This limitation however rather increased the danger. The Catholics could remain quiet till rebellion was possible, then it became a duty. The law-courts now sought above all to make the accused priests declare themselves as to the validity of the bull and its obligation. Men held themselves justified in extreme severity against those who 'slip into the country at the instigation of the great enemy, the Pope, and poison the hearts of the subjects with pernicious doctrines.'[246] On this ground Campion met his death; Parsons escaped. Assuredly there were not so many executed as the Catholic world wished to reckon, but yet probably more than the statesmen of England admitted. They persisted that it was not a persecution for religion: and in fact the controverted questions lay mainly in the region of the conflict between Papacy and Monarchy: those executed were not so much martyrs of Catholicism as of the idea of the Papal supremacy over monarchs. But how closely connected are these ideas with each other! The priests for their part believed that they were dying for God and the Church. But the effect which the English government had in view was, with all its severity, not produced. We are assured on Catholic authority that in 1585 there were yet several hundred priests actively engaged. From their reports it is clear that they were still always counting on a complete victory. They vigorously pressed for the attempt at an invasion, which they represented as almost sure of success; 'for two-thirds of the English are still Catholic; the Queen has neither strong places nor disciplined troops: with 16,000 men she might be overthrown.' This time also the house of the Spanish ambassador, Bernardino Mendoza, formed the meeting-point for these tendencies; he kept up a constant communication with the emigrants who had been declared rebels, and with the discontented at home, with Mary Stuart and her friends in Scotland, with the zealous Catholics throughout the world, especially with the Guises, with whom Philip II himself now had an understanding. The increasing power of his sovereign gained him also an ever-increasing consideration.

It was in these days that the Western and Southern Netherlands were again subdued by King Philip. After the death of his brother, his nephew Alexander Farnese of Parma had formed an army of unmixed Catholic composition, which had naturally from its inner unity gained the upper hand over the government of the States, which had called now a German and now a French prince to its head, and was composed of different religions and nationalities. First the seaports, then the towns of Flanders, and at last the wealthy Antwerp also, which by its mental activity and commercial resources had materially nourished the revolt, fell into the hands of the Spaniards. The Prince of Orange was assassinated by a fanatic. Alexander of Parma, who ascribed his victories to the Virgin Mary, pushed on his conquests gradually till they reached the Northern and Eastern Provinces.

The reaction of these events, even while they were still in progress, was first felt in Scotland. There the young King James VI after many vicissitudes had, while still under age, taken the reins of government into his own hands: and a son of his great uncle, Esme Stuart (who exchanged the title Aubigny which he brought from France for the more famous name of Lennox, and was a great friend of the Guises and the Jesuits) obtained the chief credit with him. Lennox promoted Catholicism, which was not so difficult, as part of the nobility still adhered to it, at least in secret; he too lived and moved in comprehensive plans for the re-establishment of the Church. Through the Guises he hoped to be placed in a position to invade England with a Catholic army of 15,000 men; if the English Catholics then did their duty, everything they wanted could be attained: for himself he was resolved to liberate Mary or die in the attempt. Mary was also to reascend the Scotch throne: her son was to be co-regent with her, provided that he himself returned to the bosom of the Catholic Church. Mary Stuart with her indestructible energy was involved in these designs also. She commended them warmly to the Pope and the King of Spain: for it was precisely in Scotland that the universal re-establishment could best be begun.[247] She wished only to know on what resources in men and money her friends there might reckon. We must remember the situation and the peril of these schemes and preparations, if we would understand to some degree the violent measures on which the Protestant lords in Scotland resolved. As in a similar case of an earlier time in Germany, they closed the castle, in which King James was received, against his attendants: Lennox had to leave Scotland. But the young King was shrewd enough, and sufficiently well advised, to rid himself of the lords almost in the same way that they had taken him. He succeeded, chiefly through the help of the French ambassador, a friend of the Guises. Hereupon too he seemed much inclined to favour the undertaking with which Henry Guise occupied himself in 1583, a scheme for a revolution in the affairs of both countries. Guise hoped, with the support of the King of Spain, the Pope, and the Duke of Bavaria, to be able to effect something decisive. James VI let his uncle know his full agreement with the proposed schemes. But, in fact, it did not seem to matter much whether he agreed or not. It was reported to Queen Mary, that the Catholic party in Scotland reckoned on having the most powerful king of Christendom on their side, with or against James' will; that Philip II was building so many vessels that in a short time he would become completely master of the Western ocean, and be able to invade whatever countries he pleased.

It is evident how dangerous for England these Scotch movements were in themselves: Queen Elizabeth thought herself most vulnerable on the side of Scotland: moreover she already saw herself directly threatened. A plan fell into her hands, in which the number of ships and men necessary for an invasion of England, the harbours where they were to land, the places they were to seize, even the men on whose help they could reckon, were enumerated.[248] She convinced herself that the plan came from Mendoza, who held out the prospect of his King's assistance for the purpose, as the attack was to be made simultaneously from the Netherlands and from Spain. This time too Elizabeth dismissed the hostile ambassador; but how could she flatter herself with having thus exorcised the threatening elements? Now that the foe, with whom she had been for fifteen years at war—though not an open war yet one of which both sides were conscious—had become very much stronger, she was forced to take up a decisive position against him, to save herself from being overpowered.

In 1584 her chief minister, William Cecil, now Lord Burleigh, High Treasurer of the kingdom, drew her attention to this necessity. He represented to her that she had nothing to fear from any one in the world except from Spain—but from Spain everything. King Philip had gained more victories from his cabinet, than his father in all his campaigns: he ruled a nation which was thoroughly of one mind in religion, ambitious, brave, and resolute; he had a most devoted party among the discontented in England. The question for the Queen was, whether she hoped to tame the lion or whether she wished to bind him. She could not build on treaties, for the enemy would not keep them. And, if he was allowed to subdue the Netherlands completely, no one in the world could avoid seeing to what object his power would be directed. He advises the Queen not to let things go so far—for those countries were the counterscarp of England's fortress—but to proceed to open war, to withstand the Spaniards in the Netherlands and attack them in the Indies. 'Better now,' he exclaims, 'while the enemy has only one hand free, than later when he can strike with both.'[249]

In August 1585 Antwerp fell into the hands of the Spaniards; in the capitulation the case is already taken into consideration, that Holland and Zealand also might submit. The Northern Netherlands were threatened from yet another side, as Zutphen and Nimuegen had just been taken by the Spaniards. In this extreme distress of her natural ally she delayed no longer. The sovereignty they offered her she refused anew, but she engaged to give considerable assistance, in return for which, as a security for her advances, the fortresses Vliessingen and Briel were given up into her possession. To prove how much she was in earnest in this, she entrusted the conduct of the war in the Netherlands to Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who was still accounted her favourite and was one of the chief confidants of her policy. In December 1585 Leicester reached Vliessingen; on the 1st of January 1586, Francis Drake appeared before St. Domingo and occupied it. The war had broken out by land and by sea.

NOTES:

[232] Randolph states that the promise was given before Darnley's death. Strype, Annals iii. i. 234.

[233] That this was thought of from the first is not to be supposed; the Queen had once previously declared herself against it. 'We fynde her removing either into this our realm or into France not without great discommodities to us.' Letter to Throckmorton, in Wright i. 253.

[234] Gonzalez, Apuntamientos 338. From the 'short memoryall' of 1569 in Hayne's State Papers 585 (though much in it is incorrect), we see that men believed in the union of both crowns against England, with 'the ernest desyre to have the Quene of Scotts possess this crown of England.'

[235] 'Sentenza declaratoria contra Elizabetta, che si pretende reina d'Inghilterra.' In Catena, Vita di Pio V, 309. The agreement of the bull (e.g. as to the 'huomini heretici et ignobili,' who had penetrated into the royal privy council) with the manifesto of the last rebellion, is worth observing.

[236] The instructions which Mary and Norfolk gave their Italian agent for the Roman See are preserved in the Vatican archives and printed in Labanoff iii. 221. From Leslie's expression (Negociations, in Anderson iii. 152) that the duke negociated with Ridolfi through a Mr. Backer, 'because he had the Italian tongue,' and that then all the plans were communicated to him ('the whole devises'), we might conclude that Norfolk was in general very much in foreign hands.

[237] Lo que se platico en consejo 7 Julio 1571. Some other weighty documents are in Appendix V to Mignet's Histoire de Marie Stuart, vol. ii.

[238] Already on the 16th April the French ambassador, while speaking with Elizabeth on the conclusion of the treaty agreed on, remarks, 'qu'elle a quelque nouvelle offence contre la dite reyne d'Ecosse,' which could have been nothing else but the first news of the seizure of one of Ridolfi's servants at Dover on the 10th April, who then under torture had confessed all.

[239] 'Vendran otras ocasiones en tiempo di V. M. per pagarle dios el celo, con que tam caldamente abraza este su negocio.' Contestation del duque di Alba, in Gonzalez 450.

[240] De la Mothe Fenelon au roi de France 22 Dec. 1571. Correspondence diplomatique de Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon iv. 317.

[241] Sketch of a will, in Labanoff iv. 354. 'Je cedde mes droits, que je pretends et puis pretendre a la couronne d'Angleterre et autres seignuries et royaulmes en dependant au roy catholique ou autres des siens qu'il lui plaira, avesque l'advis et consentement de S. S.'

[242] Conference at Westminster touching the Queen's marriage with the Duke of Anjou 1579. Egerton Papers 78. Sussex, who had previously given a somewhat different opinion, was one of those who signed.

[243] Sacchinus, Historia societatis Jesu iii. 1; vii. 1; viii. 96.

[244] 'Perche contro alle leggi d'Inghilterra egli havesse portato seco una bollo papale, alcuni grani benedetti et agnus dei.' Martyrio di Cutberto Maino, in Pollini, Istoria eccl. delle rivolutioni d'Inghilterra p. 499. It is a pity that the eminent Hallam had not the first reports at hand.

[245] Facultates concessae Rob. Personio et Edm. Campiano 14 April 1580. 'Catholicos tum demum obliget, quando publica ejusdem bullae executio fieri poterit.'

[246] Execution of Justice in England. Somers Tracts i.

[247] Lettre a Don Bernardino de Mendoza 6-8 April 1582. 'La grande aparence, qu'il ha de pourvenir (parvenir) maintenant au dict restablissement de la religion en ceste isle, comencant pour la Scotia (par l'Ecosse).' In Mignet App. 522.

[248] According to the Venetian accounts (Dispaccio di Spagna, Marzo 1584) the King had sent an experienced soldier as a spy to England to investigate the possibility of a landing, 'havendo pensato di concertarsi bene con il re di Scotia, perche ancora egli a un tempo medesimo si movesse da quella parte.'

[249] The Lord Treasurers advise in matters of Religion and State. Somers Tracts i. 164.



CHAPTER V.

THE FATE OF MARY STUART.

How completely the circumstances of these times are misunderstood, when they are measured by the rules of an age of peace! Rather they were filled with hostilities in which politics and religion were mingled; foreign war was at the same time a domestic one. The religious confessions were at the same time political programmes.

The Queen took up arms not to make conquests, but to secure her very existence against a daily growing power that openly threatened her, before it had become completely an overmatch for her: she provoked an open war: but she had not done enough when she now, as is necessary in such cases, took into consideration the training of soldiers, securing the harbours, fortifying strong places, improving the navy: the most pressing anxiety arose from the general Catholic agitation in the country.

Elizabeth's statesmen were well aware that the sharp prosecution of the seminarist priests was not enough to put an end to it. With reference to the laity, the Lord Treasurer, however strict in other respects, recommends to his sovereign quite a different mode of proceeding. We should never proceed to capital punishment of such men: we should rather mitigate the oath imposed on them: in particular we should never force the nobles to a final decision between their religious inclinations and their political duties, never drive them to despair. But at the same time he gives a warning against awakening any hope in them that their demands could ever be satisfied, for this would only make them more obstinate. And on no consideration should arms be put into their hands. 'We do not wish to kill them, we cannot coerce them, but we dare not trust them.' Nothing would be more dangerous than to assume a confidence which was not really felt.

Even before this the Privy Council had recommended the Queen to employ Protestants only in the government of her State, and to exclude all Catholics from a share in it.[250] The before-mentioned 'Advice' of Lord Burleigh is remarkable for extending the Protestant interest and adding a popular one to it. He thinks it intolerable that the copyholders and tenants of the Catholic lords, even when they fulfil their obligations in all other respects, experience bad treatment from them on account of religion: it is impossible to let many thousand true subjects be dependent on such as have hostile intentions. The plan Henry VIII had once entertained, of diminishing the authority of the Lords, is now brought by the High Treasurer at this crisis once more into vivid recollection. The Queen is to bind the Commons to herself, to win over their hearts. And Burleigh advises allowing the followers of dissenting Protestant Churches, especially the Puritans, to worship as they please: in preaching and catechising they are more zealous than the Episcopalians, very far more successful in converting the people, and indispensable for weakening the popish party. We see how the necessity of the war acts on home affairs. The chief minister favoured the elements which were forcing their way out through the existing forms of the state.

In this general strain on men's minds their eyes once more turned to the Queen of Scots in her captivity. What would there have been at all to fear at other times from a princess under strong custody and cut off from all the world? But in the excitement of that age she could even so be still an object of apprehension. Her personal friends had from the first not seen a great mischance in her enforced residence in England. For by blameless conduct she refuted the evil report which had followed her thither from Scotland; and her right as heiress of the crown came to the knowledge of the whole nation.[251] In the days at which we have arrived we know with certainty that her presence in the country formed a great lever for Catholic agitation. A report found in the papal archives has been published, by which it is clear how much support men promised themselves from her for every resolute undertaking.[252] This document says that since she has numberless partisans, and although in prison has uninterrupted communication with them, she will always find means, when the time comes, of giving them notice of the approaching opportunity: she is resolved to encounter every hardship, nay even death itself, for the great cause.[253]

Occupied with measures of defence on all sides, the English government had already long been considering how to meet this danger. This was the very reason why Elizabeth's marriage was so often spoken of with popular approbation: if she had children, Mary's claims would lose their importance. Gradually however every man had to confess to himself that this was not to be expected, and on other grounds hardly to be wished. Then men thought how to solve the difficulty in another way.

The chief danger was this: if an attempt on Elizabeth's life succeeded, the supreme authority would devolve on Mary, who was on the spot, who cherished entirely opposite views, and would have at once realised them:—the thought occurred as early as 1579 of declaring by formal act of parliament that all persons by whom the reigning Queen should be in any way endangered or injured should forfeit any claim they might have to the crown;[254] terms which though general were in reality directed only against the Queen of Scots; at that time the proposal was not carried into effect.

The negociations are not yet completely cleared up which were carried on with Mary in 1582-3 for her restoration in Scotland. The English once more repeated their old demand, that Mary should even now ratify the treaty of Edinburgh, and annul all that had been done in violation of it by her first husband or by herself. She was further not merely to renounce every design against the security and peace of England, but to pledge herself to oppose it: and in general, as long as Elizabeth was alive, to put forward no claim to the English throne: whether she had such a right after Elizabeth's death the parliament of England was to decide.[255] Here too the old view came into the foreground: Parliament was to be made the judge of hereditary right. The negociation failed owing to the Scotch intrigues of these years, in which the intention rather was to assert the claim of inheritance with the strong hand.

And from day to day new attempts on Elizabeth's life came to light. In 1584 Francis Throckmorton, who took part in these very schemes, was executed: in 1585 Parry also, who confessed having been in connexion with Mary's plenipotentiary in France, and who had come over to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. Writings were spread abroad in which those about her were called on to imitate, against this female Holofernes, the example set in the book of Judith.

Protestant England in the danger of its sovereign saw its own. In all churches prayers were offered for her safety. The most remarkable proof of this temper is contained in an association of individuals for defending the Queen, which was at that time subscribed to far and wide through the country. It begins with a statement that, to promote certain claims on the crown, the Queen's life was threatened in a highly treasonable manner, and enters into a union in God's name, in which each man pledges himself to the others, to combat with word and deed, and even to pursue with arms, all who should make any attempt on the Queen's person; and not to rest till these wretches were completely destroyed. If the attempt was so far successful as to raise a claim to the crown, they pledged themselves never to recognise such a claim: whoever broke this oath and separated himself from the association should be treated by the other members as a perjurer.[256]